THE FATE OF ICIODORUM. 205 
and lived on grasshoppers and gleanings, while 
hers were fed on grain which had passed the octroi. 
It seems that the schoolmaster, in making up the 
octroi list, in arranging the o’s had neglected to 
look for words beginning with oe, and so had 
omitted the word wu#f, which is the French for 
“egg.” So the Council was called together, a rate 
for wufs was agreed upon, and Widow Besoin’s 
Dominick hens were free from the pauper com- 
petition of the chickens of Farmer Bois-rouge. 
But the action of the octroi was on the whole, 
as I have said, extremely beneficial. It filled the 
treasury again, and it stimulated a large number of 
infant industries, which had previously been unable 
to compete with established industries in surround- 
ing towns, on account of the high prices of raw 
materials, and especially of labor, at Issoire. It is 
true that workman Jacques and some of the other 
laborers complained that these high wages were high 
in name only. In Clermont men worked for three 
francs a day; but these three francs would buy 
twelve yards of calico or ten pounds of sugar, while 
the five francs received in Issoire would buy but 
ten yards of calico or eight pounds of sugar. But 
the schoolmaster wrote another letter to the 
“Gazette,” showing that the question of. wages 
was solved by an estimate of what the laborer 
saved, not by what he could buy with his wages. 
“Every workingman,” said he, “as statistics show, 
saves thirty per cent of his wages. In Clermont, 
therefore, the laborer lays up one franc per day, 
or three hundred francs per year. In Issoire he 
lays up one franc fifty per day, or four hundred 
