bers of those squads still as to their bodies, in the
chrysalis peasant-state of Blouse, and only military butterflies as to
their regimentally-clothed legs--from the Great Place, away outside the
fortifications, and away for miles along the dusty roads, soldiers
swarmed. All day long, upon the grass-grown ramparts of the town,
practising soldiers trumpeted and bugled; all day long, down in angles of
dry trenches, practising soldiers drummed and drummed. Every forenoon,
soldiers burst out of the great barracks into the sandy gymnasium-ground
hard by, and flew over the wooden horse, and hung on to flying ropes, and
dangled upside-down between parallel bars, and shot themselves off wooden
platforms,--splashes, sparks, coruscations, showers of soldiers. At
every corner of the town-wall, every guard-house, every gateway, every
sentry-box, every drawbridge, every reedy ditch, and rushy dike,
soldiers, soldiers, soldiers. 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.

On market-days alone, its Great Place suddenly leaped out of bed. On
market-days, some friendly enchan