Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 751, May 18, 1878

No. 751.
Price 1½ d.
SATURDAY, MAY 18, 1878.
Should there be any one who wishes to spend a few weeks in a quiet French watering-place not far from the English coast, let him try St Valery. Here he will not find the fashion and gaiety of Trouville, requiring a dozen new costumes for his wife in as many days, nor the picturesque scenery of Biarritz and the Pyrenees. Yet the flat plains of Picardy have their charms, and there is much to interest the archæologist. This is the classic ground of the troubadours. There are great memories of heroic deeds in the middle ages, and some of the finest monuments of religious zeal. Rivers flow quietly through narrow valleys, planted with willows and poplars, often enlarging into small lakes, where the water-lily spreads its broad leaves and queenly flowers.
Wandering on the downs near the sea, the scenery is sad, but offers a grand and severe beauty of its own. Nothing is there to recall the presence of man; it is a desert, with the eternal murmur of the ocean and the ever-changing aspects of the season. Animals and birds abound in these solitudes; rabbits swarm in their burrows to such a degree that fourteen hundred have been taken from one spot at the same time. The fishing-hawk comes to seek its food in the finny tribes that rise to the surface of the water; a species of wild-fowl intrudes into the rabbit’s burrow and there builds her nest; the sea-gull deposits her eggs on the bare rock; the curlew mingles her plaintive cry with the harsher note of the heron. In the cold days of winter the swan, the eider-duck, the wild-goose, driven from the northern seas by the ice, take refuge on the sands left bare at low-water. Sometimes, during the prevalence of east wind, rare foreign birds are driven to the shores; and in the marshes, lapwings, snipes, and water-fowl abound. Capital ground this, for the ornithologist and wild-fowler.
St Valery itself, situated on the river Somme and occupying an important military position, suffered most cruelly in the wars of the middle ages. Its old walls have seen the inhabitants slaughtered and the fleets burned twenty times; English, Burgundians, and Spaniards have helped to level it to the dust; yet the brave little town has risen again from its ruins and set to work to restore its thriving commerce. Here it was that a tragical event happened in the thirteenth century, when the powerful Lord de Coucy held his sway. Many a story-teller and troubadour has narrated within the castle walls how he married the lovely Adèle, daughter of the Comte de Ponthieu, and how, as she was passing through a forest with too small an escort for such lawless times, she was attacked by brigands and subjected to the greatest indignities. Her husband, with equal cruelty, wished to efface the affront, and ordered her to be thrown into the sea. Some Flemings, sailing on their way to the Holy Land, saw the beautiful lady floating on the waves, took her on board, and when they arrived, sold her to the Sultan of Amaria, who by kind treatment made her happy in her banishment.