• 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:⁠— “In these days prevailed the horrible nuisance of the Caursines to such a degree that there was hardly any one in all England, especially among the bishops, who was not caught in their net. Even the king himself was held indebted to them in an uncalculable sum of money. For they circumvented the needy in their necessities, cloaking their usury under the show of trade, and pretending not to know that whatever is added to the principal is usury, under whatever name it may be called. For it is manifest that their loans lie not in the path of charity, inasmuch as they do not hold out a helping hand to the poor to relieve them, but to deceive them; not to aid others in their starvation, but to gratify their own covetousness; seeing that the motive stamps our every deed.” ↩
• Those within the fat lagoon , the Irascible, Canto VII , VIII . ↩