benitier, some time at the beginning of the reign of Louis the Sixteenth;
which an old soldier witnessing, he lay in wait, and the next time the
offender approached the benitier he cut off his hand, and hung it up,
dripping with blood, as an offering to the patron saint of the church.
The poor Cagots in Brittany petitioned against their opprobrious name,
and begged to be distinguished by the appelation of Malandrins. To
English ears one is much the same as the other, as neither conveys any
meaning; but, to this day, the descendants of the Cagots do not like to
have this name applied to them, preferring that of Malandrin.

The French Cagots tried to destroy all the records of their pariah
descent, in the commotions of seventeen hundred and eighty-nine; but if
writings have disappeared, the tradition yet remains, and points out such
and such a family as Cagot, or Malandrin, or Oiselier, according to the
old terms of abhorrence.

There are various ways in which learned men have attempted to account for
the universal repugnance in which this well-made, powerful race are held.
Some say that the antipathy to them took its rise in the days when
leprosy was a dreadfully prevalent disease; and that the Cagots are more
liable than any other men to a kind of skin disease, not precisely
leprosy, but resembling it in some of its symptoms; such as dead
whiteness of complexion, and swellings of the face and extremities. There
was also some resemblance to the ancient Jewish custom in respect to
lepers, in the habit of the people; who on meeting a Cagot called out,
"Cagote? Cagote?" to which they were bound to reply, "Perlute! perlute!"
Leprosy is not properly an infectious complaint, in spite of the horror
in which the Cagot furniture, and the cloth woven by them, are held in
some places; the disorder is hereditary, and hence (say this body of wise
men, who have troubled themselves to account for the origin of Cagoterie)
the reasonableness and the justice of preventing any mixed marriages, by
which this terrible tendency to leprous complaints might be spread far
and wide. Another authority says, that though the Cagots are
fine-looking men, hard-working, and good mechanics, yet they bear in
their faces, and show in their actions, reasons for the detestation in
which they are held: their glance, if you meet it, is the jettatura, or
evil-eye, and they are spiteful, and cruel, and deceitful above all other
men. All these qualities th