Cahors is the cathedral town of the Department of the Lot, in the South of France, and the birthplace of the poet Clément Marot and of the romance-writer Calprenède. In the Middle Ages it seems to have been a nest of usurers. Matthew Paris, in his Historia Major , under date of 1235, has a chapter entitled, “Of the Usury of the Caursines,” which in the translation of Rev. J. A. Giles runs as follows:⁠—