According to the historians of this time, when a man was suspected to be a leper he could have no social relations without making full declaration as to what the real nature of his complaint might be. Without this precaution his acts were void, from the capitulary of Pepin, which dissolved all marriage contracts with lepers, to the law of Charlemagne, that forbade their associating with healthy persons. The fear of contagion was such that in places where no leprosy existed they built small houses for any one who might be attacked; these houses were called _bordes_.[28] A gray mantle, a hat and wallet, were also supplied the victims, also a _tartarelle_, a species of rattle, or a small bell, with which they warned all passers near not to approach. They also had a cup placed on the far side of the road, in which all persons might drop alms without going near the leper. Leper houses were enriched, little by little, by the liberality of kings and nobles and the people, and to be a leper became less inhuman and horrible than at the beginning. Lepers, however, were forced to submit to severe police regulations. They were forbidden under the severest penalties from having sexual relations with healthy persons, for such intimacy was considered as the most dangerous method of conveying the contagion. After entering a leper house the victim was considered as dead under the civil law, and in order to make the patients better understand their position the clergy accompanied them to their asylum, the same as to their funeral, throwing the cemetery dust on them while saying: “Enter into no house save your asylum. When you speak to an outsider stand to the windward. When you ask alms sound your rattle. You must not go far from the asylum without your leper’s robe. You must drink from no well or spring save on your own grounds. You must pass no plates nor cups without first putting on your gloves. You must not go barefooted, nor walk in narrow streets, nor lean against walls, trees, or doors, nor sleep on the edge of the road,” etc. When dead they were interred in the lepers’ cemetery by their fellow-sufferers. Separated from society, these pariahs, living together, sometimes reproduced their own species, and finished their days in the most frightful cachexia, awaking only contempt, disgust, and repulsion among the healthy of the outside world.