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Pierre stood and looked at the wandering eyes, behind which were the torturings of an immense and confused intelligence; a life that fell deformed before the weight of too much brain, so that all tottered from the womb into the gutters of foolishness, and the tongue mumbled of chaos when it should have told marvellous things.
Let us forget the Maintenon terror at Montauban, the breaking up of families, the sending to the galleys of good men and women, the torturings, the roastings alive, and turn to the delightful and soothing souvenirs of genius! Every French town that has given birth to shining talent is straightway turned into a Walhalla.
Upon his conviction execution followed, and it lasted three days from April 19th to 21 st being attended by all the horrible and gradual torturings reserved for regicides.
In the Low Countries law had ceased to exist, and there anything might happen however monstrous or inhuman. Indeed, with one decree of the Holy Office, confirmed by a proclamation of Philip of Spain, all the inhabitants of the Netherlands, three millions of them, had been condemned to death. Men's minds were full of terror, for on every side were burnings and hangings and torturings.
Were they not chosen for her, "written upon her forehead" by her Karma, her inscrutable fate? Her husband has been chosen; let her make the best of the choice. Will she be happy? The future years shall make answer by many things. Will she bear sons to her husband? If so, will her young body have strength for the pains of childbirth and the torturings of ignorant and brutal midwives?
It is impossible, however, to go fully into the details of Francia's autocratic reign, incredible as many of these are. The destruction of the Church, the secularization of the monks, wholesale executions and torturings, the suppression of the Post Office, and a hundred other acts of irresponsible and childish tyranny these are only some of the episodes which characterized the days of his rule.
The specimens of humor and satire, preserved in the sermons and controversial tracts of those days, are occasionally the apt expressions of pungent thoughts; but oftener they are cruel torturings and twistings of trite ideas, disgusting by the wearisome ingenuity which constitutes their only merit.
What the amenities of the last three years of the eighteenth century cost Ireland we may judge from these figures: in 1797, while the hangings, burnings and torturings which brought about the insurrection of the following year were in an early stage, the national debt of Ireland was under $20,000,000; three years later that debt amounted to over $130,000,000.
Of course, however, humble tools like the Butcher and his wife did not get the largest joints of the heretic sheep, for whenever one was slaughtered, there were always many honest middlemen of various degree to be satisfied, from the judge down to the executioner, with others who never showed their faces. Still, when the burnings and torturings were brisk, the amount totalled up very handsomely.
The witch-doctors were discredited, and there were no torturings as punishment; but if a man transgressed, he was banished, unless his transgression was very great, and then his head was struck off in the Great Place before the king's palace.
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