The road to Fecamp passes through the little town of Cany, situated in a beautiful valley; and there my family met the Archbishop of Rouen, who, at this moment, is in progress through his diocese, for the purpose of confirmation.  The approach of his eminence gave the appearance of a fair to every village:  young and old of both sexes were collected in the highways to welcome the prelate.  He travelled in considerable state, attended by a military escort of twenty men; and arrayed in the scarlet robe of a Roman Cardinal, with the brilliant “decoration” of the Legion of Honor conspicuous upon his breast.  For the archbishop is a grand officer of that brotherhood of bastard chivalry; and this ornament, conjoined to his train of whiskered warriors, seemed to render him a very type of the church militant.  His eminence is extremely bulky; and my pilgrims were wicked enough to be much amused by the oddity of his pomp and pride.  Nor did the postillion spare his facetiousness on the occasion; for you are aware that in France, as in most other parts of the continent, the servile classes use a degree of familiarity in their intercourse with their betters, to which we are little accustomed in England, and which has given rise to the Italian proverb, that “Il Francese e fedele, l’Italiano rispettoso, l’Inglese schiavo[28].”

Throughout this part of France, large flocks of sheep are commonly seen in the vicinity of the sea, and, as the pastures are uninclosed, they are all regularly guarded by a shepherd and his black dog, whose activity cannot fail to be a subject of admiration.  He is always on the alert and attentive to his business, skirting his flock to keep them from straggling, and that, apparently, without any directions from his master.  In the night they are folded upon the ploughed land; and the shepherd lodges, like a Tartar in his kibitka, in a small cart roofed and fitted up with doors.

Fecamp, like other towns in the neighborhood, is imbedded in a deep valley; and the road, on approaching it, threads through an opening between hills “stern and wild,” a tract of “brown heath and shaggy wood,” resembling many parts of Scotland.  The town is long and straggling, the streets steep and crooked; its inhabitants, according to the official account of the population of France, amount to seven thousand, and the number of its houses is estimated at thirteen hundred, besides above a third of that quantity which are deserted, and more or less in ruins[29].

Fecamp appeared desolate and decaying to its visitors, but they recollected that its very desolation was a voucher of the antiquity from which it derives its interest.  It claims an origin as high as the days of Caesar, when it was called Fisci Campus, being the station where the tribute was collected.