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which all who were not of his own race refused to touch, was his furniture. That was tainted, infectious, unclean, fit for none but Cagots.

for fear that their clothes should touch each much property for his children to inherit; other; or else to stand still in some corner or but, certain descriptions of it were forfeited to by-place. If they were thirsty during the the commune. The only possession of his day which they passed in these towns where their presence was barely suffered, they had no means of quenching their thirst, for they were forbidden to enter into the little cabarets or When such were, for at least three centaverns. Even the water gushing out of the turies, the prevalent usages and opinions with common fountain was prohibited to them. Far regard to this oppressed race, it is no wonder away, in their own squalid village, there was that we read of occasional outbursts of ferothe Cagot fountain, and, to drink of any other cious violence on their part. In the Basseswater, was forbidden to the Cagoterie. A Pyrenées, for instance, it is only about a hunCagot woman having to make purchases in the dred years since that the Cagots of Rehouilhes town, was liable to be flogged out of it if she rose up against the inhabitants of the neighwent to buy anything except on a Monday- boring town of Lourdes, and got the better a day on which all other people who could, kept of them, by their magical powers, as it is their houses for fear of coming in contact with said. The people of Lourdes were conquered the accursed race. and slain, and their ghastly bloody heads In the Pays Basque, the prejudices and for served the triumphant Cagots for balls to some time the laws-ran stronger against the play at nine-pins with. The local parliaments Cagots than any which I have hitherto men- had begun by this time to perceive how optioned. The Basque Cagot was not allowed pressive was the ban of public opinion under to possess sheep. He might keep a pig for which the Cagots lay, and were not inclined provision, but his pig had no right of pastur- to enforce too severe a punishment. Accordage. He might cut and carry grass for the ingly, the decree of the parliament of Toulouse ass, which was the only other animal he was condemned only the leading Cagots concerned permitted to own; and this ass was permitted, in this affray to be put to death, and that because its existence was rather an advantage henceforward and for ever no Cagot was to to the oppressor, who constantly availed themselves of the Cagot's mechanical skill, and was glad to have him and his tools easily conveyed from one place to another.

be permitted to enter the town of Lourdes by any gate but that called Capdet-pourtet: they were only to be allowed to walk under the rain-gutters, and neither to sit, eat, or drink in the town. If they failed in observing any of these rules, the parliament decreed, in the spirit of Shylock, that the disobedient Cagots should have two strips of flesh, weighing never more than two ounces each, cut out from each side of their spines.

They were repulsed by the State. Under the small local governments they could hold no post whatsoever. And they were barely tolerated by the Church, although they were good Catholics and zealous frequenters of the mass. They might only enter the churches by a small door set apart for them, through In the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth which no one of the pure race ever passed. centuries, it was considered no more a crime This door was low, so as to compel them to to brill a Cagot than to destroy obnoxious make an obeisance. It was occasionally surrounded by sculpture, which invariably represented an oak-branch with a dove above it. When they were once in, they might not go to the holy water used by others. They had a bénitier of their own; nor were they allowed to share in the consecrated bread when that was handed round to the believers of the pure race. The Cagots stood afar off, near the door. There were certain boundaries-imaginary lines on the nave and in the aisles which they might not pass. In one or two of the more tolerant of the Pyrenean villages, the blessed bread was offered to the Cagots, the priest standing on one side of the boundary, and giving the pieces of bread on a long wooden fork to each person successively.

When the Cagot died, he was interred apart, in a plot of burying-ground on the north side of the cemetery. Under such laws and prescriptions as I have described, it is no wonder if he was generally too poor to have

vermin. A "nest of Cagots," as the old accounts phrase it, had assembled in a deserted castle of Mauvezin, about the year sixteen hundred; and certainly they made themselves not very agreeable neighbors, as they seemed to enjoy their reputation of magicians; and, by some acoustic secrets which were known to them, all sorts of moaning and groanings were heard in the neighboring forests, very much to the alarm of the good people of the pure race; who could not cut off a withered branch for firewood, but some unearthly sound seemed to fill the air, or drink water which was not poisoned, because the Cagots would persist in filling their pitchers at the same running stream. Added to these grievances, the various pilferings perpetually going on in the neighborhood, made the inhabitants of the neighboring towns and hamlets believe that they had a very sufficient cause for wishing to murder all the Cagots in the Château de Mauvezin. But it was surrounded

by a moat, and only accessible by a draw-resolved to try the secular power. They bridge; besides which, the Cagots were fierce accordingly applied to the cortes of Navarre, and vigilant. Some one, however, proposed and were opposed on a variety of grounds. to get into their confidence; and for this pur- First, it was stated that their ancestors had pose he pretended to fall ill close to their had "nothing to do with Raymond Count of path, so that on returning to their stronghold, Toulouse, or with any such knightly person they perceived him, and took him in, restored age; that they were in fact descendants of him to health, and made a friend of him. Gehazi, servant of Elisha (second book of One day, when they were all playing at nine- Kings, fifth chapter, twenty-seventh verse), pins in the woods, their treacherous friend left who had been accursed by his master for his the party on pretence of being thirsty, and fraud upon Naaman, and doomed, he and his went back into the castle, drawing up the descendants, to be lepers for evermore. Name, bridge after he had passed over it, and so cut- Cagots or Gahets; Gahets, Gebazites. What ting off their means of escape into safety. can be more clear? And if that is not enough, Then, going up to the highest part of the and you tell us that the Cagots are not lepers castle, he blew upon a horn, and the pure now; we reply that there are two kinds of race, who were lying in wait on the watch for leprosy, one perceptible and the other_imsome such signal, fell upon the Cagots at their perceptible, even to the person suffering from games, and slew them all. For this murder I it. Besides, it is the country talk, that where find no punishment decreed in the parliament the Cagot treads the grass withers, proving of Toulouse, or elsewhere. the unnatural heat of his body. Many credible

As any intermarriages with the pure race and trustworthy witnesses will also tell you was strictly forbidden, and as there were that, if a Cagot holds a freshly-gathered apple books kept in every commune in which the in his hand, it will shrivel and wither up in an names and habitations of the reputed Cagots hour's time as much as if it had been kept for were written, these unfortunate people had no a whole winter in a dry room. They are hope of ever becoming blended with the rest born with tails; although the parents are cunof the population. Did a Cagot marriage ning enough to pinch them off immediately. take place, the couple were serenaded with Do you doubt this? If it is not true, why do satirical songs. They also had minstrels, and the children of the pure race delight in sewing many of their romances are still current in on sheep's tails to the dress of any Cagot who Brittany; but they did not attempt to make is so absorbed in his work as not to perceive any reprisals of satire or abuse. Their disposition was amiable and their intelligence great. Indeed it required both these qualities, and their great love of mechanical labor, to make their lives tolerable.

them? and their bodily smell is so horrible and detestable that it shows that they must be heretics of some vile and pernicions description, for do we not read of the incense of good workers, and the fragrance of holiness?"

At last they began to petition that they Such were literally the arguments by which might receive some protection from the laws; the Cagots were thrown back into a worse and, towards the end of the seventeenth cen- position than ever, as far as regarded their tury, the judicial power took their side. But rights as citizens. The pope insisted that they gained little by this. Law could not they should receive all their ecclesiastical prevail against custom: and, in the ten or privileges. The Spanish priests said nothing, twenty years just preceding the first French but tacitly refused to allow the Cagots to revolution, the prejudice in France against mingle with the rest of the faithful, either the Cagots amounted to fierce and positive dead or alive. The accursed race obtained abhorrence. laws in their favor from the Emperor Charles

At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Fifth; but there was no one to carry the Cagots of Navarre complained to the these laws into effect. As a sort of revenge Pope, that they were excluded from the fel- for their want of submission and for their imlowship of men, and accursed by the Church, pertinence in daring to complain, their tools because their ancestors had given help to a were all taken away from them by the local certain Count Raymond of Toulouse in his authorities: an old man and all his family revolt against the Holy See. They entreated died of starvation, being no longer allowed to his holiness not to visit upon them the sins of fish.

their fathers. The pope issued a bull-on They could not emigrate. Even to remove the thirteenth of May, fifteen hundred and their poor mud habitations from one spot to fifteen-ordering them to be well-treated and another, excited anger and suspicion. To be to be admitted to the same privileges as other sure, in sixteen hundred and ninety-five, the men. He charged Don Juan de Santa Maria of Pampeluna to see to the execution of this bull. But Don Juan was slow to help, and the poor Spanish Cagots grew impatient, and

Spanish government ordered the alcaldes to search out all the Cagots, and to expel them before two months had expired, under pain of having fifty ducats to pay for every Cagot re

maining in Spain at the expiration of that also examined their ears, which, according to time. The inhabitants of the villages rose up common belief (a belief existing to this day), and flogged out any miserable Cagots who were differently shaped to those of other peomight be in their neighborhood; but the ple; being round and gristly, without the lobe French were on their guard against this en- of flesh into which the ear-ring is inserted. forced irruption, and refused to permit them They decided that most of the Cagots whom to enter France. Numbers were hunted up they examined had the ears of this round into the inhospitable Pyrenees, and there shape; but they gravely added, that they saw died of starvation, or became a prey to wild no reason why this should exclude them from beasts. They were obliged to wear both gloves and shoes when they were thus put to flight, otherwise the stones and herbage they trod upon, and the balustrades of the bridges that they crossed, would, according to popular belief, have become poisonous.

the good-will of men, and from the power of holding office in church and state. They recorded the fact, that the children of the towns ran baaing after any Cagot who had been compelled to come into the streets to make purchases, in allusion to this peculiarity of the And all this time there was nothing remark- shape of the ear, which bore some resemblance able or disgusting in the outward appearance to the ears of the sheep as they are cut by of this unfortunate people. There was noth- the shepherds in this district. Dr. Guyon ing about them to countenance the idea of names the case of a beautiful Cagot girl, who their being lepers-the most natural mode of sang most sweetly, and prayed to be allowed accounting for the abhorrence in which they to sing canticles in the organ-loft. The or were held. They were repeatedly examined ganist, more musician than bigot, allowed her by learned doctors, whose experiments, al- to come; but the indignant congregation, though singular and rude, appear to have finding out whence proceeded that clear, fresh been made in a spirit of humanity. For voice, rushed up to the organ-loft, and chased instance, the surgeons of the King of Navarre, the girl out, bidding her "remember her ears," in sixteen hundred, bled twenty-two Cagots, and not commit the sacrilege of singing praises in order to examine and analyze their blood. to God along with the pure race. They were young and healthy people of both But this medical report of Dr. Guyon'ssexes, and the doctors seem to have expected bringing facts and arguments to confirm his that they should have been able to extract opinion, that there was no physical reason some new kind of salt from their blood which why the Cagots should not be received on should account for the wonderful heat of their terms of social equality by the rest of the bodies. But their blood was just like that of world-did no more for his clients than the other people. Some of these medical men legal degrees promulgated two centuries behave left us an account of the general appear-fore had done. The French held with Hudiance of this unfortunate race, at a time when bras, that :they were more numerous and less intermixed than they are now. The families existing in the south and west of France, who are reputed to be of Cagot descent at this day, are, like And, indeed, the being convinced by Dr. their ancestors, tall, largely made, and power- Guyon that they ought to receive Cagots as ful in frame; fair and ruddy in complexion, follow-creatures, only made them more rabid with gray-blue eyes, in which some observers in declaring that they would not. see a pensive heaviness of look. Their lips two little occurrences which are recorded are thick, but well-formed. Some of the re- prove that the bitterness of the repugnance ports name their sad expression of countenance to the Cagots was in full force in the time with surprise and suspicion-" They are not just preceding the first French revolution. gay, like other folk." The wonder would be There was a M. d'Abedos, the curate of if they were. Dr. Guyon, the medical man Lourbes, and brother to the seigneur of the of the last century who has left the clearest neighboring castle, who was living in sevenreport on the health of the Cagots, speaks of teen hundred and eighty; he was well-eduthe vigorous old age they attain to. In one cated for the time, a travelled man, and senfamily alone, he found a man of seventy-four sible and moderate in all respects but that of years of age; a woman as old, gathering cher- his abhorrence of the Cagots; he would insult ries; and another woman, aged eighty-three, them from the very altar, calling out to them, was lying on the grass, having her hair combed as they stood afar off, "Oh! ye Cagots, damnby her great-grandchildren. Dr. Guyon and ed for evermore!" One day, a half-blind other surgeons examined into the subject of Cagot stumbled and touched the censer borne the horribly infectious smell which the Cagots before this Abbé de Lourbes. He was imwere said to leave behind them, and upon mediately turned out of the church, and foreverything they touched; but they could per- bidden ever to re-enter it. One does not ceive nothing unusual on this head. They know how to account for the fact, that the

He that's convinced against his will
Is of the same opinion still.

One or

very brother of this bigoted abbé, the seigneur | family as Cagot, or Malandrin, or Oiselier, of the village, went and married a Cagot girl; according to the old ternis of a abhorrence. but so it was, and the abbé brought a legal There are various ways in which learned process against him, and had his estates taken men have attempted to account for the unifrom him, solely on account of his marriage, versal repugnance in which this well-made, which reduced him to the condition of a Cagot, powerful race are held. Some say that the against whom the old laws were still in force. antipathy to them took its rise in the days The decendants of this Seigneur de Lourbes when leprosy was a dreadfully prevalent disare simple peasants at this very day, working ease; and that the Cagots are more liable on the land which belonged to their grandfa- than other men to a kind of skin disease, not thers. precisely leprosy, but resembling it in some This prejudice against mixed marriages re- of its symptoms; such as dead whiteness of mained prevalent until very lately. The tradi- complexion, and swellings of the face and extion of the Cagot decent lingered amongst the tremities. There was also some resemblance people, long after the laws against the accursed to the ancient Jewish custom in respect to race were abolished. A Breton girl, within lepers, in the habit of the people; who, on the last few years, having two lovers each of re- meeting a Cagot, called out, "Čagote? Caputed Cagot descent, employed a notary to ex-gote?" to which they were bound to reply, amine their pedigrees, and see which of the two Perlute! perlute!" Leprosy is not properly had least Cagot in him; and to that one she gave an infectious complaint, in spite of the horror her hand. In Brittany the prejudice seems to in which the Cagot furniture, and the cloth have been more virulent than anywhere else. woven by them, is held in some places; the M. Emile Souvestre records proofs of the disorder is hereditary, and hence (say this hatred borne to them in Brittany so late as body of wise men, who have troubled themeighteen hundred and thirty-five. Just lately selves to account for the origin of Cagoterie) a baker at Hennebon, having married a girl the reasonableness and the justice of preof Cagot descent, lost all his custom. The venting any mixed marriages, by which this godfather and godmother of a Cagot child terrible tendency to leprous complaints might became Cagots themselves by the Breton laws, be spread far and wide. Another authority unless, indeed, the poor little baby died be- says, that though the Cagots are fine-looking fore attaining a certain number of days. men, hard-working, and good mechanics, yet They had to eat the butchers' meat condemn- that they bear in their faces, and show in ed as unhealthy; but, for some unknown their actions reasons for the detestation in reason, they were considered to have a right which they are held; their glance, if you to every cut loaf turned upside down, with meet it, is the jettatura, or evil eye, and they its cut side towards the door, and might enter are spiteful, and cruel, and deceitful above all any house in which they saw a loaf in this posi- other men. All these qualities they derive tion, and carry it away with them. About from their ancestor Geĥazi, the servant of thirty years ago, there was the skeleton of a Elisha, together with their tendency to lephand hanging up as an offering in a Breton rosy. Church near Quimperle, and the tradition Again, it is said that they are descended was, that it was the hand of a rich Cagot who from the Arian Goths, who were permitted had dared to take holy water out of the usual to live in certain places in Guienne and Lanbénitier, some time at the beginning of the guedoc, after their defeat by King Clovis, on reign of Louis the Sixteenth, which an old condition that they abjured their heresy, and soldier witnessing, he laid in wait and the kept themselves separate from all other men next time the offender approached the béni- for ever. The principal reason alleged in tier, he cut off his hand, and hung it up drip- support of this supposition of their Gothic ping with blood, as an offering to the patron descent, is the specious one of derivation,— saint of the church. The poor Cagots in Brit- Chiens Gots, Cans Gots, Cagots, equivalent tany petitioned against their opprobrious name, to Dogs of Goths. and begged to be distinguished by the appellation of Malandrins. To English ears one name is much the same as the other, as neither conveys any meaning; but, to this day, the descendants of the Cagots do not like to have this word applied to them, preferring the term Malandrin.

Again, they were thought to be Saracens, coming from Syria. In confirmation of this idea, was the belief that all Cagots were possessed by a horrible smell. The Lombards, also, were an unfragrant race, or so reputed among the Italians: witness Pope Stephen's letter to Charlemagne, dissuading him from The French Cagots tried to destroy all the marrying Bertha, daughter of Didier, King records of their pariah descent, in the commo- of Lombardy. The Lombards boasted of tions of seventeen hundred and eighty-nine; Eastern descent, and were noisome. but if writings have disappeared, the tradition Cagots were noisome, and therefore must be yet remains, and points out such and such a of Eastern descent. What could be clearer?

The

In addition, there was the proof to be derived of violent delirium, which attacked them at from the name Cagot, which those holding the new and full moons. Then the workmen laid opinion of their Saracen descent held to be down their tools, and rushed off from their Chiens, or Chasseurs des Gots, because the labor to play mad pranks up and down the Saracens chased the Goths out of Spain. country; perpetual motion was required to Moreover, the Saracens were originally Mo- alleviate the agony of fury that seized upon hammedans, and as such obliged to bathe seven the Cagots at such times. In this desire for times a-day whence the badge of the duck's foot. A duck was a water bird: Mohammedans bathed in the water. Proof upon proof!

rapid movement, the attack resembled the Neapolitan tarantella; while in the mad deeds they performed during such attacks, they were In Brittany the common idea was, they not unlike the northern Berserker. In Bearn were of Jewish descent. Their unpleasant especially, those suffering from this madness smell was again pressed into the service. were dreaded by the pure race; the Bearnais, The Jews it was well known had this phy-going to cut their wooden clogs in the great sical infirmity, which might be cured either forests that lay around the base of the Pyreby bathing in a certain fountain in Egypt-nees, feared above all things to go too near which was a long way from Brittany-or by the periods when the Cagoutelle seized on the anointing themselves with the blood of a oppressed and accursed people; from whom it Christian child. Blood gushed out of the was then the oppressors' turn to fly. A man body of every Cagot on Good Friday. No was living within the memory of man, who wonder, if they were of Jewish descent. It had married a Cagot wife; he used to beat was the only way of accounting for so por- her right soundly when he saw the first symp tentous a fact. Again; the Cagots were capi- toms of the Cagoutelle, and, having reduced tal carpenters, which gave the Bretons every her to a wholesome state of exhaustion and reason to believe that their ancestors were insensibility, he locked her up until the moon the very Jews who made the cross. When had altered her shape in the heavens. If he first the tide of emigration set from Brittany had not taken such decided steps, say the oldto America, the oppressed Cagots crowded to est inhabitants, there is no knowing what the ports, seeking to go to some new country, might have happened.

where their race might be unknown. Here From the thirteenth to the end of the was another proof of their descent from Abra- nineteenth century, there are facts enough to ham and his nomadic people; and, the forty prove the universal abhorrence in which this years' wandering in the wilderness and the unfortunate race was held; whether called Wandering Jew himself, were pressed into Cagots, or Gahets in Pyrenean districts, Ca the service to prove that the Cagots derived queaux in Brittany, or Vaqueros in Asturias their restlessness and love of change from their The great French revolution brought some ancestors, the Jews. The Jews also practised good out of its fermentation of the people: arts-magic, and the Cagots sold bags of wind the more intelligent among them tried to to the Breton sailors, enchanted maidens to overcome the prejudice against the Cagots. love them-maidens who never would have In seventeen hundred and eighteen, there cared for them, unless they had been pre- was a famous cause tried at Biarritz relating viously enchanted-made hollow rocks and to Cagot rights and privileges. There was a trees give out strange and unearthly noises, wealthy miller, Etienne Arnauld by name, of and sold the magical herb called bon-succès. the race of Gotz, Quagotz, Bisigotz, Astra It is true enough that, in all the early acts of gotz, or Gahetz, as his people are described the fourteenth century, the same laws apply in the legal document. He married an heiress to Jews as to Cagots, and the appellations a Gotte (or Cagot) of Biarritz; and the newseem used indiscriminately; but their fair ly-married well-to-do couple saw no reason complexions, their remarkable devotion to all why they should near the door in the church, the ceremonies of the Catholic Church, and nor why he should not hold some civil office many other circumstances, conspire to forbid in the commune, of which he was the principal our believing them to be of Hebrew descent. inhabitant. Accordingly, he petitioned the Another very plausible idea is, that they law that he and his wife might be allowed to are the descendants of unfortunate individuals sit in the gallery of the church, and that he afflicted with goîtres, which is, even to this might be relieved from his civil disabilities. day, not an uncommon disorder in the gorges This wealthy white miller, Etienne Arnauld, and valleys of the Pyrenees. Some have pursued his rights with some vigor against the even derived the word goître from Got, or Bailie of Labourd, the dignitary of the neigh Goth; but their name, Crestiaa, is not unlike borhood. Whereupon the inhabitants of BiarCretin, and the same symptoms of idiotism ritz met in the open air on the eighth of May, were not unusual among the Cagots; although to the number of one hundred and fifty; apsometimes, if old tradition is to be credited, proved of the conduct of the Bailie in rejecttheir malady of the brain took rather the form ing Arnauld, made a subscription, and gave

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