cendants of
Gehazi, servant of Elisha (second book of Kings, fifth chapter, twenty-
seventh verse), who had been accursed by his master for his fraud upon
Naaman, and doomed, he and his descendants, to be lepers for evermore.
Name, Cagots or Gahets; Gahets, Gehazites. What can be more clear? And
if that is not enough, and you tell us that the Cagots are not lepers
now; we reply that there are two kinds of leprosy, one perceptible and
the other imperceptible, even to the person suffering from it. Besides,
it is the country talk, that where the Cagot treads, the grass withers,
proving the unnatural heat of his body. Many credible and trustworthy
witnesses will also tell you that, if a Cagot holds a freshly-gathered
apple in his hand, it will shrivel and wither up in an hour's time as
much as if it had been kept for a whole winter in a dry room. They are
born with tails; although the parents are cunning enough to pinch them
off immediately. Do you doubt this? If it is not true, why do the
children of the pure race delight in sewing on sheep's tails to the dress
of any Cagot who is so absorbed in his work as not to perceive them? And
their bodily smell is so horrible and detestable that it shows that they
must be heretics of some vile and pernicious description, for do we not
read of the incense of good workers, and the fragrance of holiness?"

Such were literally the arguments by which the Cagots were thrown back
into a worse position than ever, as far as regarded their rights as
citizens. The Pope insisted that they should receive all their
ecclesiastical privileges. The Spanish priests said nothing; but tacitly
refused to allow the Cagots to mingle with the rest of the faithful,
either dead or alive. The accursed race obtained laws in their favour
from the Emperor Charles the Fifth; which, however, there was no one to
carry into effect. As a sort of revenge for their want of submission,
and for their impertinence in daring to complain, their tools were all
taken away from them by the local authorities: an old man and all his
family died of starvation, being no longer allowed to fish.

They could not emigrate. Even to remove their poor mud habitations, from
one spot to another, excited anger and suspicion. To be sure, in sixteen
hundred and ninety-five, the Spanish government ordered the alcaldes to
search out all the Cagots, and to expel them before two months had
expired, under pain of having fifty ducats