"Executioner" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Prince, he being fled to an Army that would stand by him, against any Injuries that should assault him. However, this last Thought of Imoinda's being ravished, changed the Measures of his Revenge; and whereas before he designed to be himself her Executioner, he now resolved she should not die. But as it is the greatest Crime in Nature amongst them, to touch a Woman after having been possess'd by a Son, a Father, or a Brother, so now he looked on Imoinda as a polluted thing wholly unfit for ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... me?" he thought with a strange dread of the unexpected which he tried to shake off lest it should fasten itself upon his life for good and all. And the other, muttering cautiously with downcast eyes, supposed that his comrade had seen the news of de P—-'s executioner—that was the expression he used—having been arrested the night ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... rescue, even on the scaffold, had been freely circulated. Calcraft, the executioner, had received a number of threatening letters, which had frightened him greatly. The police, knowing what the Fenians had already attempted in the way of rescuing their friends, were very much on the alert, and more than a hundred officers, in private clothes and armed with revolvers, ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... him to be bound to a tree and shot to death with arrows, and that the inscription over his head should state that there was no fault found in him but only that he was a Christian. This picture my sister wants to buy, shows him stripped and bound to the tree, and the executioner's work going on. Arrows are piercing him in various places; and the saint's face is raised to heaven with the look upon it of struggling pain and triumphing faith together. You can see that the struggle is sharp, ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... Chapel of S. Niccolo, making therein a large Crucifix with four figures, so well wrought that it seems made only yesterday. In the arch he painted two stories of S. Nicholas—namely, his throwing the golden balls to the maidens, and his delivering two from death, while the executioner is seen apparelled and ready to cut off their heads, and very ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari
... Babington looked on with an undaunted countenance, steadily gazing on that variety of tortures which he himself was in a moment to pass through; the others averted their faces, fervently praying. When the executioner began his tremendous office on Babington, the spirit of this haughty and heroic man cried out amidst the agony, Parce mihi, Domine Jesu! Spare me, Lord Jesus! There were two days of execution; it was on the first that the noblest of these youths suffered; ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... are apt to grow quite too luxuriantly for the general good in new Western settlements. His work was not done as an officer of the law either. It was rather a self-imposed task, in which he performed, at least to his own satisfaction, the double functions of judge and executioner. And in the unwritten code governing his decisions all ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... Magistrate, putting on the black cap and a solemn look; "as the accused makes no defence, and is undoubtedly guilty, I sentence her to be eaten by the public executioner; and as that position happens to be vacant, I appoint you to ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... arranged for Beatrice, and whilst the Brotherhood returned to the chapel for her, the balcony of a shop filled with spectators fell, and five of those underneath were wounded, so that two died a few days after. Beatrice, hearing the noise, asked the executioner if her mother had died well, and, being replied that she had, she knelt before the crucifix, and spoke thus: "Be thou everlastingly thanked, O my most gracious Saviour, since, by the good death of my mother, ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... plane of unfortunate infants would be handed over to the prosiest and worst of all the teachers with good intentions, whom nobody older would endure. Who, taking his stand on the floor before them as chief executioner, would be attended by a conventional volunteer boy as executioner's assistant. When and where it first became the conventional system that a weary or inattentive infant in a class must have its face smoothed downward with a hot hand, or when and where the conventional volunteer boy first ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... blessed offer and announcement of that forgiving mercy of God which is to be accepted in simple faith. By the Law says Luther, the sinner is judged, condemned, killed; he himself had to toil and disquiet himself under it, as though he were in the hands of a gaoler and executioner. The Gospel first lifts up those who are crushed, and makes them alive by the faith which the good message awakens in their hearts. But God works in both; in the one, a work which to Him, the God ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... them; Master Freddie took off his hat and handed it to him, and then, letting go of Jurgis' arm, tried to get out of his overcoat. After two or three attempts he accomplished this, with the lackey's help, and meantime a second man had approached, a tall and portly personage, solemn as an executioner. He bore straight down upon Jurgis, who shrank away nervously; he seized him by the arm without a word, and started toward the door with him. Then suddenly came Master Freddie's voice, "Hamilton! My fren' ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... are special to such or such a plant, so that the botanist usually knows beforehand how to determine the parasite whose presence is made known to him. Thus, the Cuscuta of flax, called by the French Bourreau du Lin (the flax's executioner), and by the English, flax dodder, grows only upon this textile plant, the crop of which it often ruins. On account of this, botanists call this species Cuscuta epilinum. Others, such as C. Europa, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... dear Ned, is it for my sins that I am thus pursued? What is awaiting me I know not. What I shall do with the young cub I have not the ghostliest shadow of an idea. Shall I begin by thrashing him soundly? I have refrained so far; I hate the role of executioner. Or shall I teach him boxing? The gloves are a great educator, and are at times what the padre would call ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... from the judgments of the Standrecht; and so quickly are they carried out, that if a person is ordered to be hanged, and the regular executioner is busy, the judge can call on the soldiers to ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 59, December 23, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... Eugenie, from time to time makes variety; or an example of the punishment of the wicked by men or by devils, who play a large, and to themselves thoroughly enjoyable and merry, part here. The sculptor would seem to have witnessed the punishment of the blasphemer; how adroitly the executioner planted knee on the culprit's bosom, as he lay on the ground, and out came the sinful tongue, to meet the iron pincers. The minds of those who worked thus seem to have been almost insanely preoccupied just then with the human countenance, ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... Did she say, 'It is I who am wearing her to death, I who am keeping her on a rack and am the executioner, yet she tells me every night that she loves me devotedly, though she knows what I make her undergo?' No; my first memorable experience was true to what I knew her to be, and to all my experience. She began ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... compassion such a complicated machinery is set in motion that no mechanical iron structure on earth can be found half as involved or half as complete; and a person not thoroughly acquainted with the qualities and parts of this wonderful apparatus will prove a tormenting executioner, not a healing physician, to the sufferer. Be patient, milady, the physician at the bed of his patient is of the neuter gender—just as the ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... Miss Mayton, that my experience has been the reverse of a pleasant one. If King Herod were yet alive I'd volunteer as an executioner." ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... absent friends, or enemies; anything unfairly attacked. Generally, when she said anything cutting, it was so clearly incisive you hardly knew for a moment where you were injured. She did it like the executioner of that Eastern potentate who decapitated a criminal with such skill and with so sharp an instrument that the latter did not know when he was executed and went on talking, his head remaining in situ until he sneezed. There was one old gentleman, Lord Groome, whom she had disposed of several ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... young, and your host may be the Archangel Michael himself, or the holy Saint Mark, and the house to which you are bidden may be a paradise full of other angels! But I would as soon sit down before the grating and look at the hooded brother, while the executioner slipped the noose over my head to strangle me, as to go to any place on a bidding delivered by a fellow with such a jail-bird's head. It is as round as a bullet and as yellow as cheese. He has eyes like a turtle's and teeth like those ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... been infused into the spirit of the inhabitants of the Philippines, when in the midst of so many calamities they did not know whether they would see sprout the seed they were planting, whether their field was going to be their grave or their crop would go to feed their executioner? What is there strange in it, when we see the pious but impotent friars of that time trying to free their poor parishioners from the tyranny of the encomenderos by advising them to stop work in the mines, to abandon ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal
... pulled it gently at first, but gradually increasing the pressure upon the prisoner's throat, as if to give him a satisfactory foretaste of the hanging sensation. This slow torture was too much for the attorney's fortitude; and, as his respiration grew painful, he called to his executioner to stop. Hatchie promptly loosened ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... places in which criminals, or prisoners, were secretly executed; they were strangled, and without seeing their executioner, for a cord was passed through an opening, which he twisted till the victim was dead. This was the mode pursued with the prisoners of the Inquisitors; those of the Council were often placed in a cell to which there was a thickly grated window, through ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... or even a Polygon, born with any Irregularity, you must be taken to one of the Regular Hospitals to have your disease cured; otherwise you will end your days in the State Prison or by the angle of the State Executioner. ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... of a public execution. They hinted that the Princes d'Horn were allied to the illustrious family of Orleans, and added that the Regent himself would be disgraced if a kinsman of his should die by the hands of a common executioner. The Regent, to his credit, was proof against all their solicitations, and replied to their last argument in the words of Corneille,- "Le crime fait la honte, et non pas l'echafaud:" adding, that whatever shame there might be in the punishment he would very willingly ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... extreme; others it renders torpid, and scarcely observant of any evil that may befal them. In Barbary it is always taken, if it can be procured, by criminals condemned to suffer amputation, and it is said, to enable those miserables to bear the rough operations of an unfeeling executioner, more than we Europeans can the keen knife of our most skilful chirurgeons. This it may be necessary to have said to my friend Mr. T. Wedgwood, whom I respect much, as his virtues deserve, and I know them well. I send a small quantity only as I possess but little. If however, it ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... said, it is very hard for so many mens Lives to be taken away for a little Gold. He often said, his Peace was made with God; and his Soul would be with God: yet extream hard to forgive those he said wronged him. He told the Executioner, he was a strong man, and Prayed to be put out of misery ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... his sovereignty, and to seek relief for his shattered frame in a more genial climate. Caesar's gout was then depicted in energetic language, which must have cost him a twinge as he sat there and listened to the councillor's eloquence. "'Tis a most truculent executioner," said Philibert: "it invades the whole body, from the crown of the head to the soles of the feet, leaving nothing untouched. It contracts the nerves with intolerable anguish, it enters the bones, it freezes the marrow, it converts the lubricating fluids of the joints into chalk, it pauses ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the Lord, if this old gentleman did the wise thing, it's black pitch that would torment you at the executioner's, and light up ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... it is examined on the spot. It would seem that a password was requisite for admittance, for no sooner does a stranger-bee endeavor to get in, than it is known. If without necessary credentials, there is evidence enough against it. Each bee is a qualified jurist, judge, and executioner. There is no delay; no waiting for witnesses for defence. The more a bee attempts to escape, the more likely it will be to receive a sting, unless it succeeds. How strange bees are known, would ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... the Biog. Brit. "If I knew the rascal's name," says he, "I would hang it up, as far as lies in my power, to everlasting infamy!" Undoubtedly it richly deserved such treatment, but there was no necessity for the doctor exhibiting such keenness for the office of executioner.—E.] ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... conduct him to the scaffold. They brought with them cords, as usual, to bind the prisoner's hands. But Egmont remonstrated, and showed that he had himself cut off the collar of his doublet and shirt, in order to facilitate the stroke of the executioner. This he did to convince them that he meditated no resistance; and on his promising that he would attempt none, they consented to his remaining with his ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... of that," she said in a choking whisper. "God gave women pity to keep men from becoming demons. You can pity the executioner when, killing you, he must kill ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker
... of verbal misleading, and the most direct, is actually saying the thing that is not; and it is defended on the principle that such words are not a lie, when there is a "justa causa," as killing is not murder in the case of an executioner. ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... the famous "boar of Ardennes,"—more familiar to us now in the pages of romance than history,—who perished ignominiously some twenty years before this period, in 1484, not in fight, but by the hands of the common executioner at Utrecht. Duclos, Hist. de Louis ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... is distinguished from other asses by wearing a hat; an ass on two feet; a monster composed of part of an ape and wild ass; a villain who merits hanging on the first tree we find." And Beza was, no doubt, desirous of the office of executioner! ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... nunnery of the Carmelites received from the Luxembourg prison a package containing a generous lock of her husband's hair, she knew it had been purchased from the executioner. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... little remunerative,—a population living in hovels, and buildings called picturesquely by the familiar term of "blind houses." From the earliest ages this has no doubt been an accursed quarter, the haunt of evil-doers; in fact one thoroughfare is named "the street of the Executioner." For more than five centuries it has been customary for the executioner to have a red door at the entrance of his house. The assistant of the executioner of Chateauroux still lives there,—if we are to ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... words—'Wicked prince, you bereave us of earthly life; but the King of heaven and earth, if we die in defence of His laws, will one day raise us up to life eternal.' The next sufferer, stretching forth his hands as if to receive the palm rather than the executioner's stroke, said, with the same calm assurance, 'I received these limbs from Heaven, but I now despise them, since I am to defend the laws of God; from the sure and steadfast hope that He will one day restore them to me.' Is it possible ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... sheep-stealers, Whiteboys, shop-lifters, and cattle-houghers, who, to the amount of seven or eight at a time, were invariably 'turned off' within four-and-twenty hours after their sentences at each assizes. No executioner being at hand, time pressing, and the sheriff and his deputy being men of refinement, education, humanity, and sensibility, who could not be expected to fulfil the office which they had undertaken—and for which one of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... the Suburra that bordered the town walls, lying in the Carinae,—the valley between the Coelian and Esquiline Hills. The Great Market (Macellum Magnum) was in this district, and many cook-shops, stalls, barber shops, et cet. as well; the office of the public executioner, the barracks for foreign soldiers quartered at Rome; this district was one of the busiest and most densely populated in the entire city. Such conditions would naturally be ideal for the owner of a house ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... country from peril. But the priests inspired a strange awe. Nocturnal councils were held; their death was decreed; and, as they walked their rounds, whispering groups of children gazed after them as men doomed to die. But who should be the executioner? They were reviled and upbraided. The Indian boys threw sticks at them as they passed, and then ran behind the houses. When they entered one of these pestiferous dens, this impish crew clambered on the roof, to pelt them with snowballs through the smoke-holes. The old squaw who crouched ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... "Fair damsel, pity me! forgive that I Thus violate thy bower's sanctity! O pardon me, for I am full of grief— Grief born of thee, young angel! fairest thief! 110 Who stolen hast away the wings wherewith I was to top the heavens. Dear maid, sith Thou art my executioner, and I feel Loving and hatred, misery and weal, Will in a few short hours be nothing to me, And all my story that much passion slew me; Do smile upon the evening of my days: And, for my tortur'd brain begins to craze, ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... the Revolution were progressing with giant strides; the unfortunate Louis XVI. was carried to the scaffold, and within a few months after, the Duke of Orleans was seized on a plea of conspiracy against the French nation, and after a mock trial, consigned to the executioner. A short time previously to the death of his father, the Duke de Chartres had effected his escape through Belgium into Switzerland, and there was joined by his sister Adelaide and Madame de Genlis. Our confined space precludes the possibility of our dwelling on ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... live at peace with all the world? Then practise the maxims of an influential man, who, when asked, after the Revolution, how he managed to escape the executioner's axe, replied, "I made myself of ...
— Gold Dust - A Collection of Golden Counsels for the Sanctification of Daily Life • E. L. E. B.
... order to confiscate these people's property without any trial whatever. But this is the way of proceeding by an English chief-justice in India,—a chief-justice who had rendered himself the instrument, the letter-carrier, the messenger, I had almost said the executioner of Mr. Hastings. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... to know then, gentlemen, that a cuatrero is a stealer of cattle, the ansia is the question or torture. Roznos—saving your presence—are asses, and the first desconcierto is the first turn of the cord which is given by the executioner when we are on the rack. But we do more than burn oil to the Virgin. There is not one of us who does not recite his rosary carefully, dividing it into portions for each day of the week. Many will not ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... looked to the people or to the emperor for life; his antagonist had no power to grant or to refuse it; but if the spectators were dissatisfied and gave the signal of death, he was obliged to become the executioner of their will. This signal was the turning down the thumbs; as is well known. If any showed signs of fear, their death was certain; if on the other hand they waited the fatal stroke with intrepidity, the people generally relented. But fear and want of spirit were of very rare occurrence, insomuch ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... had already begun to sing the death hymn; the executioner was ready, the procession had set out, when Solomon the fisherman appeared suddenly on the threshold of the prison, his eyes aflame and his brow radiant with the halo of the patriarchs. The old man drew himself ...
— Widger's Quotations from Celebrated Crimes of Alexandre Dumas, Pere • David Widger
... or by arbitration in rural districts. Reference has been made to the use of torture. Flogging is the only form of torture which has been allowed under the Manchus. The obdurate witness is laid on his face, and the executioner delivers his blows on the upper part of the thighs with the concave side of a split bamboo, the sharp edges of which mutilate the sufferer terribly. The punishment is continued until the man either supplies the evidence required or becomes insensible. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... clasps her children to her breast and begs life for their sake. But feeling that the petition is futile, she then recalls the memory of her earlier virtue, and, facing her fate, begs as a last favor that no base executioner shall lay his soiled hands on the wife of Sampiero, but that he himself shall execute the sentence. Vannina's behavior moves her husband, but does not touch his heart. "The pity and tenderness," says Buonaparte, "which she should have awakened found a ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... degrades him, by throwing open to him. the downward path of lust, laziness, ungoverned and tyrannous tempers, and the other sins which have in all ages, slowly but surely, worked the just ruin of slave-holding states. The sinner is his own tempter, and the sinner is his own executioner: he lies in wait for his own life (says Solomon) when he lies in wait for his brother's. Do you see the same law working in our own free country? If you leave the poor careless and filthy, you can obtain no good servants: if you leave them profligate, they make ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley
... screens and rubbing the tables and the gold and silver sacrificial utensils, he perceived a lad appear on the scene holding a petition and a list, and report that 'Wu, the head-farmer in the Hei Shan village, had arrived.' "What does this old executioner come for to-day?" Chia ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... other career is open to me, and I am more to be pitied than you suppose. I am the only one left of a band formerly as complete as yours; the executioner has deprived me of my brave comrades one by one, and now I am obliged to carry on my operations entirely alone—dressing up my scarecrows, as your friend calls them, and assuming different voices to make believe that I am supported by a numerous company. Ah! mine is ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... a dense crowd round the scaffold. Sophie heeded them not; she ran girlishly up the steps to where the executioner was leaning on his axe. "Where do I put my head?" she asked simply. The executioner pointed to the block. "There!" said he. "Where did you think you put it?" Sophie reproved him with a look and knelt down. Then she ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... hand?" He also vexed the people by building the Temple of Artemis of Good Counsel, as he called her, hinting that he had taken good counsel for the Greeks. This temple he placed close to his own house in Melite, at the place where at the present day the public executioner casts out the bodies of executed criminals, and the clothes and ropes of men who have hanged themselves. Even in our own times a small statue of Themistokles used to stand in the Temple of Artemis of Good Counsel; and ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... arguments of tyranny are as contemptible as its force is dreadful. Had not your confiscators, by their early crimes, obtained a power which secures indemnity to all the crimes of which they have since been guilty, or that they can commit, it is not the syllogism of the logician, but the lash of the executioner, that would have refuted a sophistry which becomes an accomplice of theft and murder. The sophistic tyrants of Paris are loud in their declamations against the departed regal tyrants, who in former ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... prison; the punishment was one recognised and authorized by the law. But think you the poor wretch had committed a heinous offence, and had been convicted thereof, and sentenced to the lash? Not at all! She was brought by her master to be whipped by the common executioner, without trial, judge, or jury, just at his beck or nod, for some real or supposed offence, or to gratify his own whim or malice. And he may bring her day after day, without cause assigned, and inflict any number of lashes he pleases, short of twenty-five, provided only he pays the fee. ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... a fine plan. It ought to work, for—cripple or not—poor Calmady's a gentleman," he said, slowly. "But doesn't it seem just a trifle rough, Miss St. Quentin, to ask him to be his own executioner?" ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... Ristori was wont to perform, presents an instance of this kind. "Marie Antoinette" is in five acts, with a prologue exhibiting the queen's life at Versailles, in 1786, and an epilogue showing her imprisonment in the Conciergerie, and her march to the guillotine in the custody of Samson the executioner. ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... grasses and their colour changed; she met the trees, and their boughs were stripped. And because Autumn's being is compounded of sternness, therefore it was that they withered and perished, fell and decayed. For Autumn is an executioner,[3] and her hour is darkness. She is a warrior, and her element is metal. Therefore she is called 'the doom-spirit of heaven and earth';[4] for her thoughts are ...
— More Translations from the Chinese • Various
... the theological theory. Two or three examples out of many may serve as types. First of these may be named the teaching of Jacob Heerbrand, professor at the University of Tubingen, who in 1577 illustrated the moral value of comets by comparing the Almighty sending a comet, to the judge laying the executioner's sword on the table between himself and the criminal in a court of justice; and, again, to the father or schoolmaster displaying the rod before naughty children. A little later we have another churchman ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... fall upon and destroy a member of the flock that is sick, or hurt, or blind, is difficult of explanation, but we may be quite sure that, whatever the reason is, the act is not the outcome of a judicial proceeding in which judge and jury and executioner all play their proper part. Wild crows will chase and maltreat a tame crow whenever they get a chance, just why, it would be hard to say. But the tame crow has evidently lost caste among them. I have what I consider ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... word! Boucher has gone mad! But you and I won't trouble ourselves about him, since he will soon pay for it. I think I see a change in the hunter's eye. It has grown uncommonly stern and fierce. He has the look of an executioner." ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... he said to George, "Give me some wine, but mind you only pour out enough to fill the glass, for if you put in one drop too much, so that it overflows, I shall certainly order my executioner to cut off ...
— Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen • Alexander Chodsko
... was unspeakable. He expected an outburst of wrath unappeasable, a summons for an executioner; instead, Mahommed's eyes became humid, and resting his elbow on the table, and his face on the thumb and forefinger, ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... club swinging high in the air, Pocahontas rushed forward and threw herself between him and his victim. With her own body she shielded the Captain from harm, for her heart was moved to pity for the stranger, and she could not bear that he should die. And now aroused, with flashing eyes she waved the executioner back. Then she pleaded with her father that the captive's life ...
— The Story of Pocahontas and Captain John Smith • E. Boyd Smith
... unfortunate captain. It happened that a pirate, with a prodigious pair of whiskers, a wooden leg, and stuck round with pistols, came blustering and swearing upon the quarter deck, inquiring "where was Captain Mackra." He naturally supposed that this barbarous-looking fellow would be his executioner; but, as he approached, he took the captain by the hand, swearing "that he was an honest fellow, and that he had formerly sailed with him, and would stand by him; and let him see the man that would touch him." This terminated the dispute, and Captain Taylor's disposition ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... the skin toward the chin. After the lapse of a certain time the nose is severed from the face. An interval follows, then an ear is lopped off, and so the devilish work goes on with long pauses. The skill of the executioner is displayed in the length of time during which ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... "it is only the tumbril cart and the executioner going to the Place Louis XV. Ah! we used to see it often enough last year; but to-day, four days after the anniversary of the twenty-first of January, one does not feel sorry to see ...
— An Episode Under the Terror • Honore de Balzac
... informed him of the frightful death before him if he refused, he replied, "My life is not of value to me, provided I gain Christ." He remained firm. He was ordered to be put to the torture. He was still unshaken. Then he was delivered over to the executioner. "I am treated," he said, "more mildly than ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... flipped the knife toward the fire and resumed his attitude of abstraction. I had never killed an unarmed Indian. I had never shot one in cold blood. The office of executioner did not appeal, but repulsive as it was it would not do for the boy to kill his savage brother-in-law. Lost Sister and the savage were man and wife, even if married according to the ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... clerk, a tall "Green Mountain boy" from Vermont, who had been robbed of a pistol, acted as executioner. The signal was given, and the poor Pierced-nose resisting, struggling, and screaming, in the most frightful manner, was launched into eternity. The Indians stood round gazing in silence and mute awe, but made no attempt to oppose the execution, ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... been built out from the second story of the prison to the executioner's platform. From this high scaffold rose a great cross with ropes and chains dangling from the arms. Below were piled high heaps of fagots, saturated ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... called here to rest and ask the way. When I opened the door I saw before me the very man, my brother, that I thought to see in the condemned cell at Casterbridge. He was in this chimney-corner; and, jammed close to him, so that he could not have got out if he had tried, was the executioner who'd come to take his life, singing a song about it, and not knowing that it was his victim who was close by, joining in to save appearances. My brother looked a glance of agony at me, and I knew he meant, 'Don't reveal what you see; my life depends on it.' I was so terror-struck that I could hardly ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... that dreadful informer whose shadow already lay heavy upon thousands of homes in the Netherlands, and after the informer the officer, and after the officer the priest, and after the priest the judge, and after the judge—the executioner and ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... Destiny is all-powerful and it is difficult to evade the consequence of our past actions. And this is the karmic evil arising out of sin committed in a former life. But, O Brahmana, I am always assiduous in eradicating the evil. The Deity takes away life, the executioner acts only as a secondary agent. And we, O good Brahmana, are only such agents in regard to our karma. Those animals that are slain by me and whose meat I sell, also acquire karma, because (with their meat), gods and guests and servants are ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... revealed he, with the help of Cristalline, who is really a good-natured creature in more senses than one, slays the three chief minions of the tyrant—a watchmaker who sets the clock, a locksmith who is to count the detached rings, and a kind of Executioner High-priest who is to do the flaying and burning,—cuts his way with Cristalline herself to the enchanted boat, regaining terra firma and (relatively speaking) terra not too much enchanted. But at his very landing at the mouth of the crocodile river he ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... Chamberlain came by, and having heard what had happened, he angrily dismissed the crowd, and sending for the executioner, ordered the cheating impostor to be whipped and branded, and then sent over ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... almost flayed from his rump to the nape of his neck, Hatchway, who had purposely absented himself hitherto, appeared in the yard, and interposing in his behalf, prevailed upon Trunnion to call off the executioner, and ordered the malefactor ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... of the love-making in Dame Martha's garden, and the earlier music returns, as it does in Gounod's score, and as it was bound to do. At the end she draws back in horror from Faust, after uttering a prayer above the music of the celestial choir, just as the executioner appears. Mefistofele pronounces her damned, but voices from on high ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... had taken the place of his dead father. His eyes softened, and their fire died out. But there was no rescinding of his desperate decision. He was thinking of what it would mean, the thought of this white-haired man in the hands of the executioner. He was thinking of the kindly heart beating within that stalwart bosom. He was thinking of the wonderful, thoughtful kindness for others which was always the motive of his life. And a deep-throated curse rose to his lips. But it found no utterance. ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... France. Nine hundred thousand Christians were slain within thirty years after the institution of the Jesuits. The Duke of Alva boasted that he had put to death 36,000 in the Netherlands by the hands of the common executioner. The Inquisition destroyed 150,000 within thirty years. If it be asserted that this was accomplished by the secular arm, I reply that sentence of death was pronounced upon so-called heretics by the church and that the secular power was simply a tool for carrying the barbarous ...
— The Last Reformation • F. G. [Frederick George] Smith
... the Oneidas were coming out of the willows, crowding up around my horse, and I heard everywhere my name pronounced, and everywhere outstretched hands sought mine, and painted faces were lifted to mine—even the blackened visage of the war-party's executioner relaxing ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... pieces of eight in the name of the king; and I was forced to lend him 500, lest he might have quarrelled with me, which would have given much pleasure to the Hollanders. In this country, when a Javan of any note is to be put to death, although there is a public executioner, yet the nearest of kin to the criminal is generally allowed to execute the office, which is considered as a great favour. The 14th March, Thomas Tudd, who had been left here as chief factor for Banda, departed this life, having been long sick; so ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... to us. The conjecture of Isaac was a description of the truth. My brother, knowing well that if apprehended his death were certain, had in the outset resolved, if attacked, rather to provoke his death, and insure it in the violence of a conflict, than be reserved for the axe of the Roman executioner. But in the short moment in which he fell headlong into the river, it flashed across his mind—'The darkness favors my escape—I can reach the shore;' so swimming a short distance below the surface, falling down with the stream and softly rising, concealed himself among the reeds upon the margin ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... [primarily British, from Gilbert & Sullivan's 'lord high executioner'] n. The person in an organization who knows the most about some aspect ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... he barked at the Swiss reformers, how he pursued Andreas Bodenstein for a difference on infant baptism; how he treated Muenzer and the Anabaptists; how he hounded on the nobles to suppress the peasant revolt and "stab, kill, and strangle them without mercy"; or how he was for handing over to the executioner all who denied a single article which rested on the Scripture or the authority of the universal teaching of the Church. My purpose is to show Luther's attitude towards the Devil, witches, apparitions, and all the rest of that ghostly tribe; and in doing so I have no wish to indulge in "the ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... cowed beyond description, he did as he was bid. No other boy cried, or even winced; a few sharp cuts was all which Mr. Rose gave them, and even they grew fewer each time, for he was tired, and displeased to be an executioner. ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... Bible to the last, promising to give it to the chaplain to be delivered to me. I will not dwell on the dreadful particulars of the execution. No Maltese could be found willing to perform the office of executioner. The chief of the police, therefore, ordered a swinging stage to be formed on either side of the vessel, on which the criminals were placed with ropes round their necks, secured to the fore-yard-arms, three on each side. These stages were secured in ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... ourselves?" I continued. "Have I fallen so low in your esteem that you can dissimulate before me? That unfortunate journey, you think you are condemned to it, do you? Am I a tyrant, an absolute master? Am I an executioner who drags you to punishment? How much do you fear my wrath when you come before me with such mimicry? What terror impels you to ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... Orange bring his rack and his odious Dutch tortures—the beast! the wretch! I spit upon him and defy him. Cheerfully will I lay this head upon the block; cheerfully will I accompany my lord to the scaffold: we will cry, 'God save King James!' with our dying breath, and smile in the face of the executioner." And she told her page a hundred times at least of the particulars of the last interview which ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sat within, unconscious of the hideous tragedy that was being enacted in his name. When he discovered the infamy by which he had been made the executioner of an innocent woman, he made his first demand that Edwin M. Stanton resign from his cabinet as Secretary of War. And for the first time in the history of America, a cabinet officer waived the question of honour and refused ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... twenty yards away, where he halted and sat motionless. If he really looked so much like Ali Higg, as seemed to be the case, no one at that distance could have doubted his identity. I hauled off two or three paces, so as not to betray the fact that I was to be Jael's executioner in a certain contingency, and the long sleeve of ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... resignation, and a meekness, so distinguished and beyond his years as to attract the admiration and the liveliest sympathy of the public universally. If strangers could feel in that way, if the mere hardened executioner could be melted at the final scene,—it may be judged to what a fierce and terrific height would ascend the affliction of a doating mother, constitutionally too fervid in her affections. I have heard an official person ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... "'Fetch the Executioner!' he cried, in terrible tones. 'I will see this impostor executed before my eyes!' And twenty slaves flew to ...
— The Mysterious Shin Shira • George Edward Farrow
... King's Advocate, to a practice of Scottish law which had been almost in abeyance since 1638—except, of course, in the case of witches. Turner vainly tried to save from the Boot {208} the Laird of Corsack, who had protected his life from the fanatics. "The executioner favoured Mr Mackail," says the Rev. Mr Kirkton, himself a sufferer later. This Mr Mackail, when a lad of twenty-one (1662), had already denounced the rulers, in a sermon, as on the moral level of ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... rashly exposed himself unprotected to the assaults of the Indians, and was taken prisoner after a most gallant attempt at escape. He was led about in triumph for some time from village to village, and at length sentenced to die. His head was laid upon a stone, and the executioner stood over him with a club, awaiting the signal to slay, when Pocahontas, daughter of the Indian chief, implored her father's mercy for the white man. He was inexorable, and ordered the execution to proceed; but the generous girl laid her head ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... of your men, disguised as a penitent friar, and I will give it to him. His dress will procure him the means of approaching the scaffold itself, and he will deliver the official order to the officer, who, in his turn, will hand it to the executioner; in the meantime, it will be as well to acquaint Peppino with what we have determined on, if it be only to prevent his dying of fear or losing his senses, because in either case a very useless ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... was a very small one. We four members of the committee were, of course, present with the executioner, who was to act under their orders. The others were the United States Marshal, the governor of the gaol, the chaplain, and three members of the press. The room was a small brick chamber, forming an outhouse to the Central Electrical station. It had been used as a laundry, and had an oven ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... better than republics; for many, they will ever so remain. And better, on all hands, that peace should rule with a scepter, than than the tribunes of the people should brandish their broadswords. Better be the subject of a king, upright and just; than a freeman in Franko, with the executioner's ax ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... verse; and in cases in which nothing of the kind occurs, the erotic feelings of childhood may still exercise influence later in life. As examples from world-literature, I may mention: Heine, who was still a boy when he was so greatly attracted by his Sefchen, the executioner's niece, whose personality made a definite impression on the poet's maturer work;[107] Goethe, whose friendship with the sister of the little Derones, likewise had certain artistic results; Dante, who first met his Beatrice at the age of nine years, and ever thenceforward ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... the Hypochondriack, a periodical Paper, peculiarly adapted to the people of England, and which comes out monthly in the London Magazine, etc.' In his Corsican tour we had seen him interviewing the executioner in the island, and some days before his final parting with Johnson he had witnessed the execution of fifteen men before Newgate and been clouded in his mind by doubts as to whether human life was or was not mere machinery and a chain of planned ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... is strewn with records of the ruin of those who failed to placate his wrath. Of the six queens he married, two he divorced, and two he beheaded. Four English cardinals[16] lived in his reign; one perished by the executioner's axe, one escaped it by absence, and a third (p. 002) by a timely but natural death. Of a similar number of dukes[17] half were condemned by attainder; and the same method of speedy despatch accounted for six or seven earls and viscounts and for scores of lesser degree. He began ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... FILLED WITH HOT EMBERS!! All this time the prisoner instead of bewailing his fate, seemed to surpass his tormentors in expressions of joy. At length when exhausted with loss of blood and unable to stand, his executioner closed the tragic scene by beating out his brains with ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... when untimely sent to bed, he stole Susan's scissors, and cut a range of stables in the sheets. The short, sharp infliction of pain answered best, but his father, though he could give a shake when angry, could not strike when cool, and Albinia was forced to turn executioner, though with such tears and trembling that her culprit looked up reassuringly, saying, 'Never mind, mamma, I shan't!' He did, however, mind her tears, they bore in upon him the sense of guilt; and after each ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... easily made than obeyed. It was very difficult for Katie to confine herself to the statement of facts, for the reason that she seemed to imagine herself prosecutor, witness, judge, jury, and executioner all rolled into one. It took all the tact of the clerk to get from her what could be received as ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... the ghastly office of executioner is assigned, said all in his power to persuade him to sign the offered document, but in vain; he obtained nothing ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... culprit he was to execute. William Marwood—unlike his celebrated victim, he has his place in the Dictionary of National Biography—is perhaps the most remarkable of these persons who have held at different times the office of public executioner. As the inventor of the "long drop," he has done a lasting service to humanity by enabling the death-sentence passed by the judge to be carried out with the minimum of possible suffering. Marwood took a lofty view of the office he held, and refused his assent to the somewhat hypocritical loathing, ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... his ingenuity in his efforts to evade his danger, but Stone drew the noose about him tighter and tighter. He played the unlucky man with all the malice of an executioner. He baited him and toyed with him. McAlpin, white, stood his ground. His fighting blood was all there and he broke at length into a torrent of abuse of the man that he realized was ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... carried before the sultan, who waited for him, attended by the grand vizier; and as soon as he saw him he ordered the executioner, who waited there for the purpose, to strike off his head without hearing him, or giving him leave to clear himself. As soon as the executioner had taken off the chain that was fastened about Aladdin's neck and body, he made the ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... worn out would drop by the wayside. One of our guard would then dismount, and try by kicks and blows to make him resume his place in the line. In all cases those measures proved unavailing, and a shot in the rear told us that one of our number had ceased to exist. The executioner would then fall into his place, laughing and chatting ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... scrupulous exactitude of the dramatic properties with which is invested each incident in the tale. The hero, a characteristic Persian adventurer, one part good fellow, and three parts knave, always the plaything of fortune—whether barber, water-carrier, pipe-seller, dervish, doctor's servant, sub-executioner, scribe and mollah, outcast, vender of pipe-sticks, Turkish merchant, or secretary to an ambassador—equally accepting her buffets and profiting by her caresses, never reluctant to lie or cheat or thieve, ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... he might have drawn a picture that would have made humanity shudder. For, throughout the whole history, if a man had wished to know what was then the orthodox faith, the best method of ascertaining it, would have been, undoubtedly, to ask, " What is the catechism of this public executioner." ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... taking only the coolest and steadiest and the best bombers. Most of them were men who had been at Dover with me. I felt like an executioner when I notified ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... tell you the whole thing, but this will be enough. The Council have decreed the death of a certain person, and I am appointed his executioner." ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... executioner now inquired of the confessors whether the culprits died in the true faith? If answered in the affirmative, a rope was passed round their necks and twisted to the stake, so that they were strangled before the fire was kindled. All the other culprits had died in this manner; and the head executioner ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... who had been taken prisoner, was condemned to be roasted to death before a slow fire, and was accordingly fastened by a chain to a stake, around which a huge fire was kindled; he suffered in slow torture a long time until despatched by the executioner with a spear, a piece of humanity that greatly angered ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... that, instead of turning out the Fiend I'd been led to expect, he was one of the most considerate men I've ever met. He wouldn't even let me unlock my own boxes, but took the keys and opened them for me himself. (Didn't an executioner braid the hair of some queen whose head he was going to chop off? I must look the incident up, when I have time.) Anyway, I thought of it when the Custom House man was being so polite; but the analogy didn't go any farther, ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... go down to the scene of the outrage. A friendly Bay of Islands chief offered to do the rest. He went with the schooner. On its arrival the unsuspecting "Lizard" came off to trade. At the end of a friendly visit he was stepping into his canoe when his unofficially appointed executioner stepped quietly forward, levelled his double-barrelled ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... reflection, that his work was superlatively excellent, but unluckily printed in a tasteless age; a comfortable and solacing self-consciousness, which hath, I verily believe, prevented many a great genius from becoming his own executioner. ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... leagues from Roche-Mauprat, on your way to Fromental, you must have noticed an old tower standing by itself in the middle of the woods. It is famous for the tragic death of a prisoner about a century ago. The executioner, on his rounds, thought good to hang him without any further formality, merely to gratify an old ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... of his fell enemy victorious. He was condemned to death. No rescue came, and he was led, yet habited in his armour, to the block. With a courageous look he lay down his head; but scarcely had the axe of the cruel executioner fallen upon it, than a fearful tempest burst forth. The headsman, the recreant knight, and all who had assisted willingly at the execution, were struck to the ground, becoming black masses of cinder, ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... the author entering cheerfully into the most abstruse points of the controversy concerning the Nature of Christ, without apparently one wavering thought as to the Deity of the Son of Mary. There, in the 'Consolation,' a book written in prison and in disgrace, with death at the executioner's hands impending over him—a book in which above all others we should have expected a man possessing the Christian faith to dwell upon the promises of Christianity—the name of Christ is never once mentioned, the tone, though religious and reverential, is that of ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... the torture. It had an irresistible fascination for her. She gave the executioner the knife and begged him to explore and ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... which human nature shrinks, appear to have been sought for by Selwyn with an eagerness resembling enjoyment. This strange propensity was frequently laughed at by his friends. Alluding to the practice of criminals dropping a handkerchief as a signal for the executioner, says Walpole, "George never thinks, but a la tete tranchee. He came to town the other day to have a tooth drawn, and told the man that he would drop ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... face of a new-born child, red and full of wrinkles, distorted from crying—he saw the face of a murderer, he saw him plunging a knife into the body of another person—he saw, in the same second, this criminal in bondage, kneeling and his head being chopped off by the executioner with one blow of his sword—he saw the bodies of men and women, naked in positions and cramps of frenzied love—he saw corpses stretched out, motionless, cold, void— he saw the heads of animals, of boars, of crocodiles, of elephants, of bulls, of birds—he saw gods, saw Krishna, saw Agni—he ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... by justice. He has also the power to kill me, but he would have to provide the executioner, as he could not ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... like myself would ride off their farms, heft him up on the nearest tree, and empty their revolvers into him. And it wouldn't be a murder: it would be a rough and ready execution. Well, I did the job by myself, without sharing the responsibility with my pals; and I consider myself an executioner, ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... or even when in his department there has been any violation of law, although beyond his power of prevention, so sure is he of the punishment of death, that he anticipates it by ripping up his own body rather than be delivered over to the executioner and entailing disgrace and ruin on all his family. There cannot under such a system be anything like judicious legislation founded on enquiry and adapted to the ever-varying circumstances of life. As Government functionaries they lie and ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... ranks was the sledge, or hurdle, on which the prisoners were to be drawn to the place of execution, about a mile distant from Carlisle. It was painted black, and drawn by a white horse. At one end of the vehicle sat the Executioner, a horrid-looking fellow, as beseemed his trade, with the broad axe in his hand; at the other end, next the horse, was an empty seat for two persons. Through the deep and dark Gothic archway that opened on the drawbridge, were seen on horseback the High Sheriff ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... He shook hands with the chaplain first, then the executioner, thanking the one, forgiving the other. The executioner pushed him back gently, says one account. At the moment when the assistant put the hideous rope round his neck, he made a sign to the chaplain to take the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... and calculated like every bloody deed of this resolute and able sovereign. Reprisals had already been made upon the Greeks at Constantinople for the acts of Hypsilanti, and a number of innocent persons had been put to death by the executioner, but no general attack upon the Christians had been suggested, nor had the work of punishment passed out of the hands of the government itself. Now, however, the fury of the Mohammedan populace was let loose upon the infidel. ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... trembled under him; the perspiration stood upon his brow. He heard the voice as the voice of a judge or an executioner. He looked in the stern eyes of the Girondins, and read only anger, doom, vengeance. Then he caught in the silence the sound of his wife weeping, for at Pierre's appearance she had broken into wild ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... like your cold justice; out of the eye of your judges there always glanceth the executioner and his ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... at intervals of perhaps a minute each, filed from the room, and soon there was no one left save Chester, his executioner, and the chief. ...
— The boy Allies at Liege • Clair W. Hayes
... " 'Shalt thou then joy and solace have from me, I tears from thee, and punishment and woe? Now these mine hands shall make an end of thee. This, if thou know'st it not, for poison know. Much grieve I that thou should'st too honoured be By the executioner who deals the blow; Should'st die a death too easy: since I wot, For thee too shameful hand ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... to this effect "Erodiana Regina," "Omnia praetereunt," etc. A dirty, one-eyed fellow keeps the place. In my presence he swept the frescos over with a scratchy broom, flaying their upper surface in profound unconsciousness of mischief. The armor of the executioner has had its steel colors almost rubbed off by this infernal process. Damp and cobwebs are ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... soldier—who had sworn to throw a fagot on her scaffold as his tribute of abhorrence, that did so, that fulfilled his vow— suddenly to turn away a penitent for life, saying everywhere that he had seen a dove rising upon wings to heaven from the ashes where she had stood? What else drove the executioner to kneel at every shrine for pardon to his share in the tragedy? And, if all this were insufficient, then I cite the closing act of her life as valid on her behalf, were all other testimonies against her. The executioner had been directed to apply his torch from below. He did ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... was once a private opinion, and when it shall be a private opinion again it will solve the problem of the age. The fact narrated must correspond to something in me to be credible or intelligible. We, as we read, must become Greeks, Romans, Turks, priest and king, martyr and executioner; must fasten these images to some reality in our secret experience, or we shall learn nothing rightly. What befell Asdrubal or Caesar Borgia is as much an illustration of the mind's powers and depravations as what has befallen us. Each new law and political movement has meaning for you. Stand ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... obliges him to touch many things which he had better leave alone. Is it not deplorable that bailiffs must seize a debtor's property in the Pope's name?—that judges must condemn a murderer to death in the name of the Head of the Church?—that the executioner must cut off heads in the name of the Vicar of Christ? There is to me something truly scandalous in the association of those two words, Pontifical lottery! And what can the hundred and thirty-nine millions of Catholics ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About |
