Affable but unsophisticated Count Holk is inspired by a Romantic ballad to leave the modest, comfortable ancestral Schloss (where he and his wife Christine have enjoyed an idyllic life) to go build a new, architecturally ambitious castle by the sea'. He is unaware of how the ballad ends.As a gentleman-in-waiting to a Danish royal princess, he is summoned to a six-month spell of duty in Copenhagen. At the lively, fun-loving court, the rural count falls into beguiling company, and his life begins to spiral out of control. This multi-layered portrayal of a problematic marriage and a little-known period of Danish-German history has all Fontane's celebrated qualities: subtly entertaining dialogue, elegance and irony, a tragicomic edge, and a distinctly modern sensibility.