THE FATE OF ICIODORUM. 185 
Here the grain was exchanged for clothing, food, 
and all manner of necessaries and luxuries which 
were made in Clermont, or which had been brought 
thither from the great city of Lyons. There were 
long processions of these wagons, and all through 
the autumn and winter they went in and out. And 
the Issoire people were very proud of them; for 
neither coming nor going were they empty, and the 
teamsters of Issoire were the most skilful in the 
whole basin of the Loire. 
But the mayor of the city and other thoughtful 
people saw cause for shame rather than for pride 
in the condition of Issoire’s industries. It was 
ruinous thus steadily to carry away the wealth of 
the land and to exchange it for perishable articles. 
When a wagon-load of boots, for example, had 
been all worn out, then the boots were gone. The 
money that had been paid for them was gone, and 
so far as Issoire was concerned, it was as much 
lost as if money and boots had been sunk in the 
bottom of the sea. The money that was pad out, 
Isay. Not so with the money that was paid in. 
If those boots had been bought in Issoire, the money 
that they cost would still be in town, still be in circu- 
lation, and would go from one to another in the way 
that money is meant to go. This drain must be 
stopped, and the octroi could stop it. So it was 
enacted by the Common Council of Issoire that 
‘‘whosoever brings a pair of new boots into Issoire 
shall be compelled to pay ten francs,’ which was 
the cost of a pair of boots at Clermont. The pur- 
pose of this order was not to raise money, but to 
have boots made at Issoire, that the wearing out of 
