196 SCIENCE SKETCHES. 



issuing some kind of cheap money, some sort of 

 brass or paper token, which they could make by 

 machinery whenever the treasury became empty. 

 But to do anything of this sort successfully would 

 require the consent and co-operation of Clermont. 

 And the merchants and bankers of Clermont said 

 that gold was good enough for them. Besides, in 

 France " the burnt child dreads the fire," and the 

 best people were cowardly in the presence of great 

 financial reforms. So, by way of compromise, they 

 agreed to extend the octroi to twenty-seven arti- 

 cles, mostly articles of food or clothing which 

 had been brought in from Clermont or from the 

 mountains of the Puy-de-D6me. The workman 

 Jacques was dismissed with a pair of boots, for 

 which the mayor himself paid. Jacques left the 

 council-chamber satisfied, and the crisis was averted. 



And now money flowed in again to Issoire, 

 The farmers who brought in onions paid a little, 

 the boy who pulled water-cresses a little, the milk- 

 men a little, the vine-growers a good deal more, 

 but most of all came in from the merchants of 

 Clermont, who in spite of all discouragement still 

 persisted in carrying cheap goods to Issoire. 



Prices went up, a sure index of prosperity. It 

 was easy to pay one's debts, easier still to make 

 new ones ; but the great thing was that the money 

 was kept in town. To go from hand to hand, from 

 hand to hand, and then from hand to hand again, 

 as in the endless round of the fairy tale, that is 

 what money is for. Factories sprang up as if by 

 magic, and down the long white highways multi- 

 tudes of the crushed and down-trodden of other 



