Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/450

434 time to be famous as having the largest church and the best parish schools in the whole province of Auvergne.

Issoire has a long, long history, which is duly set forth in Joanne's "Guide-Book," but which I have luckily forgotten. Its story is one of castles and robbers and chivalry, with here and there a fair dame and an ancestral ghost, perhaps, but of this I am not so certain. Once Issoire fell into the hands of the famous knight, Pierre Diablenoir, the Duke of Alençon. After plundering all the shops, burning the houses, killing most of the people, and scaring the rest off into the woods, he set up in the public square a large column bearing this simple legend: "Ici fut Issoire!" ("Here was Issoire"). Were it not for this touching forethought, we might be to this day as ignorant of Issoire's location as we are of the site of Troy.

But the years went on, the wars were ended, the rain fell, the birds sang, the grass grew, the people came back, and Issoire arose from its ashes. To-day it is as dull and cozy a town as you will find in all France. It has now, according to Joanne, a population of 6,303 souls, and a considerable trade in grain, shoes, millstones, brandy, and vinegar. The streets of Issoire are narrow, and the houses are crowded closely together, as if struggling to get as near as possible to the church for protection. The city lies in the fertile valley of the little river Couze, surrounded by grain-lands and meadows. Toward the north a long white highway, shaded by poplars, leads out across the meadows and hills toward the larger city of Clermont-Ferrand, the capital of the department of the Puy-de-Dôme. Issoire is inclosed by an old wall, and, where the highway enters the town, it passes through a ponderous gate, which is always closed at night, as if to ward off an attack from some other Duke of Alençon.

I strolled out one midsummer afternoon on the road leading to Clermont. When I came to the city gate I first made the acquaintance of the octroi. A little house stands by the side of the gate, and here two or three gendarmes—old soldiers dressed in red coats with blue facings—watch over the industries of the town. Wheelbarrow loads of turnips, baskets of onions or artichokes, wagonloads of hay, all these come through the city gate, and each pays its toll into the city treasury. One cent is collected for every five cabbage-heads, or ten onions, or twelve turnips, or eight apples, or three bunches of artichokes, and other things pay in proportion. This payment of money is called the octroi. The process of its collection interested me so that I gave up all idea of a tramp across the fields, sat down on an empty nail-keg, and devoted myself to the study of the octroi.

The octroi is an instrument to advance the prosperity of a town by preventing the people from sending their money away.