In the seventeenth century Mölk was twice besieged, once by the Turks when they swept through a large part of Austria. It was, however, an earlier building that was thus put to warlike uses; possibly it was in consequence of damage done by the besieging Turks in 1684 that the monastery was rebuilt in the early part of the following century. Here in 1805 Napoleon made a short stay in his victorious advance on Vienna and here he stayed also in 1809. In one of the apartments a mark on the floor used to be shown as having been made by the Emperor in a moment of passion. The two centres of greatest interest in this most magnificent of the Benedictine foundations along the Danube are the church and the library. The former is a lofty and richly decorated building “the very perfection of ecclesiastical Roman architecture,” with a wonderful wealth of gold in its decoration. The library, which is noted for containing a large number of biblical and manuscript rarities, is a grand lofty room about a hundred feet in length, with a handsomely painted ceiling, and also no small measure of gilding in its scheme of decoration. Of the great wine “caves” or cellars, which apparently formed one of the features on which the old-time monks prided themselves, it is said that in some of them a carriage might be turned with ease. A French writer a few years after the campaign of 1805 said “in order to have an idea of the abundance which reigns here, it may be sufficient merely to observe, that for four successive days, during the march of the French troops through Mölk towards Vienna, there were delivered to them not less than from fifty to sixty thousand pints of wine per day--and yet scarcely one-half of the stock was exhausted. The French generals were lodged here on that momentous occasion and no doubt found it “snug lying in the abbey.” Splendid as the monastery appears when seen from the water and from the left bank, its situation was well chosen for the views it affords of the wooded heights across the river and for the beautiful prospect to be had from its gallery over the tree-grown islets up the river to where Weitenegg stands on its rocky promontory backed by the green woodlands of the higher hills, with the mountains in the distance. A little below Mölk on the left bank is the small town of Emmersdorf, another one-time robber stronghold, and on the opposite side where the river Bielach comes in is, I believe, technically the beginning of the Wachau--the gorge through which the Danube finds its way to the plain on which Vienna stands. The whole of this tract is said to have been given by Charlemagne to the Bishop of Passau. There is much to delight the visitor who has time to linger about this vineyard district of the river, much variety in the way of mountain and rocky scenery, many fascinating old villages, towns and ruins.