The passage which we follow was constructed about 1543. It runs beneath the streets towards the Castle, making a circuitous course and passing under the Albrecht Dürer Platz. It varies in height from 3 to 7 feet, and, as it nears the Castle, is hewn out of the living rock. Presently we pass on the right the passage which leads down to the Deep Well (see Chap. V.); and then at last we emerge first into the Thiergärtnerthorthurm and then on to the Castle bastion--the Schlosszwinger. This bastion is now a well-kept garden, and the empty, spreading embrasures for guns are now covered with creepers. Our guide leads us out into the Burgstrasse. A few years ago it was possible to descend again into the passages, traverse the inner side of the town-wall and pass into the Castle dungeon--the secret prison of the Vehme-Gericht. Underground passages led thither both from their own tribunal--a hall now used as a warehouse in the Pannier-Gasse--and from the private residences of the Senators. There, too, was that deep and dismal abyss[39] which was wont to receive the mangled remains of the prisoners, mostly of rank, who had been condemned to "kiss the maiden"--_die verfluchte Jungfer_. He upon whom doom had been passed was forced, after a night spent in her presence, into the embraces of the famous female figure, which stands to-day with Sphinx-like placidity in the Castle. Gradually by cunningly-contrived machinery the Maiden grasped the unhappy man with iron arms and pressed him crushingly to her bosom. But from her body and from her face sharp spikes sank as gradually into his eyes and flesh, piercing him through and through. At last the arms relaxed from their cruel embrace, but only to precipitate him, a mass of ghastly laceration, into the pit below, where the body was received upon sharply-pointed bars of steel placed vertically at the bottom, and was cut to pieces by wheels armed with knives which soon completed this inhuman work of secret destruction. This subsequent cutting into a thousand pieces may be compared with the Chinese _Ling-chee_, and the _Bodoveresta_ prescribed by Zoroaster for incompetent physicians. Besides its horrid appeal to the imagination, it was doubtless useful in concealing the identity of a prisoner secretly condemned and secretly executed.