- If you ingenuously reveal
these particulars she has omitted, you may hope to find favour; but it
you obstinately persist, as your companions have done, in attempting to
impose upon me, you must expect to share the same fate immediately.
In speaking these words he made a sign to the soldier, who throwing open
a large folding door, discovered a rack on which one of the Swedish
officers was tied, and the others stood near bound, and in the hands of
the executioner.
This sight so amazed Horatio, that he had not the power of speaking one
word; - till Mullern, who happened to be the person that was fastened
upon the rack, cried out to him, - Be not lost in consideration, Horatio,
said he; are we not in the hands of Muscovites, from whom nothing that
is human can be expected? - rather prepare yourself to disappoint their
cruelty, by bravely suffering all they dare inflict.
Hold then, said Horatio, even Muscovites would chuse to have some
pretence for what they do; and sure the first favourite and
generalissimo of a prince, who boasts an inclination to civilize his
barbarous subjects, will not, without any cause, torture them whom
chance alone has put into his power, and who have never done him any
personal injury. - By heaven, pursued he, turning to the prince, we all
are innocent of any part of those crimes laid to our charge:
