"ElizabethGaskell-AnAccursedRace" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gaskell Elizabeth C)

brother to the seigneur of the neighbouring castle, who was living in
seventeen hundred and eighty; he was well-educated for the time, a
travelled man, and sensible and moderate in all respects but that of
his abhorrence of the Cagots: he would insult them from the very
altar, calling out to them, as they stood afar off, "Oh! ye Cagots,
damned for evermore!" One day, a half-blind Cagot stumbled and
touched the censer borne before this Abbe de Lourbes. He was
immediately turned out of the church, and forbidden ever to re-enter
it. One does not know how to account for the fact, that the very
brother of this bigoted abbe, the seigneur of the village, went and
married a Cagot girl; but so it was, and the abbe brought a legal
process against him, and had his estates taken from him, solely on
account of his marriage, which reduced him to the condition of a
Cagot, against whom the old law was still in force. The descendants
of this Seigneur de Lourbes are simple peasants at this very day,
working on the lands which belonged to their grandfather.

This prejudice against mixed marriages remained prevalent until very
lately. The tradition of the Cagot descent lingered among the
people, long after the laws against the accursed race were abolished.
A Breton girl, within the last few years, having two lovers each of
reputed Cagot descent, employed a notary to examine their pedigrees,
and see which of the two had least Cagot in him; and to that one she
gave her hand. In Brittany the prejudice seems to have been more
virulent than anywhere else. M. Emile Souvestre records proofs of
the hatred borne to them in Brittany so recently as in eighteen
hundred and thirty-five. Just lately a baker at Hennebon, having
married a girl of Cagot descent, lost all his custom. The godfather
and godmother of a Cagot child became Cagots themselves by the Breton
laws, unless, indeed, the poor little baby died before attaining a
certain number of days. They had to eat the butchers' meat condemned
as unhealthy; but, for some unknown reason, they were considered to
have a right to every cut leaf turned upside down, with its cut side
towards the door, and might enter any house in which they saw a loaf
in this position, and carry it away with them. About thirty years
ago, there was the skeleton of a hand hanging up as an offering in a
Breton church near Quimperle, and the tradition was, that it was the
hand of a rich Cagot who had dared to take holy water out of the
usual benitier, some time at the beginning of the reign of Louis the
Sixteenth; which an old soldier witnessing, he lay in wait, and the
next time the offender approached the benitier he cut off his hand,
and hung it up, dripping with blood, as an offering to the patron
saint of the church. The poor Cagots in Brittany petitioned against
their opprobrious name, and begged to be distinguished by the
appelation of Malandrins. To English ears one is much the same as
the other, as neither conveys any meaning; but, to this day, the
descendants of the Cagots do not like to have this name applied to
them, preferring that of Malandrin.

The French Cagots tried to destroy all the records of their pariah