"Executioner" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... souls that had collected during the past twenty-four hours from all parts of Egypt were weighed in the Balance; the righteous were allotted estates in perpetuity in the "land of souls," and the wicked were destroyed by Shesmu, the executioner of the god, and by his assistants. The texts that describe the various "Gates" of the Book of Gates, explain who are the beings represented in the pictures, and state why they were there. And the Book proves conclusively that the Egyptians believed in the efficacy of ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... penalties. When an official has offended, 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 ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... 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 Newman
... Duchess murmured vindictively. "I tried to read one of his speeches the other day. It was nothing more nor less than blasphemy. I do not think that I am naturally a cruel woman, but I would hand such men over to the public executioner with joy." ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Chevalier Messer Bonramino, and a certain Bishop of Hungary, a man wholly witless, who would wander about Rome all day, and then at night would lie down to sleep like a beast in a stable; and he made a portrait of Marsilio Pazzo in the person of the executioner who is cutting off the head of S. James, together with one of himself. This work, in short, by reason of its excellence, brought him ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari
... to spare the lives of her brave garrison, which was rapidly thinning, agreed to the proposal, and surrendered the fort; and then D'Aunay is said to have broken {104} his solemn pledge, and hanged all the defenders except one, whose life was spared on the condition of his acting as executioner. ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... ape bearing the 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 ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... establishments corresponding to the modern Italian osterie, where were to be obtained wine with hot or cold water and also cooked food. As they sat on their stools in these "greasy and smoky" haunts they might be compelled, says the satirist, to mix with "sailors, thieves, runaway slaves, and the executioner," but even men of higher standing were often not unwilling to seek low pleasures amid such surroundings, especially when, as was frequently the case, there was provision for secret dicing beyond the observation of ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... minute to live. Then she broke silence, and said, in a low firm voice which no one heard but this executioner, for all other living creatures had retired and left her to her fate, "If I had a dagger within these fingers and he was within my reach, I would strike him dead before me, even now!" The man asked "Who?" She said, "The father of ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... finally quartered by four horses, for the attempt to assassinate Louis XV. On the day fixed, George mingled with the crowd plainly dressed, and managed to press forward close to the place of torture. The executioner observing him, eagerly cried out, 'Faites place pour Monsieur; c'est un Anglais et un amateur;' or, as another version goes, he was asked if he was not himself a bourreau.—'Non, Monsieur,' he is said ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... camphor. Malefactors, who for their crimes are sentenced to die, are the only persons who fetch the poison; and this is the only chance they have of saving their lives. After sentence is pronounced upon them by the judge, they are asked in court, whether they will die by the hands of the executioner, or whether they will go to the Upas tree for a box of poison? They commonly prefer the latter proposal, as there is not only some chance of preserving their lives, but also a certainty, in case of their safe return, that a provision will be made for them in future by the Emperor. ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... their liberty, and had gone to court with them. He was now reduced to despair; and appeared determined, in prosecution of Lord Sandy's advice, to defend himself to the last extremity, and rather to perish like a brave man, with his sword in his hand, than basely by the hands of the executioner: but after some parley, and after demanding in vain, first hostages, then conditions, from the besiegers, he surrendered at discretion; requesting only civil treatment, and a fair ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... 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 of 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 ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... made so long, and so far, every morning in vain; so my opinion of the action itself began to alter, and I began, with cooler and calmer thoughts, to consider what it was I was going to engage in; what authority or call I had to pretend to be judge and executioner upon these men as criminals, whom Heaven had thought fit for so many ages to suffer, unpunished, to go on, and to be, as it were, the executioners of his judgments upon one another; also, how far these people were offenders against me, and what right ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... 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 at ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... broken by a dream of terror, and so unusually vivid, that its impression lasted even through the terrible reality which it heralded. She beheld Arthur Stanley on the scaffold about to receive the sentence of the law—the block, the axe, the executioner with his arm raised, and apparently already deluged in blood—the gaping crowds—all the fearful appurtenances of an execution were distinctly traced, and she thought she sprung towards Stanley, who clasped her in his arms, and the executioner, instead of endeavoring to part them, smiled grimly ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... not allow the better feelings 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 alone holding ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... almost 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 ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... keep, and whom Mallet was 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 of ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... 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 preparing ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... victims guillotined during the three years of the Terror far outnumbered the others, the dresses of the majority of those who were present were the clothes of the victims of the scaffold. Thus, most of the young girls, whose mothers and older sisters had fallen by the hands of the executioner, wore the same costume their mothers and sisters had worn for that last lugubrious ceremony; that is to say, a white gown and red shawl, with their hair cut short at the nape of the neck. Some added to this costume, already so characteristic, a detail that was even more significant; ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... listeth himself. Heinous theft also or felony they punish with death. For a light theft, as namely for stealing of a ram, the party (not being apprehended in the deed doing, but otherwise detected) is cruelly beaten. And if the executioner laies on an 100. strokes, he must haue an 100. staues, namely for such as are beaten vpon sentence giuen in the court. Also counterfeit messengers, because they feine themselues to be messengers, when as indeed they are none at all, they punish with death. Sacrilegious persons ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... wells and marked with the fret of a rope. Many a beautiful woman has swung from that beam by neck, or feet, or wrists, and her body dropped through the well into the Holy Jumna without the knowledge of any save her master and her executioner." ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... most apt parallel and analogy for the systematic administration of human society by its Creator. Such punishment can no longer be regarded as moral in any deep or permanent sense; it implies a gross, harsh, and revengeful character in the executioner, that is eminently perplexing and incredible to those who expect to find an idea of justice in the government of the world, at least not materially below what is attained in the clumsy ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... movement of his hand, he slit the noses of each of the culprits from top to bottom, and dismissed them, to carry for life the marks of their disgrace. No cry was uttered by any one of the victims, nor the slightest resistance offered to their venerable judge and executioner; for such cowardice would, in the estimation of the Indians, have been far more contemptible than the crime of which they had been convicted. Silently they withdrew; nor did they, even by the expression of their countenances, seem to question the justice ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... fear the attempts at revolutionary propaganda which it is the special duty of the gendarmerie to discover and suppress. Nor need this surprise us. Though very many people believe in the necessity of capital punishment, there are few who do not feel a decided aversion to the public executioner. ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... Elizabeth Hudson and Bethia Bulloine (Bullen) 'married women and sisters,' to 'be by the Marshall Generall ... on ye next lecture day presently after the lecture carried to the Gallowes & there by ye Executioner set on the ladder & with a Roape about her neck to stand on the Gallowes an half houre & then brought ... to the market place & be seriously whipt wth tenn stripes or pay the Sume of tenn pounds' standing committed till the ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... chase of us, whereas, had you not committed this mad act, we might have gone our way unmolested. Such is your crime and its consequences; and if I deliver you up to the crew, and explain what you have done, they will save me the trouble of being your executioner. Take him on deck," he said, in Romaic, to the men who held Paolo. "I will follow shortly; and you may, meantime, make preparations ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... kind of toil could have so shriveled him? What devouring 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 of nuisances. Indeed, the man appeared ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... workmen of Babel. It appeared, by parts of sentences and broken 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, ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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 ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... earth when God's avenging judgments fell upon the enemies of the Christians. But to consider this murderous warrior on his white charger as literally death, would be as erroneous as to imagine the bare armed executioner and the guillotine to be themselves the death which they inflict. No more appalling picture of death has been drawn than that by Milton, whose dire image has this stroke of truth in it, that its adumbrate formlessness typifies the ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... nearly in his eyes. He made no comment, but she saw that he was noting the ravages which the intervening hours had left in her face. Beneath his smile there was something hard and pitiless—a look that the executioner of a de Medici might have worn—and for a moment it put her at a loss for words. Then with an attempt at her old-time camaraderie, she ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... 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 came off ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... weight, which will make six or eight tureens of fine soup. Kill the turtle the evening before; tie a cord to the hind fins, and hang it up with the head downwards. Tie the fore fins by way of pinioning them, otherwise it would beat itself, and be troublesome to the executioner. Hold the head in the left hand, and with a sharp knife cut off the neck as near the head as possible. Lay the turtle on a block on the back shell, slip the knife between the breast and the edge of the back shell; and when the knife has been ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... his Lord in chains, he was afraid and denied Him; but he was not brought so low as to offer his services as executioner. He, Clerambault, had not only deserted the cause of human brotherhood, he had debased it; he had continued to talk of fraternity, while he was stirring up hatred. Like those lying priests who distort the Scriptures to serve their wicked purposes, he had knowingly ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... the advantage of transferring from the Government to the House a disagreeable responsibility. Forgetting that he was cast for the executioner, not the hero, he murmured, "It is a far, far better thing," and graciously accepted the proposed alternative. Mr. ASQUITH, not unwilling to help in establishing a precedent which some day he himself may find useful, backed him up, and the House, as a whole, congratulating itself on its escape from ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 17, 1920 • Various
... 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
... 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, unlike the people of India, scout the idea ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... wicked deeds had been perpetrated, Paulus, covered with blood, returned to the emperor's camp, bringing with him a crowd of prisoners almost covered with chains, in the lowest condition of squalor and misery; on whose arrival the racks were prepared, and the executioner began to prepare his hooks and other engines of torture. Of these prisoners, many of them had their property confiscated, others were sentenced to banishment, some were given over to the sword of the executioner. Nor is it easy to cite the acquittal of a single ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... gallows—but a foolish, weak, selfish mother, 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
... a letter from the lords of the council was read signifying the king's pleasure that David Sampson, an apprentice to a tailor, should be very sharply whipt through the city from Aldgate to Fleet Street by the common executioner for an insult offered the Spanish ambassador on the preceding Monday (2 April). A good guard was also to be appointed for the purpose, and instructions were given to the Recorder and some of the ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... 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 ages have vexed ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the 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
... a sense of honor as keen as any razor blade. If he allowed himself wide latitude in some matters it was because he had lived his life in an atmosphere where the wide latitude was the thing. The prairie had been his bed, the sky his roof, himself his own policeman, judge, and executioner since boyhood. When responsibility is so centralized wide latitudes must be allowed. But the uttermost borders of that latitude were fixed with iron rigidity, and when he had thrown a vile epithet ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... after the day on which the Signal had printed the menu of Daniel Povey's supreme breakfast, and the exact length of the 'drop' which the executioner had administered to him, Constance and Cyril stood together at the window of the large bedroom. The boy was in his best clothes; but Constance's garments gave no sign of the Sabbath. She wore a large apron ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... that it was seen that it was a calumny, that the curate was transferred to another town and that my son died from the result of his tortures? The other boy, who was still left for me, was not a coward like his father. The executioner was afraid that this son would take revenge for the death of his brother and so, under pretense of his not having a cedula, [19] which for the moment had been forgotten, he was imprisoned by the Civil Guard, maltreated, irritated and provoked by force and injuries until he was ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... and security, but always to place before their eyes the wrath of God, and inculcate the same. For we have to preach this not to Christians, but chiefly to knaves and scoundrels, to whom it would be more fitting for judges, jailers, or Master Hannes [the executioner] to preach. Therefore let every one know that it is his duty, at the risk of God's displeasure, not only to do no injury to his neighbor, nor to deprive him of gain, nor to perpetrate any act of unfaithfulness or malice in any bargain or trade, but faithfully to preserve his property for him, ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther
... 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 in war a divine, inscrutable ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... one of his own party facetiously described him as "William the Conqueror," a title he had most hardly earned by his inflexible and invincible nature. Twice he had been cropped of his ears; for at the first time the executioner having spared the two fragments, the inhuman judge on his second trial discovering them with astonishment, ordered them to be most unmercifully cropped—then he was burned on his cheek, and ruinously fined and imprisoned in ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... all the best ministers and truest patriots in the land. But just as Guthrie was turning in at the gate of the Greyfriars, who should cross the street before him, so as almost to run against him, but the city executioner! The omen—for it was a day of omens—made the young minister stagger for a moment, but only for a moment. At the same time the ominous incident made such an impression on the young Covenanter's heart and imagination, that he ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... do I now recover? Why half live? To see my children bleed before mine eyes? A sight able to kill a mothers breast Without an executioner! what, art thou ...
— A Yorkshire Tragedy • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... sorrow; while all the time he is told that his kingdom and his treasures shall be restored to him, if he will tell only one lie. At last his wife is condemned to death on a false accusation, and he is appointed, by the sovereign of the land where she and he have been sold as slaves, to be her executioner. She calls on him to do his duty, and strike off her head. Just then Viswamitra appears to him, saying: "Wicked man, spare her! Tell a lie even now, and be restored to your ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... you your two children, your two jewels, killed by their own father. And I have punished the King for the caprice he took into his head, by making him first the judge of his brother, and afterwards the executioner of his children. But as I have wished only to shear and not to flay you, I desire now that all the poison may turn into sweetmeats for you. Therefore, go, take again your children and my grandchildren, who are more beautiful ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... executioner; it was Wanda who stood wrathfully before me demanding her furs. I am at her side in a moment, and ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... furnished to them, was being snatched from their mouth, unless the tribunes were given up in chains to C. Marcius, unless he glut his rage on the backs of the commons of Rome. That in him a new executioner had started up, who ordered them to die or be slaves." An assault would have been made on him as he left the senate-house, had not the tribunes very opportunely appointed him a day for trial; by this their rage was suppressed, every one saw himself become the judge, the arbiter ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... Isenghien, visited him secretly, and offered him poison, as a means of evading the disgrace of a public execution. On his refusing to take it, they left him with high indignation. "Miserable man!" said they, "you are fit only to perish by the hand of the executioner!" ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... civil power for martyrdom. When surrounded by blazing fagots, he cried out, "O Lord God, have mercy upon me!" and a little afterwards, "Thou knowest how I have loved thy truth." With cheerful countenance he met his fate; and, observing the executioner about to set fire to the wood behind his back, he cried out, "Bring thy torch hither: perform thy office before my face. Had I feared death, I might have avoided it." As the wood began to blaze, he sang a hymn, which the violence of the ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... and steadfast, and his heart so firm that he did not even cease from humorous sayings. When he mounted the crazy ladder of the scaffold he said, 'Master Lieutenant, I pray you see me safe up; and for my coming down let me shift for myself.' And he desired the executioner to give him time to put his beard out of the way of the stroke, 'since that had never ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of their misery and despair, for whatever might be the fate of the common people of the Pretender's army, the action of the King toward all who opposed him was known to be of merciless severity. The leaders of the rebellion could expect but one fate—death by the executioner. ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... answered Greyson, "between Pooh Bah as Chancellor of the Exchequer, or Lord High Admiral, or Chief Executioner, whichever he preferred to be, and Pooh Bah as all the Officers of State rolled into one. Pooh Bah may be a very able statesman, entitled to exert his legitimate influence. But, after all, his opinion ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... round among the spectators, as, at a signal from the man with the great sword, who I saw now must be the executioner, the bearers stopped, and with a jerk threw the poles off their shoulders into their hands, bumped the baskets heavily down upon the ground, and shot the malefactors out as unceremoniously as if they had ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... the streets as he peddled copies of the sentence. The common people crowded about the scaffold, and the rich did not always scorn to hire windows overlooking the scene. The condemned man was first stretched upon a cross and struck by the executioner eleven times with an iron bar, every stroke breaking a bone. The poor wretch was then laid on his back on a cart wheel, his broken bones protruding through his flesh, his head hanging, his brow dripping bloody sweat, and left to die. A priest muttered religious ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... of Lucrezia and happy in my love, to give her up appeared to me a shameful action. In order to insure the happiness of my future life, I was beginning to be the executioner of my present felicity, and the tormentor of my heart. I revolted against such a necessity which I judged fictitious, and which I could not admit unless I stood guilty of vileness before the tribunal of my own reason. I thought that Father Georgi, if he wished to forbid my visiting ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... threatened. Accusations of magic, of disrespect to the Caesar, of plots against the Emperor—any pretext was good to plunder them. During the preceding reign, that of the pitiless Valentinian, the Roman nobility had been literally decimated by the executioner. A certain vice-Prefect, Maximinus, had gained a sinister reputation for cleverness in the art of manufacturing suspects. By his orders, a basket at the end of a string was hung out from one of the windows of the Praetorium, into which denunciations might be cast. The ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... are inclined to mischief, are disabled in a short time from executing their intentions, by the same causes which excite them; that they are obliged to stop in the career of their crimes, that they are preserved from the hand of the executioner by the liquor which exposes them to it, and that palsies either disable them from pursuing their villanies, or fevers put ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... him. Sometimes he dispensed with a pretext, and sent a messenger to the hut of the doomed man to tell him the king wanted him. The victim, often ignorant of his fate, walked in front, while the executioner, following close behind, suddenly dealt him with the knob-kerry, or heavy-ended stick, one tremendous blow, which crushed his skull and left him dead upon the ground. Women, on the other hand, were strangled.[46] No one ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... anger of Magas against Philemon was equal to that of Nicocreon against Anaxarchus? Both Magas and Nicocreon had been insulted, but whereas Nicocreon brayed Anaxarchus to death with iron pestles and made mincemeat of him, Magas contented himself with bidding the executioner lay his naked sword on Philemon's neck, and then let him go.[241] And so Plato called anger the nerves of the mind, since it can be both intensified by bitterness, and slackened by mildness. To evade these ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... 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 ...
— Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen • Alexander Chodsko
... Orange's apartments. He made a short speech to the people, which is 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 ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... was always hovering around the 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 as ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... would escape, called 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 as to ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... first importance in St. Augustine, after St. Paul the chief builder of the Christian Church. In a treatise written in 386 to justify the Divine regulation of the world, we find him declaring that just as the executioner, however repulsive he may be, occupies a necessary place in society, so the prostitute and her like, however sordid and ugly and wicked they may be, are equally necessary; remove prostitutes from human affairs and you would pollute the world with lust: "Aufer meretrices de rebus humanis, turbaveris ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... For then, an inclined 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 beheld ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... Justice. The "lawyer" and the bailiff's men (commonly called "the brokers") are the two lowest rungs of the ladder. Now, the bailiff's man is an outsider, an adventitious minister of justice, appearing to see that judgment is executed; he is, in fact, a kind of inferior executioner employed by the county court. But the word "lawyer" (homme de loi) is a depreciatory term applied to the legal profession. Consuming professional jealousy finds similar disparaging epithets for fellow-travelers in every walk of life, ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... one who knows anything of women can have failed to remark that women themselves are even more brutal in this matter. Nothing could exceed the executioner-like promptitude with which a woman will despatch a man for whom she has ceased to care. But in her case there is to be urged that, though fundamentally love is of equal importance to man and woman, it does not so often mean the absolute saving or wrecking of a man's ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... 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; ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... women held their 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 ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... right hand in a deprecatory manner, as if he would have said, 'Spare me!' So, had they been blows, and he a brave man, under strong constraint, and weakened by bodily suffering, he might have stood before the executioner. ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... understood that she was not to die until 12 o'clock, and that she was sorry for it, for she wished to have it over. The constable told her the pain would be very slight and momentary. "Yes," she rejoined, "I am told that a very skillful executioner is provided, and my neck is ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... he said, "remember that the prince here is my guest, as you are, and give us peace. If that dead man was your cousin, at least he well deserved to die, not at the hand of one of royal blood, but by that of the executioner, for he was the worst of thieves—a thief of women. Now tell me, King, I pray you, how came your cousin here, so far from home, since he was not numbered ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... the arc which ended upon my upturned face when a bolt of myriad-legged horror hurled itself through the doorway full upon the breast of my executioner. With a shriek of fear the ape which held me leaped through the open window, but its mate closed in a terrific death struggle with my preserver, which was nothing less than my faithful watch-thing; I cannot bring myself to call so ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... no one, except the workmen, should enter the enclosure, on pain of death, and that no one should make the least noise, nor even speak loud. Accordingly, on the 30th of April, 1586, the first to enter the barrier was the chief justice and his officers, and the executioner to plant the gibbet, not merely as a matter of ceremony. Fontana went to receive the benediction of the pope, who, after having bestowed it, told him to be cautious of what he did, for a failure would certainly ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... few strangers who visited the Peninsula, inns were for a long time almost unknown, and the occupation of an innkeeper, who sold what his countrymen were delighted to give, was considered degrading: so dishonourable indeed was it looked upon, that where an executioner could not be found to carry the sentence of the law into effect upon a criminal, the innkeeper was compelled to perform his functions: therefore the innkeepers, like usurers and other persons, who follow a pursuit hostile to public opinion, were profligate and rapacious. Don Quixote teems with instances ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... miracle came to pass. God sent down the angel Michael, in the guise of a hangman, and the human hangman charged by Pharaoh with the execution was changed into the form of Moses. This spurious Moses the angel killed with the very sword with which the executioner had purposed to slay the intended victim. Meantime Moses took to flight. Pharaoh ordered his pursuit, but it was in vain. The king's troops were partly stricken with blindness partly with dumbness. The dumb could give no information about the abiding-place of Moses, ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... 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 preferred against you, have you anything to say, why the sentence ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... neutral-tinted dawn. It was a terrible moment to me, though I had expected it since yesterday. I felt like the condemned criminal in France, who does not know the day or hour of his death. The first intimation is when the executioner at daybreak enters his cell and bids him come forth to die, sometimes in less than sixty seconds ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... they saw him turned from off the gallows, they raised the 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 an appetite as ever they kissed ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... in his Rousseau, gives a startling picture of the hostility of the parliament at the period (1762) when Buffon's works appeared. Not only was Rousseau hunted out of France, and his books burnt by the public executioner, but there was "hardly a single man of letters of that time who escaped arbitrary imprisonment" (p. 270); among others thus imprisoned was Diderot. At this time (1750-1765) Malesherbes (born 1721, guillotined 1794), one of the "best instructed and most enlightened men of the ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... battalion, had in the meanwhile, been ordered to Donaldsonville. Among the duties here assigned to me, was service as Provost Marshal of the Parish, an office which combined as varied a responsibility as can well be imagined. In certain civil cases I had, as judge, jury and executioner of my own decisions, plenty of employment. With an occasional call to join in matrimonial bonds sundry pairs of hearts that beat as one, I had much more frequent cause to settle disputes between planters and employees, ...
— Reminiscences of two years with the colored troops • Joshua M. Addeman
... which at last prevailed, and she yielded to his guilty embraces. The next morning Kirk, with unparalleled brutality, desired the lady to look out at the window of his bedchamber, when she was struck with the horrid sight of her husband upon a scaffold, ready to receive the blow of the executioner; and before she could reach the place where he was, in order to take a last embrace, her husband was ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... not the 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 ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... gentleman and not an executioner,' replied William de Bray; and he turned from the king ...
— Stories from English History • Hilda T. Skae
... Braden, cold with a strange new terror. He could not put aside the impression that Murray, the bibulous Murray, was also regarding him in the light of an executioner. Somewhere back in his memory there was aroused an old story about the citizens who sat up all night to watch for the coming of the hangman who was to do a grewsome thing at dawn. He tried to shake off the feeling, he tried to laugh at the fantastic notion that had so swiftly assailed ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... "bloodshedder," and "chief of the eagle and cactus." These captains were military chiefs of the phratries, and also magistrates charged with the duty of maintaining order and enforcing the decrees of the council in their respective quarters. The "chief of the eagle and cactus" was chief executioner,—Jack Ketch. He was not eligible for the office of "chief-of-men;" the three other phratry-captains were eligible. Then there was a member of the priesthood entitled "man of the dark house." This person, with the three ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... eternally. For I have learned (said he) more in one little dark corner in yonder Tower, than ever I learned by any travail in so many places as I have been." And he desired the people to pray for him, for he "did in no wise fear death." So, taking the executioner by the hand, he said he forgave him heartily, but entreated him not to strike till he had said a few prayers, "and then he should have good leave." And so he knelt down, and laid his head on the block, and prayed; then lifting his head again, once more asked ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... with us," replied the executioner who was attending to Pontcalec; "unless by special order, the rules are ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... to colonel Brown, and with all the widowed mother agonizing in her looks, plead for his life. But in vain. With the dark features of a soul horribly triumphant over the cries of mercy, he repulsed her suit, and ordered the executioner to do his office! He hung up the young man before the eyes of his mother! and then, with savage joy, suffered his Indians, in her presence, to strike their tomahawks into his forehead; that forehead which she had so often pressed ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... regular attendants, with their whips passed through their girdles; we behold the operation of flaying performed either upon living or dead men; we observe those who are about to be executed first struck on the face by the executioner's fist. Altogether we seem to have evidence, not of mere severity, which may sometimes be a necessary or even a merciful policy, but of a barbarous cruelty, such as could not fail to harden and brutalize alike those who witnessed and those who inflicted it. Nineveh, it is plain, still ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... 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 ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... that everybody has them. It is quite certain that in this, more than in any previous century, the nerves quiver at the least shock. For instance, recall the newspaper accounts of executions of criminals. We learn that the executioner goes about his work timidly, that he is on the point of fainting, that he has nervous prostration when he decapitates a man. Then compare this nervous wreck with the invincible torturers of the olden time. They would thrust your arm into a sleeve of moistened parchment which when set ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... ax, guillotine; stake; cross; gallows, gibbet, tree, drop, noose, rope, halter, bowstring; death chair, electric chair; gas chamber; lethal injection; firing squad; mecate^. house of correction &c (prison) 752. goaler, jailer; executioner; electrocutioner^; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... see that the truth does not fall short of my forecast,' he went on. 'For I have appointed Henriques your executioner.' ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... of the Muses. In the conversation that followed, my new friend made some extraordinary confessions. "Do you not see," he said, "the penalty of learning, and that each of these scholars whom you have met at S., though he were to be the last man, would, like the executioner in Hood's poem, guillotine the last but one?" He added many lively remarks, but his evident earnestness engaged my attention, and, in the weeks that followed, we became better acquainted. He had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... Then the executioner, that was his tormentor.—8. And then by and by the trumpet sounding, he was tyed to the stake, and the fire kindled. The Captaine of the Castle, for the love he bore to M. Wischarde, drew so neer to the fire, that the flame thereof did him harme; he ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Bronze Hand - 1897 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... 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 of ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... 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 ...
— The Last Reformation • F. G. [Frederick George] Smith
... not Scripture suggest to us in the story of Lazarus—of Moses and Elias at the Transfiguration—of the dying thief—of the spirits in the Unseen Life whom Christ visited at His death—that Death comes not as an executioner to cut off our departed one from life and love, but rather as God's good angel bringing him more than life has ever brought, and leading him by a path as full of miracles of soft arrangement as was his birth to heights of ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... prevent the citizens from unjustly rebelling against him in 1540, after the suppression of which revolt Charles is said to have ascended the cathedral tower, while the executioner was putting to death the ringleaders in the rebellion, in order to choose with his brother Ferdinand the site for the citadel he intended to erect, to overawe the freedom loving city. He chose the Monastery of St. Bavon as its site, and, as we have ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... deceive the eye, the king was 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
... of its own, having its own language, its own rules, regulations and customs. The laws and institutions of the state, apparently touch it nowhere. The troubles arising here, are not settled by the civil power of the state. The overseer is generally accuser, judge, jury, advocate and executioner. The criminal is always dumb. The overseer attends to all ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... return. Dionysius not only accepted the bail, but extended the leave to six hours. When Damon reached his country villa, Lucullus killed his horse to prevent his return; but Damon, seizing the horse of a chance traveler, reached Syracuse just as the executioner was preparing to put Pythias to death. Dionysius so admired this proof of friendship, that he forgave Damon, and requested to be taken into ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... his knowledge of the young lady's kind heart, Hannibal now turned his attention toward her. He begged her to plead with his would-be executioner to give him one more chance for his life, and reiterated his promises to cease meddling with all of their affairs if this was granted. As he spoke Daisy crept nearer to Roseleaf's side, and when he paused ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... him,[1] and how he died in silence, like a boar at bay, rending from his wounds the dressings that his foes had placed to keep him alive, are notorious matters of history. At Padua alone he erected eight prisons, two of which contained as many as three hundred captives each; and though the executioner never ceased to ply his trade there, they were always full. These dungeons were designed to torture by their noisomeness, their want of air and light and space. Ezzelino made himself terrible not ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds |
