As he approached the city, all that festive and gallant scene he had quitted seemed to him like a dream; a vision of the gardens and bowers of an enchantress, from which he woke abruptly as a criminal may wake on the morning of his doom to see the scaffold and the Deathsman;-so much did each silent and lonely step into the funeral city bring back his bewildered thoughts at once to life and to death.
"Rienzi"
Edward Bulwer Lytton
And when I see before me the faded king of a great race, and the last band of doomed heroes, too few and too feeble to make head against my arms,-when the land is already my own, and the sword is that of the Deathsman, not of the warrior,-verily, Sir Norman, duty releases its iron tool, and man becomes man again.
"Harold, Complete The Last Of The Saxon Kings"
Edward Bulwer-Lytton
From his arms thou shalt start with horror, as from those of thy wronged father's betrayer,-perchance his Deathsman!
"The Last Of The Barons, Complete"
Edward Bulwer-Lytton