be spent that might otherwise be saved, and those who are interested
in the sale of such things wish the procession through the streets to
be kept up, although in heart they may be among the scoffers at
religion.

The religious confraternities in Aquitaine date from the appearance of
the _routiers_ at the close of the twelfth century. These _routiers_
were then chiefly Brabançons, Aragonese, and Germans. According to an
ecclesiastical author and local historian, the Abbé Debon, the lawless
bands spread such terror through the country that they stopped the
pilgrims from going to Figeac, Conques, and other places that had
obtained a reputation for holiness. A canon of Le Puy in Auvergne,
much distressed by the desertion of the sanctuary of Notre Dame de
Puy, which rivals that of Roc-Amadour in antiquity, formed the design
of instituting a confraternity to wage war against the _routiers_ and
destroy them. A 'pious fraud' was adopted. A young man, having been
dressed so as to impersonate Notre Dame du Puy, appeared to a
carpenter who was in the habit of praying every night in the
cathedral, and gave him the mission of revealing that it was the will
of the Holy Virgin that a confraternity should be formed to put down
the brigands and establish peace in the country. Hundreds of men
enrolled themselves at once. The confrères, from the fact that they
wore hoods of white linen, obtained the name of Chaperons Blancs. Upon
their breasts hung a piece of lead with this inscription: 'Agnus Dei
qui tollis peccata mundi dona nobis pacem.' The confraternity spread
into Aquitaine, and the _routiers_ were defeated in pitched battles
with great slaughter; but the _chaperons_ in course of time became
lawless fanatics, and were almost as great a nuisance to society as
those whom they had undertaken to exterminate. They were nevertheless
the ancestors in a sense of the confraternities of penitents who, at a