"Headsman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Brantome, in his account of Mary Queen of Scots, quotes this story. After mentioning that the headsman remained alone with the Queen's decapitated corpse, he adds: "He then took off her shoes and handled her as he pleased. It is suspected that he treated her in the same way as that miserable muleteer, in the Hundred Stories of the Queen of Navarre, treated the poor ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... my fool, thou art mistaken; perhaps thou takest a headsman's gleaming axe for the sun, and the red of dawn is ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... bowstring; death chair, electric chair; gas chamber; lethal injection; firing squad; mecate^. house of correction &c (prison) 752. goaler, jailer; executioner; electrocutioner^; lyncher; hangman; headsman^; Jack Ketch. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Jane to Robert Dudley, all the traitors who had conspired to do this dastardly deed were sent to cool their misguided ardour in the Tower, from which Northumberland, Jane and her husband were led to the headsman's block; while Robert Dudley was among those who were left to languish in durance, and to while away the tedious hours of captivity by carving their emblems and names on the walls of their cells, where they may be seen to this day, or to stroll ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... this evidence that the hurdy-gurdy sets the world to dancing—like the fiddle in the Turkish tale where even the headsman forgot his business—despite such evidence there are persons who affect to despise its melody. These claim such perceptivity of the outer ear and such fineness of the channels that the tune is but a clack when it gets inside. God pity such! ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... and regret; nevertheless, he dreaded the humiliation that would follow a violation of the oath he had sworn in the presence of his court; so, summoning an executioner, he immediately gave the fatal order; and John was forthwith beheaded in the dungeon. The headsman returned, carrying a dish in which lay the ghastly trophy of the corrupt queen's vengeance. The bloody gift was delivered to Salome, who carried it with inhuman triumph to her mother. Some of John's disciples came, secured the corpse, laid it in a tomb; and bore the tidings of his ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... brothers of his doom, and the second brother returned in his stead to the judge, thanked him for having given him permission to perform a duty required by filial piety, and said he was then ready to die. He knelt with bowed head, and the headsman brought the knife down across the back of his neck, but the knife was nicked and the neck was left unscathed. A second knife, and a third of finer steel, were brought and tried by headsmen who were accustomed to sever heads clean off at one stroke. Having spoiled their best blades without ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... "think of what you're doing to this great capital, of which we are all so justly proud. The Tower has become a disused place, and its historic hill no more reverberates to the merry chopping of the headsman's axe. Temple Bar has gone, and long ago have vanished the heads that used to look wistfully down on the passing chairmen. The chairmen themselves have sped into eternity, and in their place circles the Hansom cab. No more ...
— Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890. • Various
... me a wry grin. "Certainly. The hands of the felon were amputated at the wrist. Usually with a headsman's ...
— Nor Iron Bars a Cage.... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... guillotine, laid a bet with M. de Miranges that his own blood would flow bluer than that of any other head cut off that day in France. Citizen Samson heard the bet made, and when De Mirepoix's head fell into the basket, the headsman lifted it up for M. de Miranges ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... cell door opened; soft the headsman came, Within his hand a mighty axe a-gleam, (A gaunt and hairy man with wolfish eyes,) . . . And as he lay, the sleeper dreamed ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... principles underlying it a reasonless and rascally feud between rich and poor; in which one is offered a choice (if one have the means to take it) between American plutocracy and European militocracy, with an imminent chance of renouncing either for a stultocratic republic with a headsman in the presidential chair and ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... with honey of tenderer words than tears To feed men's hopes and fortify men's fears, And strong to silence with benignant breath The lips that doom to death, 190 And swift with speech like fire in fiery lands To melt the steel's edge in the headsman's hands. ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Maffio Petrucci, } Jeppo Vitellozzo, } Gentlemen of the Duke's Household Taddeo Bardi, } Guido Ferranti, a Young Man Ascanio Cristofano, his Friend Count Moranzone, an Old Man Bernardo Cavalcanti, Lord Justice of Padua Hugo, the Headsman Lucy, a Tire woman ...
— The Duchess of Padua • Oscar Wilde
... a most dutiful daughter-in-law, and with the baby long kept the headsman's ax from descending. But even their restraining power had its limitations. The irk of that "godless" office was being more and more poorly met by Dave. Five times during the fourth year he took ungranted periods of relaxation. The last time the usual draft was not paid. He unwisely ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... hold of the twentieth man and make him even mildly uncomfortable, so long the whole proceeding must be a humiliating one for all concerned. And the proof of how poignantly men have always felt this lies in the fact that the headsman and the hangman, the jailors and the torturers, were always regarded not merely with fear but with contempt; while all kinds of careless smiters, bankrupt knights and swashbucklers and outlaws, were regarded with indulgence or even admiration. To kill a man lawlessly was ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... the forbidden city on the Tagus, succeeded in obtaining through bribery a copy of one of the secret charts. The Spanish authorities scarcely could have been aware that he had learned a secret of such immense importance, or his silence would have been insured by the headsman. As it was, he was thrown into prison for illegal trading, where he was held for heavy ransom. But he managed to get word to Amsterdam of the priceless information which had come into his possession, whereupon the merchants of that city promptly ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... custody," answered Villefort; "and rely upon it, if the letter is found, he will not be likely to be trusted abroad again, unless he goes forth under the especial protection of the headsman." ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... by no means inviting of confidences such as his visitor was about to tender him. Rather he seemed fully armed for the defence, especially in the matter of the heavy gold pince-nez, which he held threateningly, after the manner of the headsman of old towards the victim on whom he was about ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... headsman came to Vagn. Now, as he had a dislike to this brave viking, Thorkel rushed at him, holding his sword in both hands. But Vagn threw himself suddenly at Thorkel's feet, whereupon the headsman tripped over him. In a moment Vagn was on his feet, Thorkel's sword in his hand, ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... know me? dost know me? was all the maiden said, As she streamed her golden tresses through the half-unkneaden bread, While the sunset light came sheening athwart the oaken floor, And the Headsman chanted his roundelay at ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., Issue 31, October 29, 1870 • Various
... interceded for them with all his might, even telling the king that such an execution would tarnish his honor, and that reprisals would be made on his own garrisons; and all the nobles joined in entreating pardon for the citizens, but still without effect; and the headsman had been actually sent for, when Queen Philippa, her eyes streaming with tears, threw herself on her knees amongst the captives, and said, "Ah, gentle sir, since I have crossed the sea with much danger to see you, I have never asked you one favor; now I beg as a boon to myself, ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... threatening doom; it cried aloud, and gnashed upon him. All anguish that shakes human souls was gathered there; supplications the most tender, the wrath of kings, the love in a girl's heart pleading with the headsman; then, and after all these, the deeply searching glance a man turns on his fellows as he mounts the last step of the scaffold. Life so dilated in this fragment of life that Don Juan shrank back; he walked up ...
— The Elixir of Life • Honore de Balzac
... way people do to the headsman. Why, when he found I was coming up from Domremy to volunteer, he asked me to let him come along in my protection, and see the crowds and the excitement. Well, we arrived and saw the torches filing out at the Castle, and ran there, and the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... tell it, when into the courtyard of the Castle of Edinburgh they brought the two noble young men forth to die. The sun had long risen, but the first flush of broad morning sunshine still lingered upon the low platform on which stood the block, and beside it the headsman sullenly waiting ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... killing Taj al-Muluk and would rather have put him in prison, till he should look into the truth of his words; but his Wazir said to him, "O King of the Age, it is my opinion that thou make haste to slay this gallows bird who dares debauch the daughters of Kings." So the King cried to the headsman, "Strike off his head; for he is a traitor." Accordingly, the herdsman took him and bound him fast and raised his hand to the Emirs, signing to consult them, a first and a second signal, thinking thereby to gain time in this matter;[FN52] but the King cried in anger to him, "How long wilt ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... More, for instance, on the scaffold, and Anne Boleyn, in the Tower, when, grasping her neck, she remarked, that it "was too slender to trouble the headsman much." During one part of the French Revolution, it became a fashion to leave some "mot" as a legacy; and the quantity of facetious last words spoken during that period would form a melancholy jest-book of a ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... women, and if you call from the window, I can shoot you dead before your voice can reach the street. Perhaps, though, you do not think of saving yourself, but of ensnaring me. Bah! as if the sight of the headsman would stop me now. Besides, I am prepared for flight. Have you looked at this house? It is not like other houses; it is double, and the room in which we stand has other foundations and walls from this one behind me which I guard with my pistol. Let ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... He was a tall, strong, handsome man, and his fate, villain as he was, excited much sympathy all over Germany. The ladies especially were loud in their regret that nothing could be done to save a hero so good-looking, and of adventures so romantic, from the knife of the headsman. ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... would serve her save royal blood! My poor father says as sure as the lions and fleur-de-lis have come into a family, the headsman's axe has come ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... craziness of the scaffold a good pretext for leaning in friendly fashion on his gaoler's arm, he extended his hand to Sir William Kingston, saying, "Master Lieutenant, I pray you see me safe up; for my coming down let me shift for myself." Even to the headsman he gave a gentle pleasantry and a smile from the block itself, as he put aside his beard so that the keen blade should not touch it. "Wait, my good friend, till I have removed my beard," he said, turning his eyes upwards to the official, "for it has ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... men beheaded in as many minutes. Employing a chair-coolie as a lay figure, John manages to give a satisfactory description of the modus operandi of a decapitation, and you let it go at that. A stalwart native is then introduced as the official headsman, and this functionary promptly tries to sell the heavy-bladed sword with which he says he struck off five heads earlier in the week. Probably three hundred malefactors are annually put to death on this spot, and it is said that the public executioner has been known to sell ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... predestined course of events. She is never placed, as the real tragic hero must be, before an alternative where the decision is big with fate. When the end comes there is nothing to do but let her renounce all earthly passion and face the headsman as a purified saint. So far as she is concerned, there is no action at all, but only the ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... is a petition which, in its width, fits the close of the prayer better than does the translation of the Revised Version. There seems an echo of the words in Paul's noble confidence while the headsman's axe was so near, 'The Lord will deliver me from every evil work.' Entire exemption from evil of every sort, whether sin or sorrow, is the true end of our prayers, as it is the crown of God's purpose. Nothing less can satisfy our yearnings; nothing ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... walking before, In their hands a great book open; Then there follows a soldier troop, With their drawn sabres flashing bright. At his right, the headsman goes, Holds in his hand the keen-edged sword; At his left goes his sister dear, And she weeps as the torrent pours, And she sobs ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... gives way to an enchanted hail in which are seen the most famous courtesans of ancient history—Phryne, Lais, Aspasia, Cleopatra, and Helen of Troy. The apparition of Marguerite appears to Faust, a red line encircling her neck, like the mark of a headsman's axe. We reach the end. The distraught maiden has slain her child, and now lies in prison upon her pallet of straw, awaiting death. Faust enters and tries to persuade her to fly with him. Her poor mind ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... but a step to the Chapel, and seeing that neither block nor headsman was in waiting he shrugged his shoulders ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... sandstone (like that which overlies coal) and the Rovuma in the distance. Didi is the name of a village whose headsman, Chombokea, is said to be a doctor; all the headmen pretend or are really doctors; however one, Fundindomba, came after me for medicine ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... who so scandalously abandoned him to the headsman, owes the existence of the party that still upholds his conduct to the dignified manner in which he faced death, a death at which the whole world "assisted," or might have done so. Catiline, we believe, has found no formal defender, but the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Master Walter; it shall be as I have said.—Call the headsman. They of Calais have made so many of my men to die, that they ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... the Gladiolus Cruentus. He announced his presence by that gentle Rumboldian cough which so many have tried (unsuccessfully) to imitate—short, painstaking yet withal so characteristic of the man. The arrival of the worldrenowned headsman was greeted by a roar of acclamation from the huge concourse, the viceregal ladies waving their handkerchiefs in their excitement while the even more excitable foreign delegates cheered vociferously in a medley of cries, hoch, banzai, eljen, zivio, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... preservation. The thing he went to do in London was fraught with such peril that he foresaw but the slenderest chance of escaping with his life. Therefore, he had argued, why console her now with news that he lived, when in a few days the headsman might prove that his end had been but postponed? To do so might be to give her cause to mourn him twice. Again he was haunted by the thought that, in spite of all, it may have been pity that had so grievously moved her at their last meeting. Better, then, to wait; better for both their ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... headsmen were as captains of companies. Or, being armed with their long keen whaling spears, they were as a picked trio of lancers; even as the harpooneers were flingers of javelins. And since in this famous fishery, each mate or headsman, like a Gothic Knight of old, is always accompanied by his boat-steerer or harpooneer, who in certain conjunctures provides him with a fresh lance, when the former one has been badly twisted, or elbowed in the assault; and moreover, as there generally subsists ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... ghastliness was heightened by the lather, which lather, again, was intensified in its hue by the contrasting sootiness of the negro's body. Altogether the scene was somewhat peculiar, at least to Captain Delano, nor, as he saw the two thus postured, could he resist the vagary, that in the black he saw a headsman, and in the white a man at the block. But this was one of those antic conceits, appearing and vanishing in a breath, from which, perhaps, the best regulated ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... gates and the opposing fighters threaten to dash Danton's every hope of saving by reprieve his "dear one of treasured memory." Indeed, as we have seen, but for frenzied Pierre's maniacal slaughter of the headsman, the fatal blow would now be falling! Neither Danton nor his men, of course, know that. Theirs to struggle on, to confront and conquer fortune, never to despair! Within those iron souls is ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... painfully pressed upon it. Those words had told her that Pollux was a doomed man; that apostasy on her part could not have saved his life; that had he not fallen by the Syrian's dagger, he would have been but reserved for the headsman's axe. And had Pollux perished thus, there would have been none of that gleam of hope which, at least in Zarah's eyes, now rested upon ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... unfortunate mistress as the lowest of the low. For my part, I confess that she excited my interest, that false Madame Jenkins, who weeps in every corner, implores her husband as if he were the headsman, and is in danger of being sent about her business when all society believes her to be married, respectable, established for life. The others did nothing but laugh, especially the women. Dame! it is amusing when one is in service to see ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... the ruling dynasty, domestic as well as foreign, which may be resident in the towns and cities. So the Jews of Barbary have their chiefs, and the slaves theirs. In Tunis a number of free coloured people, called Waraghleeah, emigrants from the Algerian oasis of Warklah, have also their chief or headsman. This chief has rather large and even discretionary powers, and can order his subjects to be imprisoned by the officers of the sovereign Government of the country. But, of course, this imperium in imperio is subject to the supervision of the supreme Government. The object ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... at his gentle craft all day - "No doubt you mean his Cal-craft," you amusingly will say - But, no—he didn't operate with common bits of string, He was a Public Headsman, which ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... prison and to death. Says Lamartine sublimely, "Beneath the dungeons of the Conciergerie, Madame Roland remembered that night with satisfaction. If Robespierre recalled it in his power, this memory must have fallen colder upon his heart than the ax of the headsman." ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... place we came to the pretty town of Shachiaokai, on some undulating high ground well sheltered with trees. Justice had lately been here with her headsman and brought death to a gang of malefactors. Their heads, swinging in wooden cages, hung from the tower near the gateway. They could be seen by all persons passing along the road, and, with due consideration ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... through, I have had the best of the comparison. Well, well, contagion is as often mental as physical; and I do not think my readers, who have all been under his lash, will blame me very much for giving the headsman a ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the brothers were at last able to perceive something. It was now half-past three, and the guillotine was nearly ready. The little stir which one vaguely espied yonder under the trees, was that of the headsman's assistants fixing the knife in position. A lantern slowly came and went, and five or six shadows danced over the ground. But nothing else could be distinguished, the square was like a large black pit, around which ever broke the waves of the noisy crowd which one ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... locks had ever been sacred to them as their honor. When the Roman Empire was invaded by the Goths and Vandals, a Helwyse—so runs the tale—was taken prisoner and brought before the Roman General. The latter summoned a barber and a headsman, and informed the captive that he might choose between forfeiting his head, and that which grew upon it. As to the precise words in which the Northern warrior couched his reply, historians vary; but they are agreed on the important ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... scene without whose eternal substance showed through the shadowy illusion of passing hansoms and omnibuses, like the sole fact of the street, the king's voice rising above the noises in tender caution to a heedless witness, "Have a care of the axe; have a care," and then gravely to the headsman: "When I stretch out my hands so, then—" The drums were ordered beaten, so that we could not hear more; and we went out, and crossed among the cabs and 'busses to the horse-guards sitting shrunken on their ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... the guard to Sigurd, laughingly. "This villain likes not your news, 'tis clear. You have done your task, the headsman shall ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... inclined. Here I seemed to live in the midst of these wonderful intrigues of long ago. Documents passed through my hands whose very possession at one period meant capital danger, bringing up even now visions of block, axe, and masked headsman. It seemed strange to me that so sinister a man as Lord Rantremly, who, I had heard, cared for nothing but drink and gambling, should have desired to promote this historical research, and, indeed, ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... and ancient stone houses are symbols of the inflexible state of society to which they belong. The dwellers are anchored to that condition. There is no "Westward ho" for them. Like father, like son. The hod-carrier's son carries hods. Even the headsman's office is hereditary. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... his jailer not to let him budge from his cage except to be tortured (gehenne) and the duke wrote a piteous letter, praying for clemency and signing himself le pauvre Jacques. In vain: him, too, the headsman's axe sent to his account ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... Alick completely recovered from the injury. But in the meantime, the bubble had burst, Sherrifmuir had been fought, Mar's army had been totally routed, the prisons in England and Scotland had been filled with his misguided followers, and the headsman and the hangman were beginning their ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... morn of his doom has succeeded the night, And the damp dews of death gather fast on his brow. He hears in the distance a faint muffled drum, And the low sullen boom of the death-tolling bell; The block is prepared, and the headsman is come, And the victim, bareheaded, walks ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... peril hanging over his guilty head— Felt that he could never hide him from the vengeance of the dead— Saw the heartless headsman smiling, and the axe, and heard the crowd Shouting curses on the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various |
