Page:Man Who Laughs (Estes and Lauriat 1869) v1.djvu/53

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. tolerated the Comprachicos for the very good reason that he found them useful; at least it happened that he did so more than once.

We do not always disdain to use what we despise. This low trade, an excellent substitute sometimes for the higher one which is called State policy, was censured but not persecuted. There was no surveillance, but a certain amount of attention. Sometimes the king went so far as to avow his complicity; such is the audacity of monarchical terrorism. The disfigured one was marked with the fleur-de-lis; they took from him the mark of God, and put on him the mark of the king. Jacob Astley, knight and baronet, lord of Melton Constable, in the county of Norfolk, had in his family a child who had been sold, upon whose forehead the dealer had branded a fleur-de-lis with a hot iron. In certain cases in which it was considered desirable to record for some reason the royal origin of the new position made for the child, they used such means. England has always done us the honour to utilize the fleur-de-lis for her personal use.

The Comprachicos, allowing for the shade of difference which distinguishes a trade from a fanaticism, were analogous to the Stranglers of India. They lived in gangs, and to facilitate their operations affected somewhat of the Merry-Andrew. They encamped here and there, but were grave and religious, bearing no affinity to other nomads, and were incapable of theft. The people for a long time wrongly confounded them with the Moors of Spain and the Moors of China. The Moors of Spain were counterfeiters; the Moors of China were thieves. There was nothing of the sort about the