Fatality

“ While on this subject of dominant and mysterious ideas, we shall do well to consider the forms that the idea of fatality has taken, and for ever is taking: for fatality even to-day still provides the supreme explanation for all that we cannot explain ”

“ Murden, when we remonstrated against the wounded men being disturbed, and given an opinion of the fatality of the act, received the news with the utmost sang froid, and expressed no particular desire that the men should live, under any circumstances ”

“ Breathed a low wail of fear, and, quivering, closed;
Then the corpse sank back motionless again.
Enough for him. Even the haggard face,
And hair more white than silver, could not make
His heart deceive him. 'Twas her altered form.
The crowd turned to him when that bony hand
Pointed him out, and when surprise was past,
Rushed with a yell upon him. Thus he woke.
The morning drum proclaimed the time was near
When deadly contest between foe and foe
Required his soldier's spirit, and he shook
The influence from him of that dreadful dream,
And went forth to the struggle. ”

“ Many motives impel me to beg earnestly for life. I feel the natural horror of a violent death, the universal dread of untimely dissolution. I am desirous to recompense the injury I have done to the clergy, to the world, and to religion, and to efface the scandal of my crime, by the example of my repentance: but, above all, I wish to die with thoughts more composed, and calmer preparation. ”

“ Slowly, at last, came the step of the dead, heavily ascending the stairs;—he entered—I rushed to meet him, and the long pent up agony of my soul burst forth in madness uncontrolled. ‘Monster!—murderer!—destroyer of thy father and thy brother! why comest thou thus to torture and not kill? why is thy bloody hand for ever raised, and yet forbearing to fall? If thine aim be vengeance, strike—strike—strike—thou blood-bespotted horror! ”

“ Then, as well as he could, the dying man stretched forth his arms, wherein flesh and blood alike were lacking, and with all the strength remaining in his bones embraced her who was the cause of his death. ”

“ Death came no longer as of old, knocking painfully at the door of life, but strode noiselessly in, and, before one was well aware, smote his victim—no one could tell how, for the strong man, who appeared hale and well one hour, was weak and helpless the next, and fell without knowing whence the blow came. ”

“ A look of evil and scornful triumph had hardened on them, and made death so life-like and so terrible, that the beholder at once took flight, as swiftly as if the stiffened corpse would rise up and follow. ”

“ A. "Whose sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed."—Gen. ix. 6.
"He that smiteth a man, so that he die, shall be surely put to death. . . And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe."—Ex. xxi. 12 and 23-25.
"He that killeth any man shall surely be put to death-And if a man cause a blemish in his neighbor, as he hath done, so shall it be done unto him: breach for breach, eye for eye, tooth for tooth."—Lev. ”

“ A moment before I had thought less of death than of the pain which the steel, suspended over my head, would occasion me. Death is seldom seen so close without striking his blow. I heard every syllable uttered by the assassins, just as if I had been calm. ”

“ Death has been painted as a skeleton grasping a scythe, a grinning skull, a threatening figure with terrible face and uplifted dart, a bony scarecrow shaking an hour-glass—all that could alarm and repel has been gathered round this rightly-named King of Terrors. ”

“ SECOND MURDERER. Make peace with God, for you must die,
my lord.
CLARENCE. Have you that holy feeling in your souls
To counsel me to make my peace with God,
And are you yet to your own souls so blind
That you will war with God by murd'ring me?
O, sirs, consider: they that set you on
To do this deed will hate you for the deed.
SECOND MURDERER. What shall we do?
CLARENCE. Relent, and save your souls.
FIRST MURDERER. Relent! No, 'tis cowardly and womanish.
CLARENCE. Not to relent is beastly, savage, devilish. ”

“ Then he said: “Whereas blood rained on you, many men’s blood shall be shed, yours and others; but when ye heard a great din, then ye must have been shown the crack of doom, and ye shall all die speedily. ”

“ Death, which we contemplate as the King of Terrors, threatening us with his uplifted dart, and destined to drag us away from the stage of life, bright with its tawdry tinsel, and its garish splendour, came to her in softer and more kindly guise. ”

“ Death took features altogether new to him, in these rich and sensuous surroundings. Nature enjoyed it, played with it, the horror added to her charm, she liked the torture, and smothered her victim with caresses. ”

“ And a man with death's dews on his forehead, and blood on his coat and his cheek;
"I am dying — I feel death upon me — but yet, even yet, if God wills
I may crawl on my knees to the doctor's — yes, this is the last of the hills! ”

“ Death, as if spurning the carcass, stands inexorably afar off. Baffler of man’s law, thou, too, hast escaped with life! Not for thee is the sentence, “Blood for blood!” Thou livest, thou mayst pass the extremest boundaries of age. ”

“ And whether I die now, by this assassin's knife, or live a little longer to behold the safety I establish, I have lived long enough, and am content to die!—Whether this death be, as philosophers have told us, a dreamless, senseless, and interminable trance ”

“ Call the death by any name your Highness will, attribute it to whom you will, or say it might have been prevented how you will, it is the same death eternally—inborn, inbred, engendered in the corrupted humours of the vicious body itself, and that only—spontaneous combustion, and none other of all the deaths that can be died. ”

“ Death, with all its ghastly insignia, had an effect even upon the unthinking multitude, who were ever ready to inflict death or any violent injury upon any object that came in their way—they never hesitated ”

“ They rushed to death with a cheer and a shout, or to the rattle of a song. When the warning blast rang out, their faces flushed, their eyes burned with a fiery glow, the hot blood sped more swiftly through their veins--they were real live human beings. ”

“ When death rides in triumph, and diseases rage, so that thousands and ten thousands fall, fall by sickness, or fall by the sword in battle, fall at thy side, at thy right hand, and the sight of their fall is enough to frighten thee, and if they fall by the pestilence their falling so near thee may be likely to infect thee, yet it shall not come nigh thee, the death shall not, the fear of death shall not. ”

“ The illustrations to the Arte del bene Morire comprise a hideous outline cut of Death, scythe on shoulder, flying over ground strewn with corpses (this is enclosed in a large black border used by Mischomini in 1492) , and cuts of Death showing a young man Heaven and Hell, [13] of a sick man with his good and bad angels watching him and Death standing without the door, and of a dying man attended by a friar, Death sitting now at his bed's foot, and the angels watching as before. ”

“ Dead, and at full length he lay, enshrouded—the genius and the demon of the scene. Alas! he bore no portion in our mirth, save that his countenance distorted with the plague, and his eyes in which Death had but half extinguished the fire of the pestilence, seemed to take such interest in our merriment as the dead may take in the merriment of those who are to die. ”

“ Have you not, lastly, often read, and as often been told, that bodily death is one of the most tremendous evils which man has to fear, and consequently to be dreaded as the scourge of all scourges, and the plague of all plagues, in the long catalogue of human miseries? ”

“ And such folk as can heal and cure came to examine into their wounds and to tend them that night, for they could do nothing more for them, so severe and so deadly were the stabs and the thrusts, and the gashes of the many wounds that they had, than to apply to them spells and incantations and charms, in order to staunch their blood, and their bleeding mortal wounds. ”

“ Death in a huge pair of jack-boots, seizes him by the arm with a view to unhorse him. 2. The Tinker. Death, with a skillet on his head, plunders the tinker’s basket. 3. The Hussar on horseback, accompanied by Death, also mounted, and, like his comrade, wearing an enormous hat with a feather. 4. The Physician. Death habited as a modern beau, with chapeau-bras, brings his urinal to the Doctor for inspection. 5. The fraudulent Innkeeper in the act of adulterating a cask of liquor is seized and throttled by a very grotesque Death in the habit of an alewife, with a vessel at her back. ”

“ I stammered, icy with the horror of his suggestion.
"Worse—by far," he said. "Death, according to one's belief, means either annihilation or release from the limitations of the senses, but it involves no change of character. You don't suddenly alter just because the body's gone. ”

“ Leave the dead and come to the assistance of the living.’ As in a dream I felt hands working over me, and as the heavy timbers were drawn from my benumbed limbs, and once more the life blood began to flow, the exquisite torture was more than I could endure, and again I fainted. ”

“ Frequently also, in our consideration of another’s death, the kind of death may be an alleviation. For what manglings, what cruelties have we seen, where death was the only remedy, and life was a torment! ”

“ Wretched beings at the point of death, thrown by the wayside, continued to call with feeble voice, 'I have not the plague, I am but wounded;' and, to convince those that passed, they might be seen tearing open their real wounds, or inflicting new ones. ”

“ The old Indian wagged her turbaned head, muttering low:
[80]
“Death is the most cruel fate of all when it overtakes the young, the beautiful, the loving. It is death that menaces you, girl—death in a horrible form by drowning!” ”

“ For in the first place, they die suddenly who, being in the vigor of health, are assassinated, or drowned, or meet with a fatal accident, or are struck by lightning or by a fit of apoplexy, or who die in the delirium of a violent fever, or in a lethargy. ”

“ CHAPTER VI Vengeance IT strikes a chill through me, even yet, to recall the awful horror of that instant. The fer-de-lance—death in a few heartbeats, and such a death!—a death that melts a man into an abomination! ”

“ And the realization of death, in the revolt of one’s whole being, is invested with a special horror—that of being crushed and pulverized, of being not even a dead man, but a nameless heap, a handful of fleshly dust. ”

“ Death, which after the haemorrhage had appeared as the beautiful winged boy who is so easily mistaken for the god of love—Death, who had incited me to write saucy, defiant verses about him, now confronted me as a hollow-eyed, hideous skeleton. ”

“ Since the period of which I now write, I have often witnessed the closing scene of mortality, and various are the opinions I have heard, as to which point of time, between the moment of death and the first appearance abroad of the survivors in their mourning apparel, is the saddest, the most afflicting, or the most trying—whether the moment of dissolution, the first appearance of the undertaker, the laying out in the apparel of death, the bringing of the coffin, the last frantic kiss and look, the screwing down, the carrying out, the dull thud of the clay upon the coffin lid. ”

“ What sort of death would one meet with widely-opened eyes, parted lips, and brows bent as though to rally fast-flying courage? Not a peaceful death surely. I brought my black coat to my aid. "My dear lady, you must not think of such things. Death is but a sleep, you know. Why anticipate a nightmare?" ”

“ From the strange mixture of the material and spiritual common to men in that barbarian condition, the bodies or the blood of the slain appear to be the essentials of these requirements. Thus, also, the utmost horror is felt at decapitation, or at the severing of limbs from the body after death. ”

“ You will die the Other Death, which is two deaths, the death of the soul and the death of the body, and the one you will see with your eyes and the other will have no meaning.” He turned from me, and, as I stood wondering at his strange words, two of his officers stepped out with drawn knives. ”

“ I take it for granted, you see, that the reports which you have received of bodily death are of the above description, and hence perhaps I am authorised in concluding, that you have formed your ideas of death accordingly, and therefore represent him to your affrighted imagination as that king of terrors and disgusting monster which he is so generally described to be. ”

“ So you have faced death, and faced it fearlessly; death in the field, and death in the hospital; death sharp and sudden as a sabre stroke, and death slow and painful as the gnawing of the worm that never dies!”
“I have looked upon death in all these aspects,” answered Colonel Rosenthal, gravely. ”

“ The number and character of the wounds,—consisting of blows, cuts, and gashes, showed that they had been inflicted by some one out of his senses; for life must have been extinct before half of them could have been given. ”

“ Those who were murdered--and they were found nearly every morning lying in the streets or in houses--had all the selfsame mortal wound--a dagger-thrust, right through the heart, which the surgeons said must have been delivered with such swiftness and certainty that the victim must have fallen dead without the power of uttering a sound. ”

“ And Death, disappointed of its prey, will look up at the emancipated being, unable to follow, and holding in its clutches only a cold and decaying corpse, soon to be a handful of dust. "O death, where is thy sting? ”