"To Jurand!" said Zygfried.
And in a moment the bars creaked and they entered, but there was perfect darkness in the cell. But Zygfried, who could not see well in the dim light from the lantern, ordered the torch to be lighted, and in a moment he was enabled by its bright light to see Jurand lying on the straw. The prisoner's feet were fettered, but the chains on the hands were somewhat longer so as to enable him to carry food to his mouth. Upon his body was the same coarse sackcloth which he had on when he was arraigned before the court, but now it was covered with dark blood-stains, because, that day when the fight ended, only when maddened with pain the frantic knight was entangled in the net, the soldiers then tried to kill him, struck him with their halberds and inflicted upon him numerous wounds. The chaplain interfered and Jurand was not killed outright, but he lost so much blood that he was carried to prison half dead. In the castle they expected his death hourly. But owing to his immense strength he prevailed over death, although they did not attend to his wounds, and he was cast into the terrible subterranean prison, in which during the daytime when it thawed drops fell from the roof, but when there was frost the walls were thickly covered with snow and icicles.
On the ground on the straw lay the powerless man in chains, but he looked like a piece of flint shaped in human form. Zygfried commanded Diedrich to throw the light directly upon Jurand's face, then he gazed at it for a while in silence. Then he turned to Diedrich and said: "Observe, he has only one eye--destroy it."
There was something in his voice like sickness and decrepitude, and for that very reason, the horrible order sounded more terrible, so that the torch began somewhat to tremble in the hand of the executioner. Yet he inclined it toward Jurand's face, and in a moment big drops of burning tar began to fall upon the eye of Jurand, covering it entirely from the brow down to the projecting cheek bone.
Jurand's face twitched, his grey mustachios moved, but he did not utter a single word of complaint. Whether it was from exhaustion, or the grand fortitude of his terrible nature, he did not even groan.
Zygfried said: "It has been promised that you shall be freed, and you shall be, but you shall not be able to accuse the Order, for your tongue, which you might use against it, shall be torn out."