If Paris had kept on advancing, Master Pierre would have got more rent from it annually than the whole thing is now worth to him.
_Son._ How can that be, since he got rid of competition?
_Father._ Competition in selling has disappeared; but competition in buying also disappears every day, and will keep on disappearing until Paris is an open field, and Master Pierre's woodland will be worth no more than an equal number of acres in the forest of Bondy.

Thus, a monopoly, like every species of injustice, brings its own punishment upon itself.
_Son._ This does not seem very plain to me, but the decay of Paris is undeniable.

Is there, then, no means of repealing this unjust measure that Pierre and his colleagues adopted twenty years ago?
_Father._ I will confide my secret to you.

I will remain at Paris for this purpose; I will call the people to my aid.

It depends on them whether they will replace the _octroi_ on its old basis, and dismiss from it this fatal principle, which is grafted on it, and has grown there like a parasite fungus.
_Son._ You ought to succeed on the very first day.
_Father._ No; on the contrary, the work is a difficult and laborious one.