When he was left alone and had regained the capacity to think, he felt convinced that he was in one of the dungeons of the Inquisition.  Here were the damp walls, the wooden bench, the window in the ceiling, of which he had heard.  He was soon to learn that he had judged correctly.

His body was granted a week’s rest, but during this horrible week he did not cease to upbraid himself as a traitor, and execrate the fate which had used him a second time to hurl a friend and benefactor into ruin.  He cursed himself, and when he thought of the “word” “fortune, fortune!” he gnashed his teeth scornfully and clenched his fist.

His young soul was darkened, embittered, thrown off its balance.  He saw no deliverance, no hope, no consolation.  He tried to pray, to God, to Jesus Christ, to the Virgin, to the Saints; but they all stood before him, in a vision, with lifeless features and paralyzed arms.  For him, who had relied on “Fortune,” and behaved like a fool, they felt no pity, no compassion, they would not lend their aid.

But soon his former energy returned and with it the power to lift his soul in prayer.  He regained them during the torture, on the rack.

Weeks, months elapsed.  Ulrich still remained in the gloomy cell, loaded with chains, scantily fed on bread and water, constantly looking death in the face; but a fresh, beautiful spirit of defiance and firm determination to live animated the youth, who was now at peace with himself.  On the rack he had regained the right to respect himself, and striven to win the master’s praise, the approval of the living and his beloved dead.

The wounds on his poor, crushed, mangled hands and feet still burned.  The physician had seen them, and when they healed, shook his head in amazement.

Ulrich rejoiced in his scars, for on the rack and in the Spanish boot, on nails, and the pointed bench, in the iron necklace and with the stifling helmet on his head, he had resolutely refused to betray through whom and whither the master had escaped.

They might come back, burn and spear him; but through him they should surely learn nothing, nothing at all.  He was scarcely aware that he had a right to forgiveness; yet he felt he had atoned.

Now he could think of the past again.  The Holy Virgin once more wore his lost mother’s features; his father, Ruth, Pellicanus, Moor looked kindly at him.  But the brightest light shone into his soul through the darkness of the dungeon, when he thought of art and his last work.  It stood before him distinctly in brilliant hues, feature for feature, as on the canvas; he esteemed himself happy in having painted it, and would willingly have gone to the rack once, twice, thrice, if he could merely have obtained the certainty of creating other pictures like this, and perhaps still nobler, more beautiful ones.