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In the present day we frequently hear "God bless you" addressed to persons who have just sneezed, a perpetuation of a custom quite universal in the time of Gregory the Great, in whose time, at a certain season, the air was filled with an unwholesome vapor or malaria which so affected the people that those who sneezed were at once stricken with death-agonies.
Music is all-powerful to awaken the one, but powerless to abate the other; and the eyes that weep over the pathetic strains of "Lochaber" can gaze without a tear upon the death-agonies of a slaughtered friend. The terrible sacrifice marked the end of the light season. The dark season had now begun, which would last for half the coming year.
I had heard something of the terribly-brutalising effects of the Reign of Terror, but the conversation of these wretches gave me such a vivid insight of the incredible depths of depravity of which the human mind is sometimes capable as I could certainly not otherwise have gained, unless indeed by associating with the ruffians who gathered daily round the guillotine to insult and exult over the death-agonies of their victims.
A companion sentinel hastened to the Frenchman's assistance, but Putnam also was at hand, and getting in ahead brought the guard to the ground by a well-aimed blow from the butt-end of his musket, and while the enemy lay quivering in his death-agonies the two companions hastened away. They rejoined their men and finally reached the camp in safety.
I was sure that I was to be taken to the vivi-section laboratory, and it required all my courage to fortify myself against the terrors of so fearful a death. In Pellucidar, where there is no time, death-agonies may endure for eternities. Accordingly, I had to steel myself against an endless doom, which now stared me in the face!
Maudie from the top of the ladder had watched their dying contortions with the cynical interest of a Roman matron criticizing the death-agonies of a gladiator in the arena. When after staggering about the fan-tails turned over on their backs and flopped, Maudie descended from her perch and toyed with them daintily during their last moments, finally carrying their corpses up into the loft.
That moment perhaps displayed most gloriously the lionlike courage which was Murat's special attribute. His face never changed, he did not move a muscle; only gazing at the soldiers with an expression of mingled bitterness and gratitude, he said: "Thank you; my friends. Since sooner or later you will be obliged to aim true, do not prolong my death-agonies.
But we dared go no nearer for fear of the death-agonies of the monster coming on, and our being sucked down into the vortex she made as she plunged beneath the sea which had borne her triumphantly so many times in the past. The desire was strong amongst us to begin talking, but Mr Brymer forbade a word being spoken.
That moment perhaps displayed most gloriously the lionlike courage which was Murat's special attribute. His face never changed, he did not move a muscle; only gazing at the soldiers with an expression of mingled bitterness and gratitude, he said: "Thank you; my friends. Since sooner or later you will be obliged to aim true, do not prolong my death-agonies.
For a moment she remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon the threshold then, with a low moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the person of her brother, and in her violent and now final death-agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the terrors he had anticipated. From that chamber, and from that mansion, I fled aghast.
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