Tormentor

“ The fourth tormentor will be the invisible hand of Almighty God, which discharges itself upon the damned, using His omnipotence against them; who, knowing this, turn their rage against Him, breaking out into horrible blasphemies, and desiring that He might cease to be. But all is turned to the increase of their anguish and torment. ”

“ Yet, alive to the severity of the torments she endured, she was fearful that her resolution would not hold out long, and in the despair of a generous mind, fearing to commit a base action, she bit through her tongue, and spat it in the face of her tormentor. ”

“ This poor simpleton, though he is provided with every comfort, is still beset by a tormentor. It matters not that it is invisible—that it exists only in his fancy—it is to him a real bubly Jock, and as truly disturbs his peace as if it were a thing of flesh, and strutted forth in feathers. ”

“ The savages around did not suppress a murmur of admiration. Seeing no effect from this torture, the tormenter again stooped and caught another tuft that grew low upon the neck. Each single hair felt like the point of a needle thrust into the skin, and as it came forth, the Indians seated around, noticed a livid paleness, like the track of a cloud, quickly flash over their captive’s countenance. He looked up in his tormentor’s eyes with an indescribable look. For a moment, he fixed a gaze upon him, that savage as he was, caused a strange shiver of dread to run through him. ”

“ But it is none the less true that I love you more than ever."
"Well!" replied Hubert, "this love will be the only vengeance that I wish to exact from you. Know then that you have caused this man whom you love to endure a martyrdom such as may scarcely be survived; you have rent his heart, you have been his tormentor, the tormentor of every hour and every minute. There is nothing more within me but a wound, and it is you, you who have opened it. I have ceased to believe anything, hope for anything, love anything, and you are the cause. ”

“ Then did he most vehemently charge me to yield and submit myself to the Romish Church: otherwise he would pluck off one of my arms.
Whereupon I denying still, the Tormentor, in most cruel manner, wrested the ropes as if he would have rent my body in sunder. I (being now in intollerable pains; and looking for nothing but present [instant] death) cried out, in the extremity of my anguish, "Now, farewell wife and children! and farewell England!": and so, not able to utter one word more, lay even senseless.
The Inquisitor asked the woman again, What I said? ”

“ Sixthly, I am to consider the terribleness of those hellish tormentors and executioners.
1. First, generally in hell, every one of the damned is a tormentor of all, and all are tormentors of one, saying and doing things (as is mentioned above) to torment them.
2. Moreover, the devils are terrible tormentors of men, revenging themselves upon them, for the rage they have against Almighty God and against Jesus Christ; and therefore they torment them with affrighting visions, with horrible imaginations, and with all other means that their fierce cruelty can invent. ”

“ Singular as it may appear, the sufferer had now contracted a sort of affection for his tormentor, mingled, however, with the intensest loathing and horror. Nor were such discordant emotions incompatible. Each, on the contrary, imparted strength and poignancy to its opposite. ”

“ I have heard of a Sworn Tormentor and his assistants, whose fiendish task it was to torture poor creatures' souls out of their miserable bodies, and of a Chirurgeon who had to watch lest the [255] agonies used upon 'em should be too much for human endurance, and so, putting 'em out of their misery, rob the headsman of his due, the scaffold of its prey, and the vile mobile that congregate at public executions of their raree show. Of "Scavenger's Daughters," Backs, Thumbscrews, iron boots, and wedges, and other horrible engines of pain, I have heard many dismal tales told ”

“ A few minutes, and Tortillard's last prank would have been played; but, reflecting that the lad was for the present indispensable to the furtherance of the schemes he had on hand, the Schoolmaster, by a violent effort, controlled his desire to annihilate his tormentor, and contented himself with pushing him off his shoulders back into his own chair. ”

“ The tormentors threw their dead bodies to the dogs: some raged and gnashed their teeth over the dead, seeking to take yet more abundant vengeance thereon; others laughed and made mockery thereof. And others, more gentle, seeming to sympathize as much as they dared, made grievous reproaches, and said, "Where is now their God, and of what profit is their piety, which they loved better even than their own life! ”

“ The loveliness and wiles of these mystic temptresses soon overpower [105] the strongest will and the young men yield to the spell and disappear in the darkness. Soon the vision vanishes. The victims, terror-stricken, walk round in fruitless circles until dawn. Their tormentors are malignant spirits who assume the form of lovely nymphs solely to gratify their cunning spite by hindering and terrorizing their victims. ”

“ but what stuck in my mind was this, he said that cruelty was the devil's own trade-mark, and if we saw any one who took pleasure in cruelty we might know who he belonged to, for the devil was a murderer from the beginning, and a tormentor to the end. On the other hand, where we saw people who loved their neighbors, and were kind to man and beast, we might know that was God's mark.” ”

“ Torture serves several functions, but the first is to eliminate the subject’s “voice” and exterior environment through the inflicting of “blinding pain.” The tormentors aim primarily to destroy whatever the subject was, and take hold of its power and appropriate it. ”

“ But who can think on his tormentors without horror and detestation? Bloody villains! had you thought that his death was absolutely necessary to secure your own lives, could you not have dispatched him at once, without exercising such a variety of merciless cruelties upon him? It is true, even in this case you would not have been excused, because you would have slain him while he was actually discharging his duty to his country, that is, endeavouring to detect and to bring to punishment wretches that live only by rapine and the plunder of the public. ”

“ The excruciating torments, suffering and privations of the common soldiers were such, that an adequate description is impossible,—many of them lingering in raging fevers, stretched out on the pavement, the straw that had been placed for their comfort, having worked from under them during their agonies, while hundreds of flies settled on and blackened their dying faces: and so stationary did these tormentors become, that those who still maintained sufficient power were obliged to tear them from off their faces, and squeeze them to death in their hands. ”

“ Let the tormentors TERRIFY HIM BY ALL MEANS, TO FRIGHTEN HIM INTO CONFESSION. And after he is stripped, let the inquisitor take him aside, and make a last effort. When this has failed, let him be put to the question by torture, beginning with interrogation on lesser points, and advancing to greater. If he stands out, let them show him other instruments of torture, and threaten that he shall suffer them also. If he will not confess; the torture may be continued on the second or third day ”

“ There is often a strange strife between the tormentors and the tormented; the one to manifest skill in inflicting pain, and the other to manifest fortitude in enduring it. As has just been said, quite as much renown is often acquired by the warrior, in setting all the devices of his conquerors at defiance, while subject to their hellish attempts, as in deeds of arms. ”

“ Sometimes they are so beaten over the head and face, as to have scarcely any remains of life; and happy would it be for them if by this usage an end was put to their wretched beings. But their tormentors take care that none of the blows they give prove mortal, as they wish to reserve the miserable sufferers for more severe inflictions. ”

“ Scarce three or four days were past, after this horrible fact, when the Almighty Judge, who had heard the cries of the tormented wretch, suffered the evil one suddenly to possess this barbarous and inhuman homicide, so that those cruel hands which had punished to death his innocent servant, were the tormentors of his own body: for he beat himself, and tore his flesh, after a miserable manner, till he lost the very shape of a man ”

“ Our hands were in constant requisition to keep the tormentors from the face and ears, which often received a hearty whack, aimed in the fruitless irritation of the moment at our assailants, and which sometimes ended in adding headache to the list of annoyances. ”

“ And the universe appears to me like an immense, inexorable torture−garden. Blood everywhere and, where there is most life, horrible tormentors who dig your flesh, saw your bones, and retract your skin with sinister, joyful faces. Ah, yes! the Torture Garden! Passions, appetites, greed, hatred, and lies; law, social institutions, justice, love, glory, heroism, and religion: these are its monstrous flowers and its hideous instruments of eternal human suffering. ”

“ They give a frightful account of the tortures that had been inflicted upon them, and declare that those who had escaped with life from the hands of the tormentors, were either ruined in health or injured in intellect, and that as pardon and forgiveness had been freely offered to those knights who would confess, it was not wonderful that false confessions had been made. ”

“ See how the punishment answers the sin; he that would not forgive shall not be forgiven; He delivered him to the tormentors; the utmost he could do to his fellow servant was but to cast him into prison, but he was himself delivered to the tormentors. Note, The power of God's wrath to ruin us, goes far beyond the utmost extent of any creature's strength and wrath. The reproaches and terrors of his own conscience would be his tormentors, for that is a worm that dies not; devils, the executioners of God's wrath, that are sinners' tempters now, will be their tormentors for ever. ”

“ Thus they were cut off on both sides: at their back the devils with flaming faces, on horses of alarming proportions, and in front, their captain, waiting for them to shoot, to meet his own death by the little demon's blunderbuss:
"'If you fire, you good King's men,
Then the devil shall blarst your captain.'"
"And you as well, you good King's men!" shrieked and howled the terrible demons at the back, who covered with pistols or blunderbuss every Jack Tar in the ditch. ”

“ I forced myself to an unnatural pitch of pitilessness and vindictiveness. I set out to pursue one of the worst of these men with the full determination to kill him. God saved me from blood-guiltiness. I found the man dead in the road. After this all my passion for vengeance died out, and I was brought face to face with the old love and the old despair. But each of us would die rather than do wrong, or go on in a wrong course. The only thing left for us is to separate forever.”
“Yes, forever,” murmured Mrs. Thornton. ”

“ It is the horror of the Inquisition that while any one may be haled before it on a complaint which is anonymous, hardly any one ever escapes certain penalties. Señor," his voice trembled, and a deep note of feeling came into it, "if the fate of that wretch is heavy who, being innocent of heresy, will not confess his guilt, and is therefore tortured until he confesses imaginary guilt, and is then burned to death, hardly less is the misery of the victim who recants or repenteth and is freed from the penalty of death." ”

“ Cannot ye see that if ye kill His Highness, England will not be big enough to hide thee? Cannot ye see, also, that if thou dost not kill him, but let him go, England will not be big enough to hide thee either? Master, we must settle this business with speed, and get far away before the hue and cry, for I tell thee, that this bloody night's work will bring thee, and Mistress Elizabeth, and myself to the rack and worse torture, to the stake, and worse than that. Haste! speed! we must be gone. There is but one thing to be done."
"And what is that, John Hull?" ”

“ But as a gentleman and a Christian, I tell you to your face that you are low and vile. You deceive a wife that loveth you. You take maidens to force them to your will. If you were a simple gentleman I would kill you where you stood. No! If thou wert a simple gentleman, I would not cross swords with thee, because thou art unworthy of my sword. I would tell my man here to slit thee and have done. But as thou art a King"—he spat upon the floor in his disgust—"and I am sworn to thee, I cannot punish thee as I would, thou son of hell, thou very scurvy, lying, and most dirty knave." ”

“ It is not honest torture such as we have in Paris."
Commendone shuddered. "Honest torture!" he said. "There is no torture which is honest, nor could be liked by Christ our Lord. I saw a saint burned to his death a few weeks agone. It taught me a lesson."
The little Spaniard tittered. "It must be! It must be!" he said; "and who are you and I, Señor, to flout the decrees of Holy Church? The burning doth not last for long. I have seen a many burned upon the Quemadero, and twenty minutes is the limit of their suffering. It is not so in the dungeons of the Holy Office." ”

“ Highness when he returneth not to the Tower, but he will dare do nothing against us openly for fear of the Queen's Grace. Were it known that he had come to such a stew as this, the Queen would ne'er give him her confidence again. She would ne'er forgive him. Doubtless the vengeance will pursue us, but it cannot be put in motion for some hours until the King is rescued, and has had time to confer with his familiars and think out a plan. After that, when they catch us, nothing will avail us, because nothing we can say will be believed. ”