twenty-two Cagots, in order to examine and analyze their blood. They
were young and healthy people of both sexes; and the doctors seem to have
expected that they should have been able to extract some new kind of salt
from their blood which might account for the wonderful heat of their
bodies. But their blood was just like that of other people. Some of
these medical men have left us a description of the general appearance of
this unfortunate race, at a time when 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 their ancestors, tall, largely made, and powerful in frame; fair and
ruddy in complexion, with gray-blue eyes, in which some observers see a
pensive heaviness of look. Their lips are thick, but well-formed. Some
of the reports name their sad expression of countenance with surprise and
suspicion--"They are not gay, like other folk." The wonder would be if
they were. Dr. Guyon, the medical man of the last century who has left
the clearest report on the health of the Cagots, speaks of the vigorous
old age they attain to. In one family alone, he found a man of seventy-
four years of age; a woman as old, gathering cherries; and another woman,
aged eighty-three, was lying on the grass, having her hair combed by her
great-grandchildren. Dr. Guyon and other surgeons examined into the
subject of the horribly infectious smell which the Cagots were said to
leave behind them, and upon everything they touched; but they could
perceive nothing unusual on this head. They also examined their ears,
which according to common belief (a belief existing to this day), were
differently shaped from those of other people; being round and gristly,
without the lobe of flesh into which the ear-ring is inserted. They
decided that most of the Cagots whom they examined had the ears of this
round shape; but they gravely added, that they saw no reason why this
should exclude them from the good-will of men, and from the power of
holding office in Church and State. They recorded the fact, that the