me. Count Waldstein, the present head of the family, with extreme
courtesy, put all his manuscripts at my disposal, and invited me to stay
with him. Unluckily, he was called away on the morning of the day that I
reached Dux. He had left everything ready for me, and I was shown over
the castle by a friend of his, Dr. Kittel, whose courtesy I should like
also to acknowledge. After a hurried visit to the castle we started on
the long drive to Oberleutensdorf, a smaller Schloss near Komotau, where
the Waldstein family was then staying. The air was sharp and bracing; the
two Russian horses flew like the wind; I was whirled along in an
unfamiliar darkness, through a strange country, black with coal mines,
through dark pine woods, where a wild peasantry dwelt in little mining
towns. Here and there, a few men and women passed us on the road, in
their Sunday finery; then a long space of silence, and we were in the
open country, galloping between broad fields; and always in a haze of
lovely hills, which I saw more distinctly as we drove back next morning.

The return to Dux was like a triumphal entry, as we dashed through the
market-place filled with people come for the Monday market, pots and pans
and vegetables strewn in heaps all over the ground, on the rough paving
stones, up to the great gateway of the castle, leaving but just room for
us to drive through their midst. I had the sensation of an enormous
building: all Bohemian castles are big, but this one was like a royal
palace. Set there in the midst of the town, after the Bohemian fashion,
it opens at the back upon great gardens, as if it were in the midst of
the country. I walked through room after room, along corridor after
corridor; everywhere there were pictures, everywhere portraits of
Wallenstein, and battle-scenes in which he led on his troops. The
library, which was formed, or at least arranged, by Casanova, and which
remains as he left it, contains some 25,000 volumes, some of them of
considerable value; one of the most famous books in Bohemian literature,