“This man is of the accursed race,” she cried low.
“A Jew?”
“A Cagot.”
“And what is that?”
“You do not know? They come from France, where she sits with her feet in the mountains—outcasts, pariahs, with blood so hot that an apple will wrinkle in their hands as if it had been roasted.”
“I should have fancied that a recommendation to you of Méricourt.”
“Ah, grace of God! With them it is nothing but the emitting of a pestilent miasma. These people are brutes. They would even have tails, but that their mothers are cunning to bite them off when they are newly born.”
Ned went into a fit of laughter.
“It is true, monsieur.”
“It is at least easily proved. And they come from the south?”