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.
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