One thing which immediately strikes you very disagreeably, is the yellow clayish colour of the walls, which you would almost imagine to be built of mud, did not the joints of the stones, marked by lines of glaring white, prove that this was not the case. Nothing can be more monotonous to behold than all these buildings, six or seven stories high, without a moulding, a pilaster, or a column, and with their small low windows, looking like the entrance to a beehive. The place is the very ideal of an hospital, or of barracks: its sole merit consists in its being built of granite, a species of merit which is of no value, since at the distance of a hundred paces the granite may be easily mistaken for the clay of which stoves are made in France. On the top is a heavy dwarfish cupola, which I can compare to nothing more aptly than the dome of the Val de Grâce, and which boasts of no other ornaments than a multitude of granite balls. All around, in order that nothing may be wanting to the symmetry of the whole, are a number of buildings in the same style, that is to say, with a quantity of small windows, and without the least ornament. These buildings are connected with each other by galleries in the form of bridges, thrown over the streets that lead to the village, which, at present, is nothing more than a heap of ruins. All the approaches to the edifice are paved with granite flags, and its limits marked by little walls three feet high, ornamented with the inevitable balls at every angle and every opening. The _façade_, which does not project in the least from the other portions of the building, fails to break the aridity of the general lines, and is hardly perceived, although it is of gigantic proportions.