spirit. Proud and firm, she mounted the steps of the scaffold, and
once more saluted the people and cried aloud, 'I will pray to God
for you.' But as the headsman approached and demanded that she
should allow her hands to be bound, and that she should kneel in
order to lay her head upon the block, she refused, and angrily
pushed him away. 'Only traitors and criminals lay their head on the
block!' exclaimed she, with a loud, thundering voice. 'There is no
occasion for me to do so, and I will not submit to your bloody laws
as long as there is a breath in me. Take, then, my life, if you
can.'

"And now began a scene which filled the hearts of the lookers-on
with fear and horror. The countess flew like a hunted beast round
and round the scaffold. Her white hair streamed in the wind; her
black grave-clothes rustled around her like a dark cloud, and behind
her, with uplifted axe, came the headsman, in his fiery red dress;
he, ever endeavoring to strike her with the falling axe, but she,
ever trying, by moving her head to and fro, to evade the descending
stroke. But at length her resistance became weaker; the blows of the
axe reached her, and stained her white hair, hanging loose about her
shoulders, with crimson streaks. With a heart-rending cry, she fell
fainting. Near her, exhausted also, sank down the headsman, bathed
in sweat. This horrible wild chase had lamed his arm and broken his
strength. Panting and breathless, he was not able to drag this
fainting, bleeding woman to the block, or to lift up the axe to
separate her noble head from the body. [Footnote: Tytler, p. 430]
The crowd shrieked with distress and horror, imploring and begging
for mercy, and even the lord chief justice could not refrain from
tears, and he ordered the cruel work to be suspended until the
countess and the headsman should have regained strength; for a