“But these are mere incidents. I can hardly call myself at home as yet, or master of my castle and destinies until my books have come from Augsburg. I have found some chambers in the fortress which can be fitted up very tolerably after Andrea has arranged my tapestries from Paris. I have had as yet time simply to assure myself that Regenstein is a very Emperor of strongholds. I promise myself a thousand interesting nights diverting myself with the tales of raids, forays, ghosts, goblins, witches, romances, fair and foul, in short, of adventures of every conceivable sort which every soul in the castle is eager to pour out to me whenever I deign my august ear to listen: so if I can only find paper enough in this place I can readily vie with Messere Boccaccio’s tales in the _Decamerone_. I have explored all the nooks and crannies of this vast pile of stone I call my mansion. Adolf has displayed for my admiration the long passage hewn in the living rock leading down to the privy sally-port; the numerous store chambers embedded likewise in the rocky bowels of the mountain. He has taken me out upon the topmost tower, by dizzy ladders over scaffoldings whence the rooks and daws fled noisily, and showed me the whole broad countryside spread out like a map of foreign seas: far to the east over the low hills he showed me the spires of the famed abbey church of Quedlenburg; to the west the nestling village of Heimburg, ‘your Grace’s own peculiar domain land,’ as he explained; to north the wide flat plain with the turrets of Halberstadt dim in the distance; and to south the whole wide green hill-land of the Harz, growing bolder and bolder as the eye followed the contours into the distance. “‘Noble landscape,’ quoth I, in reply to his obvious demand for praise; ‘and well may my fathers have loved it. But this town to southward, with its castle upon a rock, rising like a worthy peer to Regenstein--what is its name? I have forgotten.’ “‘Blankenburg, your Grace, both town and castle.’ “‘A castle of the Duke of Brunswick, or of a fellow noble like myself?’ “‘Of the free and immediate Counts of Blankenburg, your Grace; even of your own condition.’ “‘Close neighbors we are, I vow, unless there is abundant love between us.’ “Adolf gave a great horse laugh.