The king governs without decapitation or other corporal punishments.

In man the heart has been seen to beat spontaneously and completely 25 minutes after a legal decapitation (Renard and Loye, 1887), and by massage of the organ its beating may be restored after it has been arrested for 40 minutes (Rehn, 1909).

His enchanter, who is gifted with the power of surviving decapitation and pursuing the decapitator so long as a fated hair remains on his head, turns deadly pale in the face when it is scalped, and falls lifeless from his horse.

Yet, if we are to believe her accusers, she did her best to ensure her own dethronement and decapitation.

In one of the rooms, there was a painting of Ogurlu- Mohammed, the kings eldest son, leading the sultan Busech, or Abu Saïd, tied with a rope; and in another picture the decapitation of Busech was represented.

I fancy they expected an immediate order for my decapitation, or for my ears to be cut off at the very least, but feeling I might as well be 'in for a pound as for a penny,' I fired again, and tumbled the huge brute over, with a bullet through the skull behind the ear.

Behind the bank, and in rear of the tent, the cook and his mate were disembowelling a hapless moorghee, a fowl, whose decapitation had just been effected with a huge jagged old cavalry sword, of which my cook was not a little proud; and on the strength of which he adopted fierce military airs, and gave an extra turn to his well-oiled moustache when he went abroad for a holiday.

This Place is interesting to the historian as being the spot where Counts Egmont and Hoorn suffered decapitation in the reign of Philip II of Spain, by order of the Duke of Alva, who witnessed the execution from a window of one of the houses.

On the side opposite the palace itself is the Place Louis XV, called in the time of the republic Place de la Révolution, and where the unfortunate Louis XVI suffered decapitation.

" [Illustration: Fig. 342.Type of Executioner in the Decapitation of John the Baptist (Thirteenth Century).Fac-simile of a Miniature in the Psalm-book of St. Louis.

In certain countries decapitation was performed with an axe; but in France, it was carried out usually by means of a two-handed sword or glave of justice, which was furnished to the executioner for that purpose (Fig. 346).

Originally, decapitation was indiscriminately inflicted on all criminals condemned to death; at a later period, however, it became the particular privilege of the nobility, who submitted to it without any feeling of degradation.

[Illustration: Decapitation of Guillaume de Pommiers.

A hundred complainers and accused persons were in a similar posture; behind them twenty executioners, with drawn sabres in their hands waited the royal signal, which generally terminated each cause, by the decapitation of one or other of the parties.'

Mr. SMILLIE said that he had given the matter the closest attention, and he had come to the conclusion that there was no preventive of a cold in the head so complete and drastic as decapitation.

The next morning, however, a general decapitation overtook the flock of feathered hypocrites.

For example, in The Literary Review of The New York Post, September 3, the leading article remarks, after granting it is a rare script that cannot be improved by good editing, and after making allowance for the physical law of limitation by space: "Surgery, however, must not become decapitation or such a trimming of long ears and projecting toes as savage tribes practise.

The earl was condemned to be hanged, drawn, and quartered; but the punishment was changed to decapitation.

George IV. had only one wife, but she suffered the persecutions of six; and if she escaped decapitation or divorce, it was from no failure of inclination or instruments.

Its ceremony is to them a marriage feast: and decapitation, what a black job was to Lord Portsmouth,the only variety and excitement that could give a spur to their heavy and painful existence.

When I assured them that there was no more question of their decapitation than of mine, and that they were perfectly safe, they broke into a discordant jubilation like that of a children's school let loose; life had nothing more to give them.

When the news of the decapitation of the King reached Scotland, that loyal people were moved with horror and indignation.

His house, at Belem, was levelled to the ground at the time of the Duke's decapitation, and on the site was erected a column of disgrace, which still remains, though some shops have been erected beside it to hide the inscription; a just symbol of the conduct of the nation on this subject, for what they cannot alter they strive to conceal.

It was likewise in 1343 and at the beginning of 1344, that he ordered the arrest, at a tournament to which he had invited them, and the decapitation, without any form of trial, of fourteen Breton and three Norman lords whom he suspected of intriguing against him with the King of England.

Sometimes, it is recorded, a slave, after months of painful preparation, had the audacity to run away with his own head before the day of sale and decapitation.