They might only enter the churches by a small door set apart
for them, through which no one of the pure race ever passed. This door
was low, so as to compel them to make an obeisance. It was occasionally
surrounded by sculpture, which invariably represented an oak-branch with
a dove above it. When they were once in, they might not go to the holy
water used by others. They had a benitier of their own; nor were they
allowed to share in the consecrated bread when that was handed round to
the believers of the pure race. The Cagots stood afar off, near the
door. There were certain boundaries--imaginary lines on the nave and in
the isles which they might not pass. In one or two of the more tolerant
of the Pyrenean villages, the blessed bread was offered to the Cagots,
the priest standing on one side of the boundary, and giving the pieces of
bread on a long wooden fork to each person successively.
When the Cagot died, he was interred apart, in a plot burying-ground on
the north side of the cemetery. Under such laws and prescriptions as I
have described, it is no wonder that he was generally too poor to have
much property for his children to inherit; but certain descriptions of it
were forfeited to the commune.
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