CHARLATANISM IN FRANCE. 
637 
Carriere and Caguvet, at Lapanouse, are two blacksmiths 
and farriers who are in high reputation for administering drinks 
by the nose and the ears. 
Maille is an object of veneration among the inhabitants of 
Saint Isaire. He knows the stars better than Mathieu Laensborg, 
and he invokes their assistance both in the diagnosis and the 
treatment of disease. 
Rouquette, a farmer at Saint Sermin, and Tabaries, an 
ironmonger at Balmont, are famous for the cure of all sorts of 
coic. A phial of holy-water is their talisman. They moisten 
their fingers with it, sometimes the thumb, and sometimes the 
index or the middle finger, as the case may require, and make the 
sign of the cross on the belly of the sick animal, and mentally 
address a prayer to the saint of the day. It is true that the 
death of the exorcised animal often scandalises the faithful. 
The devil is a malicious kind of personage. 
Gattier, farrier and smith at Barnac, is not in quite so much 
repute for sanctity, but he is “ terribly learned,” as the good peo¬ 
ple about him say, for he knows how to draw the horoscope of 
every beast. Happily for the patients of Gattier, they have no souls 
to be saved; for he is violently suspected of sorcery, and it is whis¬ 
pered that Satan has something to do with all his operations. 
Paul, at Cornus, and Basc, at Roquefort, have a secret 
which is their common property. They have discovered that no 
malady can be efficaciously treated in the same manner in every 
lunation, and therefore they have twelve kinds of remedies suited 
to the peculiar nature and influence of each moon. 
Tournemire, a farrier and blacksmith at Saint Rome-de- 
Tarn, has not the good fortune to be, like the preceding worthies, 
endowed with supernatural knowledge, but his claim to talent of 
a superior order is not the less legitimate. His favourite opera¬ 
tion is the drawing of the sole. There are few horses whose 
soles he does not draw, especially young horses, and whether the 
feet be well or ill formed; for he says that they cast off* the 
strangles in the throwing out of the new sole. 
After the smiths come the shepherds and certain labourers, 
and who contrive to occupy an elevated situation in the aristo¬ 
cracy of the healing art. 
Augen, at Pascals, and Yailes, at Baraille, are celebrated 
over many leagues around, for their skill in the treatment of the 
diseases of cattle. The proceedings of both of them are the same. 
They have some wood which came from the Holy-land. They 
reduce it to powder, and form that ])owder into pills, some of 
which they introduce into the dewlap of the diseased animal, 
always remembering the indispensable ceremony of invoking the 
