Leaving St Valery, let us take a pleasant excursion to see the fine old feudal castle of Rambures. There is probably not a more perfect specimen of the military architecture of the middle ages in the whole of France. We walk round it and admire the four enormous brick towers rising at the angles of the quadrangular fortress, crowned with the roofs then so much in favour, resembling pepper-boxes. The walls, many yards in thickness, are pierced with embrasures; where we now stand they seem like a narrow slit; but when we enter, there is ample room for a man and horse to stand in them. Everything is prepared for a long defence: descending into the vaults, there are stables for a number of horses, ovens to bake bread for a regiment, wells, and store-rooms ready to contain any amount of provisions. Below these cold dark excavations are the still more melancholy _oubliettes_, a suitable name, where the prisoners were too often forgotten and allowed to die a lingering death of starvation. Here the lord of the place could without any trial confine his vassals who refused to grind their wheat at his mill, bake their bread at his bakehouse, or get in his harvest at the loss of their own. Such was the state of affairs in these olden times!
The shore-line takes us to the oldest hereditary fief of the French monarchy, a spot rendered interesting from its connection with Joan of Arc. A few houses, half-buried in sand, form what the people still persist in calling ‘the port and town of Crotoy,’ once so flourishing as the centre of commerce for the wines of the south and the wool and dye-woods of Spain, which were shipped off from here to the cloth-workers of Flanders. When it belonged to our kings Edward II. and III., the port dues amounted to no less than twelve hundred pounds, a very large sum for those days; now they are but thirty-two pounds a year. The honest hospitable fishermen are always ready to rescue any distressed ship driven on to the coast by storms. It is remembered that one of their race, whose name was Vandenthum, saved the Duc de Larochefoucauld. In the worst days of the Revolution, when it was a crime to bear a title, this most devoted of the adherents of Louis XVI. fled to Crotoy, in the hope of getting to England. Before getting into Vandenthum’s boat, the Duke gave his valet half of a card, the ace of hearts, saying: ‘When this good fisherman brings you the other half, I shall be safe on the other side; pray take it at once to my wife.’ The card was delivered; and every year after the Duke shewed his gratitude by making Vandenthum spend a fortnight with him, treating him in a princely manner, seating him at his side, and recognising him as his deliverer.