The cavalcade, with its charge of prisoners, and its attendant train of spectators, halted at the gates of the _schloss_. This vast and antique pile had now come to be surveyed with dismal and revolting feelings, as the abode of a sanguinary despot. The dungeons and labyrinths of its tortuous passages, its gloomy halls of audience, with the vast corridors which surmounted the innumerable flights of stairs-- some noble, spacious, and in the Venetian taste, capable of admitting the march of an army--some spiral, steep, and so unusually narrow as to exclude two persons walking abreast; these, together with the numerous chapels erected in it to different saints by devotees, male or female, in the families of forgotten Landgraves through four centuries back; and, finally, the tribunals, or _gericht-kammern_, for dispensing justice, criminal or civil, to the city and territorial dependencies of Klosterheim; all united to compose a body of impressive images, hallowed by great historical remembrances, or traditional stories, that from infancy to age dwelt upon the feelings of the Klosterheimers. Terror and superstitious dread predominated undoubtedly in the total impression; but the gentle virtues exhibited by a series of princes, who had made this their favorite residence, naturally enough terminated in mellowing the sternness of such associations into a religious awe, not without its own peculiar attractions. But, at present, under the harsh and repulsive character of the reigning prince, everything took a new color from his un-genial habits. The superstitious legend, which had so immemorially peopled the _schloss_ with spectral apparitions, now revived in its earliest strength. Never was Germany more dedicated to superstition in every shape than at this period. The wild, tumultuous times, and the slight tenure upon which all men held their lives, naturally threw their thoughts much upon the other world; and communications with that, or its burthen of secrets, by every variety of agencies, ghosts, divination, natural magic, palmistry, or astrology, found in every city of the land more encouragement than ever.