to Holy Orders. But De Romagne, Bishop of Tarbes, who died in 1768, ordained to the priesthood several members of this proscribed race.
It was due to the French Revolution, that beat down all barriers, that the distinction between Cagots and other men was wholly obliterated. In the Val de Campan, between four and five miles from Campan itself, is a hamlet, situated high up on the mountain side, that is occupied by six families, all by descent Cagots. The place where they live is called "Le Quartier des Cagots." Doctor Abadie, about 1840, wrote concerning them:—
"I know the heads of these families. They are carpenters. Half a century ago these families intermarried among themselves, and were not suffered to contract unions outside their narrow circle. Now they are mingled with and are melted into the mass of the population. In physiognomy they have nothing peculiar. One remarks only that the individuals of the families Pescadère, Latoure, Lacôme, and Daléas have a white skin and grey eyes; but this is perhaps due to a lymphatic constitution, the result of living in a cold and damp locality."
M. Dufresne, who filled an important, though subsidiary, post in the administration of finances under Necker, and whose bust, under the First Consul, was placed in the hall of the Treasury, in recognition of the public services he had rendered, was by birth and ancestry a Cagot; so we see that careers were open to these members of an outcast and despised race even before the Revolution. What that great upheaval did for them was to destroy the popular prejudice entertained against them.
The derivation of the word cagot has been given; that of crestiaas is not so simple. The name is never spelt with an h in early documents, as if it were derived from Christians. It probably comes from these unfortunates having been
