Old and thickly inhabited Europe melted away, and the young crusader stood alone and solitary among the mountains.
The road led around a cliff, and far across a valley on the other side he saw Zillenstein, that nest from which the Auerspergs had first ruled and raided.

The red light of the setting sun fell upon it, magnifying every battlement and tower, and making them all glow with color.

Vast as it was, it seemed even vaster in the red light and in the fire of John's own imagination.
His mind was filled with history and old romance, and it made him think of Valhalla.

Here certainly was the dusk of the gods.

Auersperg was one of the last representatives of the old order that troubled Europe so much in its going, for to John, a keen and intense lover of freedom and of the career open to all the talents, the present war was in its main feature a death struggle between autocracy and democracy.
He stared at the gigantic ramparts of Zillenstein, as long as the sun endured.