They have not lost their essential outlines, and the veils of grey and purple haze between the spectator and the reality disguises what both have suffered.

Then one draws nearer.

One enters the famous fortress, through the old Vauban fortifications, and over the Vauban bridge--little touched, to all appearance.

And presently, as one passes along the streets, one sees that here is not a town, but only the ghost, the skeleton of a town.

The roofless, windowless houses, of which the streets still keep, as in Rheims, their ancient lines, stare at you like so many eyeless skulls--the bare bones of a city.