I had heard (from an English gentleman in the packet boat from Havre to Honfleur) something respecting this most extraordinary duel between a young Englishman and a young Frenchman:  but as I mean to reserve my Caen budget for a distinct dispatch, and as I have yet hardly tarried twenty hours in this place, I must bid you adieu; only adding that I dreamt, last night, about some English antiquaries trying to bend the bow of William the Conqueror!—­Can this be surprising?  Again farewell.

[92] Evelyn, who visited Havre in 1644, when the Duke de Richlieu was
    governor, describes the citadel as “strong and regular, well stored
    with artillery, &c.  The works furnished with faire brass canon, having
    a motto, “Ratio ultima Regum.”  The haven is very spacious.” Life
    and Writings of John Evelyn, edit. 1818, vol. i. p. 51.  Havre seems
    always to have been a place of note and distinction in more senses
    than one.  In Zeiller’s Topographia Galliae, (vol. iii.) there is a
    view of it, about the period in which Evelyn saw it, by Jacques
    Gomboust, Ingenieur du Roy, from which it appears to have been a very
    considerable place.  Forty-two principal buildings and places are
    referred to in the directions; and among them we observe the
    BOULEVARDS DE RICHELIEU.

[93] It was so in Evelyn’s time:  in 1644, “It is a poore fisher
    towne (says he) remarkable for nothing so much as the odd yet usefull
    habites which the good women weare, of beares and other skinns, as of
    raggs at Dieppe, and all along these coasts.” Life and Writings of
    J. Evelyn; 1818, 4to. vol. i. p. 51.

[94] [It is near a chapel, on one of the heights of this town, that Mr.
    Washington Irving fixes one of his most exquisitely drawn characters,
    ANNETTE DELABRE, as absorbed in meditation and prayer respecting the
    fate of her lover; and I have a distinct recollection of a beautiful
    piece of composition, by one of our most celebrated artists, in which
    the Heights of Honfleur, with women kneeling before a crucifix
    in the foreground, formed a most beautiful composition.  The name of
    the artist (was it the younger Mr. Chalon?) I have forgotten.]

[95] [My translator says, “un Wynkyn de Worde non coupe:”  Qu.  Would not the
    Debure Vocabulary have said “non rogne?”]

LETTER XII.

CAEN.  SOIL.  SOCIETY.  EDUCATION.  A DUEL.  OLD HOUSES.  THE ABBEY OF ST.
STEPHEN.  CHURCH OF ST. PIERRE DE DARNETAL.  ABBE DE LA SAINTE TRINITE.  OTHER
PUBLIC EDIFICES.