THE FATE OF ICIODORUM. 217 
octroi is to benefit the laborers of Issoire, why 
don’t you put it on the outside fellows who swarm 
in Issoire, and not on the Issoire laborers’ food and 
clothing? It seems to me, sir, that when a city 
begins to fix things to help one set of men and 
then another, rather than to consider the common 
good of all, it is on dangerous ground. Once 
started on this sort of thing, everybody clamors for 
his share. Every man too lazy to work, and every 
man whose business does not pay, seems to think 
that the rest of the town owe him a living.” 
Warming up with the subject, he continued: 
“Take this millstone business of yours, for ex- 
ample. It is all folly to talk of the wealth in your 
stone-quarries, if you have to hire their owners to 
work them. If we can buy millstones in Clermont 
for less than it costs to cut them in Issoire, it is 
money in our pockets to leave them in the ground. 
If any line of business needs to be constantly 
propped up, and cannot live except at the expense 
of its neighbors, it is no industry at all. It isa 
beggary. And this octroi of yours has made a 
beggar or a brigand of every industry in Issoire!” 
But the mayor waved his hand and smiled, and said 
that some men were never satisfied. They would 
grumble about the golden pavements of the New 
Jerusalem, if they could not turn them into legal 
tender. Then he referred to a conspiracy among 
men suborned by Clermont gold, to flood the 
streets of Issoire with cheap bread and meat and 
potatoes and clothing. He asked all who wanted 
to be slaves to Clermont to rise and be counted. 
He showed that, of all people on earth, the people 
