Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
I pray to God I may be wrong, but an attempt to govern par bascule by trimming betwixt the opposite parties is equally unsafe for the crown and detrimental to the country, and cannot do for a long time. The fact seems to be that Lord Goderich, a well-meaning and timid man, finds himself on a precipice that his head is grown dizzy and he endeavours to cling to the person next him.
The assistants seized the condemned man, and pushed him on to the bascule. Juve was watching the unhappy wretch, and could not restrain a word of admiration. "That man is a brave man! He has not even turned pale! Generally condemned men are livid!" The executioner's assistants had bound the man upon the plank; it tilted upwards.
He mounted the steps deliberately, looking toward his feet; the priest held up the crucifix, and he felt it was there, but did not see it; his lips one moment touched the image of Christ, but he did not look up nor speak; then, as he gained the last step, the bascule or swingboard sprang up before him; the executioner gave him a single push, and he fell prone upon the plank, with his face downward; it gave way before him, bearing him into the space between the upright beams, and he lay horizontally beneath the knife, presenting the back of his neck to it.
Imagine two tall, straight timbers, a foot apart, rising fifteen feet from the ground. They are grooved, and spring from a wide platform, approached by a flight of steps. At the base, rests a spring-plank or bascule, to which leather thongs are attached to buckle down the victim, and a basket or pannier filled with sawdust to receive the severed head.
The bascule is so arranged that the whole weight and length of the trunk will rest upon it, leaving the head and neck free, and when prone it will reach to the grooves, leaving space for the knife to pass below it. The knife itself is short and wide, with a bright concave edge, and a rim of heavy steel ridges it at the top; it moves easily in the greased grooves, and may weigh forty pounds.
Fandor gripped Juve's hand nervously. The detective was very pale. "Let us get over there," he said, and led Fandor just behind the guillotine, to the side where the severed head would fall into the basket. "We shall see the poor devil get out of the carriage, and being fastened on to the bascule, and pulled into the lunette."
Partly because France was not blessed with a king like William of Orange, and partly because the new systeme de bascule, the balance system, in which the king allows each faction in turn to hold the reins of power, was discovered. So, instead of the gradual growth of constitutional liberty which took place in England, the tendency in France was back to absolutism.
Up from the gray rocks, rising sheer and bold and bare, stood the walls and towers of Castle Drachenhausen. A great gate-way, with a heavy iron-pointed portcullis hanging suspended in the dim arch above, yawned blackly upon the bascule or falling drawbridge that spanned a chasm between the blank stone walls and the roadway that winding down the steep rocky slope to the little valley just beneath.
I fear he may wish to govern by the system of bascule, or balancing the two parties, a perilous game . The Advocate also dined with us. Also William Clerk, whom I found quite ready and willing to stand my friend if Gourgaud should come my road. He agrees with me that there is no reason why he should turn on me, but that if he does, reason or none, it is best to stand buff to him.
Word Of The Day