CHAPTER XV.
THE CAGOT--VALLEE D'ASPE--SUPERSTITIONS--FORESTS--DESPOURRINS--THE TWO GAVES--BEDOUS--HIGH-ROAD TO SARAGOSSA--CASCADE OF LESCUN--URDOS--A PICTURE OF MURILLO--LA VACHE.
THE subject of the Cagots has occupied the attention of learned and unlearned persons both formerly, and at the present time; and the interest it excites is rather on the increase than otherwise; like the mysterious question of the race and language of the Basques, it can never fail to excite speculation and conjecture.

A gentleman, who is a professor at the college of Pau, has devoted much of his time to the investigation of this curious secret, and has thrown his observations together in the form of a romance, in a manner so pleasing, and so well calculated to place the persons he wishes to describe immediately before the mind's eye of his reader, that I think a few extracts from his story of THE CAGOT, yet unpublished, will give the best idea of the state of degradation and oppression in which the Cagots were forced to exist; and exhibit in lively colours the tyranny and bigoted prejudice to which they were victims.

I avail myself, therefore, of the permission of M.
Bade, to introduce his _Cagot_ to the English reader.[40] The story thus opens: [Footnote 40: Most of the scenes of the story in the Vallee d'Aspe have become familiar to me, and I can vouch for the truth of the descriptions.] THE CAGOT.
A BEARNAIS TALE.
"ON a fine night in the month of June, 1386, a mounted party, accompanied by archers and attendants on foot, were proceeding, at a quiet pace, along the left bank of a rivulet called Lauronce, on the way between Oloron and Aubertin.

A fresh breeze had succeeded the burning vapours which, in the scorching days of summer, sometimes transform the valleys of Bearn into furnaces.

Myriads of stars glittered, bright and clear, like sparkles of silver, in the deep blue sky, and their glimmering light rendered the thin veil still more transparent which the twilight of the solstice had spread over the face of the country; while through this shadowy haze might be seen, from point to point, on the hills, the ruddy flame of half-extinguished fires.
"From time to time, those who composed the cavalcade paused as it reached higher ground, in order to contemplate the magnificent spectacle before them and the effect produced by the doubtful and fleeting shadows which rested on the fields, on the dark woods, and on the broken and uncertain line in the southern horizon which indicated the summits of the Pyrenees.