There is heard here also a legend, of the time of the Crusades, concerning the Siebengebergen,—the Seven Mountains,—which lie just back of Bonn.
Stimulated by religious fervour, the overlord of a castle perched upon one of the Seven Mountains, enlisted in the army of the Crusaders, and fought gallantly in the very forefront of those who sought to plant the Cross upon the walls of the Holy City. After a prolonged absence, he returned to find that a rival had won the love of his lady, who, to escape his wrath, had fled to a convent.
The usurper of affections escaped, but the injured husband met near Godesberg, in his old age, a youth in whom he thought he recognized[{225}] the likeness of his wife. Questioning the boy, he visited the sin of the mother upon the child, and slew him on the highroad, on the spot where the Hoch Kreuz now stands,—a monument which tradition says was erected to warn weak wives and faithless friends.
Drachenfels, whose fame to English ears has mostly been made by Byron's verses, lies not far south of Bonn. Byron's "peasant girls with deep blue eyes" are mostly engaged in husbandry to-day, instead of poetically and leisurely gathering "early flowers."
"The castled crag of Drachenfels
Frowns o'er the wide and winding Rhine,"
and is still one of the tourist sights of the Rhine, and as such it must be accorded its place.
Bonn was formerly the residence of the Electors of Cologne, after their removal from that city in 1268, at which time it was also the shelter of Archbishop Englebert, who had fled from Cologne.[{226}]
XXIV
GODESBERG AND ROLANDSECK
Godesberg