“Ha!” answered the Baron, after a long pause, “an thou knowest that, thou art indeed the author of evil, and as omniscient as the monks call thee!⁠—That secret I deemed locked in my own breast, and in that of one besides⁠—the temptress, the partaker of my guilt.⁠—Go, leave me, fiend! and seek the Saxon witch Ulrica, who alone could tell thee what she and I alone witnessed.⁠—Go, I say, to her, who washed the wounds, and straighted the corpse, and gave to the slain man the outward show of one parted in time and in the course of nature⁠—Go to her, she was my temptress, the foul provoker, the more foul rewarder, of the deed⁠—let her, as well as I, taste of the tortures which anticipate hell!”

“She already tastes them,” said Ulrica, stepping before the couch of Front-de-Boeuf; “she hath long drunken of this cup, and its bitterness is now sweetened to see that thou dost partake it.⁠—Grind not thy teeth, Front-de-Boeuf⁠—roll not thine eyes⁠—clench not thine hand, nor shake it at me with that gesture of menace!⁠—The hand which, like that of thy renowned ancestor who gained thy name, could have broken with one stroke the skull of a mountain-bull, is now unnerved and powerless as mine own!”