“Returned! Hélas! but a poor return, indeed.”
“It will not be?”
“The lights, the entrails—a little of the coarser meat, perhaps.”
“How is that, then?”
“Where we squat, monseigneur, thither come the authorised of the pure blood. ‘These are your bounds,’ say they; and they signify, arbitrarily, any limit that occurs. Woe, then, to the Cagot sheep or pig that strays without the visionary cordon! Whoever finds it may kill, reserving to himself the good, and returning to the unhappy owner the inferior parts only of the meat.”
“It is of a piece with all I see, here more than elsewhere—the grossest inconsistency where the senses seek gratification. Truly, I think, the emancipation of the race is to be from self-denial.”
He gave the man a piece of money—rather peremptorily checking the fulsome benedictions his act called forth—and saw him slink off the way he had come. For all its show of servility, there had appeared something indescribably noble in the poor creature’s rendering of an ignoble part. It was as if, on the stage of life, he were willing to sacrifice his individuality to the success of the piece. Not all scapegoats could so triumph physically through long traditions and experiences of suffering. These Cagots—they might have come from the loins of the wandering Jew.
He walked back to Théroigne, his heart even a little less than before inclined to her. She held away from him somewhat, as if he were contaminated.
“A fraternity, extending the hand of brotherhood,” he said—repeating some words of hers uttered before the Cagot had intervened—“to whom was mademoiselle about to say? to all, without exception?”
She looked at him, half fearful, half defiant.