Vanquished

“ His aspect was to me not so much that of a man desperately ill, as mortally weary—a vanquished man. That act of destruction affected me profoundly by its air of surrender. Not before death, however. To a man of such strong faith death could not have been an enemy. ”

“ Though the memory of galling wrongs be at our hearts, knocking for admittance, that they may fill us with desires for revenge, yet let us, oh, Lord, spare the vanquished, though they never spared us in their hour of butchery and bloodshed. And, in the hour of death, do thou guide us into the abode prepared for the blest ”

“ To vanquish an opponent you had to throw him and hold him flat on his back for the supposed time it would take to scalp an actual enemy. At the end of an hour's exciting struggle, a few warriors on each side had been vanquished ”

“ Well, I hope, to make your Friend amends, you'll hide nothing from her for the future, tho' the Body shou'd still grow weaker and weaker.
Lady Brute. No, from this Moment I have no more Reserve; and for a Proof of my Repentance, I own, Belinda, I'm in danger. Merit and Wit assault me from without; Nature and Love sollicit me within; my Husband's barbarous Usage piques me to Revenge; and Satan, catching at the fair Occasion, throws in my way that Vengeance, which of all Vengeance pleases Women best.
Bel. 'Tis well Constant don't know the Weakness of the Fortification ”

“ The great city, the head of it, shall be quite ruined. Her foundations have fallen, and therefore her walls are thrown down; for how can the walls stand when divine vengeance is at the door and shakes the very foundations? It is the vengeance of the Lord, which nothing can contend with either in law or battle. ”

“ It shall be worked, O Queen, such vengeance as you cannot dream of, vengeance poured drop by drop like poison in his veins, the torment of disappointed love, the torment of horrible fear, the torment of power given and snatched away, the torment of a death of shame, and the everlasting torment of the Eater-up of Souls—this vengeance shall be worked upon Abi and all who cling to him. ”

“ And in a while, having read these papers, I laid them by and rising, stumbled towards the open casement.
"Well, my lord?" says she in strange, breathless fashion, "And what now?"
"Why now," says I, wearily, "it seems my vengeance is yet to seek."
"Vengeance?" she cried, "Ah, God pity thee! Doth life hold for thee nought better?"
"Nought!"
"Vengeance is a consuming fire!"
"So seek I vengeance!"
"O Martin Conisby, bethink you! Vengeance is but a sickness of the mind—a wasting disease—"
"So seek I vengeance!" ”

“ A lasting, implacable vengeance was his, from the contemplation of which he drew a satisfaction which no possession of property could have given him. Nature had, with incorrigible perversity, cut him out for a life of ease, whilst endowing him with a character capable of very great things. ”

“ Yet then I did not escape; his boiling and hideous passions, turned to revenge, now endeavoured to wreak themselves in my misery. These limbs, my Euthanasia, have been wrenched in tortures; cold, famine and thirst have kept like blood-hounds a perpetual watch upon my wearied life ”

“ So that, while one skeleton shall remain as the everlasting monument of our sorrow, the other shall endure as long, exhibiting to the whole human race a terrible example of Pygmy vengeance! Such is the question. I put it to you in full confidence of a response that shall be worthy of our national character, and calculated to increase, rather than diminish, the glory which our ancestors have transmitted to us, and which we ourselves have proudly vindicated in our warfare with the cranes. ”

“ It is the explosion of the magazine of vengeance. Lo, the earth is quaking, the rocks are rending, the graves are opening, the dead are rising, and all nature stands aghast at the conflict of Divine mercy with the powers of darkness. ”

“ And I thought of institutionalized evil & rabid passion for revenge pursued beyond the final resting place-- most private skeletal remains held up as curios. Medieval burning of a heretic's bones, manure pile for those decried damned; the cross-roads drive your cart over the bones of the dead, the remembered suicide's end. ”

“ Somewhere, perhaps on God's earth he wanders outcast, forsaken, loveless. I have my vengeance, but it is like Dead Sea fruit, all bitter ashes to the taste. I am a miserable, heart-weary wreck,—a woman with fame, without love.
"Vengeance is an arrow that often falleth and smiteth the hand of him that sent it." ”

“ The one at present under discussion was of peculiar horror, and was the more singular, since nature had vindicated her violated laws on their infringer, and he who boasted of his morality in indulging his passionate revenge, was now pursued by remorse and madness, and the ghosts of his victims hunting him through the world, gave him no rest or hope. ”

“ The first vantage ground is gained; they pause to collect the skirmishers and sound the pas de charge--that muffled pulse beat that, throbbing destruction, grows louder and louder and louder, drowning all but sheer lust of blood. ”

“ Instance after instance did the youth hear of men who had sacrificed brother and sister, wife and concubine,—nay, sometimes even father and mother,—to carry out some just vengeance, and who had died happy because they survived the satisfactory end of their vendetta long enough to cast one glance of exulting victory upon the dead or dying body of their victim. ”

“ Meanwhile do there hide in any part of this wicked world two hearts which throb with unusual terrors this night? Or does there pass across the mirror of a guilty memory any unusual shapes of horror prognostic of detection and coming punishment? It would comfort my uneasy heart to know; for the spirit of vengeance has seized upon me, and my house will never seem washed of its stain, or my conscience be quite at rest as to the past, till that vile man and woman pay, in some way, the penalty of their crime. ”

“ Even the insatiable thirst of revenge itself, directed as it was against one individual, could hardly have led thee to wrap the holy house of God, and the dwellings of the innocent and inoffensive burghers, in the same common ruin with the tenements belonging to those whom thou mayest suspect as being entitled to a share of thy vengeance. ”

“ Worse than all, the dying sinner would assume the robe of the Mendicant on his death-bed, bequeath his body to the friars, and make them the recipient of his legacies, leading to a prolonged and embittered renewal of the old ghoul-like quarrels over corpses. ”

“ Seated in their saddles, with reins tight drawn, and heels ready to drive home the spur—with glances bent greedily at the gleaming lights, and ears keenly alert to catch every sound—the hearts of some trembling with fear, others throbbing with hope, still others thrilling with the thought of vengeance—they wait for the crack that is to be the signal—wait and listen, with difficulty restraining themselves. ”

“ The dead bodies even of the fairest and strongest, when they have lain awhile, become dung, such vile bodies have we. And here such multitudes shall fall that their bodies shall lie as thick as heaps of dung in the furrows of the field, and no more notice shall be taken of them than of the handfuls which the harvestman drops for the gleaners, for none shall gather them, but they shall remain in sight, monuments of divine vengeance, that the eye of the impenitent survivors may affect their heart. ”

“ The sense of an unknown horror of sin grew about me, and I became a coward for the moment, — a coward, smitten down by the dread that for me, forever, faith was utterly dead, and so my heart would be imbittered into a vague and fiendish vengeance for its loss. ”

“ Vengeance spoke in those ropes and in the carefully spread-out cards, and murder in the smothering pillow. The vengeance of one who had watched her corroding influence eat the life out of my honour and whose love for our little Roger was such that any deed which ensured his continued presence in the home appeared not only warrantable but obligatory. ”

“ I regarded the Great Disposer of events as a persecutor of the human race, who took delight in their miseries. I asked why my innocent child had been smitten down into the grave?—and why my darling wife, whose first object, I knew, had ever been to serve and glorify her Maker, should have been thus tortured and desolated by the cruelest calamity which the malignity of a demon could have devised? ”

“ Alas! I fear vengeance like thine will not be thus appeased! and that thy never-dying fire will still gnaw my vitals. Oh! these mortals think they suffer: but what are their torments when compared to mine? ”

“ What sort of death could the Curse involve for one who had lived for years or for weeks in the monstrous fabric, who had conversed familiarly with her abhorred occupants, who had been admitted into close inspection of her secret life, beheld the enactment by Vanderdecken in his sleep of the impious and horrible drama of his Christ-defying wrath, eat of his bread, drank of his cup, yea, and hearkened with sympathy to his talk of home, to his yearning speech concerning those he loved there? ”

“ They wished for a second death, that might separate them from these ministers of vengeance, as the first had separated their spirits from the body,—a death that might at once extinguish all consciousness and sensibility. They called upon the depths of hell to hide them from the persecuting beams of truth, in impenetrable darkness; but they are reserved for the cup of vengeance, which, though they drink of it forever, shall be ever full. The truth, from which they fled, has overtaken them, an invincible and unrelenting enemy. ”

“ The angry heavens speak in thunder to thee,
O, hear their awful voice, tho' deaf to mine,
'Tis an offended God that bids thee hold!
Whose vengeance falls on those, who vengeance seek.
Count. My wrongs cry louder than the storm, away! ”

“ How terrible must be the awakening of such a soul, if the kind Ruler should ever permit the awakening to come, and yet worse, sadly worse, would be the unconscious sleep that plunges its victim over the precipice of ruin to be aroused at last beyond the boundaries of hope! ”

“ It seems to me as if I saw the genius of this city stand before God, lifting his hands in agony to heaven, crying for mercy on woman, insulted and trodden down, for vengeance on man, who treads her thus infamously into the dust. The vengeance comes, not the mercy. ”

“ The impulses of the flesh would lead them to crush the tyrants who have drenched the earth with their blood, and to bruise their heads like serpents, but their Captain has said, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay." ”

“ He judged that enemy by himself, and he knew that he would not stop in the search after vengeance, that nothing short of the fullest and direst ruin—nothing, in fact, short of death itself would satisfy him. ”

“ And visit, without leave, the dark abodes?
Attend the term of long revolving years;
Fate, and the dooming gods, are deaf to tears.
This comfort of thy dire misfortune take:
The wrath of Heav'n, inflicted for thy sake,
With vengeance shall pursue th' inhuman coast,
Till they propitiate thy offended ghost,
And raise a tomb, with vows and solemn pray'r ”

“ Dear Loveless, I am overjoy'd to see you have brought your Family to Tawn again: [Pg 31] I am, stap my Vitals— [Aside.] For I design to lie with your Wife. [To Aman.] Far Gad's sake, Madam, haw has your Ladyship been able to subsist thus long, under the Fatigue of a Country Life?
Aman. My life has been very far from that, my Lord, it has been a very quiet one.
Lord Fop. Why that's the Fatigue I speak of, Madam: For 'tis impossible to be quiet, without thinking: Now thinking is to me the greatest Fatigue in the World.
Aman. Does not your Lordship love reading then? ”

“ Then standing at a safe distance, he hurled at her the most terrible threats of vengeance. Among all these she remembered well one expression, which he repeated over and over.
“You've threatened my life!” he cried.
“My life shall lie at your door, if I have to kill myself.” ”

“ Once a gentleman gave one of my children a tin whistle—a veritable invention of Satan, sir, and one which I have an unspeakable horror of, and so would you if you had eighty or ninety children in your house. But the deed was done—the man escaped. I knew what the result was going to be, and I thirsted for vengeance. I ordered out a flock of Destroying Angels, and they hunted the man far into the fastnesses of the Nevada mountains. ”

“ They trample upon thy people, they oppress thine inheritance, God of vengeance, Lord God of vengeance, show thyself, punish the proud! The Lord is to sit in judgment upon the peoples; He shall be judge of all flesh! ”

“ Take, for instance, this passage from Sir Walter Raleigh’s account of the loss of the Revenge, published in 1591. He begins admirably: “All the powder of the Revenge was now spent, all her pikes were broken, forty of her best men slain, and the most part of the rest hurt.” ”

“ 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! ”

“ Know for certain, that that God whom I have served, and for whose cause I now suffer, will avenge me; for vengeance is the Lord’s, and he will repay it one way or other, except thou speedily repentest.’ At this saying the justice began to tremble, and crying out, said, ‘I will do you no more hurt than I will do my own soul. ”

“ The shriek of the famine-stricken mother and the helpless infant, as well as the centuries of misery, call to heaven for vengeance. God is slow, but just! The blood of Tone, Fitzgerald, Emmett, and others has been shed—how much good has it done the tyrant and the robber? ”

“ And the judgement was held first over the stars, and they were judged and found guilty, and went to the place of condemnation, and they were cast into an abyss, full of fire and flaming, and full of pillars of fire. 25. And those seventy shepherds were judged and found guilty, and they were cast into that fiery abyss. 26. And I saw at that time how a like abyss was opened in the midst of the earth, full of fire, and they brought those blinded sheep, and they were all judged and found guilty and cast into this fiery abyss, and they burned; now this abyss was to the right of that house. ”