The Devil instantly put his project into execution, and they found themselves standing sentinels in the interior of the castle, where reigned the mournful silence of the tomb. Thither had he, before whom millions trembled, banished himself, in order to escape from the vengeance of the relations of the murdered. Although he could thus fly from the sight of his subjects, he could not escape the cutting remorse of his own heart, nor the pains of his emaciated body. In vain did he implore Heaven to grant him health and repose; in vain did he attempt to bribe it by presents to saints, to priests, and to churches; in vain did he cover himself with relics from all parts of the world: that frightful sentence, _thou shall die_, seemed always ringing in his ears. He scarcely ventured to move out of his chamber, lest he should find an assassin in one of those whom he might meet. If anguish drove him into the free air, he went armed with lance and dagger, just as if he had strength to use either. Four hundred guards watched day and night around the stronghold of the half-dead monster; three times every hour did their hoarse calls, echoing from post to post, break the solemn stillness, and remind the tyrant of the flight of time. All around his castle gibbets were erected; and the hangman, Tristan, his only true friend, went about the country every day, and returned at night with fresh victims, in order, by their execution, to diminish the fears of the tyrant, who from time to time would walk in an apartment which was only separated from the torture-room by a thin partition. There he listened to the groans and shrieks of the wretches on the rack, and found in the sufferings of others a slight alleviation of his own. Wearing on his hat a leaden image of the Virgin,--his pretended protectress,--he drank the blood of murdered sucklings, and allowed himself to be tormented by his physician, whom he requited with ten thousand crowns a month.