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More "Executioner" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Charles I.—Is the name of the executioner known who beheaded King Charles I.? Is there any truth in the report that ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 35, June 29, 1850 • Various
... of Ireland in their long struggle with the landlords. Under such circumstances, the assassin goes free although everybody in the district knows who he is and what he has done. They do not betray him, partly because they justify him exactly as the regular Government justifies its official executioner, and partly because they would themselves be assassinated if they betrayed him: another method learnt from the official government. Given a tribunal, employing a slayer who has no personal quarrel with the slain; and there is clearly ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... endeavors to advance him socially. The Marquis has a daughter, Mathilde, a female counterpart of Stendhal's heroes; with exalted ideas of duty, and a profound reverence for Marguerite of Navarre, who dared to ask the executioner for the head of her lover, Boniface de La Mole, executed April 30th, 1574. Mathilde always assumed mourning on April 30th. "I know of nothing," she declared, "except condemnation to death, which distinguishes a man: it is the only thing which cannot be bought." Julien soon conceives ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... falls unconscious, but, regaining her senses, she clasps her children to her breast and begs life for their sake. But feeling that the petition is futile, she then recalls the memory of her earlier virtue, and, facing her fate, begs as a last favor that no base executioner shall lay his soiled hands on the wife of Sampiero, but that he himself shall execute the sentence. Vannina's behavior moves her husband, but does not touch his heart. "The pity and tenderness," says Buonaparte, "which she should have awakened found a soul thenceforward closed to the ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... eye-witness, and which I tell here again for the strangeness of the scene. Two men had awakened the animosity of the Jaluit chiefs; and it was their wives who were selected to be punished. A single native served as executioner. Early in the morning, in the face of a large concourse of spectators, he waded out upon the reef between his victims. These neither complained nor resisted; accompanied their destroyer patiently; stooped down, when ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in five acts, with a prologue exhibiting the queen's life at Versailles, in 1786, and an epilogue showing her imprisonment in the Conciergerie, and her march to the guillotine in the custody of Samson the executioner. ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... given, the more he told us about her, speaking of his unfortunate mistress as though she were the lowest of the low. For my own part, I confess that she interested me, this false Mme. Jenkins, who goes about weeping in every corner, implores her lover as though he were the executioner, and runs the chance of being thrown overboard altogether, when all society believes her to be married, respectable, and established in life. The others only laughed over the story, the women especially. Dame! it is amusing ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... on his guards to fire upon him. Four balls pierced Antequera, who fell dying from his horse into the arms of two accompanying priests. Thus the most turbulent of all the Governors of Paraguay ceased troubling, and the executioner, after having cut off his head, exhibited it to the people from the scaffold, with the usual moral aphorism ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... responded to this reasonable request; the books dropped; and Doe, looking reproachfully at his executioner, set about ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... passions had darkened that bulbous countenance, which would have seemed outrageous as a caricature? What had he been? Well, perhaps he had been part of the machinery of justice, a clerk in the office to which the executioner sends in his accounts,—so much for providing black veils for parricides, so much for sawdust, so much for pulleys and cord for the knife. Or he might have been a receiver at the door of a public slaughter-house, or a sub-inspector ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... pleased them by the vigor with which he handled the knout, and tickled the levity of the million, who laughed while they saw the half-dozen or more victims flayed by merciless satire. Berlioz wept tears of blood because he had to do such executioner's work, but did it none the less vigorously for ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... are ignorant—that if the king were to know this evening of the presence of this musketeer, this abbe, this bishop, this confessor, here—he, who has risked everything to visit you, to-morrow would behold the steely glitter of the executioner's axe in a dungeon more gloomy, more obscure ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... his cravat. This he did slowly and solemnly, as though preparing to bare his neck for the axe of the executioner. ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... mighty bludgeon was slinking toward Carthoris. The Heliumite's fingers were working as he kept his eyes upon his executioner. Kar Komak bent his gaze penetratingly upon the apes. The effort of his mind was evidenced in the sweat upon his ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... wall, is the story of Spurius Cassius, whom the Roman Senate, suspecting that he was plotting to become King, caused to be beheaded, and his house to be pulled down; and in this scene the head, which is beside the executioner, and the body, which is on the ground in foreshortening, are very beautiful. In the next picture is the Tribune Publius Mucius, who caused all his fellow-tribunes, who were conspiring with Spurius to become tyrants of their ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari
... warning example to the German scribblers, and remind them of the penalty incurred by those who stir up resistance against me by their insults and sneers. I will silence these libellers once for all, and destroy their contemptible free press by the executioner's axe. The punishment inflicted upon Palm seemed not sufficient—let M. Lange, then, be another warning to them. Let ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... willing to give you that satisfaction. I am ready, but I desire to go to the scaffold in my own way. No one shall touch me; if any one does come near me I shall blow out his brains—except that gentleman," continued Morgan, pointing to the executioner. "This is his ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... the dining-room, but it was a very different-looking crowd from the one with which that first breakfast had been eaten, and they all looked at me as I entered as if I were the executioner come for victims. ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... led to the executioner's block? A cold shudder ran through his frame; but the next moment he threw back his waving locks, and his chest heaved ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... said, sternly looking at him; "you have been found guilty, and must die. Alexis, you restrained yourself for my sake from taking the life of this wretch when you heard him plotting against me; you will now act as executioner." ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... cozener was cozened." But our story does not here conclude, for the treacheries of Stucley were more intricate. This perfect villain had obtained a warrant of indemnity to authorise his compliance with any offer to assist Rawleigh in his escape; this wretch was the confidant and the executioner of Rawleigh; he carried about him a license to betray him, and was making his profit of the victim before he delivered him to the sacrifice. Rawleigh was still plotting his escape; at Salisbury he had despatched his confidential friend Captain King to London, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... fire, nor all the brimstone and tortures they endure, which murders them alive. No, no; it is the domestical cause of all these mischiefs that racks their consciences and is their crudest executioner. This, this is the greatest of their evils; for a soul that has shaken off the fetters of flesh and blood, and is full of the love of God, no more disordered with unruly passions, nor blinded with the night of ignorance, sees clearly the vast injury she has done to herself to have offended ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... now died away. Without the tremor of a nerve, he mounted the scaffold. For a moment he stood in silence, as he looked down upon the lifeless bodies of his friends, and around upon the overawed multitude gazing in silent admiration upon this heroic enthusiasm. As he then surrendered himself to the executioner, ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... exposed to great misery in the islands, was true as well from inference as from facts: for what might not be expected from the use of arbitrary power, where the three characters of party, judge, and executioner were united! The slaves, too, were more capable on account of their passions, than the beasts in the field, of exciting the passions of their tyrants. To what a length the ill-treatment of them might be carried, might be learnt from, the instance which General Tottenham mentioned to have seen ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... Peter Smith, a humble seaman, but since you left me in command of the ship last night I mean to keep the place, with all the responsibilities, duties and honors appertaining to it. Take your hands away from your belt. This is a lone coast, and I'm the law, the judge and the executioner. Now, you and the two men back away from the door, and as sure as there's a God in Heaven, if any one of you tries to draw a weapon I'll shoot him. You'll observe that I've two pistols and also a sword. A sailor engaged in a hazardous trade like ours, catching and selling slaves, usually learns how ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... then, gentlemen, that a cuatrero is a stealer of cattle, the ansia is the question or torture. Roznos—saving your presence—are asses, and the first desconcierto is the first turn of the cord which is given by the executioner when we are on the rack. But we do more than burn oil to the Virgin. There is not one of us who does not recite his rosary carefully, dividing it into portions for each day of the week. Many will not steal at all on a Friday, and on Saturdays we never speak ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... straight story. The men, indignant at being thus a second time duped, as they supposed, actually tied the poor boy to the whipping-post and commenced whipping him. But a few lashes had left their bloody marks upon his back when the uplifted arm of the executioner was arrested. ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... hole so as to make a rustling noise. The lizard within thinks, 'Oh here's a snake! I may as well give in,' and comes to the mouth of the hole, putting out his tail first so that he may not see his executioner. The sportsman seizes his tail and snatches him out before he has time to learn his mistake." This common fondness for lizards is a point in favour of a connection between the Gujarat Vaghris and the ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... example of rhetoriqueur poetry), at the beginning, and the last sight (except in letters) of Gargantua at the end, with the curious coda on the "herb Pantagruelion" (the ancestor of Joseph de Maistre's famous eulogy of the Executioner), give, as it were, handle and top to it in unique fashion. But the body of it is the thing. The preliminary outrunning of the constable—had there been constables in Salmigondin, but they probably knew the story of the Seigneur of Basche ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... little, and cannot be expected to do much, because it is contrary to reason and experience to suppose that there can be any real check to brutality, consistent with leaving the victim still in the power of the executioner. Until a conviction for personal violence, or at all events a repetition of it after a first conviction, entitles the woman ipso facto to a divorce, or at least to a judicial separation, the attempt ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... Phillip coolly replied, 'If my son, sir, were suspected of heresy, I should myself hand him over to the Inquisition.' 'My detestation,' continued he, 'of you and your companions is so great, that I would act myself as your executioner, if ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... demand that you be taken hence from this Hall of Justice to the Place de la Revolution, in full view of the citizens of Paris an its environs, and clad in a soiled white garment, emblem of the smirch upon your soul, that there you be publicly whipped by the hands of Citizen Samson, the public executioner; after which, that you be taken to the prison of the Salpetriere, there to be further detained at the discretion of the Committee of Public Safety. And now, Juliette Marny, you have heard the indictment ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... disposition, I shall probably never know now; but the fact remains that, instead of turning out the Fiend I'd been led to expect, he was one of the most considerate men I've ever met. He wouldn't even let me unlock my own boxes, but took the keys and opened them for me himself. (Didn't an executioner braid the hair of some queen whose head he was going to chop off? I must look the incident up, when I have time.) Anyway, I thought of it when the Custom House man was being so polite; but the analogy didn't go any farther, for my head never ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... Guillotin recommended a new device, which consisted of a heavy knife sliding downward between two uprights. This instrument, called after him, the guillotine, which is still used in France, was more speedy and certain in its action than the sword in the hands of the executioner. ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... sealed," said Basil curtly. "'Twas in thine heart to play us false. Hadst thou held out the hand of friendship to yonder herd of heretics, thou wouldst have found me to-night both thy judge and executioner. Come, the time is ripe for action. I spare thee because I need thee; ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... this case," said Meldon. "It will be a perfectly just execution, and I shan't do it myself. I'm a clergyman, and not an executioner. But I'll see that it's done once I'm perfectly ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... all that I desired, do not forget that our earthly deeds are in the hands of Fate. And now I thank the Eternal Ruler for having allowed me to die, not after a long sickness nor at the hands of an executioner, but on the battlefield, in full youth, with work ahead of me still to be done.... And, my dear friends, tell both my friends and my enemies, how the Hellenes, endowed ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... their first meeting and of the love-making in Dame Martha's garden, and the earlier music returns, as it does in Gounod's score, and as it was bound to do. At the end she draws back in horror from Faust, after uttering a prayer above the music of the celestial choir, just as the executioner appears. Mefistofele pronounces her damned, but voices from on high proclaim ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... XIV. and Louis XV., with the mysteries of the Grand and Petit Trianon and of the Parc aux Cerfs, with Madame de Maintenon and Madame de Montespan, with Madame de Pompadour and Madame du Barry, that beautiful courtesan who on the scaffold so pathetically asked the executioner: "Mr. Hangman, I beseech you, do spare me." We are all familiar through Thackeray's "History of the Georges" with the chronique scandaleuse of the Hanoverian dynasty. No doubt the Hohenzollern also have had their chronique scandaleuse and have ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... to enjoy himself there, giving as his pretext for doing so, that Mtesa required him, as soon as I arrived here, to send on a messenger that order might be taken for my proper protection on the line of march; for the Waganda were a turbulent set of people, who could only be kept in order by the executioner; and doubtless many, as was customary on such occasions, would be beheaded, as soon as Mtesa heard of my coming, to put the rest in a fright. I knew this was all humbug, of course, and I told him so; but it was of no use, and I was compelled ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... with us," replied the executioner who was attending to Pontcalec; "unless by special order, the rules are the same ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... justification of what has been alleged against him in that particular. He says of London that "he was committed to the Tower, where for more than two months he lay, with as near a prospect as ever prisoner had of a chop with the executioner's axe on a scaffold on Tower Hill." I may be over-fastidious, but the word "chop" offends my ears with its coarseness, or if that be too strong, has certainly the unpleasant effect of an emphasis unduly placed. Old Auchinleck's saying of Cromwell, that "he gart kings ken ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... constitution), sitting, without any legal authority, upon the religious opinions of a class that are hateful and obnoxious to them—and, in fact, combining within themselves the united offices of both judge and executioner. With the character of their loyalty I have no quarrel; I perceive it is conditional; but the doctrine of unconditional loyalty is so slavish and absurd, that the sooner such an unnecessary fetterlock is struck ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... his wide, thin blade and all those present covered their eyes with their cloaks, when a wailing voice called on the executioner to delay yet a moment. The High King uncovered his eyes and saw that a woman had approached driving ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... affrighted, and did accuse me of being a wizard, even commanding that I should be put to death. Luckily my wit did save my life. I begged that I might be slain by the royal hand and not by that of the executioner. ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... strange request—like ordering a condemned man to go out and search for his executioner; but Mark ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... before he had seen a man killed, to please him. Lucius, delighted at this proof of affection, said, "That is easily remedied; I will gratify your wish." He ordered a condemned criminal to be brought, sent for the executioner, and bade him strike off the man's head in the banquetting chamber. Valerius of Antium says that Lucius did this to please a female, not a male favourite. But Livy says that in Cato's own speech on the subject we are told that Lucius, ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... the principles of freedom," says the historian of the House of Russell, "which the axe of the executioner does not, for it cannot, touch." This great thought must have strengthened the souls of the parents under so terrible a trial. The mother's health, however, sunk under the blow, which, in the sympathy of her celebrated ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... while under the hands of the executioner, I could not observe what was going on around me. When I began to awake from the absorption of my pain and indignation, I found myself in my room. I had been ordered thither, and had mechanically obeyed. I was on my bed, staring at the door, at which I ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... the evil designs of his fell enemy victorious. He was condemned to death. No rescue came, and he was led, yet habited in his armour, to the block. With a courageous look he lay down his head; but scarcely had the axe of the cruel executioner fallen upon it, than a fearful tempest burst forth. The headsman, the recreant knight, and all who had assisted willingly at the execution, were struck to the ground, becoming black masses of cinder, by a flash of fearful lightning; and then the people learned and acknowledged that ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... graceful elegant design, called the Madonna di Loreto. To this chapel I will again return: it is covered with frescoes. Near it there is an open triangular piece of grass land on which a murderer was beheaded within the memory of persons still living. A wild old man, who looked like an executioner broken loose from the flagellation chapel on the Sacro Monte, but who was quite tame and kind to us when we came to know him, told Jones and myself this last summer that he remembered seeing the murderer brought here and beheaded, this being as close ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... several jailers. Her cheeks were whiter than the snow-white dress she wore; her limbs trembled; her long hair hung in wild dishevelment over her shoulders, and yet was she beautiful—beautiful as a fading rose. They led her up the steps of the pillory, and the executioner's hand was already stretched out to bind her to the ignominious post, when she cast a despairing glance upon the bystanders, as though seeking aid. As she did so, a shrill scream of agony burst from her lips. She had recognised in the young officer her ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... it was found that Pope had clandestinely printed an unauthorised number of the pamphlet called The Patriot King, Bolingbroke, in a fit of useless fury, resolved to blast his memory, and employed Mallet (1749) as the executioner of his vengeance. Mallet had not virtue, or had not spirit, to refuse the office; and was rewarded not long after with the legacy of Lord Bolingbroke's works.' Johnson's Works, viii. 467. See ante, p. 268, and ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... those practised scribes sharpening their pencils, his heart sank deeper within him. The vision which had troubled him all night, of a broadside notoriety in all the city papers, rose before his mind, clothed with fresh horror. The dull sound of sharpening those pencils was like the whetting of the executioner's knife. ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... those present heard the words without a shudder. Justice might give over a d'Esgrignon to the executioner's branding iron. There was a dreadful pause. The old Marquise de Casteran could not keep back a tear that stole down over her rouge, and turned her ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... "I am no executioner," he said as he bared his huge sword. "I am a teacher of lessons, and my lessons must ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... against the will of the inhabitants, and butchering all who oppose the usurpation! Among the enormities which France has committed, this action seems but as a speck; yet the foulest murderer that ever suffered by the hand of the executioner has infinitely less guilt upon his soul than the statesman who concluded this treaty, and the monarch who sanctioned and confirmed it. A desperate and glorious resistance was made, but it was in ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... other aids, and forestalls the penalty which our beliefs would attach to our best deeds. Let us remember that the eternal law of right, 385:12 though it can never annul the law which makes sin its own executioner, exempts man from all penalties but those due ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... funny thing is to see this executioner chap going along behind all the kneeling figures, afore he knocks their heads off, and pulling this one here and a-shovin' that one theer, so arrangin' on 'em that he can have a clean stroke when he ups ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson
... nearly all simple folks, had a desire to laugh, even when they were worn out with fatigue, which made a pretext of the slightest thing, and notably of danger. One of them, called Tailleur, a buffoon with the airs of an executioner's assistant, would call out at the first explosions of ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... to London himself as a young man with only his tragedy in his wallet. Shall I ever be able to get mine played? Can you fancy the catcall music beginning, and the pit hissing at that perilous part of the fourth act, where my executioner comes out from the closet with his great sword, at the awful moment when he is called upon to amputate? They say Mr. Fielding, when the pit hissed at a part of one of his pieces, about which Mr. Garrick had warned him, said, ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a tall "Green Mountain boy" from Vermont, who had been robbed of a pistol, acted as executioner. The signal was given, and the poor Pierced-nose resisting, struggling, and screaming, in the most frightful manner, was launched into eternity. The Indians stood round gazing in silence and mute awe, but made no attempt to oppose the execution, nor testified any emotion ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... never pays a debt, an' if you've got four dollars comin' from him you might as well set around like a buzzard till he dies, which he's that ornery it prob'ly won't be long, an' then file yer claim ag'in his executioner." ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... first, but gradually increasing the pressure upon the prisoner's throat, as if to give him a satisfactory foretaste of the hanging sensation. This slow torture was too much for the attorney's fortitude; and, as his respiration grew painful, he called to his executioner to stop. Hatchie promptly ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... wish to be executioner," I said; "I would rather ride a-soldiering far away, and be in the drive of battle and the front of danger. Let me be a soldier and a man-at-arms, my father. I am sure I could become a ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... the execution was to take place, Faustus went into the grand square, attended by the Devil, and told him in going along what he was to do. At the very moment the executioner was about to decapitate the Doctor, who had kneeled down, looking very ghastly, the latter disappeared. The Devil carried him through the air beyond the frontiers; and there, delivering him a large sum of money, he abandoned him joyfully to his fate, for he ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... grave of the martyr, Marsa prayed also for the executioner. She remembered that the one who reposed in the cemetery of Pere-Lachaise, beneath a tomb in the shape of a Russian dome, was her father, as the Tzigana, interred in Hungary, was her mother; and she asked in her prayer, that these two beings, separated in life, should ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... fine hearing to the witch commissioner, who resolved instantly to seize Pug-nose, and begin the burnings in the parish of Marienfliess, to frighten Sidonia, and keep her in check until autumn. So he took the executioner, with all the torture instruments, and a scriba along with him in the carriage, and set off for Uchtenhagen, where the old ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... man, in the Common-Wealth; how disagreeable was the Event? the Sheapard could endure himself; and sit down contentedly under his misfortunes, whilst lost Antony, unable to hold out, and quitting all hopes both for himself and his Queen, became his own barbarous Executioner: Than which sad and deplorable fall I cannot imagine what could be worse, for certainly nothing is so miserable as a Wretch made so from a flowrishing & happy man; by which tis evident how much we ought to prefer before the gaity ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin
... as if, having made friends, they were very sorry for me. The big hound, Nero, seemed the most sorrowful of all, and putting his head as high as he could reach he uttered a deep hollow howl, that to my excited fancy sounded like "Poooooor boooooy!" just as Mr Solomon, with a face as stern as an executioner's might have been as he led someone to the Tower block, threw open the great door in the wall ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... regiment of {455} Highlanders, then quartered in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, murdered a cooper named Parker, and was executed on September 28, pursuant to his sentence. He was only nineteen years of age, and at the gallows endeavoured to throw the executioner off the ladder. The statement concludes with—"his body was taken to the surgeons' hall and there dissected;" and the following is appended as ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 237, May 13, 1854 • Various
... the chancel? And what would a precentor of the sixteenth century say if he could see the fine coat of yellow wash with which our Vandal archbishops have smeared their cathedral? He would remember that this was the color with which the executioner formerly painted those buildings judged "infamous;" he would recall the hotel of the Petit-Bourbon, bedaubed with yellow in memory of the Constable's treason; "a yellow of so fine a temper," says Sauval, "and so well laid on, that more than a hundred ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... mild voice of the priest, "we make our own fate, and the shadows which darken our path are thrown from the evil passions of our nature. Had you left Reardon to his wild command, you had not now been here, his condemned executioner." ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... Malebranche found an ardent follower in John Norris (1667-1711). Of Cartesianism towards the close of the 17th century the only remnants were an overgrown theory of vortices, which received its death-blow from Newton, and a dubious phraseology anent innate ideas, which found a witty executioner in Locke. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... tempered down to the quiet stanzas of Gray's Elegy. But it is not in itself a wicked thing; or the world would never have consecrated it in the great Love-Legends. One may admit that the entrance of the Nubian Executioner changes the situation; but, after all, the frenzy of the girl's request—the terror of that Head upon the silver charger—were implicit in her passion from the beginning; and are, God knows! never very far from passion of ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... inquiries originated in the "NOTES AND QUERIES," I have not observed any notice taken of an anecdote respecting him, which is current among our neighbours on the Continent; namely, that he gave six guineas to the executioner, the JOHN KETCH of that day, ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.02.09 • Various
... which she kills by administering a scientific stab in the neck. The Thomisus, in particular, the subject of this chapter, is passionately addicted to the pursuit of the Domestic Bee. I have described the contests between the victim and her executioner, at greater length, elsewhere. ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... haste unto the king, and asked, saying, I will that thou give me by and by in a charger the head of John the Baptist. 26. And the king was exceeding sorry; yet for his oath's sake, and for their sakes which sat with him, he would not reject her. 27. And immediately the king sent an executioner, and commanded his head to be brought: and he went and beheaded him in the prison, 28. And brought his head in a charger, and gave it to the damsel: and the damsel gave it to her ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... many strange things on the Banks, looked down on a slim youth in knickerbockers and a red jersey, staggering around the cluttered decks of a seventy-ton schooner, while behind him, waving a knotted rope, walked, after the manner of an executioner, a boy who yawned and nodded between ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... a look of scorn, made answer, "On the occasion of your death the only one present to merit admiration will be the public executioner who will officiate." So saying, he turned and descended to the palace accompanied by Azalia ...
— Bright-Wits, Prince of Mogadore • Burren Laughlin and L. L. Flood
... German conditions, at all events! They lie below the level of history, they are liable to all criticism, but they remain a subject for criticism just as the criminal who is below the level of humanity remains a subject for the executioner. ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... "the God whom you blaspheme will ordain, that in the heart of a desert, untrodden by the foot of man, you shall find an accuser, a witness, a judge, and an executioner." ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... army of Gauls, who had come to the relief of their leader. In the face of such odds, he succeeded in vanquishing the enemy, and took the place, achieving the most wonderful act of his genius. The conquered chief was reserved to grace a Roman triumph, and to die by the hand of a Roman executioner. [Footnote: The historian Mommsen says of this unfortunate "barbarian": "As after a day of gloom the sun breaks through the clouds at its setting, so destiny bestows on nations in their decline a last great man. Thus Hannibal stands at the close of the Phoenician history and Vercingetorix at the ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... with a strange dread of the unexpected which he tried to shake off lest it should fasten itself upon his life for good and all. And the other, muttering cautiously with downcast eyes, supposed that his comrade had seen the news of de P—-'s executioner—that was the expression he used—having been arrested ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... arrived, but had got on board just as he was going away. Omai, who had returned with me, presently pointed him out, and solicited me to shoot him. Not satisfied with this, he addressed himself to Kahoora, threatening to be his executioner if ever he presumed to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... up The trailing curtains that overhang your eyes That I may look into those eyes, and tell you I love you, never more than now when Death Thrusts his cold lips between us: Beatrice, I love you: have you no word left to say? Oh, I can bear the executioner, But not this silence: will you not say you love me? Speak but that word and Death shall lose his sting, But speak it not, and fifty thousand deaths Are, in comparison, mercy. Oh, you are cruel, And do not ...
— The Duchess of Padua • Oscar Wilde
... contemporary writers were criticised, gratified the self-esteem of some, and wounded the vanity of a larger number of his fellow-authors. The Lettres Philosophiques sur les Anglais, which followed, were condemned by the Parliament to be burnt by the public executioner. With other audacities of his pen, the storm increased. Voltaire took shelter (1734) in Champagne, at Cirey, the chateau ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... "I've done been your executioner fer twenty years," complained a voice, which Samson at once recognized as that of Aaron Hollis, the most trusted of Purvy's personal guards. "I hain't never laid down on ye yet. Me an' Jim Asberry killed old Henry South. We laid fer his boy, an' would 'a' got him ef ye'd only said ther word. I ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... overthrown a dynasty and refused a crown he was buried like a king among kings. Two years later his body was torn from the tomb, and his head, cut off by the executioner, was exposed above the gate of the House of Parliament. A little while ago a statue was raised to him. The old anarchist turned autocrat now figures in the ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... her deeds and words to the Church militant, or to any other except God, upon which she replied, "What I have always said and held to during the trial, I maintain to this moment"; and added that if she were in judgment and saw the fire lighted, the faggots burning, and the executioner ready to rake the fire, and she herself within the fire, she could say nothing else, but would sustain what she had said in her ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... easily made than obeyed. It was very difficult for Katie to confine herself to the statement of facts, for the reason that she seemed to imagine herself prosecutor, witness, judge, jury, and executioner all rolled into one. It took all the tact of the clerk to get from her what could be received ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... God," replied the marquise, "after what you tell me, now that I know the executioner's hand was necessary to my salvation, what should I have become had I died at Liege? Where should I have been now? And even if I had not been taken, and had lived another twenty years away from France, what would my death have been, since it needed the scaffold for my purification? Now ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... tyrant who condemned him. Genius and learning were incapable of moving a fierce unlettered soldier, but they had served to elevate and harmonize the soul of Longinus. Without uttering a complaint he calmly followed the executioner, pitying his unhappy mistress, and bestowing ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... in 1698 and 1699. They are believed to have been friends of Oliver Cromwell the grandson, who certainly named them in his will. There was a tradition in Hursley that this Reynell was actually the executioner of King Charles. ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... Prince, he being fled to an Army that would stand by him, against any Injuries that should assault him. However, this last Thought of Imoinda's being ravished, changed the Measures of his Revenge; and whereas before he designed to be himself her Executioner, he now resolved she should not die. But as it is the greatest Crime in Nature amongst them, to touch a Woman after having been possess'd by a Son, a Father, or a Brother, so now he looked on Imoinda ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... sprawling, accommodating God becomes a sinuous, hydracrested, overpowering dragon, stopping at nothing to "put you where you belong"—his favorite battle cry—himself judge, jury and executioner. This he has not the power to do unless he can prove to you that you "belong" where he seeks to place you, for his veins are full of mud. He is of the "earth earthy," and in the rarified atmosphere of ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... courage is a preparation made from the gall bladder of a robber famous for his bravery, who has died at the hands of the executioner. The sale of such a gall bladder is one of the perquisites of ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... feeling from his breast, save this one dark, fiend-like passion, for the furtherance of which, or in revenge of its disappointment, noble blood flowed like water—the brave, the good, the young, the old, the noble and his follower, alike fell before the axe or the cord of the executioner? Could it indeed be that Edward, once such a perfect, glorious scion of chivalry, had now shut up his heart against its every whisper, lest it should interfere with his brooding visions of revenge; forgot each feeling, lest ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... varied, and crowds always obeying them, crowds are in consequence extremely mobile. This explains how it is that we see them pass in a moment from the most bloodthirsty ferocity to the most extreme generosity and heroism. A crowd may easily enact the part of an executioner, but not less easily that of a martyr. It is crowds that have furnished the torrents of blood requisite for the triumph of every belief. It is not necessary to go back to the heroic ages to see what crowds are capable ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... century, a picture often false in its lights and exaggerated in its shadows, but a picture none the less. Mr. Froude admits the martyrdom of Ireland but regrets that the martyrdom was not more completely carried out. His ground of complaint against the Executioner is not his trade but his bungling. It is the bluntness not the cruelty of the sword that he objects to. Resolute government, that shallow shibboleth of those who do not understand how complex a thing the art of government is, is his posthumous panacea for past evils. His hero, ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... it he was verily persuaded he should never have fallen into that misery. He then prayed for the king, queen, their issue, the State of England and Scotland, and the lords of the Council and Church, after which the wearied executioner threw him from the ladder, suffering him to hang a long time to display the king's justice. The compassion and sympathy of the people present had abated directly they found he was a Roman Catholic. The same morning, very early, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... Rome. This also was a moot point of argument, on which I vainly endeavoured to decide; but the Senate and the people were wiser than I; and Serena was condemned to be strangled to-morrow by the public executioner. She was a woman of good report before this time, and is the adopted mother of the Emperor. It is now doubted by many whether Stilicho, her husband, was ever guilty of the correspondence with the Goths, of which he was accused; and I, on my part, doubt much that Serena has deserved the punishment ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... their recompense is, in his opinion, below the average. "Disgrace has the contrary effect. The trade of a butcher is a brutal and an odious business; but it is in most places more profitable than the greater part of common trades. The most detestable of all employments, that of the public executioner, is, in proportion to the quantity of work done, better paid than any common ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... now in the presence of our august and powerful band,—the Knights of the Round Table, of which I have honor to be the Captain. I am also Judge and Executioner.—The charges I have against you are already known to every Knight present. It but remains for them to pronounce you guilty, and for me to pass and execute sentence upon you. Attention, Knights! those of you who believe the prisoner to be guilty, and worthy of such punishment ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... millions added to the free gift. In this way the revocation of the Edict of Nantes is gradually brought about, article by article, one turn of the rack after another turn, each fresh persecution purchased by a fresh largess, the clergy helping the State on condition that the State becomes an executioner. Throughout the eighteenth century the church sees that this operation continues.[1403] In 1717, an assemblage of seventy-four persons having been surprised at Andure the men are sent to the galleys and the women are imprisoned. ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... between them, save that speech of comrades, who use more the sign than the tongue. It seemed to Pierre after a time that Gaspard's wrongs were almost his own. Yet with this difference: he must stand by and let the avenger be the executioner; he must ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Jewish mode of punishment; but by an accidental turn of circumstances He was transferred from the Jews to Pilate, and so His prediction was fulfilled [222:5]. Again, it is related that when the fire would not consume the body of the saint, his persecutors 'ordered an executioner to go up to him and thrust a small sword into him. When he had done this,' we are told, 'there came forth [a dove and] a quantity of blood' [222:6]. The parallel to the incident recorded in St John's account of the crucifixion ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... was a very small one. We four members of the committee were, of course, present with the executioner, who was to act under their orders. The others were the United States Marshal, the governor of the gaol, the chaplain, and three members of the press. The room was a small brick chamber, forming an outhouse to the ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... ask no other construing of what I see—they might have died justly, or been butchered foully. But there is no peace between the executioner ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... brain power I shall say little, as my mind was ever bent on sporting topics when it should have been diving into English history or vulgar fractions. Some new device in fishing gear was always of more consequence to me than any inquiry as to the name of the executioner who gave Charles the I. "chops for breakfast," as we youngsters used to say, when we irreverently spoke of the decollation of ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... The executioner had been directed to apply his torch from below. He did so. The fiery smoke rose up in billowy columns. A Dominican monk was then standing almost at her side. Wrapped up in his sublime office, he saw not the danger, but still persisted in his prayers. ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... need is the opportunity," protested Irene. "You're such chatterboxes that you won't let me talk! Now—listen. I'm not much of an executioner, girls, but I can plan and you can execute, and in that way I get my finger in the pie. Now, I believe I've a practical idea that will work out beautifully. Dorfield is an ancient city and has been inhabited for generations. Almost every house contains a lot of articles that are not in ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)
... supposed to have been favoured by Guido Fawkes. I wondered what he was looking up at. It couldn't be at the stars; such a desperado was neither astrologer nor astronomer. It must be at the high gallows, and he was going to be hanged presently. Would the executioner come into possession of his conical crowned hat and plume of feathers? I counted the feathers ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... sensation in England, as well they might, for they heralded the struggle which within half a century was to deliver up James's son to the executioner. The Parliament of 1604 met in angrier mood than any Parliament which had assembled at Westminster since the dethronement of Richard II. Among the churches non-conformity began more decidedly to assume the form of secession. The key-note of the conflict was struck at Scrooby. Staunch Puritan ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... went through Dacre. His hands clenched. He was as a man in the presence of his executioner. The paralysing spell was upon him again, constricting as a rope about his neck. But sacrifice was no part of his nature. With despair at his heart, he yet made a desperate bid ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... Michelangelo's life the strength, often turning to bitterness, is not far to seek; a discordant note sounds throughout it which almost spoils the music. He "treats the Pope as the King of France himself would not dare to treat him"; he goes along the streets of Rome "like an executioner," Raffaelle says of him. Once he seems to have shut himself up with the intention of starving himself to death. As we come in reading his life on its harsh, untempered incidents, the thought again and again arises that he is one of those who incur the judgment of Dante, as having "wilfully lived ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... even who had betrayed him under the mask of friendship. After delivering this address, and spending some time in prayer, he laid his head on the block, and breathing a short private prayer, gave the signal to the executioner. Not being immediately obeyed, he partially raised his head, and said, "What dost thou fear? Strike, man!" and underwent the fatal blow without shrinking or alteration of position. He ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... Canaris, "not today. The Emir bids me tell you that you will have four days yet to live. On the fifth day you will die by the executioner, in ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... related by Dumont, a historian of Louisiana, who published a work in 1753. The colony was then under the administration of Gov. Kerlerec, whose opinion of colonial courage was not very high. The colony was without an executioner, and no white man could be found who would be willing to accept the office. It was decided finally by the council to force it upon a Negro blacksmith belonging to the Company of the Indies, named Jeannot, renowned for his nerve and strength. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... punishment, used to be sent to summon the porter. He frequently returned with a half-sobbing message, "Please, sir, he says he's not in." The fiction did not lead to escape. Cromar was the name of the chief executioner in these scenes. Detested by his pupils, he was a victim to every sort of petty persecution from them, so that cruelty acted and reacted between him and them. On one memorable occasion he flogged ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... Peter began at last to grow impatient at the vagaries of his company. Finally, when the Executioner (a mere walker-on of no importance whatever) had twice brought ridicule upon the ultimate solemnities of the law by his introduction of comic dives off the scaffold, the manager rang down the curtain. Not before it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 19, 1916 • Various
... through the windows. Blood wells up on an altar. The walls run blood from the ceiling to the floor and... a giant of blood stands before me. His beard and his hair drip blood. He seats himself on the altar and laughs from thick lips. The black executioner raises his sword and whirls it above my head. Another moment and my head will roll down on the floor. Another moment and the red jet will ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... death, by signing what is called a warrant for the execution. This is done by the king or queen in England, and by the governor in one of the United States. This warrant is an order, very formally written, and sealed with the great seal, authorizing the executioner to proceed, and carry the sentence into effect. Of course, Queen Mary could not be executed unless Elizabeth should first sign the warrant. Elizabeth would herself, probably, have been better pleased to have been excused from all direct agency in the affair. But this could not be. ...
— Mary Queen of Scots, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... is in good working order?" asked the king of the family executioner, a tall gaunt man in black and scarlet, who was only employed in the case of members ...
— Prince Prigio - From "His Own Fairy Book" • Andrew Lang
... shadow already lay heavy upon thousands of homes in the Netherlands, and after the informer the officer, and after the officer the priest, and after the priest the judge, and after the judge—the executioner and the stake. ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... delude ourselves?" I continued. "Have I fallen so low in your esteem that you can dissimulate before me? That unfortunate journey, you think you are condemned to it, do you? Am I a tyrant, an absolute master? Am I an executioner who drags you to punishment? How much do you fear my wrath when you come before me with such mimicry? What terror impels ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... speaking. Truxton looked up, as at an executioner. The lean, cruel face of that beautiful girl's husband was not far from his own; the fiery eyes were burning into his. The Iron Count sat upon a boulder near ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... verbal misleading, and the most direct, is actually saying the thing that is not; and it is defended on the principle that such words are not a lie, when there is a "justa causa," as killing is not murder in the case of an executioner. ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... to dance—to dance in the dark night. The shoes carried her on over thorn and brier; she scratched herself till she bled; she danced away across the heath to a little lonely house. Here she knew the executioner dwelt; and she tapped with her fingers on the panes, ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... very hard for so many mens Lives to be taken away for a little Gold. He often said, his Peace was made with God; and his Soul would be with God: yet extream hard to forgive those he said wronged him. He told the Executioner, he was a strong man, and Prayed to be put out of misery ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... was very pathetic, therefore, I tried to prove to him, that, our death being inevitable, we had nothing better to think about than how best to sustain the sadness and ignominy that had come upon us; and that, death for death, it was better to fall like men of honour than under the hand of the executioner. The Irishman was moved, but not yet resolved. I then made him feel that if his own infamy did not touch him, he ought at least to spare his children the disgrace of being pointed at as the offspring of one who had been hanged; and that, if he had not been ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... ear, and it powerfully recalled to Edwin the legends of the Spanish Inquisition. He speculated whether he would ever be able to touch beef again. Above the tortured and insulted corpse the air quivered in large waves. Mr Doy, the leading butcher of Bursley, and now chief executioner, regarded with anxiety the operation which had been entrusted to him, and occasionally gave instructions to a myrmidon. Round about stood a few privileged persons, whom pride helped to bear the double heat; and farther off on the pavements, a thin scattered crowd. The sublime spectacle of an ox ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... that sort eventually drove me to it. I passed my viva-voce examination at the hands of the young lady at the desk, paid my fees, got my testamur, and was shown into the torture-chamber, where the head executioner was busy adjusting his ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... busy. He wrote often in a gay and lively style, almost, it would seem, in a struggle to keep himself from sinking into melancholy, 'singing to keep his courage up.' His gaiety was 'the madness of an intoxicated criminal under the hands of the executioner.' A Bard's Epitaph, however, among the many pieces of this season, is earnest and serious enough to disarm hostile criticism; and his loose and flippant productions are read leniently in the light of this ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... "you work—I eat" formula natural resources will be utilized in the manner best calculated to advance the interests of the ruling oligarchy. Who will be the judge, jury and executioner in the case? Who else but the ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... with a great noble, for that in the rivalries between these there might be troubles come upon the land, and maybe even civil strife; that one who might hold his head highest of all one day might on the morrow have it struck off with the executioner's axe, and that at any rate it were best at present to live quietly and see how matters went before taking any step that would bind me to the fortunes of one man more ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... with some wandering stabs of remorse, which never fail to settle on my vitals like vultures, when attention is not called away by the calls of society, or the vagaries of the muse. Even in the hour of social mirth, my gayety is the madness of an intoxicated criminal under the hands of the executioner. All these reasons urge me to go abroad, and to all these reasons I have only one answer—the feelings of a father. This, in the present mood I am in, overbalances everything that can be laid in the scale against it. * ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... had sworn to throw a fagot on her scaffold as his tribute of abhorrence, that did so, that fulfilled his vow— suddenly to turn away a penitent for life, saying everywhere that he had seen a dove rising upon wings to heaven from the ashes where she had stood? What else drove the executioner to kneel at every shrine for pardon to his share in the tragedy? And, if all this were insufficient, then I cite the closing act of her life as valid on her behalf, were all other testimonies against her. The executioner had been directed to apply his torch from below. ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... assaults of the Indians, and was taken prisoner after a most gallant attempt at escape. He was led about in triumph for some time from village to village, and at length sentenced to die. His head was laid upon a stone, and the executioner stood over him with a club, awaiting the signal to slay, when Pocahontas, daughter of the Indian chief, implored her father's mercy for the white man. He was inexorable, and ordered the execution to proceed; but ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... himself; a power healthful enough for the victim (for, doubtless, flogging is the best of all punishments, being not only the shortest, but also a mere bodily and animal, and not, like most of our new-fangled "humane" punishments, a spiritual and fiendish torture), but for the executioner pretty certain to eradicate, from all but the noblest spirits, every trace of chivalry and tenderness for the weak, as well, often, as all self-control and command of temper. Be that as it may, old Sir Vindex had heart enough to feel that it was now his duty to take especial care of the fatherless ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... laid the matter before Louis XI., who placed it in the hands of his grand provost. A trial was promptly had and promptly ended. The inhabitants of Tours blamed Tristan l'Hermite secretly for unseemly haste. Guilty or not guilty, the young Touraineans were looked upon as victims, and Cornelius as an executioner. The two families thus thrown into mourning were much respected; their complaints obtained a hearing, and little by little it came to be believed that all the victims whom the king's silversmith ...
— Maitre Cornelius • Honore de Balzac
... confession, been proved guilty of the abominable crimes of lycanthropy and witchcraft, this court condemns him, the said Gilles, to be this day taken in a cart from this spot to the place of execution, accompanied by the executioner (maitre executeur de la haute justice), where he, by the said executioner, shall be tied to a stake and burned alive, and that his ashes be then scattered to the winds. The court further condemns him, the said Gilles, to the costs of ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... copyists, and innkeepers grew rich. The executioner rode a blooded horse, like a noble of the court, and went clad in gold and silver; his wife vied with noble dames in the richness of her array. The children of those convicted and punished were sent into exile; their goods were confiscated; plowman ...
— The Witchcraft Delusion In Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) • John M. Taylor
... ekskremento. Excrescence elkreskajxo. Excruciate turmentegi. Exculpate senkulpigi. Excursion ekskurso. Excusable pardonebla. Excuse pardoni, senkulpigi. Execrable abomena. Execrate malbenegi. Execute (to do) fari. Execute ekzekuti. Executioner ekzekutisto. Executive regantaro. Exemplar ekzemplero. Exemplary ekzempla. Exemplify ekzempligi. Exempt liberigi. Exempt libera. Exercise ekzerci. Exercise ekzerco. Exercise-book kajero. Exhale odori. Exhaust konsumi. Exhaustion konsumiteco. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... royal hosts nor any of the noble guests recognized him, but a moment later two officials of the Court advanced and to the astonishment and indignation of the company declared that the stranger was no other than the executioner of Bergen! The King's wrath knew no bounds. He commanded that the knave should be seized and put to death immediately. To think that he had allowed the Queen to dance with a common executioner! The ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... with their half pounds of corn? and would they suffer a person, whom they almost deified, whom they had set on a footing with Jupiter, at least with respect to the surname of Capitolinus, to drag out an existence subject to the will of an executioner, chained in a prison and in darkness? Was there thus sufficient aid in one person for all; and no relief for one in so many?" The crowd did not disperse from that place even during the night, and they threatened that they would break open the prison; when that being conceded which they were ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... pilgrimage, the pious enthusiast regulated his circuit so as annually to visit the graves of the unfortunate Covenanters, who suffered by the sword, or by the executioner, during the reigns of the two last monarchs of the Stewart line. These are most numerous in the western districts of Ayr, Galloway, and Dumfries; but they are also to be found in other parts of Scotland, wherever the fugitives had fought, or fallen, or suffered by military or civil execution. ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... end, for faith will remove mountains. Hence, though thou wert to see that maiden under the sword of the executioner or in the jaws of a lion, believe that Christ can save her. Believe, and pray to Him, and I ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... their early crimes obtained a power which secures indemnity to all the crimes of which they have since been guilty, or that they can commit, it is not the syllogism of the logician, but the lash of the executioner, that would have refuted a sophistry which becomes an accomplice of theft and murder. The sophistic tyrants of Paris are loud in their declamations against the departed regal tyrants who in former ages have vexed the world. They are thus bold, because they are safe from the dungeons and iron cages ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... not like your cold justice; out of the eye of your judges there always glanceth the executioner and ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... food was not so mordant now. In its stead, a raging thirst tortured tongue and throat. He resisted a frantic craving to devour the snow, since he knew well that this would but multiply his torments. Yet, fatigue and thirst and even the stabbing cold, which would at last be his executioner, were not the things that swayed his emotions in these final stages of the Death Trail. Somehow, the matches had come to be his obsession. His physical agony was felt through a blessed medium of apathy now; it was become something curiously remote, almost impersonal. Always, his consciousness ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... thermometer of Fahrenheit be at 110 degrees; and scarcely an instance of canine madness is ever known to occur. When the French decreed the extinction of the tribe of curs that infest the streets, no native executioner could be found to put the exterminating law in force; nay, the very measure excited ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 560, August 4, 1832 • Various
... me?" he thought with a strange dread of the unexpected which he tried to shake off lest it should fasten itself upon his life for good and all. And the other, muttering cautiously with downcast eyes, supposed that his comrade had seen the news of de P—-'s executioner—that was the expression he used—having been arrested the night ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... rescue, even on the scaffold, had been freely circulated. Calcraft, the executioner, had received a number of threatening letters, which had frightened him greatly. The police, knowing what the Fenians had already attempted in the way of rescuing their friends, were very much on the alert, and more than a hundred officers, in private clothes and armed with revolvers, ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... him to be bound to a tree and shot to death with arrows, and that the inscription over his head should state that there was no fault found in him but only that he was a Christian. This picture my sister wants to buy, shows him stripped and bound to the tree, and the executioner's work going on. Arrows are piercing him in various places; and the saint's face is raised to heaven with the look upon it of struggling pain and triumphing faith together. You can see that the struggle is sharp, ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... Chapel of S. Niccolo, making therein a large Crucifix with four figures, so well wrought that it seems made only yesterday. In the arch he painted two stories of S. Nicholas—namely, his throwing the golden balls to the maidens, and his delivering two from death, while the executioner is seen apparelled and ready to cut off their heads, and very ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari
... Babington looked on with an undaunted countenance, steadily gazing on that variety of tortures which he himself was in a moment to pass through; the others averted their faces, fervently praying. When the executioner began his tremendous office on Babington, the spirit of this haughty and heroic man cried out amidst the agony, Parce mihi, Domine Jesu! Spare me, Lord Jesus! There were two days of execution; it was on the first that the noblest of these youths suffered; ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... are apt to grow quite too luxuriantly for the general good in new Western settlements. His work was not done as an officer of the law either. It was rather a self-imposed task, in which he performed, at least to his own satisfaction, the double functions of judge and executioner. And in the unwritten code governing his decisions all ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... Magistrate, putting on the black cap and a solemn look; "as the accused makes no defence, and is undoubtedly guilty, I sentence her to be eaten by the public executioner; and as that position happens to be vacant, I appoint you to ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... arranged for Beatrice, and whilst the Brotherhood returned to the chapel for her, the balcony of a shop filled with spectators fell, and five of those underneath were wounded, so that two died a few days after. Beatrice, hearing the noise, asked the executioner if her mother had died well, and, being replied that she had, she knelt before the crucifix, and spoke thus: "Be thou everlastingly thanked, O my most gracious Saviour, since, by the good death of my mother, ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... plane of unfortunate infants would be handed over to the prosiest and worst of all the teachers with good intentions, whom nobody older would endure. Who, taking his stand on the floor before them as chief executioner, would be attended by a conventional volunteer boy as executioner's assistant. When and where it first became the conventional system that a weary or inattentive infant in a class must have its face smoothed downward with a hot hand, or when and where the conventional volunteer boy first ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... blessed offer and announcement of that forgiving mercy of God which is to be accepted in simple faith. By the Law says Luther, the sinner is judged, condemned, killed; he himself had to toil and disquiet himself under it, as though he were in the hands of a gaoler and executioner. The Gospel first lifts up those who are crushed, and makes them alive by the faith which the good message awakens in their hearts. But God works in both; in the one, a work which to Him, the God ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... them; Master Freddie took off his hat and handed it to him, and then, letting go of Jurgis' arm, tried to get out of his overcoat. After two or three attempts he accomplished this, with the lackey's help, and meantime a second man had approached, a tall and portly personage, solemn as an executioner. He bore straight down upon Jurgis, who shrank away nervously; he seized him by the arm without a word, and started toward the door with him. Then suddenly came Master Freddie's voice, "Hamilton! My fren' ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... are special to such or such a plant, so that the botanist usually knows beforehand how to determine the parasite whose presence is made known to him. Thus, the Cuscuta of flax, called by the French Bourreau du Lin (the flax's executioner), and by the English, flax dodder, grows only upon this textile plant, the crop of which it often ruins. On account of this, botanists call this species Cuscuta epilinum. Others, such as C. Europa, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... dear Ned, is it for my sins that I am thus pursued? What is awaiting me I know not. What I shall do with the young cub I have not the ghostliest shadow of an idea. Shall I begin by thrashing him soundly? I have refrained so far; I hate the role of executioner. Or shall I teach him boxing? The gloves are a great educator, and are at times what the padre would call ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... from the judgments of the Standrecht; and so quickly are they carried out, that if a person is ordered to be hanged, and the regular executioner is busy, the judge can call on the soldiers to ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 59, December 23, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... Eugenie, from time to time makes variety; or an example of the punishment of the wicked by men or by devils, who play a large, and to themselves thoroughly enjoyable and merry, part here. The sculptor would seem to have witnessed the punishment of the blasphemer; how adroitly the executioner planted knee on the culprit's bosom, as he lay on the ground, and out came the sinful tongue, to meet the iron pincers. The minds of those who worked thus seem to have been almost insanely preoccupied just then with the human countenance, ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... Did she say, 'It is I who am wearing her to death, I who am keeping her on a rack and am the executioner, yet she tells me every night that she loves me devotedly, though she knows what I make her undergo?' No; my first memorable experience was true to what I knew her to be, and to all my experience. She began ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... compassion such a complicated machinery is set in motion that no mechanical iron structure on earth can be found half as involved or half as complete; and a person not thoroughly acquainted with the qualities and parts of this wonderful apparatus will prove a tormenting executioner, not a healing physician, to the sufferer. Be patient, milady, the physician at the bed of his patient is of the neuter gender—just as the ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... Miss Mayton, that my experience has been the reverse of a pleasant one. If King Herod were yet alive I'd volunteer as an executioner." ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... absent friends, or enemies; anything unfairly attacked. Generally, when she said anything cutting, it was so clearly incisive you hardly knew for a moment where you were injured. She did it like the executioner of that Eastern potentate who decapitated a criminal with such skill and with so sharp an instrument that the latter did not know when he was executed and went on talking, his head remaining in situ until he sneezed. There was one old gentleman, Lord Groome, whom she had disposed of several ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... young, and your host may be the Archangel Michael himself, or the holy Saint Mark, and the house to which you are bidden may be a paradise full of other angels! But I would as soon sit down before the grating and look at the hooded brother, while the executioner slipped the noose over my head to strangle me, as to go to any place on a bidding delivered by a fellow with such a jail-bird's head. It is as round as a bullet and as yellow as cheese. He has eyes like a turtle's and teeth like those ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... been infused into the spirit of the inhabitants of the Philippines, when in the midst of so many calamities they did not know whether they would see sprout the seed they were planting, whether their field was going to be their grave or their crop would go to feed their executioner? What is there strange in it, when we see the pious but impotent friars of that time trying to free their poor parishioners from the tyranny of the encomenderos by advising them to stop work in the mines, to abandon ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal
... pulled it gently at first, but gradually increasing the pressure upon the prisoner's throat, as if to give him a satisfactory foretaste of the hanging sensation. This slow torture was too much for the attorney's fortitude; and, as his respiration grew painful, he called to his executioner to stop. Hatchie promptly loosened ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... places in which criminals, or prisoners, were secretly executed; they were strangled, and without seeing their executioner, for a cord was passed through an opening, which he twisted till the victim was dead. This was the mode pursued with the prisoners of the Inquisitors; those of the Council were often placed in a cell to which there was a thickly grated window, through ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... or even a Polygon, born with any Irregularity, you must be taken to one of the Regular Hospitals to have your disease cured; otherwise you will end your days in the State Prison or by the angle of the State Executioner. ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... of a public execution. They hinted that the Princes d'Horn were allied to the illustrious family of Orleans, and added that the Regent himself would be disgraced if a kinsman of his should die by the hands of a common executioner. The Regent, to his credit, was proof against all their solicitations, and replied to their last argument in the words of Corneille,- "Le crime fait la honte, et non pas l'echafaud:" adding, that whatever shame there might be in the punishment he would very willingly ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... extreme; others it renders torpid, and scarcely observant of any evil that may befal them. In Barbary it is always taken, if it can be procured, by criminals condemned to suffer amputation, and it is said, to enable those miserables to bear the rough operations of an unfeeling executioner, more than we Europeans can the keen knife of our most skilful chirurgeons. This it may be necessary to have said to my friend Mr. T. Wedgwood, whom I respect much, as his virtues deserve, and I know them well. I send a small quantity only as I possess but little. If however, it ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... said, it is very hard for so many mens Lives to be taken away for a little Gold. He often said, his Peace was made with God; and his Soul would be with God: yet extream hard to forgive those he said wronged him. He told the Executioner, he was a strong man, and Prayed to be put out of misery ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... his sovereignty, and to seek relief for his shattered frame in a more genial climate. Caesar's gout was then depicted in energetic language, which must have cost him a twinge as he sat there and listened to the councillor's eloquence. "'Tis a most truculent executioner," said Philibert: "it invades the whole body, from the crown of the head to the soles of the feet, leaving nothing untouched. It contracts the nerves with intolerable anguish, it enters the bones, it freezes the marrow, it converts the lubricating fluids of the joints into chalk, it pauses ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the Lord, if this old gentleman did the wise thing, it's black pitch that would torment you at the executioner's, and light up ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... it is examined on the spot. It would seem that a password was requisite for admittance, for no sooner does a stranger-bee endeavor to get in, than it is known. If without necessary credentials, there is evidence enough against it. Each bee is a qualified jurist, judge, and executioner. There is no delay; no waiting for witnesses for defence. The more a bee attempts to escape, the more likely it will be to receive a sting, unless it succeeds. How strange bees are known, would ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... the Biog. Brit. "If I knew the rascal's name," says he, "I would hang it up, as far as lies in my power, to everlasting infamy!" Undoubtedly it richly deserved such treatment, but there was no necessity for the doctor exhibiting such keenness for the office of executioner.—E.] ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... conduct him to the scaffold. They brought with them cords, as usual, to bind the prisoner's hands. But Egmont remonstrated, and showed that he had himself cut off the collar of his doublet and shirt, in order to facilitate the stroke of the executioner. This he did to convince them that he meditated no resistance; and on his promising that he would attempt none, they consented to his remaining with his ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... of that," she said in a choking whisper. "God gave women pity to keep men from becoming demons. You can pity the executioner when, killing you, he must kill ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker
... of verbal misleading, and the most direct, is actually saying the thing that is not; and it is defended on the principle that such words are not a lie, when there is a "justa causa," as killing is not murder in the case of an executioner. ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... the famous "boar of Ardennes,"—more familiar to us now in the pages of romance than history,—who perished ignominiously some twenty years before this period, in 1484, not in fight, but by the hands of the common executioner at Utrecht. Duclos, Hist. de Louis ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... is distinguished from other asses by wearing a hat; an ass on two feet; a monster composed of part of an ape and wild ass; a villain who merits hanging on the first tree we find." And Beza was, no doubt, desirous of the office of executioner! ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... nunnery of the Carmelites received from the Luxembourg prison a package containing a generous lock of her husband's hair, she knew it had been purchased from the executioner. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... little remunerative,—a population living in hovels, and buildings called picturesquely by the familiar term of "blind houses." From the earliest ages this has no doubt been an accursed quarter, the haunt of evil-doers; in fact one thoroughfare is named "the street of the Executioner." For more than five centuries it has been customary for the executioner to have a red door at the entrance of his house. The assistant of the executioner of Chateauroux still lives there,—if we are to ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... words—'Wicked prince, you bereave us of earthly life; but the King of heaven and earth, if we die in defence of His laws, will one day raise us up to life eternal.' The next sufferer, stretching forth his hands as if to receive the palm rather than the executioner's stroke, said, with the same calm assurance, 'I received these limbs from Heaven, but I now despise them, since I am to defend the laws of God; from the sure and steadfast hope that He will one day restore them to me.' Is it possible ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... sheep-stealers, Whiteboys, shop-lifters, and cattle-houghers, who, to the amount of seven or eight at a time, were invariably 'turned off' within four-and-twenty hours after their sentences at each assizes. No executioner being at hand, time pressing, and the sheriff and his deputy being men of refinement, education, humanity, and sensibility, who could not be expected to fulfil the office which they had undertaken—and for which one of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... the Suburra that bordered the town walls, lying in the Carinae,—the valley between the Coelian and Esquiline Hills. The Great Market (Macellum Magnum) was in this district, and many cook-shops, stalls, barber shops, et cet. as well; the office of the public executioner, the barracks for foreign soldiers quartered at Rome; this district was one of the busiest and most densely populated in the entire city. Such conditions would naturally be ideal for the owner of a house ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... country from peril. But the priests inspired a strange awe. Nocturnal councils were held; their death was decreed; and, as they walked their rounds, whispering groups of children gazed after them as men doomed to die. But who should be the executioner? They were reviled and upbraided. The Indian boys threw sticks at them as they passed, and then ran behind the houses. When they entered one of these pestiferous dens, this impish crew clambered on the roof, to pelt them with snowballs through the smoke-holes. The old squaw who crouched ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... "Fair damsel, pity me! forgive that I Thus violate thy bower's sanctity! O pardon me, for I am full of grief— Grief born of thee, young angel! fairest thief! 110 Who stolen hast away the wings wherewith I was to top the heavens. Dear maid, sith Thou art my executioner, and I feel Loving and hatred, misery and weal, Will in a few short hours be nothing to me, And all my story that much passion slew me; Do smile upon the evening of my days: And, for my tortur'd brain begins to craze, ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... the Revolution were progressing with giant strides; the unfortunate Louis XVI. was carried to the scaffold, and within a few months after, the Duke of Orleans was seized on a plea of conspiracy against the French nation, and after a mock trial, consigned to the executioner. A short time previously to the death of his father, the Duke de Chartres had effected his escape through Belgium into Switzerland, and there was joined by his sister Adelaide and Madame de Genlis. Our confined space precludes the possibility of our dwelling on ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... live at peace with all the world? Then practise the maxims of an influential man, who, when asked, after the Revolution, how he managed to escape the executioner's axe, replied, "I made myself of ...
— Gold Dust - A Collection of Golden Counsels for the Sanctification of Daily Life • E. L. E. B.
... order to confiscate these people's property without any trial whatever. But this is the way of proceeding by an English chief-justice in India,—a chief-justice who had rendered himself the instrument, the letter-carrier, the messenger, I had almost said the executioner of Mr. Hastings. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... to know then, gentlemen, that a cuatrero is a stealer of cattle, the ansia is the question or torture. Roznos—saving your presence—are asses, and the first desconcierto is the first turn of the cord which is given by the executioner when we are on the rack. But we do more than burn oil to the Virgin. There is not one of us who does not recite his rosary carefully, dividing it into portions for each day of the week. Many will not ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... looked to the people or to the emperor for life; his antagonist had no power to grant or to refuse it; but if the spectators were dissatisfied and gave the signal of death, he was obliged to become the executioner of their will. This signal was the turning down the thumbs; as is well known. If any showed signs of fear, their death was certain; if on the other hand they waited the fatal stroke with intrepidity, the people generally relented. But fear and want of spirit were of very rare occurrence, insomuch ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... had already begun to sing the death hymn; the executioner was ready, the procession had set out, when Solomon the fisherman appeared suddenly on the threshold of the prison, his eyes aflame and his brow radiant with the halo of the patriarchs. The old man drew himself ...
— Widger's Quotations from Celebrated Crimes of Alexandre Dumas, Pere • David Widger
... or by arbitration in rural districts. Reference has been made to the use of torture. Flogging is the only form of torture which has been allowed under the Manchus. The obdurate witness is laid on his face, and the executioner delivers his blows on the upper part of the thighs with the concave side of a split bamboo, the sharp edges of which mutilate the sufferer terribly. The punishment is continued until the man either supplies the evidence required or becomes insensible. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... clasps her children to her breast and begs life for their sake. But feeling that the petition is futile, she then recalls the memory of her earlier virtue, and, facing her fate, begs as a last favor that no base executioner shall lay his soiled hands on the wife of Sampiero, but that he himself shall execute the sentence. Vannina's behavior moves her husband, but does not touch his heart. "The pity and tenderness," says Buonaparte, "which she should have awakened found a ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... degrades him, by throwing open to him. the downward path of lust, laziness, ungoverned and tyrannous tempers, and the other sins which have in all ages, slowly but surely, worked the just ruin of slave-holding states. The sinner is his own tempter, and the sinner is his own executioner: he lies in wait for his own life (says Solomon) when he lies in wait for his brother's. Do you see the same law working in our own free country? If you leave the poor careless and filthy, you can obtain no good servants: if you leave them profligate, they make ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley
... screens and rubbing the tables and the gold and silver sacrificial utensils, he perceived a lad appear on the scene holding a petition and a list, and report that 'Wu, the head-farmer in the Hei Shan village, had arrived.' "What does this old executioner come for to-day?" Chia ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... other career is open to me, and I am more to be pitied than you suppose. I am the only one left of a band formerly as complete as yours; the executioner has deprived me of my brave comrades one by one, and now I am obliged to carry on my operations entirely alone—dressing up my scarecrows, as your friend calls them, and assuming different voices to make believe that I am supported by a numerous company. Ah! mine is ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... a dense crowd round the scaffold. Sophie heeded them not; she ran girlishly up the steps to where the executioner was leaning on his axe. "Where do I put my head?" she asked simply. The executioner pointed to the block. "There!" said he. "Where did you think you put it?" Sophie reproved him with a look and knelt down. Then she ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... hand?" He also vexed the people by building the Temple of Artemis of Good Counsel, as he called her, hinting that he had taken good counsel for the Greeks. This temple he placed close to his own house in Melite, at the place where at the present day the public executioner casts out the bodies of executed criminals, and the clothes and ropes of men who have hanged themselves. Even in our own times a small statue of Themistokles used to stand in the Temple of Artemis of Good Counsel; and ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... arguments of tyranny are as contemptible as its force is dreadful. Had not your confiscators, by their early crimes, obtained a power which secures indemnity to all the crimes of which they have since been guilty, or that they can commit, it is not the syllogism of the logician, but the lash of the executioner, that would have refuted a sophistry which becomes an accomplice of theft and murder. The sophistic tyrants of Paris are loud in their declamations against the departed regal tyrants, who in former ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... prison; the punishment was one recognised and authorized by the law. But think you the poor wretch had committed a heinous offence, and had been convicted thereof, and sentenced to the lash? Not at all! She was brought by her master to be whipped by the common executioner, without trial, judge, or jury, just at his beck or nod, for some real or supposed offence, or to gratify his own whim or malice. And he may bring her day after day, without cause assigned, and inflict any number of lashes he pleases, short of twenty-five, provided only he pays the fee. ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... a fine plan. It ought to work, for—cripple or not—poor Calmady's a gentleman," he said, slowly. "But doesn't it seem just a trifle rough, Miss St. Quentin, to ask him to be his own executioner?" ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... Ristori was wont to perform, presents an instance of this kind. "Marie Antoinette" is in five acts, with a prologue exhibiting the queen's life at Versailles, in 1786, and an epilogue showing her imprisonment in the Conciergerie, and her march to the guillotine in the custody of Samson the executioner. ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... grasses and their colour changed; she met the trees, and their boughs were stripped. And because Autumn's being is compounded of sternness, therefore it was that they withered and perished, fell and decayed. For Autumn is an executioner,[3] and her hour is darkness. She is a warrior, and her element is metal. Therefore she is called 'the doom-spirit of heaven and earth';[4] for her thoughts are ...
— More Translations from the Chinese • Various
... the theological theory. Two or three examples out of many may serve as types. First of these may be named the teaching of Jacob Heerbrand, professor at the University of Tubingen, who in 1577 illustrated the moral value of comets by comparing the Almighty sending a comet, to the judge laying the executioner's sword on the table between himself and the criminal in a court of justice; and, again, to the father or schoolmaster displaying the rod before naughty children. A little later we have another churchman ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... fall upon and destroy a member of the flock that is sick, or hurt, or blind, is difficult of explanation, but we may be quite sure that, whatever the reason is, the act is not the outcome of a judicial proceeding in which judge and jury and executioner all play their proper part. Wild crows will chase and maltreat a tame crow whenever they get a chance, just why, it would be hard to say. But the tame crow has evidently lost caste among them. I have what I consider ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... word! Boucher has gone mad! But you and I won't trouble ourselves about him, since he will soon pay for it. I think I see a change in the hunter's eye. It has grown uncommonly stern and fierce. He has the look of an executioner." ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... he said to George, "Give me some wine, but mind you only pour out enough to fill the glass, for if you put in one drop too much, so that it overflows, I shall certainly order my executioner to cut off ...
— Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen • Alexander Chodsko
... was unspeakable. He expected an outburst of wrath unappeasable, a summons for an executioner; instead, Mahommed's eyes became humid, and resting his elbow on the table, and his face on the thumb and forefinger, ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... club swinging high in the air, Pocahontas rushed forward and threw herself between him and his victim. With her own body she shielded the Captain from harm, for her heart was moved to pity for the stranger, and she could not bear that he should die. And now aroused, with flashing eyes she waved the executioner back. Then she pleaded with her father that the captive's life ...
— The Story of Pocahontas and Captain John Smith • E. Boyd Smith
... unfortunate captain. It happened that a pirate, with a prodigious pair of whiskers, a wooden leg, and stuck round with pistols, came blustering and swearing upon the quarter deck, inquiring "where was Captain Mackra." He naturally supposed that this barbarous-looking fellow would be his executioner; but, as he approached, he took the captain by the hand, swearing "that he was an honest fellow, and that he had formerly sailed with him, and would stand by him; and let him see the man that would touch him." This terminated the dispute, and Captain Taylor's disposition ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... the skin toward the chin. After the lapse of a certain time the nose is severed from the face. An interval follows, then an ear is lopped off, and so the devilish work goes on with long pauses. The skill of the executioner is displayed in the length of time during which ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... "it is only the tumbril cart and the executioner going to the Place Louis XV. Ah! we used to see it often enough last year; but to-day, four days after the anniversary of the twenty-first of January, one does not feel sorry to see ...
— An Episode Under the Terror • Honore de Balzac
... informed him of the frightful death before him if he refused, he replied, "My life is not of value to me, provided I gain Christ." He remained firm. He was ordered to be put to the torture. He was still unshaken. Then he was delivered over to the executioner. "I am treated," he said, "more mildly than ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... flipped the knife toward the fire and resumed his attitude of abstraction. I had never killed an unarmed Indian. I had never shot one in cold blood. The office of executioner did not appeal, but repulsive as it was it would not do for the boy to kill his savage brother-in-law. Lost Sister and the savage were man and wife, even if married according to the ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... clerk, a tall "Green Mountain boy" from Vermont, who had been robbed of a pistol, acted as executioner. The signal was given, and the poor Pierced-nose resisting, struggling, and screaming, in the most frightful manner, was launched into eternity. The Indians stood round gazing in silence and mute awe, but made no attempt to oppose the execution, ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... been built out from the second story of the prison to the executioner's platform. From this high scaffold rose a great cross with ropes and chains dangling from the arms. Below were piled high heaps of fagots, saturated ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... called here to rest and ask the way. When I opened the door I saw before me the very man, my brother, that I thought to see in the condemned cell at Casterbridge. He was in this chimney-corner; and, jammed close to him, so that he could not have got out if he had tried, was the executioner who'd come to take his life, singing a song about it, and not knowing that it was his victim who was close by, joining in to save appearances. My brother looked a glance of agony at me, and I knew he meant, 'Don't reveal what you see; my life depends on it.' I was so terror-struck that I could hardly ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... that dreadful informer whose shadow already lay heavy upon thousands of homes in the Netherlands, and after the informer the officer, and after the officer the priest, and after the priest the judge, and after the judge—the executioner and ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... Destiny is all-powerful and it is difficult to evade the consequence of our past actions. And this is the karmic evil arising out of sin committed in a former life. But, O Brahmana, I am always assiduous in eradicating the evil. The Deity takes away life, the executioner acts only as a secondary agent. And we, O good Brahmana, are only such agents in regard to our karma. Those animals that are slain by me and whose meat I sell, also acquire karma, because (with their meat), gods and guests and servants are ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... revealed he, with the help of Cristalline, who is really a good-natured creature in more senses than one, slays the three chief minions of the tyrant—a watchmaker who sets the clock, a locksmith who is to count the detached rings, and a kind of Executioner High-priest who is to do the flaying and burning,—cuts his way with Cristalline herself to the enchanted boat, regaining terra firma and (relatively speaking) terra not too much enchanted. But at his very landing at the mouth of the crocodile river he ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... Chamberlain came by, and having heard what had happened, he angrily dismissed the crowd, and sending for the executioner, ordered the cheating impostor to be whipped and branded, and then sent over ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... almost flayed from his rump to the nape of his neck, Hatchway, who had purposely absented himself hitherto, appeared in the yard, and interposing in his behalf, prevailed upon Trunnion to call off the executioner, and ordered the malefactor ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... of the love-making in Dame Martha's garden, and the earlier music returns, as it does in Gounod's score, and as it was bound to do. At the end she draws back in horror from Faust, after uttering a prayer above the music of the celestial choir, just as the executioner appears. Mefistofele pronounces her damned, but voices from on high ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... had taken the place of his dead father. His eyes softened, and their fire died out. But there was no rescinding of his desperate decision. He was thinking of what it would mean, the thought of this white-haired man in the hands of the executioner. He was thinking of the kindly heart beating within that stalwart bosom. He was thinking of the wonderful, thoughtful kindness for others which was always the motive of his life. And a deep-throated curse rose to his lips. But it found no utterance. ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... France. Nine hundred thousand Christians were slain within thirty years after the institution of the Jesuits. The Duke of Alva boasted that he had put to death 36,000 in the Netherlands by the hands of the common executioner. The Inquisition destroyed 150,000 within thirty years. If it be asserted that this was accomplished by the secular arm, I reply that sentence of death was pronounced upon so-called heretics by the church and that the secular power was simply a tool for carrying the barbarous ...
— The Last Reformation • F. G. [Frederick George] Smith
... the Oneidas were coming out of the willows, crowding up around my horse, and I heard everywhere my name pronounced, and everywhere outstretched hands sought mine, and painted faces were lifted to mine—even the blackened visage of the war-party's executioner relaxing ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... pieces of eight in the name of the king; and I was forced to lend him 500, lest he might have quarrelled with me, which would have given much pleasure to the Hollanders. In this country, when a Javan of any note is to be put to death, although there is a public executioner, yet the nearest of kin to the criminal is generally allowed to execute the office, which is considered as a great favour. The 14th March, Thomas Tudd, who had been left here as chief factor for Banda, departed this life, having been long sick; so ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... to us. The conjecture of Isaac was a description of the truth. My brother, knowing well that if apprehended his death were certain, had in the outset resolved, if attacked, rather to provoke his death, and insure it in the violence of a conflict, than be reserved for the axe of the Roman executioner. But in the short moment in which he fell headlong into the river, it flashed across his mind—'The darkness favors my escape—I can reach the shore;' so swimming a short distance below the surface, falling down with the stream and softly rising, concealed himself among the reeds upon the margin ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... [primarily British, from Gilbert & Sullivan's 'lord high executioner'] n. The person in an organization who knows the most about some aspect ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... he barked at the Swiss reformers, how he pursued Andreas Bodenstein for a difference on infant baptism; how he treated Muenzer and the Anabaptists; how he hounded on the nobles to suppress the peasant revolt and "stab, kill, and strangle them without mercy"; or how he was for handing over to the executioner all who denied a single article which rested on the Scripture or the authority of the universal teaching of the Church. My purpose is to show Luther's attitude towards the Devil, witches, apparitions, and all the rest of that ghostly tribe; and in doing so I have no wish to indulge in "the ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... cowed beyond description, he did as he was bid. No other boy cried, or even winced; a few sharp cuts was all which Mr. Rose gave them, and even they grew fewer each time, for he was tired, and displeased to be an executioner. ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... Bible to the last, promising to give it to the chaplain to be delivered to me. I will not dwell on the dreadful particulars of the execution. No Maltese could be found willing to perform the office of executioner. The chief of the police, therefore, ordered a swinging stage to be formed on either side of the vessel, on which the criminals were placed with ropes round their necks, secured to the fore-yard-arms, three on each side. These stages were secured in ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... ourselves?" I continued. "Have I fallen so low in your esteem that you can dissimulate before me? That unfortunate journey, you think you are condemned to it, do you? Am I a tyrant, an absolute master? Am I an executioner who drags you to punishment? How much do you fear my wrath when you come before me with such mimicry? What terror impels you to ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... Orange bring his rack and his odious Dutch tortures—the beast! the wretch! I spit upon him and defy him. Cheerfully will I lay this head upon the block; cheerfully will I accompany my lord to the scaffold: we will cry, 'God save King James!' with our dying breath, and smile in the face of the executioner." And she told her page a hundred times at least of the particulars of the last interview which ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sat within, unconscious of the hideous tragedy that was being enacted in his name. When he discovered the infamy by which he had been made the executioner of an innocent woman, he made his first demand that Edwin M. Stanton resign from his cabinet as Secretary of War. And for the first time in the history of America, a cabinet officer waived the question of honour and refused ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... twenty yards away, where he halted and sat motionless. If he really looked so much like Ali Higg, as seemed to be the case, no one at that distance could have doubted his identity. I hauled off two or three paces, so as not to betray the fact that I was to be Jael's executioner in a certain contingency, and the long sleeve of ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... resignation, and a meekness, so distinguished and beyond his years as to attract the admiration and the liveliest sympathy of the public universally. If strangers could feel in that way, if the mere hardened executioner could be melted at the final scene,—it may be judged to what a fierce and terrific height would ascend the affliction of a doating mother, constitutionally too fervid in her affections. I have heard an official person ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... "'Fetch the Executioner!' he cried, in terrible tones. 'I will see this impostor executed before my eyes!' And twenty slaves flew to ...
— The Mysterious Shin Shira • George Edward Farrow
... King's Advocate, to a practice of Scottish law which had been almost in abeyance since 1638—except, of course, in the case of witches. Turner vainly tried to save from the Boot {208} the Laird of Corsack, who had protected his life from the fanatics. "The executioner favoured Mr Mackail," says the Rev. Mr Kirkton, himself a sufferer later. This Mr Mackail, when a lad of twenty-one (1662), had already denounced the rulers, in a sermon, as on the moral level of ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... rashly exposed himself unprotected to the assaults of the Indians, and was taken prisoner after a most gallant attempt at escape. He was led about in triumph for some time from village to village, and at length sentenced to die. His head was laid upon a stone, and the executioner stood over him with a club, awaiting the signal to slay, when Pocahontas, daughter of the Indian chief, implored her father's mercy for the white man. He was inexorable, and ordered the execution to proceed; but the generous girl laid her head ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... of your men, disguised as a penitent friar, and I will give it to him. His dress will procure him the means of approaching the scaffold itself, and he will deliver the official order to the officer, who, in his turn, will hand it to the executioner; in the meantime, it will be as well to acquaint Peppino with what we have determined on, if it be only to prevent his dying of fear or losing his senses, because in either case a very useless ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... better than republics; for many, they will ever so remain. And better, on all hands, that peace should rule with a scepter, than than the tribunes of the people should brandish their broadswords. Better be the subject of a king, upright and just; than a freeman in Franko, with the executioner's ax ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... verse; and in cases in which nothing of the kind occurs, the erotic feelings of childhood may still exercise influence later in life. As examples from world-literature, I may mention: Heine, who was still a boy when he was so greatly attracted by his Sefchen, the executioner's niece, whose personality made a definite impression on the poet's maturer work;[107] Goethe, whose friendship with the sister of the little Derones, likewise had certain artistic results; Dante, who first met his Beatrice at the age of nine years, and ever thenceforward ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... the Hypochondriack, a periodical Paper, peculiarly adapted to the people of England, and which comes out monthly in the London Magazine, etc.' In his Corsican tour we had seen him interviewing the executioner in the island, and some days before his final parting with Johnson he had witnessed the execution of fifteen men before Newgate and been clouded in his mind by doubts as to whether human life was or was not mere machinery and a chain of planned ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... is strewn with records of the ruin of those who failed to placate his wrath. Of the six queens he married, two he divorced, and two he beheaded. Four English cardinals[16] lived in his reign; one perished by the executioner's axe, one escaped it by absence, and a third (p. 002) by a timely but natural death. Of a similar number of dukes[17] half were condemned by attainder; and the same method of speedy despatch accounted for six or seven earls and viscounts and for scores of lesser degree. He began ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... FILLED WITH HOT EMBERS!! All this time the prisoner instead of bewailing his fate, seemed to surpass his tormentors in expressions of joy. At length when exhausted with loss of blood and unable to stand, his executioner closed the tragic scene by beating out his brains with ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... when untimely sent to bed, he stole Susan's scissors, and cut a range of stables in the sheets. The short, sharp infliction of pain answered best, but his father, though he could give a shake when angry, could not strike when cool, and Albinia was forced to turn executioner, though with such tears and trembling that her culprit looked up reassuringly, saying, 'Never mind, mamma, I shan't!' He did, however, mind her tears, they bore in upon him the sense of guilt; and after each ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the ghastly office of executioner is assigned, said all in his power to persuade him to sign the offered document, but in vain; he obtained nothing ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... culprit he was to execute. William Marwood—unlike his celebrated victim, he has his place in the Dictionary of National Biography—is perhaps the most remarkable of these persons who have held at different times the office of public executioner. As the inventor of the "long drop," he has done a lasting service to humanity by enabling the death-sentence passed by the judge to be carried out with the minimum of possible suffering. Marwood took a lofty view of the office he held, and refused his assent to the somewhat hypocritical loathing, ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... his ingenuity in his efforts to evade his danger, but Stone drew the noose about him tighter and tighter. He played the unlucky man with all the malice of an executioner. He baited him and toyed with him. McAlpin, white, stood his ground. His fighting blood was all there and he broke at length into a torrent of abuse of the man that he realized was ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... carried before the sultan, who waited for him, attended by the grand vizier; and as soon as he saw him he ordered the executioner, who waited there for the purpose, to strike off his head without hearing him, or giving him leave to clear himself. As soon as the executioner had taken off the chain that was fastened about Aladdin's neck and body, he made the ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... worn out would drop by the wayside. One of our guard would then dismount, and try by kicks and blows to make him resume his place in the line. In all cases those measures proved unavailing, and a shot in the rear told us that one of our number had ceased to exist. The executioner would then fall into his place, laughing and chatting ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... scrupulous exactitude of the dramatic properties with which is invested each incident in the tale. The hero, a characteristic Persian adventurer, one part good fellow, and three parts knave, always the plaything of fortune—whether barber, water-carrier, pipe-seller, dervish, doctor's servant, sub-executioner, scribe and mollah, outcast, vender of pipe-sticks, Turkish merchant, or secretary to an ambassador—equally accepting her buffets and profiting by her caresses, never reluctant to lie or cheat or thieve, ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... he might have drawn a picture that would have made humanity shudder. For, throughout the whole history, if a man had wished to know what was then the orthodox faith, the best method of ascertaining it, would have been, undoubtedly, to ask, " What is the catechism of this public executioner." ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... taking only the coolest and steadiest and the best bombers. Most of them were men who had been at Dover with me. I felt like an executioner when I notified ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... tell you the whole thing, but this will be enough. The Council have decreed the death of a certain person, and I am appointed his executioner." ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... executioner now inquired of the confessors whether the culprits died in the true faith? If answered in the affirmative, a rope was passed round their necks and twisted to the stake, so that they were strangled before the fire was kindled. All the other culprits had died in this manner; and the head executioner ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... who had been taken prisoner, was condemned to be roasted to death before a slow fire, and was accordingly fastened by a chain to a stake, around which a huge fire was kindled; he suffered in slow torture a long time until despatched by the executioner with a spear, a piece of humanity that greatly angered ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... that, instead of turning out the Fiend I'd been led to expect, he was one of the most considerate men I've ever met. He wouldn't even let me unlock my own boxes, but took the keys and opened them for me himself. (Didn't an executioner braid the hair of some queen whose head he was going to chop off? I must look the incident up, when I have time.) Anyway, I thought of it when the Custom House man was being so polite; but the analogy didn't go any farther, ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... go down to the scene of the outrage. A friendly Bay of Islands chief offered to do the rest. He went with the schooner. On its arrival the unsuspecting "Lizard" came off to trade. At the end of a friendly visit he was stepping into his canoe when his unofficially appointed executioner stepped quietly forward, levelled his double-barrelled ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... reflection, that his work was superlatively excellent, but unluckily printed in a tasteless age; a comfortable and solacing self-consciousness, which hath, I verily believe, prevented many a great genius from becoming his own executioner. ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... leagues from Roche-Mauprat, on your way to Fromental, you must have noticed an old tower standing by itself in the middle of the woods. It is famous for the tragic death of a prisoner about a century ago. The executioner, on his rounds, thought good to hang him without any further formality, merely to gratify an old ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... of his fell enemy victorious. He was condemned to death. No rescue came, and he was led, yet habited in his armour, to the block. With a courageous look he lay down his head; but scarcely had the axe of the cruel executioner fallen upon it, than a fearful tempest burst forth. The headsman, the recreant knight, and all who had assisted willingly at the execution, were struck to the ground, becoming black masses of cinder, ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... the author entering cheerfully into the most abstruse points of the controversy concerning the Nature of Christ, without apparently one wavering thought as to the Deity of the Son of Mary. There, in the 'Consolation,' a book written in prison and in disgrace, with death at the executioner's hands impending over him—a book in which above all others we should have expected a man possessing the Christian faith to dwell upon the promises of Christianity—the name of Christ is never once mentioned, the tone, though religious and reverential, is that of ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... the torture. It had an irresistible fascination for her. She gave the executioner the knife and begged him to explore and ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... which human nature shrinks, appear to have been sought for by Selwyn with an eagerness resembling enjoyment. This strange propensity was frequently laughed at by his friends. Alluding to the practice of criminals dropping a handkerchief as a signal for the executioner, says Walpole, "George never thinks, but a la tete tranchee. He came to town the other day to have a tooth drawn, and told the man that he would drop ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... face of a new-born child, red and full of wrinkles, distorted from crying—he saw the face of a murderer, he saw him plunging a knife into the body of another person—he saw, in the same second, this criminal in bondage, kneeling and his head being chopped off by the executioner with one blow of his sword—he saw the bodies of men and women, naked in positions and cramps of frenzied love—he saw corpses stretched out, motionless, cold, void— he saw the heads of animals, of boars, of crocodiles, of elephants, of bulls, of birds—he saw gods, saw Krishna, saw Agni—he ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... by justice. He has also the power to kill me, but he would have to provide the executioner, as he could not ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... like myself would ride off their farms, heft him up on the nearest tree, and empty their revolvers into him. And it wouldn't be a murder: it would be a rough and ready execution. Well, I did the job by myself, without sharing the responsibility with my pals; and I consider myself an executioner, ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... or even when in his department there has been any violation of law, although beyond his power of prevention, so sure is he of the punishment of death, that he anticipates it by ripping up his own body rather than be delivered over to the executioner and entailing disgrace and ruin on all his family. There cannot under such a system be anything like judicious legislation founded on enquiry and adapted to the ever-varying circumstances of life. As Government functionaries they lie and ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... ranks was the sledge, or hurdle, on which the prisoners were to be drawn to the place of execution, about a mile distant from Carlisle. It was painted black, and drawn by a white horse. At one end of the vehicle sat the Executioner, a horrid-looking fellow, as beseemed his trade, with the broad axe in his hand; at the other end, next the horse, was an empty seat for two persons. Through the deep and dark Gothic archway that opened on the drawbridge, were seen on horseback the High Sheriff ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... He shook hands with the chaplain first, then the executioner, thanking the one, forgiving the other. The executioner pushed him back gently, says one account. At the moment when the assistant put the hideous rope round his neck, he made a sign to the chaplain to take the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... and calculated like every bloody deed of this resolute and able sovereign. Reprisals had already been made upon the Greeks at Constantinople for the acts of Hypsilanti, and a number of innocent persons had been put to death by the executioner, but no general attack upon the Christians had been suggested, nor had the work of punishment passed out of the hands of the government itself. Now, however, the fury of the Mohammedan populace was let loose upon the infidel. ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... trembled under him; the perspiration stood upon his brow. He heard the voice as the voice of a judge or an executioner. He looked in the stern eyes of the Girondins, and read only anger, doom, vengeance. Then he caught in the silence the sound of his wife weeping, for at Pierre's appearance she had broken into wild ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... like your cold justice; out of the eye of your judges there always glanceth the executioner and his ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... at intervals of perhaps a minute each, filed from the room, and soon there was no one left save Chester, his executioner, and the chief. ...
— The boy Allies at Liege • Clair W. Hayes
... " 'Shalt thou then joy and solace have from me, I tears from thee, and punishment and woe? Now these mine hands shall make an end of thee. This, if thou know'st it not, for poison know. Much grieve I that thou should'st too honoured be By the executioner who deals the blow; Should'st die a death too easy: since I wot, For thee too shameful hand ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... to this effect "Erodiana Regina," "Omnia praetereunt," etc. A dirty, one-eyed fellow keeps the place. In my presence he swept the frescos over with a scratchy broom, flaying their upper surface in profound unconsciousness of mischief. The armor of the executioner has had its steel colors almost rubbed off by this infernal process. Damp and cobwebs are ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... soldier—who had sworn to throw a fagot on her scaffold as his tribute of abhorrence, that did so, that fulfilled his vow— suddenly to turn away a penitent for life, saying everywhere that he had seen a dove rising upon wings to heaven from the ashes where she had stood? What else drove the executioner to kneel at every shrine for pardon to his share in the tragedy? And, if all this were insufficient, then I cite the closing act of her life as valid on her behalf, were all other testimonies against her. The executioner had been directed to apply his torch from below. He did ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... was once a private opinion, and when it shall be a private opinion again it will solve the problem of the age. The fact narrated must correspond to something in me to be credible or intelligible. We, as we read, must become Greeks, Romans, Turks, priest and king, martyr and executioner; must fasten these images to some reality in our secret experience, or we shall learn nothing rightly. What befell Asdrubal or Caesar Borgia is as much an illustration of the mind's powers and depravations as what has befallen us. Each new law and political movement has meaning for you. Stand ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... obliges him to touch many things which he had better leave alone. Is it not deplorable that bailiffs must seize a debtor's property in the Pope's name?—that judges must condemn a murderer to death in the name of the Head of the Church?—that the executioner must cut off heads in the name of the Vicar of Christ? There is to me something truly scandalous in the association of those two words, Pontifical lottery! And what can the hundred and thirty-nine millions of Catholics ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
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