I have saved it from their inhumanity: it has that about it which will pay your trouble.' I saw that he held in his arms a child, who was weeping bitterly; when I looked on its lovely face--round, innocent, and rosy--my heart was touched, and I accepted the charge.
[Footnote 48: Tard-venus.] "'Alas! the sweet creature knew not that it had fallen into the hands of a Cagot; for no sooner had I received it on my bosom, than it ceased crying; and, so far from showing repugnance to one about to become its father, its hands were stretched towards me, and it smiled in my face.
My dear Raymond, thou wert this infant sent by Providence to my care.'" * * * * * The old man then relates his bringing home the child; employing a goat to nourish it; and at length confiding it to the charge and instruction of the hermit of Eysus, the only being whose religion or charity allowed him to listen to the confession of the Cagot.

While Raymond, however, was yet an infant, and but a short time after Guilhem had received him, the latter was, one day, returning from an expedition to the town, where the wants of his family obliged him to resort, and passed by the ruins of the old tower (the very place in which Raymond afterwards became a prisoner, and was rescued, by the fortunate familiarity of Guilhem with the spot, in time to appear at the tournament).
"'I had,' said he, 'taken from my dress the ignominious mark of my degradation; and, in full security, was gathering at my leisure some herbs destined for your use, when it so happened that some shepherds of the Vallee d'Aspe observed and at once recognised me; and their usual superstition acting on them at the supposed ill-omen of meeting a Cagot picking herbs, they attacked me with one accord, and commenced pelting me with stones, and using every epithet of opprobrium.

I was struck to the earth; then they dragged me to the entrance of a sort of inclined cavern, called in the country 'The Den of the Witches'[49].

With coarse jests they thrust me through the opening, exclaiming that, as the evil spirits raised tempests when stones were thrown in there, perhaps they would be appeased by receiving the body of a Cagot.
[Footnote 49: Tutte de las bronchos.] "'I fell to some distance, rolling along the declivity; and my body stopped at the bottom on the damp earth.

When I had a little recovered, I prepared to attempt an escape, as I heard that my tormentors had departed; but, on reaching the opening, I found a barrier which I had not looked for: these wretched men had lighted a fire of weeds and brushwood at the mouth of the cave.