As to Dürrenstein, it has special claims to attention. Richard had managed to offend Leopold of Bavaria in the crusades in the Holy Land, and on his way home, being shipwrecked near Trieste, wandered through his enemy’s country until he was seized, imprisoned, and held to ransom. None of his unfortunate subjects knew where he was, and the story goes that his minstrel Blondin, wandering for many months in disguise, at length found him out by singing the first verse of a song Richard had himself composed, to which the monarch responded by the second verse. Whether this happened at Dürrenstein or at Trifels, where he was afterwards removed, remains in doubt. If Aggstein is fine, Dürrenstein is more so, because the crumbling ruins, mounted on a peak and surrounded by torn and precipitous fragments, appeal more peculiarly to English-speaking people owing to the halo of romance. The walls are fast falling to pieces, the stones and pinnacles that stand are hardly distinguishable from the curiously vertical and narrow lumps of rock which rear themselves at all heights around; the railway has driven a wedge through the very rock in which the building was founded, yet a granite mass is pointed out still as the chamber in which Richard was confined for fifteen weary months! With the considerable market-town of Krems we end the bit of the Danube known as the Wachau, which began at Mölk, and is the favourite “short trip” of the citizens of Vienna, who are carried thence by rail and river in hundreds during the fine-weather season. Happy they to have such delightful scenery within such easy reach. After Krems the scenery is again tame to Vienna and calls for no special comment, except for the castle of Greifenstein with its romantic story. From this castle there is a fine panorama of forest and plain and of the island-bestudded Danube itself. Before reaching Vienna, pass Klosterneuberg, and finally see the branch of the river, known as the Danube canal, going off, only to rejoin the main stream below the city. CHAPTER VII VIENNA AND THE VIENNESE