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Updated: May 4, 2025
The latter summoned a barber and a headsman, and informed the captive that he might choose between forfeiting his head, and that which grew upon it. As to the precise words in which the Northern warrior couched his reply, historians vary; but they are agreed on the important point that his head was chopped off without delay! Did the memory of these things bring no blush to Balder's cheeks?
She refused to lay her head upon the block, and the headsman hacked at her neck as she stood erect; her body was not allowed to be buried in the chantry which she had erected for herself, so far did the spite of Henry go, but she lies among the ambitious and unfortunate, the aspiring, and unsuccessful of many a sect and party in the cemetery of St Peter's Chapel in the Tower.
You look, indeed, like a spirit of health, and I might be disposed to give entire belief to that countenance, if it were not for the tongue that belongs to it. But you are a queer spirit, whether good or evil! 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.
Will he not reject your proffers, and with hot scorn?" "Scorn! darest thou that word to me?" cried the Duke. "Scorn! have I no headsman whose axe is as sharp as Harold's? and the neck of a captive is not sheathed in my Norman mail." "Pardon, pardon, my liege," said Mallet, with spirit; but to save my chief from a hasty action that might bring long remorse, I spoke thus boldly.
The chained watch-dog sent a dismal howl after it. And when the feeble light of the tallow candles shone again through the darkness, it fell upon three shapes which had sunk upon their knees in terror, the two 'prentices of the headsman, and the monster. But the proud, defiant virago turned towards the elder of the 'prentices, and looked him up and down contemptuously.
True, they could send for the headsman of the nearest town, but at least a day would be gained, and a day might be sufficient for the rescue. D'Artagnan took upon himself that more than difficult task. Another thing, not less essential, was to warn Charles Stuart of the attempt to be made, so that he might assist his rescuers as much as possible, or at least do nothing to thwart their efforts.
On finding himself alone with the sufferer, he approached the pillow of the latter. The headsman examined him with one of those rapid, anxious looks peculiar to dying men, and made a movement of surprise. "You are very young, holy father," said he. "Those who wear my dress have no age," replied the monk severely. "Alas, good father, speak to me more kindly!
Then I made a cradle for it out of my coverlet, which I slung upon a beam, and rocked it to sleep, and when I looked at it in the morning it was still slumbering." After saying these words the headsman took out of a little cabinet a small bundle, carefully wrapped up in paper, and, unwinding it gradually from its manifold wrappings, set out its contents before the stranger.
Then a servant fetched in the polluted, blue-eyed headsman, who asked: 'Whose sun of life has come near its setting? took the prince by the arm, placed him upon the cloth of execution, and then, all merciless and stony-hearted, cut his head from his body and hung it on the battlements. The news of the death of Prince Tahmāsp plunged his father into despair and stupefaction.
"Death!" repeated Montreal, and for the first time his countenance changed; perhaps for the first time in his life he felt the thrill and agony of fear. "Death!" he repeated again. "Impossible! He dare not, Brettone; the soldiers, the Northmen! they will mutiny, they will pluck us back from the grasp of the headsman!"
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