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Next morning I rose early, and made certain alterations in the chief priest's clothes so as to avoid detection. I went to the chief executioner's house, presented the letter, and received the horse, upon which I rode hastily away to the village. Having obtained the hundred tomauns I escaped across the frontier to Bagdad. IV. Hajji and the Infidels
The innocent men were released at once, but Laurent and his companion were put in prison to await the guillotine. But, pooh! Master Laurent had too pretty a head to fall under the executioner's ignoble knife. The judges who condemned him, the curious who expected to witness him executed, had forgotten what Montaigne calls the corporeal recommendation of beauty.
When he was doomed to death, and came away from his trial with the edge of the executioner's axe turned towards him as was always done in those times when a state prisoner came to that hopeless pass he bore it quite serenely, and gave his blessing to his son, who pressed through the crowd in Westminster Hall and kneeled down to receive it.
Just about this time was the State murder of Overbury, and the execution of Sir Walter Raleigh, one of England's noblest sons, brave and chivalric, who, at the executioner's block, took the axe in his hand, kissed the blade, and said to the sheriff: "'Tis a sharp medicine, but a sound cure for all diseases."
All men, at least, who speak the English tongue, will accept the conclusion of the provinces, that when laws which protected the citizen against arbitrary imprisonment and guaranteed him a trial in his own province which forbade the appointment of foreigners to high office which secured the property of the citizen from taxation, except by the representative body which forbade intermeddling on the part of the sovereign with the conscience of the subject in religious matters when such laws had been subverted by blood tribunals, where drowsy judges sentenced thousands to stake and scaffold without a hearing by excommunication, confiscation, banishment-by hanging, beheading, burning, to such enormous extent and with such terrible monotony that the executioner's sword came to be looked upon as the only symbol of justice then surely it might be said, without exaggeration, that the complaints of the Netherlanders were "no pedantic fantasies," and that the King had ceased to perform his functions as dispenser of God's justice.
"Then go to her, sir, I entreat of you," she said; "she may yet be saved. But what of Jennet? Is she, too, to die?" "No," replied the divine; "being evidence against her relatives, her life is spared." "Heaven grant she do no more mischief!" exclaimed Alice Nutter. She then submitted herself to the executioner's assistants, and was led forth.
These words, drawn from him by Rich, were found sufficient to effect the King's pleasure. The aged prelate was pronounced guilty, and beheaded on July 22nd, 1535. On his way to the scaffold he exclaimed, "Feet, do your duty; you have only a short journey," and then, singing the Te Deum laudamus, he placed his head upon the block, and the executioner's axe fell.
She looked up suddenly, saw the huge notched executioner's sword descending upon her bowed neck, uttered a little scream, sprang to her feet and ran, fleet as a rabbit, across the waiting-room; whilst down its full length after her with a clang fell the weapon followed by a burst of laughter from everyone in the room but the countess.
But France was helpless, and when Lochiel sailed for France with the Prince only Cluny remained, hunted like a partridge in the mountains, to keep up the spirit of the Cause. Old Lovat met a long-deserved death by the executioner's axe, though it needed the evidence of Murray of Broughton, turned informer, to convict that fox.
A horrible thought suddenly seized him, and he fancied that the King had seen him slip the letter into Don John's glove, and would ask for it, and take it, and read it and that would be the end. Thrills of torment ran through him, and he knew how it must feel to lie bound on the rack and to hear the executioner's hands on the wheel, ready to turn it again at the judge's word.
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