[The Pilgrims Of The Rhine by Edward Bulwer-Lytton]@TWC D-Link bookThe Pilgrims Of The Rhine CHAPTER VII 4/5
"Let us enter the church." They went afterwards to the celebrated cathedral, which is considered one of the noblest of the architectural triumphs of Germany; but it is yet more worthy of notice from the Pilgrim of Romance than the searcher after antiquity, for here, behind the grand altar, is the Tomb of the Three Kings of Cologne,--the three worshippers whom tradition humbled to our Saviour.
Legend is rife with a thousand tales of the relics of this tomb.
The Three Kings of Cologne are the tutelary names of that golden superstition which has often more votaries than the religion itself from which it springs and to Gertrude the simple story of Lucille sufficed to make her for the moment credulous of the sanctity of the spot.
Behind the tomb three Gothic windows cast their "dim, religious light" over the tessellated pavement and along the Ionic pillars.
They found some of the more credulous believers in the authenticity of the relics kneeling before the tomb, and they arrested their steps, fearful to disturb the superstition which is never without something of sanctity when contented with prayer and forgetful of persecution.
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