Blunderbuss

“ Then great droves of beasts would pass, and sometimes--oh! sad sight--a wretched highwayman with his hands tied behind his back and escorted by the thief-catchers, while the passers-by hooted at him or beat at him with sticks and whips, or flung refuse at him.
"Such was Buck once," Gerald would say when he saw one of these; "and, perhaps O'Rourke, though I think he was more the spy. Ah! well, it is better to be honest men in Virginia or Georgia than like this." ”

“ I was on the branch--on the wall--as she reached me; my sword is not a mile long, and it would have been folly to shoot. The men were near; the report would have brought them to us--and I was saved. That was enough."
"All the same, 'tis a pity. The dog should be dead ere monsieur goes again. Of a surety she will smell him out if he is in or about the house. And, when she scents him, she will go nigh mad in her desire to reach him; will make noise enough to wake the dead."
"Humph!" said Andrew. "Perhaps 'tis a pity, too, since such is the case. ”

“ Doubtless the sword! Then she said--
"What fate do you expect--at his hands?"
"God only knows! Yet, if you should know also, tell me."
Again she paused--the eyes still sweeping the floor, so that now he felt sure 'twas she who had restored his weapon to him--when a moment later she said, speaking in a harsh, emotionless voice--
"You are to be taken from here to Nancy, where the Duke is for the winter period. There you will be tried on various charges--attempted murder, abduction--he will swear she is his wife! You will be condemned. Nothing can save you ”

“ The door was down--the besiegers in the house!
Soon--who could doubt it?--what else was there for those men of vengeance to do?--it would be in flames! Nothing could save it!
Or only one thing. The yielding up of De Bois-Vallée to their ire.
"Stop," he said, addressing him, "stop. You know what will, what must, happen next. It can be but one thing, the destruction of your house. Retrace your steps if you choose, defend the house singly if you desire--since I do believe that they come partly to rescue me, expect from me no help--give yourself up to them. Thereby the flames may be avoided. ”

“ In truth, he expected to see nothing; he knew that there was nothing to come behind him which he need fear, unless it were some mounted robber whom he could shoot, and would shoot, from the interior of his carriage--from out that window--with his silver-mounted pistols--as he would shoot a mad dog or a wolf that might attack him; he knew that there was no human creature on earth who could molest him or bar his way. ”

“ Every time that C. B. came on deck it seemed as [Pg 326] if the skipper was waiting for him, and insults and provocations came thick and fast. With his hand in his hip pocket where his revolver lay, the dastard (for a man must be a dastard who insults and abuses an unarmed man, having himself a lethal weapon) would hurl every epithet of contumely that he could invent at the great fellow, who took not the slightest notice of him until one day, maddened by the contemptuous silence as he deemed it of the passenger, he hurled a foul and filthy insult at Mary. ”

“ The poor fanatical fool had been taught by deeper villains than himself that his pistol was to rid the world of a tyrant, and to open his own pathway to Heaven, if his career should be cut short on earth. ”

“ I had once great expectations in regard to him, and, perhaps, my opinion might not have changed, even in consequence of the revolt and the massacre of white men; for he has peculiar notions regarding himself, is extremely superstitious, and believes he has a right to shake off what he calls the yoke of the oppressor. But the man who can murder in cold blood young girls and innocent babes, is a villain beyond all hope. Here we are, however, approaching the house of Dr. Blunt.--Hold! Let us take care; there is a man pointing a musket at us from the window. ”

“ The wheel is an open death for all to see, set up at cross-roads or in market places--such things are not for De Bois-Vallée. Go, give him my service, and say so!"
"You wish me to repeat that?"
"Ay, repeat it. Repeat also this. That, though I lie here with a chain round my leg like an ox at the shambles; though I am here in his topmost garret a prisoner, I shall ere long be free again. I know it--feel it. Tell him, also, that Andrew Vause was never born to die at his hands--but, instead, to slay him--as I will! ”

“ I may refer the reader to The New World for September, 1894. Lucian’s satire, “Zeus in Heroics,” may have given the hint to Bruno.
In a striking passage, Bruno explains that evil is relative. “Nothing is absolutely bad,” he says; “because the viper is not deadly and poisonous to the viper, nor the lion to the lion, nor dragon to dragon, nor bear to bear; but each thing is bad in respect to some other, just as you, virtuous gods, are evil towards the vicious.” ”

“ As well die by the hand of him I injured as by the torture or the weapons of those howling wolves who are on their way here----"
He paused a moment and then, loosening the cross-belt or scarf in which were two great pistols, he flung it and them at his lordship's feet, while at the same time he opened his waistcoat and tore aside his muslin ruffles.
"Now, Gerald St. Amande," he said, "as we stand face to face--'tis your own word--do your worst. If I have been a villain I am at least no coward. Do your worst." ”

“ Rage against the inspector and the bus conductor, against life, against the Golightlys and all people who beat children and animals, rage against the Stout Gentleman, who so obviously ate too much, and against all the damned monotony of things. ”

“ Yet, to the doomed man standing by the window, he did not seem to be altogether popular with them, especially when he suddenly halted his horse, and turning round on the vast concourse behind him, said something to them, accompanied with a comprehensive wave of his disengaged hand—something that vexed and annoyed that concourse terribly, he could see, and hear, too—a vexation increased when, after the other had spoken a further word to the officer in command of the dragoons, they began to close in from the outside of the place round the assembled mob. ”

“ His soul revolted against the necessity for creeping as he had done into another man's house, although that man was his enemy and a scoundrel: if it was De Bois-Vallée, another five moments should see him on the inside of that door, or the owner of the house outside it, and their swords crossed. And then--and then! Well then the servitors below might rush up to their master's assistance, plunge their daggers and knives into his body--only, first, he would make sure of the man who had broken Philip's life and sent him to his grave. ”

“ For, brave man as he was, and ready to face a dozen, or a score, of human foes, his blood curdled in him at the thought of those ferocious fangs tearing him to pieces; the thought of the hot breath of the brutes in his face as they sprang at his throat and dragged him to the earth.
"Any number of men," he said, "and armed to the teeth I can face and laugh at, but five men and two hounds such as those---nay, I am no coward to avoid them." ”

“ Then, how after four years, we again sailed in the Duke's ship, or Furie, and what happened to us in the fishing up of the plate. But more than all this is to tell you of shameful villainies and thievings that took place, and of how the chief villain was frustrated so that not he but another was to be benefited. And who, think you, my descendant whom I know not, is that other? You may think Phips, you might imagine myself or the Duke, you might suppose some of the other adventurers. Yet 'tis not so. 'Tis no less an one than you--you, yourself. ”

“ Hot work, monsieur, this morning, what with the glaring sun and the flames from the mill. N'est-ce pas, monsieur? Yet, yet I wish those heretics had not been of the feeble. It is no soldier's work slaughtering babes and women and vieillards. My God!" he broke off, exclaiming, a moment later, "So it is you, villain!"
"What!" exclaimed Martin, astonished at this sudden change of speech and regarding him as though he were a madman. "What! Villain! To whom does monsieur apply that word?" and the look upon his face should have warned the young man to be careful of his words. ”

“ Von Horn, too, had let them know the identity of their creator, and thus implanted in their malformed brains the insidious poison of revenge. Envy and jealousy were there as well, and hatred of all beings other than themselves. They envied the ease and comparative beauty of the old professor and his assistant, and hated the latter for the cruelty of the bull whip and the constant menace of the ever ready revolver ”

“ The portion is for three, and a good one at that."
"He is a villain!" exclaimed the old marquis, his eyes flashing. "He shall not sit at the table. I thought his drivellings of murder were not true, until this gentleman came, and that he was a harmless idiot. Now, I know he is a villain. And--and--I am a gentleman--a peer of France--he shall not sit at meat with me."
"Faith! then he must eat on his bed. Here, fool," Bluet exclaimed, going up to Fordingbridge, who seemed more dazed than ever, though he had been regarding the food eagerly; "the marquis will not have you at the table; eat there!" ”

“ If John Bull, as a mob, gets excited, the powers that be consider him to be all the better for a little hammering about the head, while prick of sword or cut of sabre would goad him to madness. In La France, au contraire, blows cause the madness. ”

“ The beasts who bore the men, weakened by the already grievous burdens laid upon them, were spurred to speedier tramp, but hard as were these pressed with their human loads, the awfullest of the terrors of that terrorful night came to the dumb sufferers who pulled the swaying gun carriages and heavy caissons through the ruts and slush of the ever-lengthening pathway. ”

“ Many writers have spoken truly enough when they have since said that a light purse dropped into an archer's or an exempt's hands might be made the instrument of a terrible, as well as a most unjust and inhuman, vengeance. It was done that night in Paris, and for many more nights, with awful success. Girls who had jilted men, men who had injured and betrayed women, successful rivals, faithless wives; a poet whose verses had been preferred to another's and read before De Parabére or the Duchesse de Berri and her lover and second husband, the bully, Riom ”

“ But when once I had made it known, you can imagine the gusto with which the police prepared to enter the house and confound the obliging host with a sight of my dripping garments and accusing face. And indeed in all my professional experience I have never beheld a more sudden merging of the bully into a coward than was to be seen in this slick villain’s face, when I was suddenly pulled from the crowd and placed before him, with the old man’s wig gone from my head, and the tag of blue ribbon still clinging to my wet coat. ”

“ With a shriek the gouvernante fell back on to the cushions dead; with another, Urbaine flung her arms about her, moaning, while now, from all around, the sound of firing was heard, and, pealing high, above all else, the voice of Poul, howling orders, yelling curses, laughing defiantly. Yet why he laughed none knew, for already the saddles of the dragoons were being emptied rapidly; the ground was strewn, too, with the bodies of the fusileers of Barre and Pompidon, those who still lived being driven back.
Fear paralyzes sometimes; sometimes also inspires with a terrible and desperate courage. ”

“ For a moment the hunted wretch--the man caught like a rat in a trap--glared round his hall; even in the dim light and gloom Andrew could see his tongue rolling over his lips as though to moisten their feverish burning, then, urged by God knows what desperation--the desperation perhaps of despair, perhaps of tigerish rage and ferocity!--he leapt up the last remaining rungs of the ladder, carrying the carbines in his hand. ”

“ They prey upon mankind. And all the time, behind every villain stands a greater villain. Behind the humble footpad stands the Captain: behind the Captain stands the thief-taker: behind the thief-taker stands the money-lender himself unseen. It would surely be to the advantage of the Law could it tackle the greater villains first. A cart-load of gentlemen like Mr. Probus on its way to Tyburn would perhaps be more useful than many cartloads of poor pickpockets and hedge-lifters. ”

“ A breach of discipline (which is unavoidable in the case of a volunteer army) is immediately exaggerated into a great crime. Trifles are transformed into outrages that deserve to be punished by death. The mountain frequently gives birth to a mere mouse, but the bad impression produced upon the public mind remains.
“Would you believe it? The officials themselves put difficulties in our way! They echo, I hope unwittingly, the calumnies that are circulated against us, and regard us with evident ill will. Indeed, our fellow citizens are almost inclined to look upon our army as a band of brigands. ”

“ But it was above that fire that the real horror was, for there, swinging from the lowest branch of the young oak by a cord, head downwards, and perilously near the flames as they leaped up, was the body of the Englishman whose cries they had heard--that body being swung backwards and forwards by his struggles and convulsions, the arms thrown wildly about, and the hands clutching at space. ”

“ Georges broke in, "you are, I perceive, a coward, besides the other things I have charged you with. You know who I am well enough. If not—if your memory is as treacherous as your courage seems poor, let me remind you. I am the man whom you attacked [139] with five others at Aignay-le-Duc; the man whose child you sought to slay; the father of the child whom your woman and your man-servant seized away from one who had it in his possession, and whom they slew also, you not appearing on the scene. You are careful of yourself, Monsieur de Roquemaure! ”