Then the workmen
laid down their tools, and rushed off from their labour to play mad
pranks up and down the country. Perpetual motion was required to
alleviate the agony of fury that seized upon the Cagots at such times. In
this desire for rapid movement, the attack resembled the Neapolitan
tarantella; while in the mad deeds they performed during such attacks,
they were not unlike the northern Berserker. In Bearn especially, those
suffering from this madness were dreaded by the pure race; the Bearnais,
going to cut their wooden clogs in the great forests that lay around the
base of the Pyrenees, feared above all things to go too near the periods
when the Cagoutelle seized on the oppressed and accursed people; from
whom it was then the oppressors' turn to fly. A man was living within
the memory of some, who married a Cagot wife; he used to beat her right
soundly when he saw the first symptoms of the Cagoutelle, and, having
reduced her to a wholesome state of exhaustion and insensibility, he
locked her up until the moon had altered her shape in the heavens. If he
had not taken such decided steps, say the oldest inhabitants, there is no
knowing what might have happened.
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