The Natchalnik accompanied me in a visit to the fortress, protected from accident by a couple of soldiers; for the castle of Semendria is still, like that of Shabatz, in the hands of a few Turkish spahis and their families.  The news from Shabatz having produced a alight ferment, we found several armed Moslems at the gate; but they did not allow the Servians to pass, with the exception of the Natchalnik and another man.  “This is new,” said he; “I never knew them to be so wary and suspicious before.”  We now found ourselves within the walls of the fortress.  A shabby wooden cafe was opposite to us; a mosque of the same material rose with its worm-eaten carpentry to our right.  The cadi, a pompous vulgar old man, now met us, and signified that we might as well repose at his chardak, but from inhospitality or fanaticism, gave us neither pipes nor coffee.  His worship was so proud, that he scarcely deigned to speak.  The Disdar Aga, a somewhat more approximative personage, now entered the tottering chardak, (the carpenters of Semendria seem to have emigrated en masse,) and proffered himself as Cicerone of the castle.

Mean and abominable huts, with patches of garden ground filled up the space inclosed by the gorgeous ramparts and massive towers of Semendria.  The further we walked the nobler appeared the last relic of the dotage of old feudal Servia.  In one of the towers next the Danube is a sculptured Roman tombstone.  One graceful figure points to a sarcophagus, close to which a female sits in tears; in a word, a remnant of the antique—­of that harmony which dies not away, but swells on the finer organs of perception.

“Eski, Eski.  Very old,” said the Disdar Aga, who accompanied me.

“It is Roman,” said I.

“Roumgi?” said he, thinking I meant Greek.

“No, Latinski,” said a third, which is the name usually given to Roman remains.

As at Sokol and Ushitza, I was not permitted to enter the inner citadel;[18] so, returning to the gate, where we were rejoined by the soldiers, we went to the fourth tower, on the left of the Stamboul Kapu, and looking up, we saw inserted and forming part of the wall, a large stone, on which was cut, in basso rilievo, a figure of Europa reposing on a bull.  Here was no fragile grace, as in the other figure; a few simple lines bespoke the careless hardihood of antique art.

The castle of Semendria was built in 1432, by the Brankovitch, who succeeded the family of Knes Lasar as despots, or native rulers of Servia, under the Turks; and the construction of this enormous pile was permitted by their masters, under the pretext of the strengthening of Servia against the Hungarians.  The last of these despots of Servia was George Brankovitch, the historian, who passed over to Austria, was raised to the dignity of a count; and after being kept many years as a state prisoner, suspected of secret correspondence with the Turks, died at Eger, in Bohemia, in 1711.  The legitimate Brankovitch line is now extinct.[19]