The difficulty, which is the greatest by far, is to account for the unceasing contempt which clung to them after they became Chrestiàas.
An ingenious person of Pau, who has considered the subject in all its bearings, has a theory that the Cagots are, after all, the earliest Christians, persecuted by the Romans, compelled, in the first instance, to take shelter in rocks and caves; and, even after the whole country became converted to Christianity, retaining their bad name from habit, and in consequence of their own ignorance, which had cast them back into a benighted state, and made them appear different from their better-instructed neighbours. Their name of Christians appears to have given rise to this notion.
I am looking forward very anxiously to a work of M. Francisque Michel, on the subject, of the Cagots, which I hear is now in the press. His unwearied enthusiasm and industry, and the enormous researches he has made both in France and Spain, will, doubtless, enable him to throw some valuable light on the curious question,[38] if not set it at rest for ever.
[CHAPTER XV.]
the cagot—vallée d'aspe—superstitions—forests—despourrins—the two gaves—bedous—high-road to saragossa—cascade of lescun—urdos—a picture of murillo—la vache.
The subject of the Cagots has occupied the attention of learned and unlearned persons both formerly, and at the present time; and the interest it excites is rather on the increase than otherwise; like the mysterious question of the race and language of the Basques, it can never fail to excite speculation and conjecture. A gentleman, who is a professor at the college of Pau, has devoted much of his time to the investigation of this curious secret, and has thrown his observations together in the form of a romance, in a manner so pleasing, and so well calculated to place the persons he wishes to describe immediately before the mind's eye of his reader, that I think a few extracts from his story of the cagot, yet unpublished, will give the best idea of the state of degradation and oppression in which the Cagots were forced to exist; and exhibit in lively colours the tyranny and bigoted prejudice to which they were victims. I avail myself, therefore, of the permission of M. Badé, to introduce his Cagot to the English reader.[39] The story thus opens:
The Cagot.
a béarnais tale.