The contrast of the sweet smiling valley, with its brook murmuring along, makes the stern fortress more gloomy. Leaving the valley, we gradually ascend by a footpath, until at length we reach where the draw-bridge formerly stood; now there is but the stone pillar that used to sustain it.
Some rough steps lead up to the gate-tower, and a ring at the bell brought a chubby-faced child, that looked much out of place amid the ruins. We entered, and an old dreamy man took the place of the child; he led us through a ruined garden that surrounded a tower of immense thickness, entering which he slowly led us by a winding road, that would admit six men to mount abreast, up to the summit of the tower.
To our surprise we now were on a piece of level ground; this tower, which was the only entrance, having been built on a lower ledge of rock.
The garden we were in was neatly kept and full of vegetables; at its extremity stood the castle, from the centre of which, and on a still higher piece of rock, the donjon keep, with its twin towers, rose up: these towers are circular, and joined by a double wall.
All round outside the walls was air; the valley seemed far away: for hundreds of feet, a pebble that we dropped fell down, striking nothing till it came into the depths of the valley. Much of the ruin still remains, and the old man showed us how we might ascend to the top of the twin towers.
There we sat wrapped in solitude, the valleys far beneath us, and the hills spread out like a raised map, with here a tint of green where trees should be, and there a grey patch for rock, while over them shone out a bit of molten silver where our river flowed: so was the whole country charted out for us, and here for hours we sat, our senses drinking with delight from the pure well of fresh, sweet pleasure raised by our most novel situation.
The old man sat still beneath us; and the records in our hand told us what the old guide could not, the legends of the place.
The Knights of Ehrenburg were vassals of the great Counts of Sponheim, and very powerful in council and war; the last of the race was Count Frederick, who, according to the Chronicle of Limburg, burnt down a great part of Coblence: his reason for so doing appears in the following legend:—