To the north of those hills and woods where Seldwyla nestles, there flourished as late as the end of the fifteenth century the town of Ruechenstein, lying in the cool shade, whereas her rival Seldwyla basked in the full glare of the midday sun. Gray and forbidding looked the massed body of its towers and strong walls, and upstanding and just were its councilmen and citizens, but severe and morose also, and their chief employment consisted in the execution of their prerogatives as an independent city, in the exercise of law and justice, the issuing of mandates and decrees, of impeachments and committals. The greatest source of their pride was the fact that there had been conferred on them the exercise and enforcement of the power over life and death of all subject to their sway, and so eager and willing they were to sacrifice for this power their all, their privileges and their substance, as entrusted to them by Empire and supreme ruler, as other commonwealths were to achieve their liberty of conscience and the freedom of worship according to their faith. On the rocky promontories all around their town wore conspicuous the emblems of their dread sovereignty. Such as tall gallows and scaffolds, sundry places of execution, showing the wheel where miscreants had their limbs broken, the stake where heretics or other evildoers were made to suffer, and their grim-faced town hall was hung full of iron chains with neck rings; steel cages were exhibited on the towers of the walls, and wooden drills wherein loose-tongued or wicked women were being stretched and turned, could be seen at almost every corner. Even by the shore of the dark-blue river which washed the walls of the town, sundry stations had been erected where malefactors could be drowned or ducked, with tied feet or in sacks, according to the finer discriminations of the decree of judgment. Now it need not be supposed that because of all this the Ruechensteiners were iron men, robust and inspiring terror by their looks, such as one would be inclined to think from their favorite pastimes. That was indeed not the case. Rather were they people of ordinary, philistine appearance, with thin shanks and pot-bellies, their only distinctive mark being their yellow noses, the same noses with which the year around they used to besniff and watch each other. And nobody indeed would have guessed from the more than commonplace and scanty semblance of their whole physical being that their nerves were like ropes, such as were absolutely required not only to view all along the grewsome sights offered to them by their authorities in the putting to a shameful and lingering death of scores and scores of felons and other poor wretches condemned by their councilmen, but actually to enjoy the sight. These cruel instincts of theirs were not apparent on their faces; they were hidden away in their hearts.