that quality of
stubborn resistance which had cost them in their original state many a
beating from the driver's staff. The greatest enthusiasm was kindled
among rich and poor; year after year, thousands of pilgrims flocked
hither from all Germany to offer their aid, without reward or
recompense, to the building of the tower; and out of the
farthest boundaries, even from Austria, came wagons loaded with
building-materials, the gratuitous offerings of the pious. Rich legacies
were left to the work, and many a cloister devoted a fourth part of its
yearly revenues to the same object So much for asses' skins!

Meanwhile the Devil was not idle. In the night-winds he and his legions
would shriek and yell and rattle among the scaffolding and cranes
in vain. In the latter part of the thirteenth century, he shook the
structure with a frightful earthquake, which terrified all Alsatia,
and, although whole streets were thrown down in Strasburg, yet the
foundations of the _Wunderbau_, as the Germans love to call it, were not
loosened, and no stone was moved from its place. A few years afterward,
in 1289, he once more made use of his favorite element, and laid in
ashes the market-place of Strasburg all around the minster. More
fortunate than its great compeers, St. Paul's of London, and St. Peter's
of Hamburg, it miraculously experienced but trifling damage.

Well, the great Erwin died at last, when he had built the tower as high
as the roof-ridge of the nave. His son succeeded him, finished the tower
to the platform, when he, too, was gathered to his fathers in 1339. John
Hueltz followed as master; and finally his nephew, Hueltz II., in 1439,
finished the grand pyramid, fixed the colossal cross in its place, and
crowned the whole with a gigantic statue of the Virgin. Thus, from the
laying of the foundation-stone till all was completed, were one
hundred and sixty years; yet throughout this time the work was never
discontinued, and five successive generations labored upon its walls.

But the wrath of the Arch-Enemy, as may well be believed, waxed greater
as this prodigious structure gradually developed itself in all its
lordliness and strength, and was not at all appeased at its triumphant
completion. Ever since then he has visited its stately height with
especial marks of his malice. The most furious tempests have raged about
it, and more than sixty times has it been struck by lightning, and five
times have earthquakes shaken its