United States or Israel ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


We stopped at the very same inn which the famous old robber-knight and rough fighter Goetz von Berlichingen, abode in after he got out of captivity in the Square Tower of Heilbronn between three hundred and fifty and four hundred years ago. Harris and I occupied the same room which he had occupied and the same paper had not quite peeled off the walls yet.

As we toiled up the mountain its upper region presented a very striking aspect, looking as if a precipice had been smoothed and squared for the purpose of rendering the old castle on its summit more inaccessible than it was by nature. This is the castle of the robber-knight, Ghino di Tacco, whom Boccaccio introduces into the Decameron.

Gustavus Adolphus and Wallenstein looked down from the neighboring pedestals, while at the other end stood Goetz von Berlichingen and Albert of Brunswick. Guarding the door were Hans, the robber-knight of Nuremberg, and another from the Thüringian forest.

This fine old robber-knight was a devoutly and sincerely religious man, hospitable, charitable to the poor, fearless in fight, active, enterprising, and possessed of a large and generous nature. He had in him a quality of being able to overlook moderate injuries, and being able to forgive and forget mortal ones as soon as he had soundly trounced the authors of them.

As we toiled up the mountain its upper region presented a very striking aspect, looking as if a precipice had been smoothed and squared for the purpose of rendering the old castle on its summit more inaccessible than it was by nature. This is the castle of the robber-knight, Ghino di Tacco, whom Boccaccio introduces into the Decameron.

Many of them, where they are situated remote from a church, have a little bell on the roof which they ring for morning and evening prayers; we often heard these simple monitors sounding from the cottages as we passed by. The next night we stopped at the little village of Stein, famous in former times for its robber-knight, Hans von Stein.

I have here my bales of cloth which I carry to Cahors woe worth the day that ever I started on such an errand! I crave your gracious protection upon the way for me, my servant, and my mercery; for I have already had many perilous passages, and have now learned that Roger Club-foot, the robber-knight of Quercy, is out upon the road in front of me.

Perceval looketh at him in wonderment and thinketh him that he hath set too craven a knight in his place, and now at last knoweth well that he spake truth. The robber-knight smiteth him all over his body and giveth him so many buffets that the knight seeth his own blood. "By my head," saith he, "You have wounded me, but you shall pay therefor, for I supposed not that you were minded to slay me!"

But Perceval crieth to him: "Knight, do your endeavour to save my honour and your own life and the honour of these two damsels!" And the robber-knight dealeth him a great buffet of his sword so as that it went nigh to stun him altogether. Howbeit the Coward Knight moveth not.

Adown their sides we discerned the dry beds of mountain torrents, which had lived too fierce a life to let it be a long one. On here and there a hillside or promontory we saw a ruined castle or a convent, looking from its commanding height upon the road, which very likely some robber-knight had formerly infested with his banditti, retreating with his booty to the security of such strongholds.