Only in two respects is the town unsatisfactory,
and both are connected with its streets. The liberty given to each
householder to erect an iron fence across the pavement at each limit
of his property makes it necessary to walk in the road, and the _pave_
of the road is so rough as to cause no slight suffering to any one in
thin boots. M. Havard has an amusing passage on this topic, in which
he says that the ancient fifteenth-century punishment for marital
infidelity, a sin forbidden by the municipal laws no less than by
Heaven, was the supply by the offending man of a certain number of
paving stones. After such an explanation, the genial Frenchman adds,
we must not complain:--
Nos peres ont peches, nos peres ne sont plus,
Et c'est nous qui portons la peine de leurs crimes.
The island of Walcheren is quickly learned. From Middelburg one
can drive in a day to the chief points of interest--Westcapelle and
Domburg, Veere and Arnemuiden. Of these Veere is the jewel--Veere,
once Middelburg's dreaded rival, and in its possession of a clear
sea-way and harbour her superior, but now forlorn. For in the
seventeenth century Holland's ancient enemy overflowed its barriers,
and the greater part of Veere was blotted out in a night.
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