"Headsman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Her feet only still belong to this earth. Her upraised eyes tell that her thoughts are already in heaven. The man who bears the sword is not an executioner whose stern ferocity augments that of the spectacle. Here the headsman has an air of compassion. Behind the saint walks a priest who assists her. His physiognomy is common, but sweet. He applauds the tranquil resignation of the victim, who seems already to hear the celestial concert that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... the European headsman; He stands masked, clothed in red, with huge legs and strong naked arms, And leans ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... pours! Oh, I am nothing, nothing unto thee, But, husband, think how dear thou art to me! Think how the path of glory on thee opes, Thou dearest lodestar of a nation's hopes! Shall blood of kings be but the headsman's sport? Is life a toy ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille
... Lucius, returning his fondness, replied, "Do not be melancholy on that account; I can remedy that." Ordering therefore, forthwith, one of those condemned to die to be brought to the feast, together with the headsman and axe, he asked the youth if he wished to see him executed. The boy answering that he did, Lucius commanded the executioner to cut off his neck; and this several historians mention; and Cicero, indeed, in his dialogue de Senectute, introduces Cato ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... In the meantime, another discussion on his fate took place in the Convention. It was proposed to deal with him as he had dealt with better men, to put him out of the pale of the law, and to deliver him at once without any trial to the headsman. But the humanity which, since the ninth of Thermidor, had generally directed the public councils restrained the deputies ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... scaffold a good pretext for leaning in friendly fashion on his gaoler's arm, he extended his hand to Sir William Kingston, saying, "Master Lieutenant, I pray you see me safe up; for my coming down let me shift for myself." Even to the headsman he gave a gentle pleasantry and a smile from the block itself, as he put aside his beard so that the keen blade should not touch it. "Wait, my good friend, till I have removed my beard," he said, turning his eyes upwards ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... struggled to his knees, where he leaned with neck outstretched as if he waited the stroke of the headsman's sword, unable to regain his feet. The girl looked with serious eyes into Morgan's face, the hot ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... native, and the hatchet made to answer for a flag, while the mountain in the background would answer for the rolling billows of the ocean. He said he'd be hanged if it should. So I mentioned that it might perhaps pass for the execution of Mary Queen of Scots. Put George in black for the headsman, bend over the tree and put a frock on it for Mary, let the hatchet stand, and work in the guinea-pig and the factory chimney as mourners. Just as I had got the words out of my mouth, Barker knocked ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... two minutes from the time of first observing the whale, three or four boats are down, and are darting through the water with their utmost speed toward their intended victim, perhaps accompanied with a song from the headsman, who urges the quick and powerful plying of the oar, with ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... "Scavenger's daughter," while Simon Renard, scarcely able to repress a smile, interrogates the comical little figure at his leisure. Behind him stands Sorrocold, the surgeon; and in the farther corner Mauger (the headsman), Nightgall, and an assistant torturer, recline against the wall. The feeble rays of the lantern throw an obscure light upon the gloomy walls decorated with the stock in trade of the torturers, thumb-screws, gauntlets, collars, pinchers, saws, chains, and other ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... his account of Mary Queen of Scots, quotes this story. After mentioning that the headsman remained alone with the Queen's decapitated corpse, he adds: "He then took off her shoes and handled her as he pleased. It is suspected that he treated her in the same way as that miserable muleteer, in the Hundred ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... her—kss-kss—what a laugh we'll have." And the more they gave him to drink, the more he told, speaking of his unfortunate mistress as the lowest of the low. For my part, I confess that she excited my interest, that false Madame Jenkins, who weeps in every corner, implores her husband as if he were the headsman, and is in danger of being sent about her business when all society believes her to be married, respectable, established for life. The others did nothing but laugh, especially the women. Dame! it is amusing when one is in service to see that these ladies of the upper ten have their affronts too, ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... it war rather a tantalizing scene to stand aloof and contemplate; and so the guards very likely felt; but Sir Norman's thoughts were of that room in black, the headsman's axe, and Leoline. He felt he would never see her again—never see the sun rise that was to shine on their bridal; and he wondered what she would think of him, and if she was destined to fall into the hands of ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... Stranger.—The headsman thought so, when he made a ghost of me almost three hundred years ago. I had a character through life of loving a jest, and did not belie it at the last. But I had also as general a reputation for sincerity, and ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... For the headsman's axe seemed to be glimmering in the black darkness ahead, and he shuddered as he recalled once more what he ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... can be. There was a great heap of it. It looked just like rags soaked in blood. Logre, the hunchback, you know, put one of the pieces over his shoulder. He looked like a headsman. You may be sure this is some ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... now, down the long galleries Is borne, death-wounded; for this day it is She needs must pass out of the light and die. And, seeing the stain of death must not come nigh My radiance, I must leave this house I love. But ha! The Headsman of the Pit, above Earth's floor, to ravish her! Aye, long and late He hath watched, and cometh at the ...
— Alcestis • Euripides
... royal executioner, but also the city functionary, in the hope of delaying his execution, the emissaries of the Cardinal secured the services of a condemned felon, who, on a promise of unconditional pardon, consented to fill the office of headsman; and who, between his inexperience and his horror at his unwonted task, performed his hideous functions so imperfectly that it was only on the thirty-fourth stroke that the head of the martyred young man was severed from ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... at the block, and with scented cravat Dusted room for his neck, gayly doffing his hat, Kissed his hand to a lady, bent low to the crowd, Then smiling, turned round to the headsman and bowed. ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... see the European headsman, He stands mask'd, clothed in red, with huge legs and strong naked arms, And leans on a ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... of what I hear is true, rogue," answered Ithobal savagely, "the tormentor and the headsman alone could satisfy all my debt to you. Say, merchant, what return have you made me for that sackful of gold which you bore hence ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... and certain death, there stalked into the arena a grim and fatal form, brandishing a short, sharp sword, and with features utterly concealed beneath its vizor. With slow and measured steps, this dismal headsman approached the gladiator, still kneeling—laid the left hand on his humbled crest—drew the edge of the blade across his neck—turned round to the assembly, lest, in the last moment, remorse should come upon them; the dread signal continued the same: the blade glittered brightly ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... our wrath by the precipitation of their crane-neck quarterings. Treason they feel to be their crime; each individual carter feels himself under the ban of confiscation and attainder; his blood is attainted through six generations; and nothing is wanting but the headsman and his axe, the block and the sawdust, to close up the vista of his horrors. What! shall it be within benefit of clergy to delay the king's message on the high road?—to interrupt the great respirations, ebb and flood, systole and diastole, of the national intercourse?—to endanger the ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... Don Juan; he saw it thinking, upbraiding, condemning, uttering accusations, threatening doom; it cried aloud, and gnashed upon him. All anguish that shakes human souls was gathered there; supplications the most tender, the wrath of kings, the love in a girl's heart pleading with the headsman; then, and after all these, the deeply searching glance a man turns on his fellows as he mounts the last step of the scaffold. Life so dilated in this fragment of life that Don Juan shrank back; he walked up and down the room, he dared not meet that gaze, but he saw nothing ...
— The Elixir of Life • Honore de Balzac
... understand the feelings of Marie Stuart when she arrayed herself in her best garments for her execution: it was simply the heroism of supreme vanity, the desire to fascinate if possible the very headsman. One can understand any beautiful woman being as brave as she. Harder than death itself would it have seemed to her had she been compelled to appear on the scaffold looking hideous. She was resolved to make the most of her charms so long as life lasted. ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... able-bodied, middle-aged man, without encumbrance, who can have an undeniable character from his last situation, as headsman, hangman, and general executioner. He is accustomed to the use of thumbikins and the most approved and fashionable modes of torture; and officiated for many years as superintendent of the wheel of a foreign prince, renowned ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... had been Sir Walter, instead of sailing to England where you knew that a headsman's axe awaited you, you would have coasted by the shores of the Chesapeake Bay and dropped off quietly where is the home of the canvas-back and the terrapin! Just stepped into one of the jolly-boats and peacefully drifted ashore on a ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... and unfortunate incidents, its pleasures and chagrins? This often happens to me, especially by day and when I am unhappy. For a long time, too, I have been unhappy. For instance, not long ago, when shut up in a dark prison, with no prospect before me but that of an unjust death, and the headsman's axe bringing to a close my sad and eventful career, my good angel certainly, for I believe in such beings, sent, two hundred feet below the surface of the earth, a vision of dazzling light and beauty. I was transported beneath the green shadows of myrtles and orange-trees; ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... would serve her save royal blood! My poor father says as sure as the lions and fleur-de-lis have come into a family, the headsman's axe ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Valentine, adieu! Think on thy Proteus, when thou haply seest Some rare noteworthy object in thy travel: Wish me partaker in thy happiness When thou dost meet good hap; and in thy danger, If ever danger do environ thee, Commend thy grievance to my holy prayers, For I will be thy headsman, Valentine. ...
— The Two Gentlemen of Verona • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... anybody had ever wanted to read them, had never succeeded in getting themselves read, but they had cuts and cuts which were fascinating to surmise about. The sixth book was the second volume of a romance called "The Headsman," by "the author of 'The Spy,'" and the seventh was a ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... early hour, the chains and bolts of the cell were heard to clash and groan, and Damian was startled from a broken sleep, which he had not enjoyed for above two hours. His eyes were bent on the slowly opening door, as if he had expected the headsman and his assistants; but the jailer ushered in a stout man in a pilgrim's habit. "Is it a priest whom you bring me, warden?" said the ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... be so, yet I have heard that no matter how handsome a headsman may be, he wears a black mask, and hands are not stretched out to ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... of the king, however harmless in itself, had in it for her something dismal and dreadful. It was the involuntary, instinctive touch of the headsman, who examines the neck of his victim, and searches on it for the place where he will make the stroke. Thus had Anne Boleyn once put her tender white hands about her slender neck, and said to the headsman, brought over from Calais specially for her execution: "I pray you strike me well ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... warned him; the singing had ceased. And this bitter idealist, this preacher of the hollowness of the real, wondered where were the sable trappings of woe, the hideous envisagement of them that are condemned with mortuary symbols in garbs of painted flame to the stake, faggot, axe, and headsman. None of these were visible, and the gentle spirit of the prisoner became ruffled, alarmed. He expected violence but instead they offered churchly music. Restless, his nerves fretted, he asked himself ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... his fate, villain as he was, excited much sympathy all over Germany. The ladies especially were loud in their regret that nothing could be done to save a hero so good-looking, and of adventures so romantic, from the knife of the headsman. ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... custody," answered Villefort; "and rely upon it, if the letter is found, he will not be likely to be trusted abroad again, unless he goes forth under the especial protection of the headsman." ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Tis very hard, my lord, I cannot choose My way of cooking. I shall laugh, I vow, In the grim headsman's face, when I remember That I am dying for my lady's love. I leave no one to shed a tear for me; Father nor mother, kith nor kin, have I, To say, "Poor Ritta!" o'er my lifeless clay. They all have gone before me, and 'twere well If ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... bringing to England in their Armada; and, at the end of the room, sits Queen Elizabeth on horseback, in her high ruff and faded finery. Very likely none of these clothes were ever on her actual person. Here, too, we saw a headsman's block,—not that on which Raleigh was beheaded, which I would have given gold to see, but the one which was used for the Scotch Lords Kilmarnock, Lovat, and others, executed on account of the Rebellion of 1745. It is a block ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... from the prisoner's legs, that he might go to hear mass, commanded his jailer not to let him budge from his cage except to be tortured (gehenne) and the duke wrote a piteous letter, praying for clemency and signing himself le pauvre Jacques. In vain: him, too, the headsman's axe sent to his ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... we spare thee torture or mutilation. Prepare to meet the headsman within the castle yard, at the third sun-rising ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... nothingness. One would have said that it was the tatters of a people, rags of wood, of iron, of bronze, of stone, and that the Faubourg Saint Antoine had thrust it there at its door, with a colossal flourish of the broom making of its misery its barricade. Blocks resembling headsman's blocks, dislocated chains, pieces of woodwork with brackets having the form of gibbets, horizontal wheels projecting from the rubbish, amalgamated with this edifice of anarchy the sombre figure of the old tortures endured by ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo |
