"Executioner" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with the crowd, and I stood in the rear of the gibbet. After a weary interval, the scharfrichter—executioner—mounted, by means of a ladder, to the cross beam of the gallows. By the action of a wheel the culprit slowly rose into the air, but still unhurt. Three broad leathern straps confined his arms; and perfectly motionless, held in a perpendicular ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... of Yvetot, when and wherever he should chance to meet with him. The reader must not be surprised at such a vow: in those days, sovereigns frequently indulged in a plurality of offices, and could upon occasion perform the duty of the executioner as well as that of the judge. Vauthier happened to have a friend at court, who sent him timely warning of this state of affairs; and not thinking it by any means prudent to expose himself to the lethal fury of a king who had unscrupulously killed his ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various
... my heroine undergoes the fate of his in Irene. I have heard he came up 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 ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... cross-pollination as they crawl over the spadix. But here is no trap to catch the tiny benefactors such as is set by wicked Jack-in-the-pulpit, or the skunk-cabbage, or another cousin, a still more terrible executioner, the cuckoo-pint (Arum maculatum) ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... legs of the beast clear of the ground. A chant issues from the betel-stained mouths, and a human fiend forces through the circle, brandishing a straight-bladed sword, heavy and keen-edged, that has just been blessed before the altar of Kali. He is the official executioner. ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... Louise, and she primped herself like another Mary Queen of Scots receiving a call from the executioner. She was calmed by the hope that she would learn her fate, at least, and she cared little what it was, so long as it ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... said Chouardin. "I only said that I would sooner that a brave enemy should die in battle than be handled by an executioner. Talk as you will, you cannot disgrace such a man ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... distinguishes the satirist from the libeller: for the former privately corrects the fault for the benefit of the person, like a parent; the latter publickly exposes the person himself, as an example to others, like an executioner. ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... it. He would then hand it to the Private Secretary, who would instantly start post-haste for Cork. As the condemned man was being actually conducted to the scaffold, the Private Secretary would appear, brandishing the liberating document. All then would be joy, except for the executioner, who would grind his teeth at being baulked of his prey ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... 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 daughter-in-law, the heroic Lady Rachel Russell, she endeavored to sustain. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... them, and ladies in Paris wore their bonnets a la Trenck. But the French finally guillotined the author, when within a year of threescore and ten, on the 26th of July, 1794. He had gone to Paris in 1792, and joined there in the strife of parties. At the guillotine he struggled with the executioner. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... have sent me, but a confirmation of Richard's innocence of the death of Clarence. As the Duke of Buckingham was appointed to superintend the execution, it is incredible that he should have been drowned in a butt of malmsey, and that Richard should have been the executioner. When a seneschal of England, or as we call it, a lord high steward, is appointed for a trial, at least for execution, with all his officers, it looks very much as if, even in that age, proceedings were carried ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... "God has suffered you to be tried very severely; but I fear lest there should be a worse trial to come, more painful sufferings than any you have yet undergone. Alas, perhaps even my dear child's head may fall by the hands of the executioner!" ...
— The Basket of Flowers • Christoph von Schmid
... been obliged to press her handkerchief to her mouth to hide the crooked smile that the thought: 'he is the executioner,' had brought to ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... Cromwell, giving an account of his death, in his consolatory letter to the father, writes thus,—"A little after, he said, one thing lay upon his spirit. I asked him what that was. He told me it was that God had not suffered him to be any more the executioner of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... swelling of her saile, The nearest May at *Sebastians safely set her downe Harbour of Where, with her goodnes she may blesse the towne. Spaine. If heauen in iustice would haue plagu'd by thee Some Pirate, and grimme Neptune thou should'st be His Executioner, or what is his worse, The gripple Merchant, borne to be the curse Of this braue Iland; let them for her sake, Who to thy safeguard doth her selfe betake, 40 Escape vndrown'd, vnwrackt, nay rather let Them be at ease in some safe harbour set, Where with much ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... seemed that for many desperate deeds and crime abominable he was chained and shackled in a dock, and the judge, donning the black cap, sentenced him to be shorn of those adornments, his whiskers. In his dream it seemed that there and then the executioner advanced to his fell work—a bony hand grasped his right whisker, the deadly razor flashed, and Mr. Brimberly awoke gurgling—awoke to catch a glimpse of a hand so hastily withdrawn that it seemed to ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... streets, though the 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 ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 560, August 4, 1832 • Various
... The prudence of the author and printer saved them from this fate; but the book had hardly reached France before its sale was forbidden under penalty of fines and imprisonment, and it was condemned by an act of Parliament to be burnt by the public executioner in the streets of Paris, all of which particulars will be narrated in the BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF BARON D'HOLBACH, which I am now ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... respectable society?" Well, perhaps, if in the beginning of a book these were written and printed, many, when they read it, would lay the book down and say, "It seems to me a very miserable title, I don't like things of this sort." And yet my father was not a skin-dresser nor an executioner; on the contrary, his employment placed him at the head of the grandest people of the town, and it was his place by right. He had to precede the bishop, and even the princes of the blood; he always went first,—he was a hearse driver! There, now, the truth is out. And I will own, that when people ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... not like your cold justice; out of the eye of your judges there always glanceth the executioner and his cold steel. ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... serving-men obeyed the orders of a stout, squat, vigorous man, who cast upon Christophe, as he entered, the glance of a cannibal upon his victim; he looked him over and estimated him,—measuring, like a connoisseur, the strength of his nerves, their power and their endurance. The man was the executioner of Blois. Coming and going, his assistants brought in a mattress, several mallets and wooden wedges, also planks and other articles, the use of which was not plain, nor their look comforting to the poor boy concerned in these preparations, whose blood now ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... was, even 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
... black. A portion of it, which has since been cleaned and dried, is of a beautiful dark-brown color. That of the beard was a reddish-brown. On the back part of the head it was not more than an inch in length, and had probably been cut so short for the convenience of the executioner, or perhaps by the piety of friends after death in order to furnish memorials of the unhappy king. On holding up the head to determine the place of separation from the body, the muscles of the neck had evidently contracted themselves ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... turn by a brother who became the Emperor Vouti. This ruler was fond of the chase and a great eater, but, on the whole, he did no harm. The next two emperors were cruel and bloodthirsty princes, and during their reigns the executioner was constantly employed. Two more princes, who were, however, not members of the Song family, but only adopted by the last ruler of that house, occupied the throne, but this weakness and unpopularity—for the Chinese, ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... depositions, that of William Cox, is so remarkable that I am induced to transcribe it. If it be true, "Matfelonensis" is certainly justified in saying, "We need hardly question that Richard Brandon was the executioner." ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 40, Saturday, August 3, 1850 - A Medium Of Inter-Communication For Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, • Various
... 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, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... it suit the purpose of a great political party. The patriots, to enlist in their favour the religious prejudices of the people, represented the king as the patron of popery, because he sent the priests into banishment, instead of delivering them to the knife of the executioner. Hence, when they became lords of the ascendant, they were bound to make proof of their orthodoxy; and almost every execution mentioned above took place by their order in 1642, or 1643. After that time they began to listen ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... year after for witchcraft, who, on being sentenced, openly denied all her former confessions, and died without any sign of repentance, offering repeated interruption to the minister in his prayer, and refusing to pardon the executioner. ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... remonstrances, equally addressed to the patron, whose name was Baptiste, and to the guardian of the Genevese laws, a rumor was rife among these truculent travellers, that Balthazar, the headsman, or executioner, of the powerful and aristocratical canton of Berne, was about to be smuggled into their company by the cupidity of the former, contrary, not only to what was due to the feelings and rights of men of more creditable callings, but, as it was vehemently ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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 ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... de minas [416]—one reporter, one court scrivener, one alguacil-mayor, with his assistants, one governor of the prison of the court, one chancellor, one registrar, two bailiffs, one chaplain and sacristan, one executioner, attorneys, and receivers. The Audiencia tries all causes, civil and criminal, taken to it from all the provinces of its district. [417] These include the Filipinas Islands and the mainland of China, already discovered or to be discovered. ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... 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, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... enough for you to talk; the governor sent two hundred men after us in a warship, while we had only two boats. He also sent along an executioner to hang us to the trees on the coast ...
— The Corsair King • Mor Jokai
... either the apparatus to execute anyone or an executioner. We do not believe that a stupidly unreasoning act should incite us to equally unreasoning reprisal, for we would then be as guilty of irrationality ...
— Life Sentence • James McConnell
... Almighty God permits that one shall be the executioner of the other for his evil deeds, that both may give place to his most holy gospel which, by the hands of the Spaniards, and by order of the most happy, catholic, and unconquered Emperor and King of Spain, Charles V of glorious memory, father of your Majesty, was sent to these blind and ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
... preserved in the Mercure Francois: "Burghers, said he, I have been always your faithful countryman: believe not that I die for treason; but for maintaining the Rights and Liberties of my Country." After this Speech the executioner struck off his head at one blow. It is affirmed that the Prince of Orange, to feast himself with the cruel pleasure of seeing his enemy perish, beheld the execution with a glass. The people looked on it with other eyes: for many came to gather the sand wet with his blood, to keep it carefully ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... property in him as a conservator of the peace among themselves, and a protector against trespassers from abroad, whether black or white; to hold property in him as impartial judge and an honest jury to try them for offenses, and a merciful executioner to punish them for violations of the usages ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... 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 ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... husband's anger, and as, according to one of the savage country superstitions, the cries of a cat, in the agonies of being boiled or roasted alive, compelled (as it were) the powers of darkness to fulfil the wishes of the executioner, resort had been had to the charm. The poor woman evidently believed in its efficacy; her only feeling was indignation that her cat had been chosen out from all others for a sacrifice. Margaret listened in horror; and endeavoured in vain to enlighten the woman's mind; but she was ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... it can move in regular array, invincibly, to conquer wrong; surely too vast an engine to be employed on trifles. Who wants a wheel to break a butterfly upon; or, to crush a worm who calls for a pavior's rammer? Monsieur Montigny, listen. Mercy is Heaven's first attribute, and the executioner is the State's meanest, as well as last, servant; shall I, then, stoop to this, who may aspire to that? Shall I wield a whip of legal scorpions before your son, should he seek to re-enter Stillyside? Would you have me, as once Heaven's cherubim ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... read that "the mission of Napoleon" was to be the "testamentary executor of the revolution;" and the Prince should have added the legatee; or, more justly still, as well as the EXECUTOR, he should be called the EXECUTIONER, and then his title would be complete. In Vendemiaire, the military Tartuffe, he threw aside the Revolution's natural heirs, and made her, as it were, ALTER HER WILL; on the 18th of Brumaire he strangled her, and on the 19th ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the tank we were trailing disappeared. There was no warning; one second it was pursuing its way, an implacable executioner, the next it had plunged into the weed and was lost to sight. The ends of the grass came together spitefully behind it, weaving themselves together, knitting, as we watched, an opaque blanket. It closed over and around ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... has decreed my death," he said, meeting the man's steel-cold eye for the first time. "Now I know how the men whose doom preceded mine have felt in a presence that leaves no hope to mortal man. But you shall not be my executioner. I will meet my fate at less noxious hands than yours." And, leaning forward, he whispered a few seemingly significant words into the messenger's ear. The man, grievously disappointed, hung his head, and with a sidelong look, the venom ...
— The Bronze Hand - 1897 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... 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 ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Catholicism—yea, better than we are with the laws that govern this country, as we for fifty-six years have been directly influenced by this "Canon Law," and for the past thirty years, or since we became a Roman Catholic priest, have been a servant and an executioner of this law; therefore, I know whereof I speak, and no man dare deny ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... his death with perfect composure, declined addressing the multitude assembled, and told the sheriff in a firm voice that he was ready. Another account says that he "betrayed no emotion, and even hurried the executioner in the performance of his duty." "Not a limb nor a muscle was observed to move. His body, after his death, was given over to the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... interrupted for a moment, while the last awful ceremony was in progress, were resumed. As he read them, I saw the clergyman fix his eye on the executioner with a peculiar expression. He drew his handkerchief from his pocket, and passed it slightly over his upper lip. This was the fatal signal. A lumbering noise, occasioned by the falling of part of the apparatus, announced that it had ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 271, Saturday, September 1, 1827. • Various
... mayst not be free from danger; and my name, at least, will be coupled with the name of thy foes. If it fail,—my brother, my bold brother, is swept away! He will fall a victim to revenge or justice, call it as you will. Your kinsman may be his judge—his executioner; and I—even if I should yet live to mourn over the boast and glory of my humble line—could I permit myself to love, to see, one in whose veins flowed the blood of his destroyer? Oh! I am wretched—wretched! these thoughts make me ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... friends of the old Russian ways in Moscow set to work to undo all his reforms. A sudden rebellion among his life-guards, the Streltsi regiment, forced Peter to hasten home by the fast mail. He appointed himself executioner-in-chief and the Streltsi were hanged and quartered and killed to the last man. Sister Sophia, who had been the head of the rebellion, was locked up in a cloister and the rule of Peter be-gan in earnest. This scene was repeated in the year 1716 when Peter had gone on his second western ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... deep toned brazen gong sounded somewhere below; the trumpeters blew an ear-piercing note; and, at a gesture from the high priest, four of the brawny executioner-priests leaped forward, seized one of the Atlantean victims, hurled him to the stone platform and, in an unbelievably short interval, strapped the shrieking wretch by wrists, elbows, knees and ankles to a long, brass rod. Slung like a dead deer from a rail, they lifted the helpless Atlantean, and, ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... wrists and ankles tied to ropes which led over windlasses at either end. There was no color in him; his features were contorted and set, and sweat-drops stood upon his forehead. A priest bent over him on each side; the executioner stood by; guards were on duty; smoking torches stood in sockets along the walls; in a corner crouched a poor young creature, her face drawn with anguish, a half-wild and hunted look in her eyes, and in her lap lay a little child asleep. Just as we stepped across the threshold the executioner ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... should snuff out his life. Defense was out of the question; he was as helpless as a baby. An impulse in his fingers to clutch his revolver he restrained at once—it could only hasten his death. He wondered, as the seconds passed, why his executioner hesitated to shoot, but he could not rid himself of the mental horror of being shot in the base of the brain. Anywhere else he would have almost welcomed a bullet; anywhere else it might have given him one chance for life through ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... the Revolution a certain Dr. 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
... shutting up the Mamertines within their city, and after the siege had lasted some years, they found themselves reduced to extremity and unable to hold the city longer against Hiero on their own resources. It is evident that a surrender on stipulated conditions was impossible, and that the axe of the executioner, which had fallen upon the Campanians of Rhegium at Rome, as certainly awaited those of Messana at Syracuse. Their only means of safety lay in delivering up the city either to the Carthaginians or to the Romans, both of whom could not but be so strongly set upon acquiring ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... had murdered the child of the unfortunate wretch who had disappeared at his coming, but on the question of his release he was obdurate. If Cuthbert would agree to give up Cicely he should be released; otherwise he should meet with a secret death at the hands of Mauger, the executioner. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... and scarcely observant of any evil that may befall 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. Wedgewood, whom I respect much, as his virtues deserve, and I know them well. I send a small quantity only as I possess ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... quarters, composed of ex-nobles, tradesmen, bankers, working-men, hit the old publican's taste well enough, for he could accommodate himself to persons of all qualities. He noticed that these, cut off like himself from every opportunity of pleasure and foredoomed to perish at the hand of the executioner, were of a very merry humour and showed a marked taste for wit and raillery. His bent was to think lightly of mankind, so he attributed the high spirits of his companions to the frivolity of their minds, which prevented them from looking ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... most enlightened Athenians, though they created him many enemies. He was falsely accused, arraigned, and condemned to drink hemlock, the juice of a poisonous plant. When the hour to take the poison had come, the executioner handed him the cup, with tears in his eyes. Socrates received it with composure, drank it with unaltered countenance, and, in ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... spirits. Jerry, it was true, was dead, but so was the god, leaving us happily still alive and practically untouched. Never more would the Kalubis of Pongo-land shiver out their lives at the feet of this dreadful divinity who soon or late must become their executioner, for I believe, with the exception of two who committed suicide through fear, that no Kalubi was ever known to have died except by the hand—or teeth—of ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... and saw the executioner with the whip in his hand. At this sight she forgot her desire to captivate the multitude, and even her hatred, and sinking on her knees she said, "Have pity!" and seized his hand; but he raised the other, and let the whip fall lightly on her shoulders. She jumped ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... 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
... family, as though they had been strangers. But, no; on reflection, the procureur was not a merciless man; and it was not the magistrate, slave to his duties, but the friend, the loyal friend, who roughly but firmly cut into the very core of the corruption; it was not the executioner, but the surgeon, who wished to withdraw the honor of Danglars from ignominious association with the disgraced young man they had presented to the world as their son-in-law. And since Villefort, the friend of Danglars, ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... more 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
... have confessed, and are still stubborn," said the judge, "lead them to death instantly." So they were taken out, and the host had to go with them into the circle. When they were taken hold of by the executioner's men, and were just going to be led up to the scaffold where the headsman was standing with naked sword, a coach drawn by four blood-red chestnut horses came up suddenly, driving so fast that fire flashed from the stones, and someone made signs from the window with a white ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... 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 came off at all, ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... more. Indeed, it hastened to assure the executioner that it was only too anxious to be comfortably pinned ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... into the hall (L.'s favourite state-room), where awaited him the whole number of his school-fellows, whose joint lessons and sports he was thenceforth to share no more; the awful presence of the steward, to be seen for the last time; of the executioner beadle, clad in his state robe for the occasion; and of two faces more, of direr import, because never but in these extremities visible. These were governors; two of whom, by choice, or charter, were always accustomed to officiate at these Ultima Supplicia; not ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... handing a guinea to the man who presented it. On the scaffold not a muscle moved as he surveyed the black crowd of onlookers with a calm and amused eye. To the chaplain he confessed his belief in God; and he exchanged a few pleasant words with the executioner as he placed a ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... with a flush of rage, tears in his eyes, and a voice trembling between terror and indignation, asked very humbly if N—— would be pleased to tell him how many stripes he meant to inflict? 'Why,' returned the executioner, 'you little rascal, what is that to you?' 'Because, if you please,' said Byron, holding out his arm, 'I would take half.' There is a mixture of simplicity and magnanimity in this little trait which ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... the stake, to which he was only tied, but not nailed as usual, as he assured them he should stand immoveable, the flames, on their kindling the fagots, encircled his body, like an arch, without touching him; and the executioner, on seeing this, was ordered to pierce him with a sword, when so great a quantity of blood flowed out as extinguished the fire. But his body, at the instigation of the enemies of the gospel, especially Jews, ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... Vagn and Olaf, with their thirty comrades, were led out in front of the tents for execution. They were made to sit in a row on the trunk of a fallen tree. Their feet were bound with ropes, but their hands were left free. The man who was to act as executioner was one Thorkel Leira, a stalwart warrior, who had done great deeds in the battle. Now, this same Thorkel was an old enemy of Vagn Akison, and at the arvel of King Sweyn, Vagn had taken a solemn oath ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... that gentleman," said she, pointing to Lepretre. The four accused, who were included in a common alibi, fell by this one admission under the executioner's axe. They rose and bowed ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... the place of execution, with the back towards a high post of wood, the culprit's neck is encircled by an iron collar attached to the post, and capable of compression by a powerful screw passing through the post, which, on the signal being made, the executioner turns, and the victim is choked in a second. The practice is much less disgusting than hanging, as no effects are visible to an on-looker beyond the convulsive movement of a frame loaded with heavy irons to prevent a severe and ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... 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 no moral ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... and the very tapers seemed to tremble into quiet. The executioner was ready on the scaffold, and Bernardo del Nero was seen ascending it with a slow firm step. Romola made no visible movement, uttered not even a suppressed sound: she stood more firmly, caring for his firmness. She saw him pause, saw the white head ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... 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 so. The fiery ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... rites laid down for them.[299] If a Sudra unites with a woman belonging to the foremost of the four orders, the son that is begotten is called a Chandala. Endued with a fierce disposition, he must live in the outskirts of cities and towns and the duty assigned to him is that of the public executioner. Such sons are always regarded as wretches of their race. These, O foremost of intelligent persons, are the offspring of intermixed orders. The son begotten by a Vaisya upon a Kshatriya woman becomes a Vandi or Magadha. The duties assigned to him are eloquent recitations ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... O Mervyn! Ye have not merited that I should leave you a legacy of persecution and death. Your safety must be purchased at what price my malignant destiny will set upon it. The cord of the executioner, the note of everlasting infamy, is better than to leave you beset by the consequences of my guilt. It must ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... moulded by the great Jesuit order, and by reforming bishops like Ghiberti of Verona, and Carlo Borromeo of Milan. Devout and self-denying as a saint, fierce and inflexible against abuses as a puritan, resolute and uncompromising as a Jacobin idealist or an Asiatic despot, ruthless and inexorable as an executioner, his soul was bent on re-establishing, not only by preaching and martyrdom, but by the sword and by the stake, the unity of Christendom and of its belief. Eastwards and westwards, he beheld two formidable foes ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... by him ready." Why, here is our chance; here is the opportunity for that flourish which modesty, throughout our life, has forbidden to us! John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, when the time came for him to lay his head upon the block, bade the executioner smite it off with three strokes as a courtesy to the Holy Trinity. King Charles the Second, as he lay upon his death-bed, apologised to those who stood around him for "being an unconscionable time adying." The story is familiar of Napoleon's aide-de-camp, ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... 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 his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... farmers are carried on the registers as proprietors, who, in fact, are no longer such. Thus, again, many a large farmer—unskilled in his trade, or visited by misfortune, or who came into possession under unfavorable circumstances—also falls a prey to the executioner's axe of the capitalist. The capitalist becomes lord of the land; with the view of making double gains he goes into the business of "butchering estates:" he parcels out the domain because he can thereby get a larger price than if he sold it in lump: then also he has better prospects of plying his ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... faintness, and a dozen made coarse jokes; and one or more speculated as to the issue of his immortal part, or the degree of his pain, or the probability of his cognizance. In seven minutes he was beyond the reach of execution or executioner, and a hurdle being wheeled from the stable, they cut down his body, while a few scrambled for the rope, and it was wheeled on a run into the convict's corridor for his old father to claim. The neck was not broken, nor the flesh discolored. Some said that he died "game;" and all went away, leaving ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... Of all Offices, one would not beg this; viz. Uncall'd for, to be an Executioner of the Vindictive Wrath of God; the extent and duration of which is to us uncertain. If this ever was a Commission; How do we know but that it is long since out of Date? Many have found it to their Cost, that a Prophetical Denunciation of Judgment against a Person ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... abstract, nothing can be done. It is eternally evil. But I may be saved from it by learning to loathe it, to hate it, to shrink from it with an eternal avoidance. The only vengeance worth having on sin is to make the sinner himself its executioner. Sin and punishment are in no antagonism to each other in man, any more than pardon and punishment are in God; they can perfectly co-exist. The one naturally follows the other, punishment being born ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... said the 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 ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... executioner seized her by the hand; then she hastily threw the eleven shirts over the swans, and immediately eleven handsome Princes stood there. But the youngest had a swan's wing instead of an arm, for a sleeve was wanting to his shirt—she had not quite ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... week's rent, plunging Mrs. Brigg into the further circle of an inferno, and yet sat within doors day after day. Mrs. Brigg approached apoplexy by way of persuasion, was by turns pathetic and paralytic with passion. She coaxed with the ardour of an executioner inveigling the victim's neck to the noose and in haste to be off to breakfast. She threatened like Jove ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... till the last day, but I know surely, and my faith is such, that my soul shall sup with my Saviour this night." Then he prayed for his accusers, that they might be forgiven, if, through ignorance or evil design, they had forged lies upon him. After this the executioner asked his forgiveness, to whom he replied, "Come hither to me;" and when he came, he kissed his cheek, and said, "Lo, here is a token that I forgive thee, do thine office." Being raised up from his knees, he was ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... was a common punishment; and as for the usual slapping, horsing, and flogging, they were inflicted with a brutality that in every case richly deserved for the tyrant, not only a peculiar whipping by the hand of the common executioner, but a separation from civilized society by transportation for life. It is a fact, however, that in consequence of the general severity practised in hedge schools, excesses of punishment did not often produce retaliation against the master; these were ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... conception, engaged in torturing writhing and bleeding specimens of humanity. Demon masks of ancient lacquer hung from the pillars, naked swords gleamed in motionless hands, and in a deep recess whose 'darkness' was rendered 'visible' by one lamp, was that indescribable horror the executioner of the Lord of Hell, his many brandished arms holding instruments of torture, and before him the bell, the thunderbolt and sceptre, the holy water, and the baptismal flagon. Our joss-sticks fumed on the still air, monks ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)
... cryed of injustice done him; and 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 ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... was of it, played its part, and made him show his teeth by frequent spasms. Being a little bow-legged, he made an awkward effort in coming to the front of the stage; but we all love him, because he is such a vigorous friend of freedom, looking as though he would willingly be executioner of all the oppressors in the land. He said that he "utterly concurred" with the mover in the spirit of his resolution; it was not, to be sure, in the usual form of resolutions, but that could easily be fixed; and he would suggest that it be referred to the ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... true that extremes meet, the moment despotism was hurled from the throne, it devolved to the mob, whose majesties, not being able to write their names, do not issue lettres de cachet, but execute their wills with their own hands; for hanging, which degrades an executioner, ne deroge pas in sovereigns—witness the Czar Peter the Great, Muley Ishmael, and many religious and gracious ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... as his propensity to hunt those unfortunate persons was known, the execution of the warrants was almost in every instance entrusted to his hands. It was not so with Sir Robert, who, being himself a magistrate, might be said to have been in the position at once of judge and executioner. At all events, the race of blood was pretty equal between them, so far as the clergy was concerned; but in general enmity to the Catholic community at large, Whitecraft was far more cruel and comprehensive in his vengeance. It is indeed an observation founded ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... 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 also attracted the prurient curiosity of memoir ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... torture. It had an irresistible fascination for her. She gave the executioner the knife and begged him to explore and lay bare ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... and he was permitted to enjoy the society of a numerous party of his friends. When he reached the spot where he was to suffer, he was subjected to no lingering torments; for his head was severed from his body by a single stroke of the executioner. [383:1] ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... mind, which led to speculation, criticism, and the cultivation of the exact sciences. From Ferrara came Savonarola, the fanatical prophet who appeared during the moral blight which characterized the age of the Borgias, and Lucretia must frequently have recalled this man in whom her father, by the executioner's hand, sought to stifle the protestations of the faithful and upright against the immorality of ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... killed on the spot by the attendants of the duke; the others were captured: Visconti was penitent, but Olgiati through all his tortures maintained that the deed was an acceptable offering to God, and exclaimed while the executioner was breaking his ribs, 'Courage, Girolamo! thou wilt long be remembered; death is bitter, ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... them, would have awkwardly interrupted the line of the angle, and diminished its apparent strength; and therefore in the midst of them, entirely without relation to them, and indeed actually between the executioner and interceding mother, there rises the ribbed trunk of a massy tree, which supports and continues the shaft of the angle, and whose leaves above overshadow and enrich the whole. The capital below bears among its leafage a throned figure of Justice, Trajan doing justice to ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... felt, still. It is of Christ brought to the foot of the cross. There is no wringing of hands or lamenting crowd—no haggard signs of fainting or pain in His body. Scourging or fainting, feeble knee and torn wound,—he thinks scorn of all that, this shepherd-boy. One executioner is hammering the wedges of the cross harder down. The other—not ungently—is taking Christ's red robe off His shoulders. And St. John, a few yards off, is keeping his mother from coming nearer. She looks down, not at Christ; but tries ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... ruffians were, none of them liked to commit a murder in cold blood. They had determined that Congo must die, yet none of them wished to act as the executioner. ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... who did not do her duty to him in his childhood? It is I who was his great enemy—I who assisted the devil to lead him to destruction—I who, had he been hanged, had been, and have felt for years that I was, his executioner. Can I forgive him! Can he ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... paramour, Mortimer, on a suspicion of intending to restore his brother, Edward II. to the throne; and so much was he beloved by the people, and his persecutors detested, that he stood from one to five in the afternoon before an executioner could be procured, and then an outlaw from the Marshalsea performed the detested duty. Thomas, Duke of Surrey, was beheaded at Cirencester, in rebellion against Henry IV. Thomas de Montacute, Earl of Salisbury, after obtaining the highest ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 554, Saturday, June 30, 1832 • Various
... sympathy for my country's cause. It is her nameless woe, nameless sufferings. In the name of that ocean of bloody tears which the impious hand of the tyrant wrung from the eyes of the childless mothers, of the brides who beheld the executioner's sword between them and their wedding day—in the name of all these mothers, wives, brides, daughters, and sisters, who, by thousands of thousands, weep over the graves of Magyars so dear to their hearts,—who weep the bloody tears of ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... slit on the forehead and the pulling down of 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
... 1st Executioner. He is calling Elias; Watch now diligently If he comes to save him. If he delivers him, really We will believe in him, And ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... and more cooerdination. We cannot live a day without each other, and every day we become more interdependent. Times have changed since the cave-dwelling days when every man was his own butcher, baker, judge, jury, and executioner; when no man attempted more than he could do alone, and therefore regarded every other man as his natural enemy and rival, the killing of whom was good business. Cooeperation began when men found that two men could hunt better than ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... the credulity of General Auersperg was very severely punished. A court-martial condemned him to be cashiered, dragged through the streets of Vienna on a hurdle and finally put to death at the hands of the public executioner...! A similar sentence was passed on Field-marshal Mack, to punish him for his conduct at Ulm. But in both cases the death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. They served ten years and were then released, but deprived of their position, expelled from the ranks of the nobility ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... pile, Did of this penitential aisle Some vague tradition go, Few only, save the Abbot, knew Where the place lay; and still more few Were those, who had from him the clue To that dread vault to go. Victim and executioner Were blindfold when transported there. In low dark rounds the arches hung, From the rude rock the side-walls sprung; The grave-stones, rudely sculptured o'er, Half sunk in earth, by time half wore, Were all the pavement of ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... speech, a Chinese executioner has appeared on the city gate, bearing a pole upon which is fixed a turbaned head: he places it in the row, and disappears.) But tell me, Barak, shall I in divan Behold the lovely daughter ...
— Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... fascinating, the manifestation of a sublime law of the universe. We must, however, do De Maistre the justice to point out, first, that he gave a measure of his strange interest in Surgery and Judgment, as Mr. Carlyle calls it, to the public executioner, a division of the honours of social surgery which is no more than fair; while, in the second place, he redeems the brutality of the military surgical idea after a fashion, by an extraordinary mysticism, which led him to see ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... Westminster on October 1. There he demanded, "for love of him and for safety of the kingdom," that accused clerks should be tried by the common law, and that if proved guilty, they should be degraded by the bishops, and given up to the executioner for punishment. He complained of the exactions of the ecclesiastical courts, and urged that in all matters concerning these courts or the rights of the clergy, the bishops should return to the customs of Henry the First. ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... accompanied by most of the great nobles who had passed over with him to the Irish wars. Little dreamt they of the fate which impended over many of their heads. Three short years and Gloucester would die by the assassin's hand, Arundel by the executioner's axe, and Mowbray, Earl Marshal, the ambassador at Ballygorry, would pine to death in Italian banishment. Even a greater change than any of these—a change of dynasty—was ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... there seemed to be a merciful interposition. Carried upward by force of the explosion, the bag containing a greater quantity of the powder was hurled through the opening in the roof, and fell into the yard untouched by fire; had it been otherwise, the public executioner's work would have been less, and fewer dripping heads had graced the ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... Midon," he said, sadly; "you will not believe. Who knows how much your coming here this morning will cost you? It is said that no one can escape his destiny. But if some day the hand of the executioner is laid upon your shoulder, remember that I warned you, and do not ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... feet long, is forcibly passed between the back-bone and the skin from the lower part of the body, where a cross cut is made for its insertion, till it come out betwixt the shoulders and neck, the executioner guiding the point of it so that none of the vitals or large blood vessels may be wounded. The under end of the spike is afterwards made fast to a wooden post, which is then stuck into the ground, so that the miserable wretch is raised aloft, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... taper-bearers. When the mass was finished, just as the abbot and his assistants had partaken of the holy communion, the Danes burst into the church. The abbot was slain upon the holy altar by the hand of the Danish king Oskytal, and the other priests and monks were beheaded by the executioner. ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... perished.[232] "That," says Rio, "is the reason why he left but an imperfect work—for those at least who are only struck by what is wanting in it. Others will at first regard it with the interest attaching to unfinished poems, interrupted by the jailer's call or by the stern voice of the executioner. Then they will study it in all its details, in order to appreciate its beauties; and that appreciation will be the more perfect in proportion as a man is the more fully penetrated with its dominant ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... more desperate than Margaret this day. There was not a gambler setting his teeth while watching the last turn of the die, more desperate than Margaret this day. If there was a criminal standing above a sea of faces with the abominable executioner's hands about his throat, Margaret was, for the time, ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... him rather to well. He ruined many of the English gentry, particularly the ancient family of Arden, of Park-hall, in this neighbourhood: he afterwards ruined his own family by disinheriting a son, more worthy than himself.—If he did not fall by the executioner, it is no proof that he did not ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... were a fitter name for it—had just begun. The South was imprisoned, awaiting the executioner. The Constitution of the United States hung in the balance. The Federal Union faced the threat of sectional despotism. The spirit of the time was martial law. The gospel of proscription ruled in Congress. Radicalism, vitalized by the ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... The executioner motioned first to David. An attendant brought him the heading cup of wine, which it was the custom to offer to those about ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... In this expedition he 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 ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... powerful in the arms and chest. Of my 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
... bring out a carpenter.' Carpentering around the arena wasn't a popular job in those days. He went visiting once to a province and thought it would be pleasant to see how they disposed of criminals and captives in their crude, old-fashioned way, but there was no executioner on hand. No matter; the Emperor of Rome was in no hurry—he would wait. So he sat down and stayed there until an ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... organized 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 ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... character that she plays a part similar to that of St. Michael and Ilya the Prophet combined, as above mentioned, in another ballad of the Last Judgment. She appears in this ballad to be the sole inhabitant of heaven, judge and executioner. With her "thundering voice" she condemns to outer darkness all who have not paid her proper respect, promising to bury them under "damp mother earth and burning stones." To the just, that is, to those who have paid her due homage, she ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... first part of our confinement we felt a cold chill at our hearts every time we heard a footfall near the cave, dreading lest it should prove to be that of our executioner. But as time dragged heavily on we ceased to feel this alarm, and began to experience such a deep, irrepressible longing for freedom that we chafed and fretted in our confinement like tigers. Then a feeling of despair came over us, and we ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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 know he meant, 'Don't reveal what you see; my life depends on it.' I was so terror-struck ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... to save their house the shame 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 ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... scaffold gravely. 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 crown-piece which he ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... libeller. Chief Justice Finch ordered the scars left by his former punishment to be laid bare. "I had thought," said he, "that Mr. Prynne had no ears but methinks he hath ears." Three years before, the executioner had only clipped off the outer rims; but now Prynne was to suffer the full rigour of the sentence. A contemporary thus describes ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... executioner, who brought down his lash with great force upon the bare back of the prisoner. A terrible cry broke from Koshkin. Two more blows were given, and then the executioner moved to the other side and delivered another three ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... suffix and an English termination, because in that case a large majority of people would never have found out that the whole phrase was blatant nonsense. What are internal relations? Did the chief destroyer of common sense, the chief executioner of good English, mean, perhaps, the relations between that which is within and that which is without? He might have said so. It would not have meant much, but it would undoubtedly have meant something. And if life is this, then death must be the opposite, and ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... her heart ceased to beat—perhaps she would pay the price of her temerity and the Hereditary Executioner would ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 11, 1917 • Various
... at this profanation of the sacred symbol and of the Scripture was intense; the culprit was arrested, tried and convicted, and sentenced to make a public reparation, after which he was to serve three years in the galleys. To this end he was led by the public executioner, with a cord around his neck, bareheaded and barefooted, wearing only a long shirt, and having a placard on his breast and back on which was inscribed the legend "Desecrator of holy things" (Profanateur des choses saintes), in front of the parish church ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... great ass, who 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
... man shall his blood be shed," and all the explicit directions as to who should be killed, and how; for such and such offences, certainly justify the axe and rope of the executioner; and beyond that come numbers of inspired commands as to the merciless extermination of opposing tribes in which men, women and children were "put to the sword"—even to babes unborn. Killing seemed highly honorable, even compulsory, among ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... in the next century, the seventeenth. Bissendorf perished at the hands of the executioner at the same time that his books, Nodi gordii resolutio (on the priestly calling), 1624, and The Jesuits, were burnt by the same agent. In the case of the De Republica Ecclesiastica (1617) by De Dominis, Christian ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... breath. They saw Sir Mador look towards Sir Gaheris, as if to ask him why he delayed giving the signal for the executioner to go forward to do ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... charming picture of that gentleman sitting in his study "meditating for the good and entertainment of the public, with my two little children (as is my usual course to suffer them) playing near me." And the ending of his horrid nightmare, in which a Jacobite executioner was placing a rope round his neck, "when my little girl entered my bedchamber and put an end to my dream by pulling open my eyes, and telling me that the taylor had brought home my cloaths for his Majesty's Birthday." The number for January 28 must not be overlooked, containing ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... and terrible example of justice took place towards the close of this month, which I record with regret, but which it would be disingenuous to suppress. Six marines, the flower of our battalion, were hanged by the public executioner, on the sentence of a criminal court, composed entirely of their own officers, for having at various times robbed the public stores of flour, meat, spirits, tobacco, ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... encountered the previous day. Then a very curious operation took place. One of us was told off to ascertain their sex, and nothing can depict our joy when we discovered what we were seeking among them, the female executioner ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... 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 ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin
... 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
... within him to have play. With a few angry and scathing words, bidding his servants remember what Calais had cost them to take, and what the obstinacy of its citizens had made England pay, he relentlessly ordered the executioner to do his work, and that right quickly; and as that grim functionary slowly advanced to do the royal bidding, a shiver ran through the standing crowd, the devoted six ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... without shuddering?' 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 no other ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... mute sacrifice upbraid the priest? He knows him not his executioner. O, she has decked his ruin with her love, Led him in golden bands to gaudy slaughter, And made perdition pleasing: She has left him The blank of what he was; I tell thee, eunuch, she has quite unmanned ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... mind he had just escaped the speeches of the Attorney and Solicitor-General over again; the gaunt figure of Mr. Pitt glared by him; the walls of a prison enclosed him; and he felt the hands of the executioner near him, without knowing it till the tremor and disorder of his nerves gave information to his reasoning faculties that all was not well within. That is, the same state of mind was recalled by one circumstance ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... all persons to pray for him. At the last moment he confessed that his conduct towards Northampton had been vile and wicked. Whilst craving pardon of Northampton's son "he was suddenly turned off, and the executioner ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... 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 ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... a woman's rights champion when another woman had become a butcher, 'Go thou and do likewise,' and an American young lady working as an executioner, are, in this connection, ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... basilisa. They all perished—her brother Manfred, her half-brother, the poetic and lamented Encio, hero of so many songs, and her nephew, the knightly Coradino, who was to die later on under the axe of the executioner upon attempting the defense of his rights. As the Oriental empress did not represent any danger for the dynasty of Anjou, the conqueror let her follow out her destiny, as lonely and forsaken ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... whobub with such a maine cry, as if the rebels had come to rifle the city. Being ready to mount the ladder, when he was pressed by some of the bystanders to speak, he repeated frequently Sine me quaeso. The executioner had no sooner taken off the bishop's head, but the townsmen of Dublin began to flock about him, some taking up the head with pitying aspect, accompanied with sobs and sighs; some kissed it with as religious ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... himself. The path they were ascending was quite steep, and Fernando could not help glancing at the pretty little hand, encased in a cream-colored kid glove, resting on his arm. If Fernando had known that an executioner were behind him with an axe raised, ready to cut off his head if he touched that hand, he could not have helped doing it. From putting his own right hand upon it as if by chance, and taking it away again after a minute or so, ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... caused many an Englishman's body to be unburied, and to rot above ground, not one of your bones shall be buried," pronounced Captain Church. And he ordered an old Indian, who acted as executioner, to behead ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... 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 think, ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... content to court by an act which I hope was unwillingly performed. When it was found that Pope clandestinely printed an unauthorised 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 ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... 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
... destructiveness, and has said, over and over again, that it ought to be killed; but the cat is such a family pet that no one in the family has the heart to destroy it, and as yet no stranger has come forward to play the part of executioner. The lady in question assured me that to her certain knowledge that particular cat would watch a nestful of young robins week after week until they had grown up to such a size that they were almost ready to fly; then he would kill them and devour them. Old "Tommy" was too wise to kill the robins ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday |
