Far below at the foot of the shaggy cliff ran the historic Donau,
serene and muddy, all rhythmic testimonials to the contrary. With
something of a shudder I computed the distance from my eerie perch to
the rocks at the bottom of the cliff. Five hundred feet, at least; an
impregnable wall of nature surmounted by a now rank and obsolete
obstruction built by the hand of man: a fortress that defied the legions
of old but to-day would afford no more than brief and even desultory
target practice for a smart battery. To scale the cliff, however, would
be an impossibility for the most resourceful general in the world. All
about me were turrets and minarets, defeated by the ancient and
implacable foe--Time. Shattered crests of towers hung above me, grey
and forbidding, yet without menace save in their senile prerogative
to collapse without warning. Tiny windows marked the face of my still
sturdy walls, like so many pits left by the pox, and from these in the
good old feudal days a hundred marksmen had thrust their thunderous
blunderbusses to clear the river of vain-glorious foes. From the
scalloped bastions cross-bowmen of even darker ages had shot their
random bolts; while in the niches of lower walls futile pikemen waited
for the impossible to happen: the scaling of the cliff!

Friend and foe alike came to the back door of Schloss Rothhoefen, and
there found welcome or stubborn obstacles that laughed at time and
locksmiths: monstrous gates that still were strong enough to defy a
mighty force. There was my great stone-paved courtyard, flanked on all
sides by disintegrating buildings once occupied by serfs and fighting
men; the stables in which chargers and beasts of burden had slept side
by side until called by the night's work or the day's work, as war or
peace prescribed, ranged close by the gates that opened upon the steep,
winding roadway that now dismayed all modern steeds save the conquering