boots, was waiting outside, a big, burly fellow, with a sledgehammer fist and an unpleasant look in his eye. The mayor took one glance at him, and saw that he was not to be trifled with. Moreover, this one case was not to end the difficulty. The road to Clermont and the road across the mountains to Aurillac, the chief town of the next department, Cantal, were black with the advancing hosts of workmen coming to share the privileges which Issoire held out to the oppressed of every city. Through the windows of the Hôtel de Ville the mayor could see them coming, and he knew that the demand of each one of them would be "boots." It was not one pair of boots to be paid for, it was a thousand! There were boots enough in Issoire. The factories were never so prosperous, and the money they received from the city was kept in rapid circulation. The grocers got some, the butchers some, a good deal went to the landlady of the Golden Lion, and the wives of the factory-owners and the councilmen bought diamond necklaces and bracelets to match the ear-rings which they had before.
But this could not go on unless the city treasury could meet the demands upon it. In the words of a celebrated economist, "The mill can never grind again with the water that is past," and, unless new water could be procured, grinding was over at Issoire. The town must have money, or else the factories would be closed, the supply of boots cease, and each citizen of Issoire would have to keep the wolf from the door by his own unaided exertions.
It was a great crisis, but such crises, "God's stern winnowers," as the poet calls them, are the making of great men. And this crisis made a great man of the mayor of Issoire, or rather it made a background against which his greatness could be seen, I have forgotten the mayor's name, and I am very sorry for it. It was a French name and wholly unpronounceable to me, something like De Rougeâtre, or De Rousselieu; but if ever the name of a mayor were
"On Fame's eternal beadroll worthy to be filed,"
it is his, and it is my constant regret that I can not file it there.
And the mayor said: "All our prosperity is due to the action of the octroi on a single article of necessity—namely, boots. This is prosperity along a single line only, a one-sided development of our industries, and from this comes our present embarrassment. Put the octroi on everything, and you have prosperity along the whole line. Some of these things we can produce at home, some we can not. Those that we can not produce the people will have somehow, and from these you can raise the money to pay for the boots which Issoire recognizes as the just due of the toiling workingman." Here the mayor wiped a tear from his eye, and raised his voice a little, in the hope that perchance some toiling workingman might be listening outside, or taking his needful midday rest at the Golden Lion, next door.
