WALPOLIANA. I. ADELA, A TALE. I HAVE been amusing myself with a history of Picardy, and shall read you off a short tale that struck me. Thomas de Saint Valery was travelling with his wife, Adela, daughter of a count de Ponthieu. They were attacked near a forest by eight armed men. St. Valery, after a severe struggle, was seized, bound, and thrown into a thicket. His wife was carried off, exposed to the brutality of the banditti, and afterwards dismissed in a state of nudity. She, however, sought for, and found her husband, and they returned together. They were soon after met by their servants, whom they had left at an inn, and returned to their father's castle at Abbeville. The barbarous count, full of false ideas of honour, proposed, some days after, to his daughter, a ride to his town of Rue, on the seashore. There they entered a bark, as if to sail about for pleasure; and they had stood out three leagues from the shore, when the count de Ponthieu, starting up, said, with a terrible voice, “Lady, death must now efface the shame which your misfortune has brought on all your family." |