One unlucky personage appears to have been excluded from this pacific arrangement: this was a village magistrate, who had acted as spy for the besieged. He was taken by the conquerors, and a rope having been stretched over the ravine, between the castle and the hill of Bleiden, he was suspended at an immense height from the ground.
Another version of this story makes the magistrate-spy to walk across ropes so stretched over the valley; and it is added, that he accomplished the feat, and in gratitude built the chapel which we see (now in ruins) on the hill to the right of the castle.
The views from Thuron are very extensive, a long reach of the river leads the eye back to the villages and cliffs we have past; undisturbed by those infesters of the Rhine, who turn every place of interest on that river into a tea-garden, we can here enjoy our meditations without hindrance, and muse our fill.
THE BIRD AND THE RUIN.
I gazed on an ancient keep;
Its hoary turrets high,
And its gloomy dungeons deep,
Its mould’ring cistern dry,
All seemed to me to say,
“Behold in our decay