The Author’s Pen
The Lonely Schloss
Nothing can be more picturesque or solitary. It stands on a slight eminence in a forest. The road, very old and narrow, passes in front of its drawbridge, never raised in my time, and its moat, stocked with perch, and sailed over by many swans, and floating on its surface white fleets of water lilies.
Over all this the schloss shows its many-windowed front; its towers, and its Gothic chapel.
The forest opens in an irregular and very picturesque glade before its gate, and at the right a steep Gothic bridge carries the road over a stream that winds in deep shadow through the wood. I have said that this is a very lonely place. Judge whether I say truth. Looking from the hall door towards the road, the forest in which our castle stands extends fifteen miles to the right, and twelve to the left. The nearest inhabited village is about seven of your English miles to the left. The nearest inhabited schloss of any historic associations, is that of old General Spielsdorf, nearly twenty miles away to the right.
Reading
Laura is doing something odd for someone describing a home: she is measuring the distance to everyone else. She turns to her reader and almost dares them, "Judge whether I say truth," then reels off the miles of forest stretching out on either side and how far you would have to travel to reach another living soul. What sounds like a proud tour of a beautiful old castle is really a young woman quietly telling you she has no one nearby, which is exactly the condition that will let a stranger become her whole world.
