They appealed to the parliament of Bourdeaux against this decision, but
met with no better success than the opponents of the miller Arnauld.
Legaret was confirmed in his right of standing where he would in the
parish church. That a living Cagot had equal rights with other men in
the town of Biarritz seemed now ceded to them; but a dead Cagot was a
different thing. The inhabitants of pure blood struggled long and hard
to be interred apart from the abhorred race. The Cagots were equally
persistent in claiming to have a common burying-ground. Again the texts
of the Old Testament were referred to, and the pure blood quoted
triumphantly the precedent of Uzziah the leper (twenty-sixth chapter of
the second book of Chronicles), who was buried in the field of the
Sepulchres of the Kings, not in the sepulchres themselves. The Cagots
pleaded that they were healthy and able-bodied; with no taint of leprosy
near them. They were met by the strong argument so difficult to be
refuted, which I quoted before. Leprosy was of two kinds, perceptible
and imperceptible. If the Cagots were suffering from the latter kind,
who could tell whether they were free from it or not? That decision must
be left to the judgment of others.
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