Far from impossible.
I curse the day when I entered Dresden, joined this court and family.
Loschwitz, May 15, 1902.
Royal command to join the court at Pillnitz June 1. The King, who has been ailing for some time, is anxious to be reunited with the children, and, as a necessary evil, I must go along.
I replied that I would prefer Nossen, or even Stolpen, if it pleases His Majesty.
Castle Stolpen is an old-time stronghold of the bishops of Meissen, and its very ruins are pregnant with reminiscences of a barbaric age. The apartments once occupied by the Countess Cosel, as a prison first, as a residence after the death of Augustus, might be made habitable even now. Exceedingly interesting are the old-time torture chambers and the subterranean living rooms of the "sworn torturer" and the dogs, man-shaped, that served him.
Sanct. Donatus Tower, a wing of the great, black pile, was the ancient habitat of these worthies, and the torture chamber, still extant, is a hall almost as big as the Dresden throne-room. In an inscription hewn in the basalt, the sovereign bishop, Johannes VI, poses as builder and seems proud of the damnable fact. Other princes of the Church let us know in high-sounding Latin script that they created the "Monk hole" and the "stairless prison" respectively.
The latter is a vast subterranean vault, never reached by sunshine or light of any kind. Its victims were made to descend some twenty feet below the surface of the earth on a ladder. When near the bottom, the ladder was pulled up and—stayed up. The prisoners were fed once every twenty-four hours, when a leather water pouch and some pounds of black bread were sent down on a rope.
Of course only the strongest got a morsel, or a drink of water. The others died of starvation and the survivors lived only until there were new arrivals, stronger than themselves. The dead bodies were never removed, and horrible stories of necrophily smudge the records of this awful prison and cover its princely keepers with infamy.