pointed us out the way without waiting for a kreuzer. Perhaps the women
have more to busy themselves about in the cities, and are not so
curious about passers-by. We rarely see a reflector to exhibit us to the
occupants of the second-story windows. In all the cities of Belgium
and Holland the ladies have small mirrors, with reflectors, fastened
to their windows; so that they can see everybody who passes, without
putting their heads out. I trust we are not inverted or thrown out
of shape when we are thus caught up and cast into my lady's chamber.
Cologne has a cheerful look, for the Rhine here is wide and promising;
and as for the "smells," they are certainly not so many nor so vile as
those at Mainz.

Our windows at the hotel looked out on the finest front of the
cathedral. If the Devil really built it, he is to be credited with one
good thing, and it is now likely to be finished, in spite of him. Large
as it is, it is on the exterior not so impressive as that at Amiens;
but within it has a magnificence born of a vast design and the most
harmonious proportions, and the grand effect is not broken by any
subdivision but that of the choir. Behind the altar and in front of the
chapel, where lie the remains of the Wise Men of the East who came to
worship the Child, or, as they are called, the Three Kings of Cologne,
we walked over a stone in the pavement under which is the heart of Mary
de Medicis: the remainder of her body is in St. Denis near Paris. The
beadle in red clothes, who stalks about the cathedral like a converted
flamingo, offered to open for us the chapel; but we declined a sight of
the very bones of the Wise Men. It was difficult enough to believe they
were there, without seeing them. One ought not to subject his faith to
too great a strain at first in Europe. The bones of the Three Kings,
by the way, made the fortune of the cathedral. They were the greatest
religious card of the Middle Ages, and their fortunate possession
brought a flood of wealth to this old Domkirche. The old feudal lords
would swear by the Almighty Father, or the Son, or Holy Ghost, or by
everything sacred on earth, and break their oaths as they would break
a wisp of straw: but if you could get one of them to swear by the Three
Kings of Cologne, he was fast; for that oath he dare not disregard.

The prosperity of the cathedral on these valuable bones set all the
other churches in the neighborhood on the same track; and one can
study right