Note 13 — Chapter XXI
Reading edition
The love for killing oxen still prevails at Rome, where the ambition of the lower orders to be a butcher, is, like their white costume, a remnant of the honourable office of killing at the Pagan sacrifices. In Spain butchers are of the lowest caste, and cannot prove “purity of blood.” Francis I. never forgave the “Becajo de Parigi” applied by Dante to his ancestor.