The Schloss is an old white building full of beauty and interest, built on the hill below the village, in the midst of a park where Maria Therese used to hunt. Though very old the house has happily suffered little through imprudent restoring, and despite constant improvements its beauty has not been impaired, as has so often happened with old Hungarian houses. The gardens which surround the Schloss are so beautifully laid out and so ornamented with fountains and statues that K is known to Hungarians as the Miniature Versailles ; the head gardener being a person of such serious importance in K that even the Herrschaft at the Schloss speak of and treat him not as an ordinary gardener but as a Man of Art.
Indoors, too, the house confirms its reputation of being a small Versailles, for the collection of pictures and antiquities, begun centuries ago, is pursued by the Prince of to-day with vigour, and carping guests have been heard to remark that though there wasn’t a chair in the Schloss but had a history and a value that made ordinary mortals’ hair stand on end, there also wasn’t one that offered any ease or comfort except in the Prince’s den where all was modern but sacred to the Prince. Continue reading