hook the house to its foundation,
and down it toppled with a hideous noise, and overwhelmed the wicked
doctors. Faustus hurried to Paris, without attending to the look of wild
exultation which the Devil cast upon him.

Faustus, having heard much talk of the prisons which the most Christian
king had caused to be built for the purpose of receiving those whom he
dreaded, had a strong desire to see the interior of them. The Devil
willingly undertook to satisfy his curiosity; and although the guards
were forbidden, under pain of death, to permit any strangers to enter
these habitations of horror, yet the golden arguments which the Devil
used procured him and his companion a ready admittance. They saw there
cages of iron, in which it was impossible for a man to stand upright, or
sit down, or place himself in any easy posture. The wretches who were
compelled to tenant these iron dwellings had their limbs galled by heavy
chains. The keeper said, confidentially, that when the king was in good
health, he frequently walked in the gallery, in order to enjoy the song
of his nightingales; for thus did he call these wretched victims.
Faustus asked some of the unfortunates the cause of their captivity; and
he heard stories which pierced him to the heart. At last, coming to a
cage wherein was a venerable-looking old man, he put the same question to
him, and the prisoner answered, in a plaintive tone:

"Whoever you are, let my sad story serve you as a warning never to assist
a tyrant in his cruelties. You behold in me the Bishop of Verdun, who
first gave to the king the idea of these horrible cages, and was the very
first to be shut up in one of them after they were completed. Here have
I, for fourteen years, done penance for my sins, praying daily to God to
end my torments by death."

_Faustus_. Ha, ha! Your excellence, then, like another Perillus, has
found a Phalaris. Do you know that story? You shake your head. Well, I
will tell it you.

"This Perillus, who was neither a bishop nor a Christian, constructed a
brazen bull, which he showed to the tyrant Phalaris as a masterpiece of
invention, and assured him that it was constructed in such a manner,
that, if his majesty would shut up a man in it, and then heat it red-hot
by a fire laid beneath it, the shrieks of the tormented man would exactly
resemble the bellowings of a bull, which would doubtless afford his
majesty great pleasure. 'My dear Perillus,' said the tyrant,