THE FATE OF ICIODORUM. 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 
flouring-mills, and paper-mills, and saw-mills, and 
wind-mills, and gin-mills, ahd —” 
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 Café de la Comédie, 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 
