This chapter consists entirely of one of Bruno's emails (or addresses to Pascal and the Moulinards), recounting the history of the Cagot people of the Guyenne region. Bruno explains that 'Neire,' part of the region's ancient name, signifies bloodshed. For a thousand years, Cagots were treated as untouchables, banished from villages, forbidden to enter taverns, churches, or use communal water sources, forced into caves and stone huts. Legend held them to be tall, red-haired, intelligent, and possibly Neanderthal-descended.

Bruno urges his young listeners to focus not on 1871 but on 1594, the year of the Cagot Rebellion. He tells the story of Jacques, a tall, blue-eyed Cagot healer summoned by the Count of Vantôme to cure his wife's barrenness. The wife became pregnant, and when she bore a black-haired, blue-eyed girl, the enraged count drowned the baby in a well, cast out his wife, and burned Jacques at the stake along with his beloved mare, Loli.

Bruno argues that the rebellion's tipping point was not the murder of the baby or Jacques, since Cagots and women were considered subhuman, but the burning of the horse Loli. Combined with thirty years of conscription into religious wars, this outrage drove peasants and Cagots—historical enemies—into an unprecedented alliance. Bruno compares this to poor white overseers uniting with enslaved Black people in the American South.

The rebels gathered at the ruined Château de Gaume, reportedly twenty thousand strong, combining peasant military training with Cagot guerrilla skills. They captured and beheaded nine nobles with axes, using the severed heads for games of pétanque. King Henry IV crushed the revolt; some peasants betrayed the Cagots, but all were slaughtered together and buried in a mass grave on the château grounds.

Afterward, the old social order returned and Cagots resumed their pariah status until the monarchy's collapse, when they burned records of their identity and legally became French, effectively disappearing as a category. Bruno notes that the Château de Gaume was reused under Vichy in 1940 as a prison for Communists, Roma, Poles, and other 'undesirables,' producing another mass grave. No French leader has examined the grounds, and Cagot descendants keep their heritage a guarded secret rather than seeking monuments.