The _gakets_ of Guizeris, in the diocese of Auch, had a door appropriated to them in the church, which the rest of the inhabitants carefully avoided approaching.
"This prejudice," says Brugeles,[38] "lasted till the visit paid to the church by M.Louis d'Aignan du Sendat, archdeacon of Magnoac, who, in order to abolish this distinction, passed out of the church by the _porte des Cagots_, followed by the _cure_, and all the ecclesiastics of the parish, and those of his own _suite_; the people, seeing this, followed also, and since that time the doors have been used indifferently by all classes." [Footnote 38: "Chroniques Eccl.

du Dioc.

D'Auch."] Although my idea may be laughed at by the learned, it has occurred to me, that this race might be the descendants of those Goths who were driven from Spain by the Moors, introduced by Count Julian in consequence of the conduct of Don Roderick.
There seems scarcely a good reason why the Goths under Alaric should stop in the Pyrenees on their way to a safer retreat, when pursued by the troops of Clovis, the Christian; Spain was open to them, and to remain amongst the enemy's mountains seemed bad policy.

Again, why should Abdelrahman, after his defeat, when his discomfited people fled before the _hammer_ of the great Charles, have paused in the Pyrenees?
Spain was their's, and surely the remnant would have sought their own land, even if detained awhile by the snows, and not have remained a mark of contempt and hatred in the country of their conquerors.
But when Roderick and his Goths fled from the Moors, after the fatal battle of Guadalete, and they remained monarchs of Spain, there was no safety for the ruined remnant but in close concealment; and the Pyrenees offered a safe retreat.

The Christians of France, however, would not have received them as friends, and they could not return to their own country; therefore, they might have sheltered themselves in the gorges, and when they appeared have been looked upon with the same horror as the Arians of the time of Alaric, or even have been confounded by the people with those very Moors who drove them out of Spain.
The difficulty, which is the greatest by far, is to account for the unceasing contempt which clung to them _after_ they became _Chrestiaas_.
An ingenious person of Pau, who has considered the subject in all its bearings, has a theory that the Cagots are, after all, the _earliest Christians_, persecuted by the Romans, compelled, in the first instance, to take shelter in rocks and caves; and, even after the whole country became converted to Christianity, retaining their bad name from habit, and in consequence of their own ignorance, which had cast them back into a benighted state, and made them appear different from their better-instructed neighbours.