And the town being pretty well all wall,
guard-house, gateway, sentry-box, drawbridge, reedy ditch, and rushy
dike, the town was pretty well all soldiers.
What would the sleepy old town have been without the soldiers, seeing
that even with them it had so overslept itself as to have slept its
echoes hoarse, its defensive bars and locks and bolts and chains all
rusty, and its ditches stagnant! From the days when VAUBAN engineered it
to that perplexing extent that to look at it was like being knocked on
the head with it, the stranger becoming stunned and stertorous under the
shock of its incomprehensibility,--from the days when VAUBAN made it the
express incorporation of every substantive and adjective in the art of
military engineering, and not only twisted you into it and twisted you
out of it, to the right, to the left, opposite, under here, over there,
in the dark, in the dirt, by the gateway, archway, covered way, dry way,
wet way, fosse, portcullis, drawbridge, sluice, squat tower, pierced
wall, and heavy battery, but likewise took a fortifying dive under the
neighbouring country, and came to the surface three or four miles off,
blowing out incomprehensible mounds and batteries among the quiet crops
of chicory and beet-root,--from those days to these the town had been
asleep, and dust and rust and must had settled on its drowsy Arsenals and
Magazines, and grass had grown up in its silent streets.
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