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 burying-ground on
the north side of the cemetery. Under such laws and prescriptions as I
have described, it is no wonder that he was generally too poor to have
much property for his children to inherit; but certain descriptions of it
were forfeited to the commune. The only possession 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.

When such were, for at least three centuries, the prevalent usages and
opinions with regard to this oppressed race, it is not surprising that we
read of occasional outbursts of ferocious violence on their part. In the
Basses-Pyrenees, for instance it is only about a hundred years since,
that the Cagots of Rehouilhes rose up against the inhabitants of the
neighbouring town of Lourdes, and got the better of them, by their
magical powers as it is said. The people of Lourdes were conquered and
slain, and their ghastly, bloody heads served the triumphant Cagots for
balls to play at ninepins with! The local parliaments had begun, by this
time, to perceive how oppressive was the ban of public opinion under
which the Cagots lay, and were not inclined to enforce too severe a
punishment. Accordingly, the decree of the parliament of Toulouse
condemned only the leading Cagots concerned in this affray to be put to
death, and that henceforward and for ever no Cagot was to 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, nor drink in the town. If they failed in observing any of
these rules, the parliament decreed, in the spirit of Shylock, that the