From morning until night, military music sounds under your windows, soldiers pass through the streets, come, go, and drill; the bugle sounds incessantly and the troops file past.

You understand at once that the arsenal constitutes the real city and that the other is completely swallowed up by it.

Everywhere and in every form reappear discipline, administration, ruled paper.

Factitious symmetry and idiotic cleanliness are much admired.

In the navy hospital for instance, the floors are so highly polished that a convalescent trying to walk on his mended leg would probably fall and break the other.