examined by learned doctors, whose experiments,
although singular and rude, appear to
have been made in a spirit of humanity.  For
instance, the surgeons of the king of Navarre,
in sixteen hundred, bled twenty-two Cagots,
in order to examine and analyse 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
should 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 an account 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 grey-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 to 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
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 shape of the ear, which
bore some resemblance to the ears of the
sheep as they are cut by the shepherds in
this district.  Dr. Guyon names the case of a
beautiful Cagot girl, who sang most sweetly,
and prayed to be allowed to sing canticles in
the organ-loft.  The organist, more musician
than bigot, allowed her to come; but the
indignant congregation, finding out whence
proceeded that clear fresh voice, rushed up to
the organ-loft, and chased the girl out,
bidding her "remember her ears," and not
commit the sacrilege of singing praises to God
along with the pure race.

But this medical report of Dr. Guyon's—
bringing facts and arguments to confirm his
opinion, that there was no physical reason
why the Cagots should not be received on
terms of social equality by the rest of the
world—did no more for his clients than the
legal decrees promulgated two centuries
before had done.  The French held with
Hudibras, that—
         He that's convinced against his will
         Is of the same opinion still.
And, indeed, the being convinced by Dr.
Guyon that they ought to receive Cagots as
fellow-creatures, only made them more rabid
in declaring that they would not.  One or
two little occurrences which are recorded
prove that the bitterness of the repugnance
to the Cagots was in full force in the time
just preceding the first French revolution.
There was a M. d'Abedos, the curate of
Lourbes, and brother to the seigneur of the
neighbouring castle, who was living in seventeen
hundred and eighty; he was well-
educated for the time, a travelled man, and
sensible and moderate in all respects but that
of his abhorrence of the Cagots; he would
insult them from the very altar, calling out
to them, as they stood afar off, "Oh! ye
Cagots, damned for evermore!"  One day, a
half-blind Cagot stumbled and touched the
censer borne before this Abbé de Lourbes.
He was immediately turned out of the church,
and forbidden ever to re-enter it.  One does
not know how to account for the fact, that
the very brother of this bigoted abbé, the
seigneur of the village, went and married a
Cagot girl; but so it was, and the abbé
brought a legal process against him, and had
his estates taken from him, solely on account
of his marriage, which reduced him to the
condition of a Cagot, against whom the old
laws were still in force.  The descendants of
this Seigneur de Lourbes are simple peasants
at this very day, working on the lands which
belonged to their grandfather.

This prejudice against mixed marriages
remained prevalent until very lately.  The
tradition of the Cagot descent lingered
amongst the people, long after the laws
against the accursed race were abolished.  A
Breton girl, within the last few years, having
two lovers each of reputed Cagot descent,
employed a notary to examine their
pedigrees, and see which of the two had least
Cagot in him; and to that one she gave her
hand.  In Brittany the prejudice seems to
have been more virulent than anywhere else.
M. Emile Souvestre records proofs of the
hatred borne to them in Brittany so late as
eighteen hundred and thirty-five. Just lately
a baker at Hennebon, having married a girl
of Cagot descent, lost all his custom. The