For the odd part of it was
(unless our memory is wholly amiss) Montjoie was then (1912)
supposed to be part of Germany, and they pronounced it Mon-yowey.
But the Reich must have felt that this was not permanent, for they
had not Germanized either the name of the town or of the hostelry.
And let us add, in this affectionate summary, _The Lion_--(_Hotel
zum Loewen_)--at Sigmaringen, that delicious little haunt on the
upper Danube, where the castle sits on a stony jut overlooking the
river. Algernon Blackwood, in one of his superb tales of fantasy (in
the volume called "The Listener") has told a fascinating gruesome
story of the Danube, describing a sedgy, sandy, desolate region
below the Hungarian border where malevolent inhuman forces were
apparent and resented mortal intrusion. But we cannot testify to
anything sinister in the bright water of the Danube in the flow of
its lovely youth, above Sigmaringen. And if there were any evil
influences, surely at Sigmaringen (the ancient home and origin of
the Hohenzollerns, we believe) they would have shown themselves. In
those exhilarating miles of valley, bicycled in company with a
blithe vagabond who is now a professor at Cornell, we learned why
the waltz was called "The Blue Danube." So heavenly a tint of
transparent blue-green we have never seen elsewhere, the hurrying
current sliding under steep crags of gray and yellow stone, whitened
upon sudden shallows into long terraces of broken water.
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