One sturdy Cagot family alone, Belone by name, kept up a lawsuit,
claiming the privilege of common sepulture, for forty-two years; although
the cure of Biarritz had to pay one hundred livres for every Cagot not
interred in the right place. The inhabitants indemnified the curate for
all these fines.
M. de Romagne, Bishop of Tarbes, who died in seventeen hundred and sixty-
eight, was the first to allow a Cagot to fill any office in the Church.
To be sure, some were so spiritless as to reject office when it was
offered to them, because, by so claiming their equality, they had to pay
the same taxes as other men, instead of the Rancale or pole-tax levied on
the Cagots; the collector of which had also a right to claim a piece of
bread of a certain size for his dog at every Cagot dwelling.
Even in the present century, it has been necessary in some churches for
the archdeacon of the district, followed by all his clergy, to pass out
of the small door previously appropriated to the Cagots, in order to
mitigate the superstition which, even so lately, made the people refuse
to mingle with them in the house of God. A Cagot once played the
congregation at Larroque a trick suggested by what I have just named.
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