little below
the knees, and were broad enough about the seat and thighs to carry
his no doubt numerous family. He made a fine figure against the sky.

COLOGNE AND ST. URSULA

It is a relief to get out of Holland and into a country nearer to
hills. The people also seem more obliging. In Cologne, a
brown-cheeked girl 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, an