I will now conduct you to the interior.  On entering, from the southeast door, you observe, to the left, a small piece of white marble—­which every one touches, with the finger or thumb charged with holy water, on entering or leaving the cathedral.  Such have been the countless thousands of times that this piece of marble has been so touched, that, purely, from such friction, it has been worn nearly half an inch below the general surrounding surface.  I have great doubts, however, if this mysterious piece of masonry be as old as the walls of the church (which may be of the fourteenth century), which they pretend to say it is.

The first view of the interior of this cathedral, seen even at the most favorable moment—­which is from about three till five o’clock—­is far from prepossessing.  Indeed, after what I had seen at Rouen, Paris, Strassburg, Ulm, and Munich, it was a palpable disappointment.  In the first place, there seems to be no grand leading feature of simplicity; add to which, darkness reigns everywhere.  You look up, and discern no roof—­not so much from its extreme height, as from the absolute want of windows.  Everything not only looks dreary, but is dingy and black—­from the mere dirt and dust which seem to have covered the great pillars of the nave—­and especially the figures and ornaments upon it—­for the last four centuries.  This is the more to be regretted, as the larger pillars are highly ornamented; having human figures, of the size of life, beneath sharply pointed canopies, running up the shafts.  The extreme length of the cathedral is 342 feet of Vienna measurement.  The extreme width, between the tower and its opposite extremity—­or the transepts—­is 222 feet.

There are comparatively few chapels; only four—­but many Bethstuehle or Prie-Dieus.  Of the former, the chapels of Savoy and St. Eloy are the chief; but the large sacristy is more extensive than either.  On my first entrance, while attentively examining the choir, I noticed—­what was really a very provoking, but probably not a very uncommon sight—­a maid servant deliberately using a long broom in sweeping the pavement of the high altar, at the moment when several very respectable people, of both sexes, were kneeling upon the steps, occupied in prayer.  But the devotion of the people is incessant—­all the day long—­and in all parts of the cathedral.

Meanwhile, service is going on in all parts of the cathedral.  They are singing here; they are praying there; and they are preaching in a third place.  But during the whole time, I never heard one single note of the organ.  I remember only the other Sunday morning—­walking out beneath one of the brightest blue skies that ever shone upon man—­and entering the cathedral about nine o’clock.  A preacher was in the principal pulpit; while a tolerably numerous congregation was gathered around him.  He preached, of course, in the German language, and used much action.  As he became more and more animated, he necessarily became warmer, and pulled off a black cap—­which, till then, he had kept upon his head; the zeal and piety of the congregation at the same time seeming to increase with the accelerated motions of the preacher.