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More "Executioner" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shame. This places the boundary between, and 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
... 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
... before him if he refused, he replied, "My life is not of value to me, provided I gain Christ." He remained firm. He was ordered to be put to the torture. He was still unshaken. Then he was delivered over to the executioner. "I am treated," he said, "more mildly than ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... proposed trust. I know not why, but the news gives me little concern. I heard it as a party indifferent. I remember hearing that Mandrin[146] testified some horror when he found himself bound alive on the wheel, and saw an executioner approach with a bar of iron to break his limbs. After the second and third blow he fell a-laughing, and being asked the reason by his confessor, said he laughed at his own folly which had anticipated ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... renewed every seven years People of a provocative prosperity Pessimy is invulnerable Portrait of himself by the artist Put into her woman's harness of the bit and the blinkers Repeatedly, in contempt of the disgust of iteration Satirist is an executioner by profession Satirist too devotedly loves his lash to be a persuasive teacher Self-deceiver may be a persuasive deceiver of another Semblance of a tombstone lady beside her lord Share of foulness to them that are for scouring the chamber She was not his match—To speak would be to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... prisoner. The only anxiety which he expressed was that men of his own priestly caste might be in attendance to take charge of his corpse. He again desired to be remembered to his friends in the Council, mounted the scaffold with firmness, and gave the signal to the executioner. The moment that the drop fell, a howl of sorrow and despair rose from the innumerable spectators. Hundreds turned away their faces from the polluting sight, fled with loud wailings towards the Hoogley, and plunged into its holy waters, as if to purify themselves ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... job. There would be reactions from this day's business. The council of headmen would be called. Johnny would be discussed. He had committed an act of diplomatic indiscretion. He might be asked to leave these shores; and then again an executioner might be appointed for him, and a walrus lance thrust ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell
... to the man who had been the instrument of bringing disgrace upon the family? Spies, detectives, police officers, may be useful citizens, but they are rarely pleasant company for other people. We fee the executioner, but we do not touch his bloody hand. We might feel a certain tragic admiration for Brutus condemning his sons to death, but we would scarcely invite Brutus to dinner after the event. It would harrow our ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... "The Mang is a village menial in the Maratha villages, making all leather ropes, thongs and whips, which are used by the cultivators; he frequently acts as watchman; he is by profession a thief and executioner; he readily hires himself as an assassin, and when he commits a robbery he also frequently murders." In his menial capacity he receives presents at seed-time and harvest, and it is said that the Kunbi will ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... street; all his features beam with kindness and serenity. A sword, or rather a long yataghan, is slung in his girdle; all the Arabs salute him with respect, and press forward to kiss his hand. This man is a chaouch or executioner—an office considered so honourable in this country, that the person invested with it is regarded as a special favourite of Heaven, intrusted with the care of facilitating the path of the true believer from this lower world to the seventh heaven of Mohammed.—A Residence ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various
... Presently the executioner pulled the friar roughly on one side, and in a moment felled the culprit with a heavy mallet, and falling on him, cut his ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... passion-charged strains of 'Armide.' The overture paints the gradual awakening of a tempest, and when the storm is at its height the curtain rises upon the temple of Diana at Tauris, where Iphigenia, snatched by the goddess from the knife of the executioner at Aulis, has been placed as high priestess. The priestesses in chorus beseech the gods to be propitious, and when the fury of the storm is allayed, Iphigenia recounts her dream of Agamemnon's death, and laments the woes of her house. She calls upon Diana to put ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... stretched upon the frame on his back, with his 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 ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... same village. We went in that direction, to ascertain what could be happening. It was a woman who had not attended mass that day, whom they were taking to the church to lash. She was led along by the executioner. He had a heavy cat-o'-nine-tails on his shoulder, which hung down to the middle of his back. The father, more black than white, went behind, and a crowd of Indians followed, especially of Indian women. Doubtless they ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... poor boy in particular, with a courage, a resignation, and a meekness, so distinguished and beyond his years as to attract the admiration and the liveliest sympathy of the public universally. If strangers could feel in that way, if the mere hardened executioner could be melted at the final scene,—it may be judged to what a fierce and terrific height would ascend the affliction of a doating mother, constitutionally too fervid in her affections. I have heard an official person declare, that the spectacle of her desolation and frantic anguish was the ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... his cravat. This he did slowly and solemnly, as though preparing to bare his neck for the axe of the executioner. ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... first meeting and of the love-making in Dame Martha's garden, and the earlier music returns, as it does in Gounod's score, and as it was bound to do. At the end she draws back in horror from Faust, after uttering a prayer above the music of the celestial choir, just as the executioner appears. Mefistofele pronounces her damned, but voices from on high ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... 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 ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... Bowles's "character" I will not do him the injustice to judge from the edition of Pope, if he prepared it heedlessly; nor the justice, should it be otherwise, because I would neither become a literary executioner nor a personal one. Mr. Bowles the individual, and Mr. Bowles the editor, appear the two most ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... well as any of us other gentlemen that we have never considered M. de Bouteville dishonored for having suffered death on the Place de Greve. That which does in truth dishonor a man is to avoid meeting his enemy—not to avoid meeting his executioner!" ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... drunkenness, laziness, swearing, quarrelling, nor lying, to go unpunished. The labourers in Suffolk, if they found one of their number guilty, would hold a court-martial among themselves, lay the culprit down on his face, and an executioner would administer several hard blows with a shoe studded with hob-nails. This was called "ten-pounding," and must have been very effectual in checking any of ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... state—too drunk to attend to business, consequently his deputy, a renegade Mnyamwezi, gave ear to the business. With most of the Wagogo chiefs lives a Mnyamwezi, as their right-hand man, prime minister, counsellor, executioner, ready man at all things save the general good; a sort of harlequin Unyamwezi, who is such an intriguing, restless, unsatisfied person, that as soon as one hears that this kind of man forms one of and the chief of a Mgogo sultan's council, one feels very much tempted ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... contain stamens and pistil, it follows they must often effect 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 ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... vice chancellor to the Empress Anna, and had also brought about the downfall of Biron the Regent. Now his turn had come. He was taken to the place of execution with the rest; his gray head was laid upon the block, his collar unbuttoned and gown drawn back by the executioner—when a reprieve was announced. Her Gracious Majesty was going to permit him to go to Siberia. He arose, bowed, said: "I pray you give me back my wig," calmly put it on the head he had not lost, buttoned his shirt, replaced his gown, and started to join his company ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... 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, ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... evade the consequence of our past actions. And this is the karmic evil arising out of sin committed in a former life. But, O Brahmana, I am always assiduous in eradicating the evil. The Deity takes away life, the executioner acts only as a secondary agent. And we, O good Brahmana, are only such agents in regard to our karma. Those animals that are slain by me and whose meat I sell, also acquire karma, because (with their meat), gods and guests and servants are regaled with dainty food and the manes ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... owne altar which the gods adore, Kindle the souls of gnats and wasps before? Who would delight in his chast eyes to see Dormise to strike at lights of poesie? Faction and envy now are downright rage. Once a five-knotted whip there was, the stage: The beadle and the executioner, To whip small errors, and the great ones tear; Now, as er'e Nimrod the first king, he writes: That's strongest, th' ablest deepest bites. The muses weeping fly their hill, to see Their noblest sons of peace in mutinie. Could there nought else this civil war compleat, But poets ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... loathsome and inexcusable instance in point is the "Vision of Annihilation" depicted by the vermicular, infested imagination of the great Teutonic phantasist while yet writhing under the sanguinary fumes of some horrid attack of nightmare. Stepping across the earth, which is but a broad executioner's block for pale, stooping humanity, he enters the larva world of blotted out men. The rotten chain of beings reaches down into this slaughter field of souls. Here the dead are pictured as eternally horripilating at death! "As annihilation, the white shapelessness ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... inhabitants of the Philippines, when in the midst of so many calamities they did not know whether they would see sprout the seed they were planting, whether their field was going to be their grave or their crop would go to feed their executioner? What is there strange in it, when we see the pious but impotent friars of that time trying to free their poor parishioners from the tyranny of the encomenderos by advising them to stop work in the mines, to abandon their commerce, ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal
... estimable man. He afterward crossed over the Bruenig by stealth to visit his family, and was then betrayed, condemned and beheaded. In accordance with the barbarous custom of the age, his widow was obliged to pay the executioner, who went himself to get his wages. At the earnest request of those, who had remained faithful, part of their privileges were gradually restored, first to the inhabitants of the Haslithal and then to the people of the monastery. ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... soul feasting on this happy thought, I send this revelation to mankind and yield my body to the executioner to be ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... inscriptions to this effect, 'Erodiana Regina,' 'Omnia praetereunt,' &c. A dirty one-eyed fellow keeps the place. In my presence he swept the frescoes over with a scratchy broom, flaying their upper surface in profound unconsciousness of mischief. The armour of the executioner has had its steel colours almost rubbed off by this infernal process. Damp and cobwebs ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... she, "the spirit in which your sister meets me because I object to her compromising herself with this wretched baron. She accuses me of persecution, and talks as though I were an executioner." ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... more, and he still continued obstinate; they then added 100 more, which made 300 lb. weight, yet he would not speak; 50 lb. more was added, when he was nearly dead, having all the agonies of death upon him; then the executioner, who weighed about 16 or 17 stone, laid down upon the board which was over him, and, adding to the weight, killed him in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 371, May 23, 1829 • Various
... whose wisdom and moderation had just been praised by the French minister, ceased not to declare that the possession of Rome was indispensable.) On the other hand, there were loud murmurs which protested against the iniquitous equality which was sought to be established between the victim and his executioner. M. Rouher perceived that the majority which the Imperial government had commanded for sixteen years, was on the point of slipping from him; so, turning to Jules Favre, he declared "that he was ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... 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
... at the nunnery of the Carmelites received from the Luxembourg prison a package containing a generous lock of her husband's hair, she knew it had been purchased from the executioner. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... hands, however, and bowed again, and each was the other's 'servant;' and being seated, they talked de generalibus; for the good parson would not come like an executioner and take his prisoner by the throat, but altogether in the spirit of the shepherd, content to walk a long way about, and wait till he came up with the truant, and entreating him kindly, not dragging or beating him back to the flock, but leading ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... answered. "Who are they? and who is to be his executioner? Surely, if he is all that you say there are laws under whose ban he must have come. It is not safe to talk like this of life and death here. All those things are arranged nowadays ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... pine-wood, but she seemed to suffer no pain. And fearing lest, amazed at this miracle, all the people should be converted, Olibrius commanded that the blessed Margaret should be beheaded. She spoke unto the executioner and said: "Brother, take your axe and strike me." With one blow he struck off her head. Her soul took flight to heaven in the form of ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... about in the allees. What a residence—what a life—what a people!" Dumouriez could but lament with the royal family, and exhort them to be patient. But the endurance of the victims is exhausted sooner than the cruelty of the executioner. How could it be expected that a courageous and proud princess, who had been constantly surrounded by the adulation of the court, could love the Revolution that was the instrument of her humiliation and her torture? or see in this ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... amuse yourself as you please, for you are young, and your host may be the Archangel Michael himself, or the holy Saint Mark, and the house to which you are bidden may be a paradise full of other angels! But I would as soon sit down before the grating and look at the hooded brother, while the executioner slipped the noose over my head to strangle me, as to go to any place on a bidding delivered by a fellow with such a jail-bird's head. It is as round as a bullet and as yellow as cheese. He has eyes like a turtle's and teeth like those ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... trowsers without again falling, and the effort made him groan with distress. He was in the act of trying in vain to stand on one foot, so as to get the other into the garment, when he fancied he heard the step of his executioner, returning doubtless to resume his torture. He dropped the rag, and darted out of the door, forgetting aches and stiffness and agony. All naked as he was, he fled like the wind, unseen, or at least ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... you will 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 seized on her property, and kept it until force deprived him of ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... charger the head of John the Baptist." The king was astounded; his amazement was followed by sorrow 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 ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... at first falls unconscious, but, regaining her senses, she clasps her children to her breast and begs life for their sake. But feeling that the petition is futile, she then recalls the memory of her earlier virtue, and, facing her fate, begs as a last favor that no base executioner shall lay his soiled hands on the wife of Sampiero, but that he himself shall execute the sentence. Vannina's behavior moves her husband, but does not touch his heart. "The pity and tenderness," says Buonaparte, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... application, and purity of morals; but the intimacy which he formed with some libertine young men during his stay at the Academy of Paris entirely changed him. He contracted an insatiable desire for play, and even his own father said to him, "You will die by the hands of the executioner." Being destitute of money, the young Count took up the trade of a pickpocket, which he carried on in the pit of the theatres, and by which he made considerable gains in silver-hilted swords and watches. At length, having lost a sum of five-and-twenty thousand crowns at the fair of Saint-Germain, ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... Riley Sinclair accepted the inevitable with a sigh. All his strong instincts cried out to find Sandersen and, having found him, to shoot him and flee. Yet he had a sense of fatality connected with Sandersen. Lowrie's own conscience had betrayed him, and his craven fear had been his executioner. Quade had been shot in a fair fight with not a soul near by. But, at the third time, Sinclair felt reasonably sure that his luck would fail him. The third time the world would be very apt to brand ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... came under the one category. More than once, as we drew near to Strasbourg, I heard the project of a mutiny discussed, day after day. Some one or other would denounce the "scelerat Regnier," and proclaim his readiness to be the executioner; but the closer we drew to head-quarters, the more hushed and subdued became these mutterings, till at last they ceased altogether; and a dark and forboding dread succeeded to all our ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... the history of Western Asia rose to a crisis. Pharaoh Necoh who had marched north to the Euphrates was defeated in a battle for empire by Nebuchadrezzar, son of the King of Babylon. From the turmoil of nations which filled the period Babylon emerged as that executioner of the Divine judgments on the world, whom Jeremiah since 627 or 625 had been describing generally as out of the North. His predictions were justified, and he was able to put a sharper edge on them. Henceforth in place of the enemy ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... exclamation on his lips, seemed somewhat startled when he saw the weird figures before him, for he, too, like the breeds and Indians, was not without a species of superstitious dread of the manikin and his strange attendant. The executioner glared ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... painted in fresco the Chapel of S. Niccolo, making therein a large Crucifix with four figures, so well wrought that it seems made only yesterday. In the arch he painted two stories of S. Nicholas—namely, his throwing the golden balls to the maidens, and his delivering two from death, while the executioner is seen apparelled and ready to cut off their heads, ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari
... of this country there was a very wise man, well versed in the law and in concocting drugs, for he was the public executioner and the chemist of the place. To him, therefore, went a deputation of the people to lay their grievances before him; and after the spokesman had finished what he had to say, the executioner looked very wise, and, after considering awhile, ...
— Tales from the Lands of Nuts and Grapes - Spanish and Portuguese Folklore • Charles Sellers and Others
... said the queen, pointing out the man who had insulted her. The executioner raised his gleaming axe just as Jacinta came to herself and opened her eyes. Then two shrieks pierced the air. One was a cry of joy, for in the glittering steel Jacinta saw herself, so charmingly pretty—and ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... been convicted of murder, and was about to be hanged—the Governor acting as the executioner. And suppose just as the doomed man was to suffer death, some one in the crowd should step forward and say, "I am willing to die in the place of that murderer. He has a family, and I have none." And suppose further ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... 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 to ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... Madonna di Loreto. To this chapel I will again return: it is covered with frescoes. Near it there is an open triangular piece of grass land on which a murderer was beheaded within the memory of persons still living. A wild old man, who looked like an executioner broken loose from the flagellation chapel on the Sacro Monte, but who was quite tame and kind to us when we came to know him, told Jones and myself this last summer that he remembered seeing the murderer brought here and beheaded, this being as close as might be to ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... of suffering. In truth, when we regard many galleries which contain nothing but scenes of bloodshed, scourging, and beheading, one might suppose that the old masters had painted for the collection of an executioner. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... means all that was to come. He harked back to that notion of a prisoner helping to make it easy for his executioner. "Easy plumb to the end," he pursued, his mind reviewing the acts of the morning. "Why, he tried to give me your newspaper. ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... will confess to you that when, having fired wide, they turned to go and the cheat was evident, twice before you pulled the bandage away I had lifted my gun. But I could not fire it, cavalier. To make me your executioner! Me, your wife—and while you thought so ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... nature shrinks, appear to have been sought for by Selwyn with an eagerness resembling enjoyment. This strange propensity was frequently laughed at by his friends. Alluding to the practice of criminals dropping a handkerchief as a signal for the executioner, says Walpole, "George never thinks, but a la tete tranchee. He came to town the other day to have a tooth drawn, and told the man that he would drop his handkerchief ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... the rock of the citadel—the dumb monitor which might remind them how their fatherland had been saved from the extremity of danger by the hands of the very man whom they were now consigning to the executioner (370). ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... seemed to be very striking, however, not the less so, that one of them provoked an unseasonable smile. It was the decapitation of John the Baptist; and this holy personage was represented as still on his knees, with his hands clasped in prayer, although the executioner was already depositing the head in a charger, and the blood was spouting from the headless trunk, directly, as it were, into the face ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... showed himself, a tall haggard figure, arrayed in a fantastic garment of black and grey, passmented with silver lace, all fell back with a sort of instinctive horror, and made wide way for him to approach the foot of the table. As this office was held by the common executioner, men shouldered each other backward to avoid even the touch of his garment, and some were seen to brush their own clothes, which had accidentally become subject to such contamination. A sound went through the Court, produced by each person drawing in their breath ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Maximus, who had usurped the provinces of Gaul, Spain, and Britain, and who meditated the conquest of Italy. At Aquileia the usurper was seized, after a succession of defeats, stripped of his imperial ornaments, and delivered to the executioner, and Theodosius reigned without a rival in the renovated empire, practicing the virtues of domestic life, rewarding eminent merit, and protecting the interests of the church. He restored the—authority of the laws, and ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... much less release him. The arrests were often made with such secrecy and rapidity that his nearest relations knew not what had become of him, but he was cut off from the outer world, for the rest of his life, as completely as if he had at once been handed over to the executioner.[15] ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... 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
... hand to Luigi, who grasped it eagerly, and, after a few incoherent words, Mansana took his leave in the same spirit of confident self-satisfaction in which he had come. The little lieutenant, who throughout this interview had felt as though he were in the presence of his executioner, was now seized with a bewildering sense of joy at his departure. He jumped about the room, and broke into a loud peal of laughter. Mansana, who was still upon the staircase, heard the laughter, and stopped ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... observed of pardoning one criminal on condition of his hanging the others. Our guides related to us that, a short time before our arrival on the coast of Cumana, a Zambo, known for the great ferocity of his manners, determined to screen himself from punishment by turning executioner. The preparations for the execution however, shook his resolution; he felt a horror of himself, and preferring death to the disgrace of thus saving his life, he called again for his irons which had been struck off. He did not long remain in ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... places during the few months immediately subsequent to the discovery of the plot; the strictest search, however, was made; rewards were offered for his apprehension; and at last he was taken with Hall, another jesuit, and his own servant, in the house of a Roman Catholic. The servant became his own executioner in the prison. The proclamation against Garnet and the other jesuits, is dated January 14, 1605-6; but he was not taken at the end of the month when the other conspirators were executed. He did not, however, long elude ...
— Guy Fawkes - or A Complete History Of The Gunpowder Treason, A.D. 1605 • Thomas Lathbury
... overflowing with jolly humour and comic scorn, a besom wielded by a laughing giant, is calculated to put the victims in better humour with their executioner than with themselves. Browning has had to endure more than most men at the hands of the critics, and he takes in this volume, not in this poem only, a full and a characteristically good-humoured revenge. The Epilogue follows up the pendant to Pacchiarotto. There is the same jolly humour, ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... to imbrue his hands in blood—no matter whose—seemed to find a savage pleasure in destroying life; and one of his favourite habits was to be himself the executioner of his victims. He was endowed with some brute courage, a quality altogether wanting to his associate, Antonio Bocardo; for the latter was both cowardly and cruel, though in general more inclined to robbery ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... fellow-man, nay, hope itself hath fled. I feel it would be folly to flatter myself; I shall not go hence, except to be thrown into still more horrible receptacles of sorrow; perhaps, bound, into the hands of the executioner. Well, well, the day after my death it will be all one as if I had yielded my spirit in a palace, and been conveyed to the tomb, accompanied with all the pageantry of ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... some trap. Deceitful by nature, he willingly had recourse to the vilest trickery; lying when occasion demanded, excelling in the adoption of all disguises and in every species of deception. Further, he was cruel, and had even acted as an executioner. Feofar-Khan possessed in him a lieutenant well capable of seconding his ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... captain. I'm only Peter Smith, a humble seaman, but since you left me in command of the ship last night I mean to keep the place, with all the responsibilities, duties and honors appertaining to it. Take your hands away from your belt. This is a lone coast, and I'm the law, the judge and the executioner. Now, you and the two men back away from the door, and as sure as there's a God in Heaven, if any one of you tries to draw a weapon I'll shoot him. You'll observe that I've two pistols and also a sword. A sailor engaged in a hazardous trade like ours, catching and selling slaves, usually ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Malebranche found an ardent follower in John Norris (1667-1711). Of Cartesianism towards the close of the 17th century the only remnants were an overgrown theory of vortices, which received its death-blow from Newton, and a dubious phraseology anent innate ideas, which found a witty executioner ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... to this reasonable request; the books dropped; and Doe, looking reproachfully at his executioner, set ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... 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
... de La Mole, who interests himself in Julien and endeavors to advance him socially. The Marquis has a daughter, Mathilde, a female counterpart of Stendhal's heroes; with exalted ideas of duty, and a profound reverence for Marguerite of Navarre, who dared to ask the executioner for the head of her lover, Boniface de La Mole, executed April 30th, 1574. Mathilde always assumed mourning on April 30th. "I know of nothing," she declared, "except condemnation to death, which distinguishes a man: it is the only thing which cannot be bought." Julien soon conceives it his ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... And while I did it my reason was all the time scoffing at my heart (for whose imperious behoof the wild, mad things I am about to record were done)—scoffing, as an Asiatic malefactor will sometimes scoff at the executioner whose pitiless and conquering saw is severing his bleeding body in twain. I arose and murmured ironically to Fenella Stanley as I wrapped the cross in a handkerchief and placed it in a hand-valise: 'Secrecy is the first thing ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... of his clay in a little stretched upon the grass that grew where psalm had chanted and the feet of holy men had passed. Kill him! The one thrust of fence I dare not neglect was as sure as the arrow of fate; I knew myself in my innermost his executioner. ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... once a day at midnight. Then all the 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 sacrifices and offerings, ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... insulting the "Jacobins," and kept back with no little difficulty by the royal troops from mutilating the corpses of women, bishops and princes. Monsignore Natale himself was hanged, and in his case the public executioner—"Masto Donato" as he was nick-named by the populace—gave vent to many pleasantries concerning the episcopal rank of his victim. Blindfolded and with the cord of infamy depending from his neck, the Bishop was led up to the fatal ladder amid ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... word; I've allus said I'd be my own executioner, (I did not correct her mistake), and I know that's the way. You see, some day I'll go out like a candle, for all my mother's folks died that way, so I want to be ready. The other side of the house live longer, more pity for it too. They've handed ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... old men, One for every hundred per cent. of old gain. Every one of the Twelve, with Twelve times my old power of suffering and agony. From that hour until Twelve at night, I, Twelve old men in anguish and fearful foreboding, wait for the coming of the executioner. At Twelve at night, I, Twelve old men turned off, swing invisible outside Lancaster Castle, with Twelve ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... one of the pieces of the shell fled with such force against the foot of the gibbet, that it immediately brought it down. Our two friends no sooner felt terra firma than they looked about for the cause; and finding their guards, executioner, and all, had taken it in their heads to die first, they directly extricated each other from their disgraceful cords, and then ran down to the sea-shore, seized a Spanish boat with two men in it, and made them row ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... 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 to deal ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... the same time regained the mastery. In bending over him in his rage, had Negoro slightly loosened the bands that till then had rendered all movement impossible? It was probable, for Dick Sand thought that his members had more play than before the arrival of his executioner. The young novice, feeling solaced, said to himself that perhaps it would be possible to get his arms free without too much effort. Guarded as he was, in a prison firmly shut, that would doubtless be only a torture—only a suffering ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... cried. "Death the judge, the gaoler, the executioner! He has done justice on them for me, and they will not break loose from the house he has made for them to lie in and to sleep in for ever. And now, friend Death, I am master in their stead, and you must give me time to enjoy the mastership before you serve ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... answer That though it is true I wished not, Woe is me! the common scaffold Should his punishment make public, I as little wished his hardened Heart should know my love and pity Since it did not fear my anger: Ah! believe me, Claudius, 'Twixt the chastisement a father And an executioner gives, A great difference must be granted: One hand honours what it striketh, One disgraces, blights, and blackens. Soon my rigour ceased, for truly, In a father's heart it lasteth Seldom long: but then ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... the superior to whom he owed canonical obedience. The sentence in the case of a woman was, that she be burned to death, and in the case of a man, that he be drawn to the place of execution and there hanged by the neck until he be dead.[8] To mitigate the sufferings of felons at the stake, the executioner usually fastened one end of a cord to the stake, and bringing this cord around the neck of the woman, pulled it tightly the moment the torch was applied, and continued the strain until life was extinct, which, unless the cord was sooner burnt asunder, generally happened ...
— The Trial and Execution, for Petit Treason, of Mark and Phillis, Slaves of Capt. John Codman • Abner Cheney Goodell, Jr.
... of that sort eventually drove me to it. I passed my viva-voce examination at the hands of the young lady at the desk, paid my fees, got my testamur, and was shown into the torture-chamber, where the head executioner was busy adjusting ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... 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
... when he stabbed his adversary. We can scarcely hope just yet to attain to the magnificent calm which enabled Marie Antoinette to say, "I'm sorry. I did not do it on purpose," when she stepped on the foot of her executioner as they stood together on the scaffold, or Lord Chesterfield, gentleman to the very end, to say, "Give Dayrolles a chair" when his physician came into the room in which he lay dying. But we do want something that will enable us to live together in the world with a minimum degree ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... gloom, and your soul—that which enjoys, aspires, competes—will be drugged as deep as if you had quaffed the cup of oblivion. Luther Dallas was counted one of the most experienced axe-men in the northern camps. He could fell a tree with the swift surety of an executioner, and in revenge for his many arborai murders the woodland had taken captive his mind, captured and chained it as Prospero did Ariel. The resounding footsteps of Progress driven on so mercilessly in this mad age could not reach his fastness. It did not concern him that men were thinking, investigating, ...
— A Michigan Man - 1891 • Elia W. Peattie
... down," said Marie 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 was ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... whole, very well pleased with the arrangement. Particularly pleased was I with Piragoff's transparent plan for disposing of me. For, now that it really came to action, I found myself shying somewhat at the office of executioner; though I meant to do my duty all the same. But the fact that this man was already arranging coolly to murder me made my task less unpalatable. The British sporting instinct ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... the fruitless excursion which I had 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 I had to engage in the quarrel of that blood, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... request—like ordering a condemned man to go out and search for his executioner; but Mark ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... to hold their deliberations; what he overheard was communicated to the generals; and ten students were in consequence denounced, arrested, and severely flogged (by an arbitrary order of the grand duke,) to make them divulge their associates. Though writhing under the whip of the executioner, not a word escaped their lips to inculpate their friends, or impart a knowledge of the schemes that had so long engrossed their thoughts. The severity of the punishment may be conceived by the fact, that one ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 489, Saturday, May 14, 1831 • Various
... gentlemen, that a cuatrero is a stealer of cattle, the ansia is the question or torture. Roznos—saving your presence—are asses, and the first desconcierto is the first turn of the cord which is given by the executioner when we are on the rack. But we do more than burn oil to the Virgin. There is not one of us who does not recite his rosary carefully, dividing it into portions for each day of the week. Many will not steal at all on a Friday, and on Saturdays we ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... be; God would not allow it! Spurling himself had said that he had not sunk so low as that. Yet, in case it might be so, he would keep his word and help him to escape—from the Mounted Police, but not from himself. He would be the executioner if there must be one. The law should not rob him of his revenge. He would save Spurling's life in case he might need to ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... his own executioner, and the victim of a silly weakness that, I should think, your state of society was yet too young and simple to encourage. The idle vanity of making an appearance, a vanity, by the way, that seldom besets gentlemen, or the class to which it may be ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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 ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... me by and by in a charger the head of John the Baptist. 26. And the king was exceeding sorry; yet for his oath's sake, and for their sakes which sat with him, he would not reject her. 27. And immediately the king sent an executioner, and commanded his head to be brought: and he went and beheaded him in the prison, 28. And brought his head in a charger, and gave it to the damsel: and the damsel gave it to her ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... examined before the first parliament of King Charles II. respecting the matter. Should any of your correspondents be able to substantiate this, or produce more conclusive evidence in determining who the executioner was, I shall be extremely obliged. ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 47, Saturday, September 21, 1850 • Various
... of little ANNIE PROTHEROE. She kept a small post-office in the neighbourhood of BOW; She loved a skilled mechanic, who was famous in his day— A gentle executioner whose name was ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... afternoon when, on arrival at our destination, we took rooms at the Hotel du Midi on the opposite side of the Tarn to the prosperous pleasant little French town, once a headquarter of the Inquisition, and even now containing in its Museum the executioner's axe and many instruments of torture. After a wash and a meal, for we were both very hungry, we set out to find Monsieur Charles Rabel, whose address was Rue ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... his fidelity, could he mean otherwise than well with us, when, thrown by shipwreck upon the coast of Wales, we would have been doomed to instant death, had the Cymri recognized in me the Constable of Chester, and in thee his trusty esquire, the executioner of his commands against the Welsh ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... but he knew his family and connexions, how many of his ancestors had fallen by the sword of the English, how many in domestic brawl, and how many by the hand of the executioner for march-treason. Their castles he was acquainted with from turret to foundation-stone; and as for the miscellaneous antiquities scattered about the country, he knew every one of them, from a cromlech to ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... two places in which criminals, or prisoners, were secretly executed; they were strangled, and without seeing their executioner, for a cord was passed through an opening, which he twisted till the victim was dead. This was the mode pursued with the prisoners of the Inquisitors; those of the Council were often placed in a cell to which there was a thickly grated ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... it! The bridegroom turned pale, and, after being put to the torture, confessed many murders, and was, with his band, executed with the cruelty then practised; that is, their entrails were cut out by the executioner, the bodies severed into pieces, and hung up to rot on ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... which he bore to virtue and to truth. Here the youthful virgin, robed in innocence and sanctity, clothed with the visible protection of God, is seen at one time to yield up her frame, unfit, as yet, for torments, to the power of the executioner; while her spirit, ascending {009} like the smoke of incense, passed from earth to heaven. At another time we behold her conducted, as it were, into the wilderness by the Spirit; where, having left the house of her father, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... his subordinates to take him by the elbows and signed to the priest with his hand. The priest came forward, holding the crucifix, and took his place close to the prisoner. For a final touch of the grotesque the executioner produced and put on a tall ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... took off his cravat. This he did slowly and solemnly, as though preparing to bare his neck for the axe of the executioner. ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... 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 ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... and his clothes were stripped from him, and he was held in position while the executioner rained blow after blow upon him to revenge the ...
— The Boy Nihilist - or, Young America in Russia • Allan Arnold
... sufferings of the unfortunate. "If Ganem alone be guilty," thought he to himself, "why should the mother and the daughter, who are innocent, be punished? Ah! cruel Haroon al Rusheed! what a mortification do you put upon me, in making me the executioner of your vengeance, obliging me to persecute persons who have ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... was led to the scaffold, where an executioner with a block and a tremendous axe was always ready in case he should ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray
... lapse of a few moments, his EYES WERE DUG OUT, AND THEIR SOCKETS FILLED WITH HOT EMBERS!! All this time the prisoner instead of bewailing his fate, seemed to surpass his tormentors in expressions of joy. At length when exhausted with loss of blood and unable to stand, his executioner closed the tragic scene by beating out his brains with a tomahawk."—Indian Wars, ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... Aladdin in chains. They met him riding home, bound him, and forced him to go with them on foot. The people, however, who loved him, followed, armed, to see that he came to no harm. He was carried before the Sultan, who ordered the executioner to cut off his head. The executioner made Aladdin kneel down, bandaged his eyes, and raised his scimitar to strike. At that instant the Vizier, who saw that the crowd had forced their way into the courtyard and were scaling ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... drunk to attend to business, consequently his deputy, a renegade Mnyamwezi, gave ear to the business. With most of the Wagogo chiefs lives a Mnyamwezi, as their right-hand man, prime minister, counsellor, executioner, ready man at all things save the general good; a sort of harlequin Unyamwezi, who is such an intriguing, restless, unsatisfied person, that as soon as one hears that this kind of man forms one of and the chief of a Mgogo sultan's council, one feels very ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... warning example to the German scribblers, and remind them of the penalty incurred by those who stir up resistance against me by their insults and sneers. I will silence these libellers once for all, and destroy their contemptible free press by the executioner's axe. The punishment inflicted upon Palm seemed not sufficient—let M. Lange, then, be another warning to them. Let him ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... have his vicarage in that age, since he was well shapen, of a high colour, stout, big, strong, eating and drinking like a convalescent, and indeed, was always rising from a little malady that attacked him at certain times; and, later on, he would have been his own executioner, had he determined to observe his canonical continence. Add to this that he was a Tourainian, id est, dark, and had in his eyes flame to light, and water to quench all the domestic furnaces that required lighting or quenching; and never since at ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... 3. 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 ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... peculiarity relates to the execution of Damiens, who was torn with red-hot pincers, and 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 to have answered, 'je ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... the punishment they had suffered, nor were there any tyrants to whom they could transfer their guilt. But they trusted that sufficient atonement had been made by the death of so many of their senators by poison and the hands of the executioner. They said, "that a few only of their nobles remained, being such as were not induced by the consciousness of their demerit to adopt any desperate measure respecting themselves, and had not been condemned to death through the resentment of their conquerors. ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... need is the opportunity," protested Irene. "You're such chatterboxes that you won't let me talk! Now—listen. I'm not much of an executioner, girls, but I can plan and you can execute, and in that way I get my finger in the pie. Now, I believe I've a practical idea that will work out beautifully. Dorfield is an ancient city and has been inhabited for generations. Almost every house contains a ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)
... Apostle, on the further edge of life, looked back over it all; and, whilst much had become dim, and some trusted friends had dropped away, like Demas, he saw these two, and waved them his last greeting before he turned to the executioner—'Salute Prisca and Aquila.' Paul's Master is not less mindful of His friends' love, or less eloquent in the praise of their faithfulness, or less sure to reward them with the crown of glory. 'Whoso confesseth Me before men, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... (where love was more spread abroad) would have dared to use. At any rate, the vote for whipping carried the day; and even Ruth, trembling and cold, agreed that it must be done; only she asked, in a meek, sad voice, if she need be present (Mr Benson was to be the executioner—the scene, the study); and being instantly told that she had better not, she went slowly and languidly up to her room, and kneeling down, she ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... his bolts drawn, and made a terrified bound. He believed they were come to conduct him to the scaffold; so that when he saw merely and simply, instead of the executioner he expected, only his commissary of the preceding evening, attended by his clerk, he was ready ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... his body could not be consumed by the fire, ordered an executioner to go up to him and stab him with a dagger. And when he had done this, there came forth a quantity of blood,[98] so that it extinguished the fire; and all the multitude marvelled that there should be so great a difference between the unbelievers ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... quality of honest conviction which comes to those who have a real knowledge of God; it was a bawling down of dissensions that, left to work themselves out, would have spoilt good business; it was the fist of Nicolas of Myra over again, except that after the days of Ambrose the sword of the executioner and the fires of the book-burner were added to the weapon of the human voice. Priscillian was the first human sacrifice formally offered up under these improved conditions to the greater glory of the reinforced Trinity. Thereafter ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... disguise, but being observed, he was given over to justice, and disclosed all the particulars of the conspiracy. Girolamo was twenty-three years of age, and exhibited no less composure at his death than resolution in his previous conduct, for being stripped of his apparel, and in the hands of the executioner, who stood by with the sword unsheathed, ready to deprive him of life, he repeated the following words, in the Latin tongue, in which he was well versed: "Mors acerba, fama perpetua, stabit ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... 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, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... 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), ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... luxuriantly for the general good in new Western settlements. His work was not done as an officer of the law either. It was rather a self-imposed task, in which he performed, at least to his own satisfaction, the double functions of judge and executioner. And in the unwritten code governing his decisions all ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... "you work—I eat" formula natural resources will be utilized in the manner best calculated to advance the interests of the ruling oligarchy. Who will be the judge, jury and executioner in the case? Who else ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... him. The vision which had troubled him all night, of a broadside notoriety in all the city papers, rose before his mind, clothed with fresh horror. The dull sound of sharpening those pencils was like the whetting of the executioner's knife. ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... After a revelation such as this, The Last Day shall have little left to show Of righted wrong and villainy requited! Nay, Judgment now beginning upon earth, Myself, methinks, in sight of all my wrongs, Appointed heaven's avenging minister, Accuser, judge, and executioner Sword in hand, cite the guilty—First, as worst, The usurper of his son's inheritance; Him and his old accomplice, time and crime Inveterate, and unable to repay The golden years of life they stole away. What, ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... and such as are complexioned for humility. But how shall we expect charity towards others, when we are uncharitable to ourselves? "Charity begins at home," is the voice of the world; yet is every man his greatest enemy, and as it were his own executioner. "Non occides," is the commandment of God, yet scarce observed by any man; for I perceive every man is his own Atropos, and lends a hand to cut the thread of his own days. Cain was not therefore the first murderer, ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... more episodes of that sort eventually drove me to it. I passed my viva-voce examination at the hands of the young lady at the desk, paid my fees, got my testamur, and was shown into the torture-chamber, where the head executioner was busy adjusting ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... the man, as if I would shoot him. Upon this my savage, for so I call him now, made a motion to me to lend him my sword, which hung naked in a belt by my side; so I did. He no sooner had it but he runs to his enemy, and, at one blow, cut off his head as cleverly, no executioner in Germany could have done it sooner or better; which I thought very strange for one who, I had reason to believe, never saw a sword in his life before, except their own wooden swords. However, it seems, as I learned afterwards, they make their wooden ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... death an elegant supper was provided for him, 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
... meane his wife or his maid seruant, for he may vse his slaue as he 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 they ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... moment in passing sentence of death upon him. All the Spanish clergy had recourse to Ferdinand VII., and used their utmost influence to obtain a pardon, or at least a commutation of the sentence; but the king was inflexible, and the criminal died at the hands of the executioner, by the garrote, in the Plazuela ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... to uphold the laws of Texas and the United States. They were deputy sheriffs, United States marshals—in fact, were often vested with any and every power, even to the extent of ignoring disreputable sheriffs. At times they were judge, jury, and executioner when the difficulties demanded extremes. When a band of outlaws was located, detectives or spies were sent among them, who openly joined the desperadoes, and gathered evidence to put the Rangers on their trail. Then, in the wilderness, with ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington
... the military court. Bolderwood, remembering the tears the prisoner had shed when he thought the family burned alive, could not be too hard upon him, and although the woodsman made every appearance of striking tremendous blows, he scarce raised a welt upon the man's back. But when the other executioner laid on for the last nineteen strokes, the surveyor roared with pain and without doubt the lesson was one which did him good. It would be many a day before he ventured to survey the lands east of the Twenty-Mile Line—at ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... he flipped the knife toward the fire and resumed his attitude of abstraction. I had never killed an unarmed Indian. I had never shot one in cold blood. The office of executioner did not appeal, but repulsive as it was it would not do for the boy to kill his savage brother-in-law. Lost Sister and the savage were man and wife, even if married according to ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... Harrison "hanged, drawn, and quartered at Charing-Cross, he (Harrison) looking as cheerful as any man could in that condition." He also gravely informs us that Sir Henry Vane, when about to be beheaded on Tower Hill, urgently requested the executioner to take off his head so as not to hurt a seton which happened to be ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 536, Saturday, March 3, 1832. • Various
... are shut against the people.—The DOGE enters in his ducal robes, in procession with the COUNCIL OF TEN and other Patricians, attended by the Guards, till they arrive at the top of the "Giants' Staircase[469] (where the Doges took the oaths); the the Executioner is stationed there with his sword.—On arriving, a CHIEF OF THE TEN takes off the ducal ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... 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 ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... First. The executioner; thou, the great, the dreadful, the eternal God. These words, therefore, as I have already said, signify that Christ the Mediator, through whom alone salvation comes, and by whom alone execution hath been deferred, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... was the sledge or hurdle on which the prisoners were to be drawn to the place of execution, about a mile distant from Carlisle. It was painted black, and drawn by a white horse. At one end of the vehicle sat the executioner, a horrid-looking fellow, as beseemed his trade, with the broad axe in his hand; at the other end, next the horse, was an empty seat for two persons. Through the deep and dark Gothic archway that opened on the drawbridge ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... brutal. The hangman uses an argument which everyone can understand. In this sense, therefore, force must be the ultimate sanction, though it is equally true that to get the force you must appeal to motives very different from those wielded by the executioner. The application of this analogy of criminal law to questions of morality and religion affects the final conclusions of ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... his neck in the socket of a mock guillotine. Above him was suspended a huge gleaming knife that seemed to tremble, as if about to fall. At his side was a fellow dressed in the somber garments of an executioner. ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... still further to the irritation of the Greeks, and the manner in which it was executed—without even a show of the courtesies prescribed between diplomats by the tradition of centuries—shocked the very man who acted as the executioner. Not for the first time had Admiral Dartige been made to serve ends which he did not understand, by means which he did not approve, in association with persons whom he could not respect. But the worst was ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... middle-aged man of strong build and florid face, with a brush of thick black hair. His quick-glancing eyes were at once cold and kind, but the kindness had something terrifying in it, like the politeness of an executioner. As the two men stood together they presented absolutely opposite types: Coquenil, taller, younger, deep-eyed, spare of build, with a certain serious reserve very different from the commissary's outspoken directness. ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... Cicero, "Pro Sestio," 65. "But that is not a remedy when the knife is applied to some sound and healthy part of the body; that is the act of an executioner and mere inhumanity. Those are the men who really apply healing remedies to the republic, who cut out some pestilence as if it were a wen on the person ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... heard as the Vigilantes levelled their weapons at the crowd. From my position near the condemned men I could see the shifting components of the mob freeze to immobility before the menace of those barrels. At the same instant the man who had been appointed executioner jerked the box ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... having pained you by my disclosure. Excuse me for having unfolded all my heart to you, excuse me for having permitted you to read my most secret sentiments. Your love deserves something better than mine; but if it inspire you with any pity for me, rescue the Count from the executioner, and know that to save Monte-Leone is to save ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... 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 ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... does; she performs, she executes. There are times when she will execute a piece called "The Last Hope" until the neighbors are filled with despair and ready to stretch their heads on the block to any more merciful executioner. Nor does Georgiana sing to company in the parlor. That is Sylvia's gift; and upon the whole it was this unmitigated practice in the bosom—and in the ears—of her family that enabled Sylvia to shine with such vocal effulgence in the procession on the last ...
— Aftermath • James Lane Allen
... up to the man who was his executioner with a dull, dogged expectation of what was coming. He tried to keep himself straight, but he felt that his head was shaking as if with palsy, and he was grateful that the dusk hid his face. 'Here is Mark, at last,' said Mabel. ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... will that thou give me by and by in a charger the head of John the Baptist. 26. And the king was exceeding sorry; yet for his oath's sake, and for their sakes which sat with him, he would not reject her. 27. And immediately the king sent an executioner, and commanded his head to be brought: and he went and beheaded him in the prison, 28. And brought his head in a charger, and gave it to the damsel: and the damsel gave it to her ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... save the wretch, whose screams reached her, by confessing her own guilt. Medea asked permission to go to a balcony, where she could see Prinzivalle and be seen by him. She looked on coldly, then threw down her embroidered kerchief to the poor mangled creature. He asked the executioner to wipe his mouth with it, kissed it, and cried out that Medea was innocent. Then, after several hours of torments, he died. This was too much for the patience even of Duke Robert. Seeing that as long as Medea lived his life would be in perpetual danger, but unwilling to ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... God," replied the marquise, "after what you tell me, now that I know the executioner's hand was necessary to my salvation, what should I have become had I died at Liege? Where should I have been now? And even if I had not been taken, and had lived another twenty years away from France, what would my death have been, since it needed the scaffold for my purification? Now I ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... As the executioner seized her by the hand, to lift her out of the cart, she hastily threw the eleven coats of mail over the swans, and they immediately became eleven handsome princes; but the youngest had a swan's wing, instead of an arm; for she ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... a word inculpating himself or any other person could be wrung out of him. Some councillors left the board in horror. But the pious Crawford presided. He was not much troubled with the weakness of compassion where an Amalekite was concerned, and forced the executioner to hammer in wedge after wedge between the knees of the prisoner till the pain was as great as the human frame can sustain without dissolution. Payne was then carried to the Castle of Edinburgh, where he long remained, utterly forgotten, as ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... justification of prostitution. Of this we have an example of the 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, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... he was seized in his bed at five in the morning; at seven he was taken to the Conciergerie; at nine he received information of the charge against him; at ten he went into the dock; by two in the afternoon he was condemned; by four his head lay in the executioner's basket. ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... raising what is low, and of lifting again what has fallen. Until my heart is worn out it will be open to pity, it will take the part of the weak, it will rehabilitate the slandered. If today it is the people that is under foot, I shall hold out my hand to the people—if it is the oppressor and executioner, I shall tell it that it is cowardly and odious. What do I care for this or that group of men, these names which have become standards, these personalities which have become catchwords? I know only wise and foolish, innocent and guilty. I do not have to ask myself ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... and I will confess to you that when, having fired wide, they turned to go and the cheat was evident, twice before you pulled the bandage away I had lifted my gun. But I could not fire it, cavalier. To make me your executioner! Me, your wife—and while you ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... particular, nearly all simple folks, had a desire to laugh, even when they were worn out with fatigue, which made a pretext of the slightest thing, and notably of danger. One of them, called Tailleur, a buffoon with the airs of an executioner's assistant, would call out at the first explosions of a ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... aid and sympathy they had contrived to send to him. The man who had been arrested in his career, more ignominiously than the magnificent Tully had been in his,—in a career, too, a thousand times more noble,—by a Caesar, indeed, but such a Caesar;—the man who had sat for years with the executioner's block in his yard, waiting only for a scratch of the royal pen, to bring down upon him that same edge which the poor Cicero, with all his truckling, must feel at last,—such a one would look over the old philosopher's papers with an apprehension of their meaning, somewhat ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... seemed the most sorrowful of all, and putting his head as high as he could reach he uttered a deep hollow howl, that to my excited fancy sounded like "Poooooor boooooy!" just as Mr Solomon, with a face as stern as an executioner's might have been as he led someone to the Tower block, threw open the great door in the wall ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... imprisoned in the tower of Achizer, and at ten o'clock on the ensuing morning, they were brought forth for execution. They were bound neck and middle, to posts, with their arms extended, and their bellies were cut open by the executioner, lengthways and across, and thus they remained until six in the evening, their entrails exposed to flies and other insects; their tongues and entrails were afterwards taken out for the beasts of the field and the birds of the air to prey upon, and their heads were ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... escape deadly peril? Cuthbert Trevlyn, listen to me and heed me well. This thing is known—is known in high places. The King and his counsellors have had intelligence thereof. The deed of darkness will be frustrated, and heads will fall beneath the axe of the executioner. Already whispers are going abroad—already the guilty ones are watched and spied upon; and with the guilty there are those suspected who know naught of this vile deed. Shall I say more, or can thine own quick wits ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... his judge, his executioner; yet it made him avert himself again, and that movement made ME, with a single bound and an irrepressible cry, spring straight upon him. For there again, against the glass, as if to blight his confession and stay his answer, was the hideous author of our woe—the ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... the vigor with which he handled the knout, and tickled the levity of the million, who laughed while they saw the half-dozen or more victims flayed by merciless satire. Berlioz wept tears of blood because he had to do such executioner's work, but did it none the less vigorously for ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... upon certain conditions, but, obstinate witches that you are, you refused to listen. Now I offer you the last boon in my power—not life, indeed; it is too late for that—but a merciful death. If you will give me what I seek, the executioner shall dispatch you both before the fire bites—never mind how. If not—well, as I have told you, there has been much rain, and they say the ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... with rough familiarity). A word first. Tell your executioner that if Pothinus had been properly killed—IN THE THROAT—he would not have called out. Your man bungled ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw
... on the whole, very well pleased with the arrangement. Particularly pleased was I with Piragoff's transparent plan for disposing of me. For, now that it really came to action, I found myself shying somewhat at the office of executioner; though I meant to do my duty all the same. But the fact that this man was already arranging coolly to murder me made my task less unpalatable. The ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... supposed good, for facts mock your arguments. It is not for their good; you know it is not. You cannot accomplish your purpose when you have done all; and think you that you will escape, by your satanic inventions, the Divine Executioner? Think you that your specious arguments will avail with Him who hath sworn in His holy habitation that He will avenge the oppressed and down-trodden of the earth? No, no! I see written between the lines, and ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth
... power, and I must yield to necessity; but once let the blow be struck, once let him commit a crime of which I can produce the proofs, then I will be master, and in my turn I will cry in his ears: 'Simon Turchi, fear the bailiff and the executioner!' At the present moment I am powerless; if I took any means to prevent the attempt, he might destroy all evidence of his criminal design, and deliver me up to the authorities of Lucca. I would be taken into Italy ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... him with chains and thrash him. Then the fetters were knocked off, the kingly robe was placed on him, and he received in his hands the symbol of royal dignity, which was nothing but the axe of the executioner. It is not therefore surprising to read that in Sierra Leone, where such customs have prevailed, "except among the Mandingoes and Suzees, few kings are natives of the countries they govern. So different are their ideas from ours, ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... somewhat with the silent, imposing attention of the vast audience before whom he spoke, he expanded into an inflated exhibition of his own past relations to the object of his attack, and thus represented himself eminently qualified to act the part he had assumed of prosecutor, judge, and executioner. When he finished, the speaker announced to Mr. Adams that his position entitled him to the floor, bringing up to the imagination a parallel scene: 'Then Agrippa said unto Paul, Thou art ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... shows the Daimio on the point of performing the sacrificial ceremony. His forelock is reversed, as a sign of submission to his fate, and to assist the executioner, who, as soon as his master goes through the form of disembowelling himself with the knife on the stand, will, with one blow of his razor-edged sword, complete the sacrifice by decapitation. Only ...
— Sketches of Japanese Manners and Customs • J. M. W. Silver
... king, "that you are a spy, and intend to kill me. But I will be first, and kill you. Strike," he added to an executioner who was by, "and rid me ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.
... 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 at a decent woman he knew he had broken the law of ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... praises. The Divine sentence, instead of creating a difficulty, is, on the contrary, exactly the thing which removes it[592]. To weigh the story apart from this, (which is the prime consideration of all,) is like condemning the immorality of an executioner without caring to hear that he is but carrying out the sentence of the Lawgiver. Furnished with the clue of GOD'S approbation of Jael's deed, we retrace our steps, and reconsider the narrative. If all ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... again—the scene between the lover and the husband, where the husband lays down the strange and sinister penalty to which the lover submits—the exquisite love-scene in the fifth act—and the cry of agonised passion with which Dona Sol defends her love against his executioner. All these things he declaimed, stumping up and down, till the terrified landlady rose out of her bed to remonstrate, and got the door locked in her face for her pains, and till the bourgeois baby in the next room ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Our guides related to us that, a short time before our arrival on the coast of Cumana, a Zambo, known for the great ferocity of his manners, determined to screen himself from punishment by turning executioner. The preparations for the execution however, shook his resolution; he felt a horror of himself, and preferring death to the disgrace of thus saving his life, he called again for his irons which had been struck off. He did not long remain in prison, and he underwent his sentence through the baseness ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... fall upon and destroy a member of the flock that is sick, or hurt, or blind, is difficult of explanation, but we may be quite sure that, whatever the reason is, the act is not the outcome of a judicial proceeding in which judge and jury and executioner all play their proper part. Wild crows will chase and maltreat a tame crow whenever they get a chance, just why, it would be hard to say. But the tame crow has evidently lost caste among them. I have what I consider good proof that a number of skunks that were wintering together ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... God, humbled herself on her knees, and offered her neck to the axe, laying her neck, sweetly and graciously, in the place appointed, moving to and fro, till she got a rest for her neck to lay in. When her head was now made fast to "the Maiden'' the executioner came behind her and pulled out her feet, that her neck might be stretched out longer, and so made more meet for the stroke of the axe; but she, as it was reported to me by him who saw it and held her by the hands at this time, drew her legs twice to her ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... motives too powerful to be put down by the still, quiet remonstrances of reason and right. The abuses to which such practices would be likely to lead, in cases in which one of the parties constituted himself the law, the judge, and the executioner, were urged in vain against the active and ever-stimulating incentive of a love of gold. Still, I knew that Marble wished the thing undone when it was too late, it being idle to think of quieting the suggestions of that monitor God has ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... become, in less than two generations, nearly as obsolete as the sling and stone of the shepherd, and attack and defence now begin at distances to which, half a century ago, military reconnaissances hardly extended. Upon a partial view of the subject, the human race seems destined to become its own executioner—on the one hand, exhausting the capacity of the earth to furnish sustenance to her taskmaster; on the other, compensating diminished production by inventing more efficient methods of exterminating the consumer. At the present moment, at an epoch of universal peace, the whole ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... hour the court broke up, the guards retired, the money was carried to the treasury, the executioner wiped his sword, and the lives of the pacha's subjects were considered to be in a state of comparative security, until the affairs of the country were again brought under their cognizance on ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... got back to the Cheshire Cat, she was surprised to find quite a large crowd collected round it: there was a dispute going on between the executioner, the King, and the Queen, who were all talking at once, while all the rest were quite ...
— Alice's Adventures in Wonderland • Lewis Carroll
... my soul feasting on this happy thought, I send this revelation to mankind and yield my body to the executioner to be shot ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... spouted forth from the neck like water from a fountain—the body, lifted up without delay, was flung down through a trap-door in the platform. Never did capital punishment more quickly take effect on a human being; and whilst the executioner was coolly taking out the axe from the groove of the machine, and placing it, covered as it was with gore, in a box, the remains of the culprit, deposited in a shell, were hoisted into a wagon, and conveyed to the prison. In twenty minutes all was over, and the Grande Place ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... undoubted occurrence both in France and Germany, where 'respectable' individuals, simply as amateurs, and not at all with any view to the salary or fees of operating, have come forward as candidates for the post of public executioner. What is every man's duty is no man's duty by preference. And unless where a writer is thrust upon such a duty by an official necessity (as, if he contracts for a 'Biographia Britannica,' in that case he is bound by his contract to go through with the ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... light-hearted of caprices—I did not dare to touch the music—and soon I was rattling through it, all my thoughts three thousand miles away in a little Ohio town. When I had finished I arose in grim silence, took the music, held it toward the chief executioner, ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... and delicate functions of our living machinery, can turn the most light-hearted of men into a melancholy one, and make a coward of the bravest? Then, I go to bed, and I wait for sleep as a man might wait for the executioner. I wait for its coming with dread, and my heart beats and my legs tremble, while my whole body shivers beneath the warmth of the bedclothes, until the moment when I suddenly fall asleep, as one ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... short-hand of the 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
... meant, as the confession of the criminal, to be repeated after the priest, but I heard no response from his lips. Again and again the priest repeated them, the third time with a louder voice than ever; the signal was then given to the executioner. The iron collar was adjusted to the neck of the victim, and fastened under the chin. The athletic negro in blue, standing behind the post, took the handle of the screw and turned it deliberately. After a few turns, the criminal gave ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... think, without regret, of leaving the world where he had known so many sorrows and so few joys, still he shuddered when he remembered the gaping crowd which would be assembled to see his expiring convulsions, and the horror which he could not but feel, when the executioner's hands should touch his neck, and the dreadful cap should be drawn over his eyes. Oh! that that horrid moment might be over—when he would still be alive—still sensible to the thoughts of life—but when the light of the sun would have been ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... thank God," said he, "that I am nowise afraid of death, nor am daunted with any terrors; but do as cheerfully lay down my head at this time as ever I did when going to repose!" With one blow was a period put to his life by the executioner.[*] ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... red sandal-wood and vermilion, and bedecked with garlands. Thus arrayed, the victim sat on a raised dais in front of the goddess, and spent some time in meditation (japa), and in uttering mantras. Having done this, he made a sign with his finger, and the executioner, after uttering the usual sacrificial mantras, cut off his head, which was placed before the goddess on a golden plate. The lungs were cooked and eaten by such Kandra Yogis as were present, and it is said that the royal family partook of a small quantity ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... added the names of others of the citizens. The Thirty acquitted him, as they did Agoratus, as he seemed to tell the truth, but you long afterwards brought him into court as a murderer and, justly voting death for him, gave him over to the executioner, and he was beaten to death. 57. If he was put to death then Agoratus should justly be killed, as he was responsible for the death of Menestratus having accused him, and who is more to blame for those killed by Menestratus than ...
— The Orations of Lysias • Lysias
... he had surrendered, which was indignantly denied by Bragadino. The pasha, becoming enraged, ordered the four Venetians to be put to death, and in a few minutes Generals Baglioni, Martinengo, and Quirini were executed in the presence of Bragadino, for whom a more terrible death was reserved. The executioner cut off his nose and ears; three times he was made to lay his head upon the block, as if to be beheaded, then, heavily chained, was thrown into a dark dungeon, and left for nine days ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... not till he had lived ten years in captivity, which was the worst part of his fortune. The fairest of all queens (Mary, Queen of Scots), widow to the greatest king in Europe,[24] did she not come to die by the hand of an executioner? Unworthy and barbarous cruelty! and a thousand more examples there are of the same kind; for it seems that as storms and tempests have a malice to the proud and overtow'ring heights of our lofty buildings, there are also spirits above that are envious ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... this cavern. Unless you wish to turn me over to the lord high executioner, I will bid you ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... a wise rooster and Mrs. Davis had wrung the necks of so many roosters with her own fair hands in the course of her fifty years that an air of the executioner seemed to hang around her. Adam scuttled through the hall as the ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... he looked incredulous she added, "Stay, I will show you. Little Bonsa must be thirsty who has fasted so long, also there are matters that I desire to know. Come hither—you, and you," and she pointed at hazard to the two priests who knelt nearest to her, "and do you bid the executioner bring his axe," she ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... their places. Everybody was dressed for a Fancy Ball that was never to leave off. From the Palace of the Tuileries, through Monseigneur and the whole Court, through the Chambers, the Tribunals of Justice, and all society (except the scarecrows), the Fancy Ball descended to the Common Executioner; who in pursuance of the charm was required to officiate "frizzled, powdered, in a gold-laced coat, pumps, and white silk stockings." At the gallows and the wheel—the axe was a rarity—Monsieur Paris,—as it was the episcopal mode among his brother Professors of ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... death!" he cried. "Death the judge, the gaoler, the executioner! He has done justice on them for me, and they will not break loose from the house he has made for them to lie in and to sleep in for ever. And now, friend Death, I am master in their stead, and you must give me time to enjoy the mastership before you serve me likewise. Oh Vjera, the joy, the delight, ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... 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 ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... tortures—the beast! the wretch! I spit upon him and defy him. Cheerfully will I lay this head upon the block; cheerfully will I accompany my lord to the scaffold: we will cry, 'God save King James!' with our dying breath, and smile in the face of the executioner." And she told her page a hundred times at least of the particulars of the last interview which she ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the rich ransom offered. For twenty-two years he continued a tenant of a dungeon, and in this gloomy scene of death in life survived all the sons and grandsons of his father, every one of whom perished by poison, the sword, or the axe of the executioner. It is this dread story of the fate of the Hohenstauffen imperial house which we ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... himself from his heart before God, he hath gained. For God can do nothing but to be merciful towards them that humble themselves. For if God should always be stern and angry, so should I, said Luther, be afraid of him as of the executioner. And seeing that I must stand in fear of the Pope, of the Emperor, of the Papistical Bishops, and of other tyrants, which are God's enemies, to whom then should I fly and take my refuge, if I should ...
— Selections from the Table Talk of Martin Luther • Martin Luther
... herself, they had her answers set aside as being of no importance and having no bearing on the trial. And they were right, for nothing that Jeanne said could possibly affect an issue where the stake and the executioner were already decided upon. And when some of the spectators showed signs of pity for her youth and innocence they had the trial ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... all—I heard Orloff offer to be my executioner. Pray, why did you not accept the ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... "the God whom you blaspheme will ordain, that in the heart of a desert, untrodden by the foot of man, you shall find an accuser, a witness, a judge, and an executioner." ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... his neck a valuable gold chain. He slew a peasant passing, who, rallying him on his infirm state, had ventured to beg one of his swords, as neither could any longer be of service to him. At last his good fortune brought him a worthy executioner in Hather, the son of a prince whom he had slain. The young hero was hunting, and seeing the old man, he ordered two of his attendants to tease him. Both lost their lives for their temerity. The prince then advanced; and the old man, after relating his great actions, desired the former ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII., No. 324, July 26, 1828 • Various
... and patience in suffering for their testimony in all the branches of it; and that sometimes unto death, by beatings, bruisings, long and crowded imprisonments, and noisome dungeons: four of them in New England dying by the hands of the executioner, purely for preaching amongst that people: besides banishments, and excessive plunders and sequestrations of their goods and estates, almost in all parts, not easily to be expressed, and less to have been endured, but by ...
— A Brief Account of the Rise and Progress of the People Called Quakers • William Penn
... king's army. Cromwell took him prisoner in a battle, and enjoyed the pleasure of having his rival's head cut off. His maxim was to shed the blood of every important enemy, either on the field of battle, or by the executioner's hand. He always increased his power, by always daring to abuse it; the profundity of his plans took away nothing from his ferocious impetuosity. He goes into the House of Parliament and, taking his ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... little good, And well he thought he could endure the smart Of death, and yet he could not harme his heart: For why his hand being guiltlesse of the deed, Deny'd to make his harmelesse heart to bleed, And like a trembling executioner, Constrain'd to slay a guiltelesse prisoner, His hand retired still, further backe and further, As lothing to enact so vile ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... effect of one damned soul meeting another out in eternity and yelling for pure joy and malice. The finish was a whoop on the low note so loud that it lifted my hair. Then the howl was cut off as sharp and neat and sudden as I've seen a Chinaman's head struck from his body by the executioner at Canton—Big Wan—ever seen him work? Very pretty. Got to perfection what ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... as an object lesson. On the way, one of them escaped. Four were hanged, and then, running out of rope, they prepared to shoot the other two. One of these got away during a delay caused by defective percussion caps on his executioner's revolver. ...
— Rebel Raider • H. Beam Piper
... 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 19, 1916 • Various
... who had marched north to the Euphrates was defeated in a battle for empire by Nebuchadrezzar, son of the King of Babylon. From the turmoil of nations which filled the period Babylon emerged as that executioner of the Divine judgments on the world, whom Jeremiah since 627 or 625 had been describing generally as out of the North. His predictions were justified, and he was able to put a sharper edge on them. Henceforth in place ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... (N. B.—This series is not yet arranged, but is distinct from that referred to in Chapter IV. See Appendix II.). Scene 1st, St. Firmin arriving; scene 2nd, St. Firmin preaching; scene 3rd, St. Firmin baptizing; and scene 4th, St. Firmin beheaded, by an executioner with very red legs, and an attendant dog of the character of the dog in 'Faust,' of whom we may have more ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... aired such a scrap of interesting knowledge at the foot of the scaffold, and expected the executioner to listen attentively. ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... majority; when I had jumped up with the proper air of relief and gratitude; when the secretary had handed me his little packet of books with an affability which effectually concealed his dramatic function as executioner; when the audience was simply disappointed at being baulked of the entertainment of hearing Mr Robert Harcourt cross-examine me; in short, when the situation was all but saved by the tact of the Chairman and secretary, Colonel Lockwood rose, with all his carnations blazing, and gave away the ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw
... consideration than he probably has ever experienced in all his life before; and if, notwithstanding the ingenuity of his advocates, and the merciful glosses of his judge, a simple-minded British jury capitally convict him, and he is handed over to the executioner, he still finds pious gentlemen ready to weep over him in his cell, and titled dames to send him white camellias, to wear upon his ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... thirty years past has regularly presented herself at the door of the asylum. At her own request they place her in confinement; then the unhappy woman every night passes through the terrible scenes of the French Revolution, of which she was a witness in her youth. She trembles in the hands of the executioner; she fancies herself drenched with the blood of the victims; she weeps and cries aloud incessantly. In the course of a few weeks the mind returns to its wonted seat, and she is restored to liberty with the ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... towed alongside and beheaded; and how (on the principle which entitled the headsman of old to the garments in which the beheaded was killed) his great padded surtout becomes the property of his executioner; how, in due time, he is condemned to the pots, and, like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, his spermaceti, oil, and bone pass unscathed through the fire; —but now it remains to conclude the last chapter of this part of the description by rehearsing —singing, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... prayer-book was shown me, said to be the one used by Lady Jane Grey when on the scaffold. Nothing makes me more conscious that I am on foreign soil than the constant recurrence of associations connected with the executioner's block. We hung the Quakers and we burned the witches, but we are careful not to remember the localities of our barbarisms; we show instead the Plymouth Rock ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... 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 so that the smooth ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... Russian Czars, Paul, Nicholas I, and Alexander III, were brought up with the knout, their preceptors used the boys at their sweet pleasure. The first turned out a madman; the second a brute; the third his people's executioner. ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... Executioner Samson shews the Head: fierce shout of Vive la Republique rises, and swells; caps raised on bayonets, hats waving: students of the College of Four Nations take it up, on the far Quais; fling it over Paris. Orleans drives off ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... her back against a truss of hay, rather shrinking away, for now that the moment had really come she felt frightened, and all her doubts returned. She had the air of a pale little victim before her executioner. ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... meeting to-day had approved of the proposed trust. I know not why, but the news gives me little concern. I heard it as a party indifferent. I remember hearing that Mandrin[146] testified some horror when he found himself bound alive on the wheel, and saw an executioner approach with a bar of iron to break his limbs. After the second and third blow he fell a-laughing, and being asked the reason by his confessor, said he laughed at his own folly which had anticipated increased agony at every blow, when it was obvious ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... 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
... him plenty to do. But the role of an elderly passenger, given a softly cushioned seat and deposited respectfully at the journey's end, he rejects with violent expressions of scorn. It is ignominious. He will be a policeman or robber or judge or executioner, just as the exigencies of the game demand. These are honorable positions worthy of one who belongs to the party of action. But do not impose upon him by asking him to act the part of the respectable citizen who is robbed and who does nothing but telephone for the police. ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... or stimulate his thought and conduct. It is the source of his moral codes, of the sanctions of his ethics and philosophy. It can endow him with energy, courage and endurance, and can as easily take these away. It can make him acquiesce in his own punishment, and embrace his executioner, submit to poverty, bow to tyranny, and sink without complaint under starvation. Not merely can it make him accept hardship and suffering unresistingly, but it can make him accept as truth the explanation that his perfectly preventable ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... A surgeon purchased my body, carried me home, and dissected me. He began with making a crucial incision on me from the navel to the clavicula. One could not have been worse hanged than I was. The executioner of the Holy Inquisition was a sub-deacon, and knew how to burn people marvellously well, but he was not accustomed to hanging. The cord was wet and did not slip properly, and besides it was badly tied; in short, I ...
— Candide • Voltaire
... separation from something from which he was now sundered as by the sword of God. He did not hate the atheist; it is possible that he loved him. But Turnbull was now something more dreadful than an enemy: he was a thing sealed and devoted—a thing now hopelessly doomed to be either a corpse or an executioner. ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... Robin choke Robin with Robin. But hark 'ee again, good, patient dame. It seemeth that Ranulph the executioner betaketh him at cock-crow to hang poor me; but, finding me not, made great outcry, insomuch that the city guard, such as mighty Lob and Will had left alive, sought counsel together; and taking one of their slain fellows, Ranulph ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... power, and when the liberty and personal independence of individuals were in no way considered or regarded; days when the severity of our criminal laws drew down from a French philosopher the sneer, that a history of England was a history of the executioner; when the doomed were sent out of the world in bands of twenty, and even thirty, at a time, at Tyburn or at "Execution dock;" and when, in the then unhealthy tone of public morals, criminals famous for their deeds of violence and rapine, were regarded ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... 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
... the day kept the word of promise, but it was only to the ear. He indeed sent his captives to Berwick, where they had an airing on the other side of the Tweed; but it was under the custody of a strong guard, by whom they were brought back to Edinburgh, and delivered to the executioner. This, Birrel calls keeping a Highlandman's promise." [See Note 6.—M'Gregor ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... the trick!' said the gaoler. 'Two axes broke off short and the bits turned to rubbish. The executioner says the rascal has ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... like a man," the screech in that case always made and provided is heard at a distance. "Hold! hold! he is innocent!" are the next words; and enter the wife with a pair of pistols, and a witness. The executioner pardons the condemned on his own responsibility; and the villain comes on, on purpose to be shot, which is done by the farmer, who seems determined not to be accused of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... the Jews, and this was not a Jewish mode of punishment; but by an accidental turn of circumstances He was transferred from the Jews to Pilate, and so His prediction was fulfilled [222:5]. Again, it is related that when the fire would not consume the body of the saint, his persecutors 'ordered an executioner to go up to him and thrust a small sword into him. When he had done this,' we are told, 'there came forth [a dove and] a quantity of blood' [222:6]. The parallel to the incident recorded in St John's account of the crucifixion is obvious ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... at him as he spoke; and then answered: "Theophilus, you shall have the sign you ask for." There was no time for more; the executioner placed her before the block, and, in another moment, with one blow, he struck off the head of the ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... 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, as wretched ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... swear to heaven, my beauty, the executioner won't stand on such ceremony when he catches hold of your son!... And you give yourself airs! Why, think, it'll happen in forty hours! Forty hours, no more, and you hesitate... and you have scruples, when your son's life is at stake! Come, come, no whimpering, no silly sentimentality... ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... do with us," replied the executioner who was attending to Pontcalec; "unless by special order, the rules are the same for ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... to be shot with his own musket. The executioner had been already appointed, and all other arrangements made for carrying out the decree, when Willem, advancing towards Macora, ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... against the ammunition, was blown up, the shell having driven clean through his spine; the man loading the shell had a fragment driven clear through his stomach. The man leaning against the gun wheel was beheaded as cleanly as any king's executioner with his ax could do it, his head lying in the fireplace! The cartridge had exploded but ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... destinies of England, found himself in a moment as utterly helpless as the feeblest of his victims had been. He was flung into the Tower; his stormy protests were unheeded by the King; on July 28th, his head fell beneath the executioner's axe. ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... bright gleams of lakes and watercourses, of fertile fields and wooded hills; amongst which nestled the rich villages, and the flocks and herds were feeding in peace. She saw it not. She saw not the smiling land, the taunting crowd, the cruel executioner: she saw only the face of her Lord. Descending the hill, she knelt to pray; and so praying she was speared. No common honour descended upon her that day: she was the first martyr of Christ's church in the island of Madagascar. "Strange is it," said the executioner, ...
— Fruits of Toil in the London Missionary Society • Various
... that men of his own priestly caste might be in attendance to take charge of his corpse. He again desired to be remembered to his friends in the Council, mounted the scaffold with firmness, and gave the signal to the executioner. The moment that the drop fell, a howl of sorrow and despair rose from the innumerable spectators. Hundreds turned away their faces from the polluting sight, fled with loud wailings towards the Hoogley, and plunged into its holy waters, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... down to the quiet stanzas of Gray's Elegy. But it is not in itself a wicked thing; or the world would never have consecrated it in the great Love-Legends. One may admit that the entrance of the Nubian Executioner changes the situation; but, after all, the frenzy of the girl's request—the terror of that Head upon the silver charger—were implicit in her passion from the beginning; and are, God knows! never very far from passion ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... seen, is to tie a wisp of grass to a long stick and move it over the hole so as to make a rustling noise. The lizard within thinks, 'Oh here's a snake! I may as well give in,' and comes to the mouth of the hole, putting out his tail first so that he may not see his executioner. The sportsman seizes his tail and snatches him out before he has time to learn his mistake." This common fondness for lizards is a point in favour of a connection between the Gujarat Vaghris and ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... uphold. I cannot help thinking that in this, as in almost every other respect connected with the subject, there is a considerable degree of cant, and a very great deal of wilful blindness. If a man be viciously disposed—and with very few exceptions, not a man dies by the executioner's hands, who has not been in one way or other a most abandoned and profligate character for many years—if a man be viciously disposed, there is no doubt that he will turn his Sunday to bad account, ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... had still a considerable influence among the troops, acted merely as regent for his son; but, in action, he never hesitated to assume the full power of the prince. Soon after, having shown the letter to Damodar, he delivered him and his son to the public executioner. As leading to the place, the young man proposed resistance, and a sudden attempt might have put them in possession of arms, which, with their known courage, and the veneration for their character, where no higher authority was present, might ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... Cardinal Pole and said to be haunted by the ghost of that Countess of Salisbury who, when an old woman upwards of seventy, was beheaded by the order of Henry VIII, and caused the headman much trouble by refusing to place her head upon the block; an illustration by Cruickshank depicts the executioner chasing the ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... executioner took off his coat, and was about to draw off his boots, when he said, calmly, "It is only loss of time; you will remove them more easily from my lifeless limbs." He examined the keen edge of the knife, ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... the stake he was hurried where the flames once more did their work, and another faithful soul appeared before the Throne, washed in the blood of the Lamb, and arrayed in a white robe, rejoicing in the victory won through Jesus Christ. At the stake his executioner begged forgiveness. Wishart kissed his cheek, saying, "Go, here is a token that I forgive thee; do thine office." One standing near said to him, "Be of good courage." He replied, "This fire torments my body, but in ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... punish you?" he asked. "Corporeally? It's my recollection that she did not. I was always the executioner. I doubt now if that ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... and the most direct, is actually saying the thing that is not; and it is defended on the principle that such words are not a lie, when there is a "justa causa," as killing is not murder in the case of an executioner. ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
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