Horrible was the penance which the Prior now imposed upon me! Forbid to appear again in the church--shut out like an alien from the society of the monks, I was henceforth confined to the charnel vaults of the convent--miserably prolonging my life by a stinted portion of tasteless roots and water, scourging myself with knotted ropes, and mangling my flesh with various implements of martyrdom, which the ingenuity of demoniacal malevolence had _first_ invented, lifting up my voice only in bitter accusations against myself, or in the most passionate and abject supplications for deliverance from that hell whose flames already seemed to burn within me! But when my blood streamed from an hundred wounds--when pain, in a hundred scorpion stings, assailed me--and nature yielded at last, from inability to continue the conflict, so that I fell asleep like an exhausted child, even in despite of my torments--then the horrid imagery of dreams molested me with a new and involuntary martyrdom. Methought I saw Euphemia, who came floating towards me in all the luxuriance of her beauty, and casting on me the most seductive glances. But I cried out aloud, "What would'st thou from me, thou accursed sinful woman? No! hell shall not triumph over the truly penitent!" Then methought her form, before so wanton and luxurious, shook and shivered. She threw aside her robes, and a horror, like that of annihilation, seized upon me; for I saw that her body was dried up into a skeleton, and through the ribs of the spectre I saw not worms, but numberless serpents that twined and twisted within and without, thrusting out their heads and forked burning tongues towards me. "Away!--begone!" cried I, in delirium; "thy serpents are stinging my already wounded flesh. They would fatten on my heart's-blood,--but then--I should die--I should die--Death would release me from thy vengeance!" "My serpents," howled out the spectre, who now seemed like an infernal fury,--"my serpents may nourish themselves from thy heart's-blood, but herein consists not thy torment, oh wretched sinner! Thy pain is within thine own bosom, and in vain hopest thou for release in death. Thy torment is the thought of thine own crimes, and this thought is eternal!" Hereafter the figure of Hermogen, streaming with blood, rose up out of the dusky void, and Euphemia fled before him. He, too, staid not; but rushed past, with an hideous groan, and pointing to a wound in his throat, which had the form of the cross.