[26] From Roadside Sketches, by Three Wayfarers.

After we have looked over the interior, the sacristan conducts us out into the mouldy little burying-ground at one side, and crossing the grass, proudly points out in the surrounding wall the chief historic ear-mark of the place,—­a scar among the stones, where was once a narrow opening through the wall.  This was the despised entrance set apart for that singular race, the Cagots.  The Cagots were a once-distinct tribe dwelling in corners of all these Pyrenean valleys, similar to the Cacous or Caqueux of Brittany and Auvergne, and for some reason held as outcasts and in universal detestation.  The popular abhorrence of them was phenomenal.  Their origin is not known:  of Goths, Alans, Moors, Jews, Egyptians, each theory has had its propounder.  Even the taint of descent from lepers has been ascribed to them.  But whoever their ancestors, the people would none of them.  They were pariahs, proscribed and held infamous.  They lived in separate hamlets, shunned and insulted, their lives desolate and joyous, without hope, without spirit, without ambition.  Laws were passed against them, one at Bordeaux as late as 1596,—­many earlier; by these they were even denied the rights of citizens; they could not bear arms, nor engage in any trade save wood-working or menial occupations, nor marry out of their race; they were obliged to wear a scarlet badge on the shoulder, in the shape of a goose’s foot; they were not to go barefoot in towns lest they contaminate the streets, and the penalty was branding with a red-hot iron; they were not to touch the provisions in the market-place nor the holy water in the font; they must creep into the church corners through contemptuous side-doors, as at Larroque and Lannemezan and here at Luz.  The priests would hardly admit them to confession; the tribunals required the testimony of seven to equal that of a citizen; and hatred pursued them even to the grave and compelled their dead to be buried in lonely plots of ground, separate and remote from the Acre of God.

Did a burgher sicken and die, witchcraft was charged to the Cagot; did a reckless mob seek to vent its spite, it fell upon the Cagot.  Despite popular report, most of them had the appearance of ordinary humanity, though rarely its spirit; a few even held their own intellectually; but very many, bred in by constant intermarriage of kin, seem to have become as the Swiss cretins,—­deformed, idiotic, repulsive.

The Cagots were cursed “on four separate heads and on four separate and opposing propositions:  for being lepers, for being Jews, for being Egyptians, and for being Moors or Saracens;” and they were persecuted “as though the objectionable points of all four races were centred in them.”  As lepers, they were reputed to be descendants of the cursed Gehazi; as Egyptians, they were ascribed the jettatura or evil eye; as Saracens, they were held unclean and descended from infidels; and as Jews, their enforced pursuit of the carpenter’s trade was considered as proving that their ancestors were the builders of the Cross!