The Schloss Persenbeug, though much renewed, and looking modern in its creamy whiteness, represents one of the oldest buildings in Lower Austria. It was at one time a summer residence of the Austrian Emperors, and is associated with the story of the Devil and the Bishop the first part of which was enacted in the neighbourhood of the Strudel and Wirbel. To continue that story in the words of the old chronicler before quoted, after describing the passing of the Devil’s Tower he goes on, “Not far from thence, some two miles’ journey,[9] the Emperor and his people landed, proposing to pass the night in a town called Pösenbeiss, belonging to the Lady Richlita, widow of the Count Adalbero von Ebersberg. She received the Emperor joyfully; invited him to a banquet, and prayed him, besides, that he would bestow the town of Pösenbeiss and other surrounding places (that her husband had possessed and governed) on her brother’s son Welforic the Third. The Emperor entered the banquet room, and standing near Bishop Bruno, Count Aleman von Ebersberg and the Lady Richlita, gave the Countess his right hand and granted her prayer. At that moment the floor of the apartment fell in, and the Emperor fell through into the bathing chamber below it, without sustaining any injury, as did also Count Aleman, and the Lady Richlita, but the Bishop fell on the edge of the bathing tub, broke his ribs and died a few days afterwards. Another account says that others, including Lady Richlita, were also killed. This tragic incident, it is suggested by Planche, was really brought about by the machinations of the monks of Kremsmünster who laid claim to the castle and estates. They did not, however, succeed in getting possession of them, and Persenbeug had been successively the property of several nobles before, at the beginning of the last century, it was repurchased by the Emperor of Austria. A little lower down-stream, on one of the arms through which the river of the same name reaches the Danube, is the attractive old town of Ybbs--its red-roofed houses dominated by a spired church and backed by low green hills. From the outlook point of “Kirl” is to be obtained a grand view of the Danube, and, away to the south, of the Austrian Alps and the lofty Schneeberg. A little beyond Ybbs the Linz-Vienna railway approaches close to the river and keeps near it for some distance. Having passed round the southern point of the Persenbeug peninsula--on which and on the further bank tall chimneys denote modern manufacturing activity--we go by the ruins of a Cistercian monastery at Säussenstein (on the right bank). Säussenstein takes its name from the rushing of the waters of the “Charybdis” which swirls round its base. Before the river turns eastward again, on the summit of a hill ahead of us are seen the twin towers of a church.