THE FATE OF I CIO DO RUM. 195 



produce, we will raise the income which the city 

 needs. And the great charm of this tax is that 

 the people will not feel it at all, for it will all be 

 paid by outsiders, by these merchants from Cler- 

 mont and Lyons who send their goods to our 

 town. They own the goods, they bring them here, 

 they pay the octroi, for we need not buy of them 

 until the goods are safe inside the city gates. By 

 a single stroke in financial policy, we shall keep 

 our factories running, our workingmen contented, 

 and make the merchants in our rival cities pay all 

 our expenses. As for the other articles which we 

 buy in Clermont, we can make them here, if only 

 we can have the octroi to help us. Extend the 

 octroi to everything, and Issoire will become a mi- 

 crocosm, a little world within a world. We shall do 

 everything for ourselves. There is no excuse for 

 buying anything in Clermont so long as there is a 

 foot of land in Issoire on which a factory can be 

 built. We shall have woollen-factories, and pow- 

 der-factories, and iron-foundries, and distilleries, 

 and cotton-factories, and wine-vaults, and chair- 

 factories, and stone-quarries, and gold-mines, and 

 flourihg-mills, and paper-mills, and saw-mills, and 

 wind-mills, and gin-mills, and " 



But here the mayor began to grow a little inco- 

 herent. He had been out late the night before, 

 explaining the advantages of the octroi at the club 

 in the Cafe de la Comedie, and his private secre- 

 tary pulled his coat in warning that he should 

 bring his speech to a close. 



The mayor's recommendation was accepted in 

 part A few of the Council had been in favor of 



