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It was absolutely essential that he should be speedily cured of his wound; and that real motive covering his weariness and long-felt disgust, he did not, like Persan, Bouteville, and Vauban, join the Prince in Flanders.
The subterranean galleries of the citadel of Verdun were constructed by Vauban, and are now a hive of activity barbers' shops, sweet shops, boot shops, hospitals, anything and everything which goes to make up a small city. One of the young officers placed his "cell" at our disposal.
This system has been wrongly imputed to Vauban, who, on the contrary, had a controversy with Louvois about the great number of points the latter desired to fortify. The maxims on this point are as follow: The fortified places should be in echelon, on three lines, and should extend from the frontiers toward the capital.
The present fortifications were erected about the time of the first Francis, and of Henry of Navarre, and afterwards greatly improved by Vauban under Louis le Grand. Their erection had the salutary effect of draining the marshy ground, and rendering the air healthy; but the sanitary arrangements both here and elsewhere are still very defective.
The immense, flat-topped, gray Gothic spire which dominated the picturesque line of low, red-tiled roofs showing here and there above the clustering, dark-green masses of trees in level meadows, was that of St. Rombauld, designated by Vauban as "the Eighth Wonder of the World," constructed by Keldermans, of the celebrated family of architects.
In, the end, he convinced himself that the land was the only real wealth, and he set himself to work to form a new system. He had already made much progress, when several little books appeared by Boisguilbert, lieutenant-general at Rouen, who long since had had the same views as Vauban, and had wanted to make them known.
It had the fervent support of the ministers, not only by prayers and sermons, but, in one case, by counsels wholly temporal. A certain pastor, much esteemed for benevolence, proposed to Pepperrell, who had at last accepted the command, a plan, unknown to Vauban, for confounding the devices of the enemy.
The ministers, it may well be believed, did not give him a better welcome. The King saw only in Marechal Vauban a man led astray by love for the people, a criminal who attacked the authority of the ministers, and consequently that of the King. He explained himself to this effect without scruple.
It was commanded by the surrounding hills and the French moved out of the town and the Vauban fortifications and built on the surrounding hills, on the rim, to go back to our figure, the forts which were the defence of the town when the present war began, forts arranged quite like those of Liège or Antwerp and some four or five miles away from the town.
Denise looks the neat old serving-woman to perfection, and once started on their journey Violet's face brightens. They find the modiste, who inspects her new customers and is all suavity. Grandon makes a brief explanation, and questions if all toilets must be black. "It is extremely sad," and Madame Vauban looks sympathetic. "And she is so young, so petite!
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