"Countess" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the hereditary Prince of Baden? The Marquis of Beauharnais, the father of the Viscount of Beauharnais, the first husband of the Empress Josephine, had a brother, Count Claude de Beauharnais, who was a commodore, and married Mademoiselle Fanny Mouchard. Countess Fanny, a friend of Dorat and Cubieres, took much interest in literature and wrote many novels. She was a blue-stocking, and it was about her that Lebrun wrote ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... height of his physical power, was often conspicuous in the revels. In the intervals of his serious labors Napoleon gave way to a life of sensuality, and the women were prodigal of their charms. One of them was the well-known Countess Walewska, a beautiful woman, who while yet a child had been forced into wedlock with an aged nobleman. She was now made to feel that the future of her country depended upon her captivating Napoleon, for he had singled her out as the most beautiful of all the crowd which ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... The Countess of Mar looked for the first time upon Wallace's countenance. He was the enemy of her kinsmen of the house of Cummin; unknown to her husband, she had sought to betray him to one of these kinsmen; and now, as this beautiful woman beheld the man she had tried to injure, a sense of shame, accompanied ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... is no longer very willing to be seen, but she must not rid herself of them all at once; and is sometimes surprised by her best visitants in company which she would not show, and cannot hide; but from the moment that a countess enters, she takes care neither to hear nor see them: they soon find themselves neglected, and retire; and she tells her ladyship that they are somehow related at a great distance, and that, as they are a good sort of people, she cannot ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... scarcely say, it added much to the pleasure of my stay in Philadelphia. The same kind friend had also a seat for me always in his box at the opera, where that most charming and lady-like of actresses, the Countess Rossi,[AE] with her sweet voice, was gushing forth soft melody to crammed houses. On every side I met nothing but kindness. Happening one day at dinner to mention incidentally, that I thought the butter unworthy of the reputation ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... writing an article for an American newspaper which has offered her fifty pounds. This is the first fun she's ever got out of being a countess—and now I shouldn't wonder if she'd be a dowager soon! As for me, I'm trying to flirt with Petro. No, to be honest, that isn't quite true. I'm not exactly flirting. He's too good for that. Ena says he's "glue," because he has no interest in ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... Massacre of St. Bartholomew, in 1572. Afterward he had traveled through Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands, had gone as embassador to the Emperor's Court, and every-where won golden opinions. In 1580, while visiting his sister Mary, Countess of Pembroke, at Wilton, he wrote, for her pleasure, the Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, which {83} remained in MS. till 1590. This was a pastoral romance, after the manner of the Italian Arcadia of Sanazzaro, and the Diana Enamorada of Montemayor, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... certain special character is to introduce a letter written by that character to one of the other people in the plot. This expedient is employed with extraordinary cleverness by George Meredith in "Evan Harrington." Most of the tale is told externally; but every now and then the clever and witty Countess de Saldar writes a letter in which a leading incident is illuminated from her personal ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... may have been Lady Mount Severn's malady, she—to give you the phrase that was in people's mouth's at the time—"went out like the snuff of a candle." It was now the turn of Lady Isabel. She had no more decided disorder than the countess had had, yet death had marked her. She felt that it had, and in its approach she dreaded not, as she once had done, the consequences that must ensue, did discovery come. Which brings us back to the point whence ensued this long ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Intercourse of Letters to the Right Honourable Lady LETICE, Countess of Falkland, in her ...
— English Housewifery Exemplified - In above Four Hundred and Fifty Receipts Giving Directions - for most Parts of Cookery • Elizabeth Moxon
... himself—stood in arms beneath her walls. Two men, both named Tommaso—though it does not transpire that they were related—one a chamberlain of the Palace of Forli, the other a musician, were so devoted to the Countess Sforza-Riario, the grim termagant who ruled the fiefs of her murdered husband, Girolamo Riario, as to have undertaken an enterprise from which they cannot have hoped to emerge with their lives. It imported no less than the murder of the Pope. They were arrested on November 21, ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... amount rather than be forced to give up. Now here's your chance to get an income without an encumbrance and stave off your creditors. Marry the spook, so that she can go back to the spirit land a countess and make it hot for the Bangletops, and don't be so allfired proud. She'll be disappointed enough I can tell you, when I inform her that an earl was the best I could do, the promised duke not being within reach. If she says earls are drugs in the ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... about some on 'em in the Penny Story Gazette," said Dick. "It's called the 'Crime of a Coronet; or, The Revenge of the Countess May.' It's a boss thing, too. Some of us boys 're takin' it ...
— Little Lord Fauntleroy • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Joyselle burst out, scarlet with shyness, all her serenity gone. "You should not have brought her to the kitchen! Mon Dieu, mon Dieu, a countess' daughter!" ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... list of operatic artists,—Madame and her daughters holding that certain Germans, with whose names we, unfortunately for us, are not even acquainted, are far superior to any French or Italian singers that can be named—there ensues a pause in the conversation, of which the Countess CASANOVA takes advantage, and extending her right hand, which movement sharply jingles her bracelets, and so, as it were, sounds a bell to call us to attention, cuts in quickly with an emphatic, "Well, I don't profess to understand music as you do. I know what I ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various
... by many ladies, of whom one was a dowager countess, but there were also a bishop and a midshipman. The last had a bad cold and kept on blowing his nose during the performance of the soprano, a lady of strange appearance, said to be a ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... daughter of the Count of Armagnac, being now a lad of sixteen, a good squire, and in all things very like his father. He had a desire to see his mother, and so rode into Navarre, hoping to bring home his mother, the Countess of Foix. But she would not leave Navarre for all that he could say, and the day came when he and the young squires of his company must return. Then the King of Navarre led him apart into a secret chamber, and there gave him a little purse. Now the purse ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... Orleans during the siege which Joan of Arc raised. William de la Pole, then Earl of Suffolk, was appointed commander of the English forces in the Earl of Salisbury's place, and not only succeeded to his office, but also married his Countess, who now became Countess of Suffolk. It was long before either the Earl or his Countess could revisit Ewelme, where the Earl must have had some property before his marriage, for his elder brother, Earl Michael, ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... only wanted to see them, you know, and be able to say at home that you knew Madame la Marquise So-and-so, and Madame la Comtesse So-and-so, and describe their dresses, why, we can manage it well enough; for we are engaged to a little party at the opera this evening with the Countess de Papillon and Madame Casta Diva, two of the best known ladies in Paris. But they ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis
... a wonder, exaggerated little. There were, in fact, in this case as in thousands, the well-worn incidents, old as the hills, which, with individual variations, made a mourner of Ariadne, a by-word of Vashti, and a corpse of the Countess Amy. There were rencounters accidental and contrived, stealthy correspondence, sudden misgivings on one side, sudden self-reproaches on the other. The inner state of the twain was one as of confused ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... that he was at Antwerp in 1583 and was "once of Oriel College." He married Ann Sutton in 1593, and had a family. He is supposed to have died shortly after the publication of his last work, Fantastickes (1626). Breton found a patron in Mary, countess of Pembroke, and wrote much in her honour until 1601, when she seems to have withdrawn her favour. It is probably safe to supplement the meagre record of his life by accepting as autobiographical some of the letters signed N.B. in A Poste with a Packet of Mad Letters ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... Brenhilda, Countess of Paris, was one of those stalwart dames who willingly hazarded themselves in the front of battle, which, during the first crusade, was as common as it was possible for a very unnatural custom to be, and, in fact, gave the real instances ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... written a few days after this criticism appeared, shows in what circles the poet was then moving. 'I have been introduced to a good many of the noblesse, but my avowed patrons and patronesses are, the Duchess of Gordon, the Countess of Glencairn with my Lord and Lady Betty, the Dean of Faculty, Sir John Whitefoord. I have likewise warm friends among the literati; Professors Stewart, Blair, and Mr. Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling.... ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... mere imitations. Why should I not, if I were minded to revel in horrifying details, show you how the famished garrison drew lots, and ate themselves during the siege; and how the unlucky lot falling upon the Countess of Chalus, that heroic woman, taking an affectionate leave of her family, caused her large caldron in the castle kitchen to be set a-boiling, had onions, carrots and herbs, pepper and salt made ready, to make a savory soup, as the French like it; and when all things were quite completed, ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Italians marry American women, while so few Englishwomen, French women, or Italian women marry American men? Surely the American men have also the shekels; surely it is something even in Oregon or Montana to have inspired an honourable passion in a Lady Elizabeth or a dowager countess. I think the true explanation is that our men are attracted by American women, but our women are not equally attracted by American men, and that the quality of the articles has something ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... the house at night. My aunt Dorothy listened, pressing my arm. The next morning Janet urged me to go at once. 'Keep him away, bring down grandada, Harry. She cannot quit the island, because she has given Prince Ernest immediate rendezvous here. You must not delay to go. Yes, the Countess of Delzenburg shall have your excuses. And no, I promise you I will run nobody down. Besides, if I do, aunty will be at hand to plead for the defence, and she can! She has a way that binds one to accept everything she says, and Temple ought to study ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... sister, Isabelle of Hainault, the first wife of Philip Augustus of France, his brother Henry, Emperor of the East, and his two daughters. One of these daughters, Marguerite, grown to woman's estate, besieged Valenciennes because the burghers refused to recognise her as the born Countess of Hainault. Gilles Miniave, provost of the city, plainly said to her when he refused to surrender: 'We have taken and we intend to kill your soldiers, madame, as abettors of tyranny.' This was as much to the purpose in its way as the firing on the royal troops by ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... consequence, his tone was different. He talked his best, and she had a perfect feast of Wrangerton news—showed him all her presents, and enjoyed the thought of Annette's smile at hearing of her little Violet stepping into her carriage for a party at a countess's. ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... day at the baron's, enjoying that satisfaction which the conversation of his beautiful daughter never failed to afford, when word was brought that madam, the countess d'Espargnes, was come to visit her.—Mademoiselle Charlotta ran to receive her with a great deal of joy, she being a lady she very much regarded, and who she had not seen of ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... pleasure to gratify her wishes, she soon heard enough of Border lore; among others, an aged gentleman of property, near Langholm, communicated to her ladyship the story of Gilpin Horner—a tradition in which the narrator and many more of that county were firm believers. The young Countess, much delighted with the legend, and the gravity and full confidence with which it was told, enjoined it on me as a task to compose a ballad on the subject. Of course, to hear was to obey; and thus the goblin story, objected to by several ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 571 - Volume 20, No. 571—Supplementary Number • Various
... their chairs. There's some pictures in the old books Miss Lois sent us, and the funny clothes they wore. I'll bring them over some day. I read about a lady going to Court in her chair. And there were two or three pretty maids to wait on her. We'll make believe you are the Countess Somebody, and we are the ladies in waiting. And we'll all go to the Palace. The King will be out; they're always on hunting expeditions, and the Prince, that will be Charles, there was a bonnie Prince Charlie once, will take us about and show us the ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... the Countess Bubna's box while we are here. She scarcely ever goes herself, being obliged to hold a sort of military drawing-room almost every evening. Her husband, General Bubna, has the command of the Austrian forces in the north of Italy: and though the Archduke Reinier ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... Kranitski kept with him at all times, and which, as he lay now in the long-chair, he turned in his fingers, mechanically. This cigarette-case was a precious memento. He had received it soon after his arrival in the city, twenty and some years before, from Countess Eugenia, his mother's aunt. Prom their first meeting the countess was simply wild about him. Society even insisted, notwithstanding her more than ripe years, that she was madly in love with that uncommonly beautiful and blooming young man, who had been reared by his mother ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... supped with a little company of intimates: her natural sister, the Countess of Argyll, the Commendator of Holyrood, Beaton, the Master of the Household, Arthur Erskine, the Captain of the Guard, and one other—that, David Rizzio, who from an errant minstrel had risen to this perilous eminence, a man of a swarthy, ill-favoured countenance ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... lost more than he could repay without mortgaging his family estate. To that step he was driven at last. At the same time his gallantry brought him into trouble. A love affair, or slight flirtation, with a lady of the name of Villiers [Miss Elizabeth Villiers, afterwards Countess of Orkney] exposed him to the resentment of a Mr. Wilson, by whom he was challenged to fight a duel. Law accepted, and had the ill fortune to shoot his antagonist dead upon the spot. He was arrested the same day, and brought to trial ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... the saloon when visitors were there; only when Sophie was alone, or her artistic hand was needed to arrange her sister's beautiful hair, was she permitted to stay with the future countess. Every rough touch was resented with harsh words, blows, and ill-treatment. The smiling fairy of the drawing-room, was the harsh, grim mistress for her sister, whose every mistake was punished with unrelenting severity. ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... a kind of example complacently held up by the younger generation to fathers of families, and frequently cited to mothers-in-law. She had made over her property to Moina in her own lifetime; the young Countess' happiness was enough for her, she only lived in her daughter. If some cautious old person or morose uncle here and there condemned the course with—"Perhaps Mme. d'Aiglemont may be sorry some day that she ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... the widow, 'the least right you have to give the law to the Countess of Lyndon: I do not in the least understand your threats, or heed them. What has passed between me and an Irish adventurer that should authorise this ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... doctrine of affinity. Who that accepts, as I do, the marvellous teaching of Comte, and remembers that the highest ideas which it contains were inspired by a woman, could fail to be? But I shall know the man towards whom I am destined to occupy the relation that Comte's Countess did to him, at a glance. No words will need to pass between us to assure us that we are one in sentiment. It will be as impossible for him to be indifferent to elevating the taste of the masses in matters of domestic detail, or be otherwise wanting in a whole-hearted devotion to the service ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... close by. The base upon which the figures rest is modern. The earl is represented in full armour. At his feet is a lion, and at his head, under the helmet, is a coronet and a lion's head. At the countess's feet is a dog, and her head rests ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Chichester (1901) - A Short History & Description Of Its Fabric With An Account Of The - Diocese And See • Hubert C. Corlette
... to have been of service to you. It was a piece of good fortune, indeed, on my part that I happened so providentially to ride along at the right moment. I was about this morning to do myself the honor of calling to inquire how the countess and yourself were after the terrible ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... guardian of her girlhood, was the child of Maurice, Marshal Saxe, that favorite figure in history and romance, himself son of the famous Augustus II., Elector of Saxony, and King of Poland, and the Swedish Countess Aurora von Koenigsmark. The Marshal's daughter Aurore, though like her father of illegitimate birth—her mother, who was connected with the stage, passed by her professional name of Mlle. Verrieres—obtained after the Marshal's death the ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... It was the peculiar merit of his pictures,—so at least said the art-loving world,—that though the likeness was always good, the stiffness of the modern portrait was never there. There was also ever some story told in Dalrymple's pictures over and above the story of the portraiture. This countess was drawn as a fairy with wings, that countess as a goddess with a helmet. The thing took for a time, and Conway Dalrymple was picking up his gilt sugar-plums with ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... The Countess of Villeroy was a very old French lady who was strongly inclined to think that people were wrong in supposing they could cruise among the clouds in balloons. But when she saw Professor Charles and his companion rise into the blue sky, she was ready to agree with any one who ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... Clara N—— was, of course, Clara Anastasia Novello, daughter of Lamb's friend, Vincent Novello (1781-1861), the organist, and herself a fine soprano singer (see also the poem "The Sisters," on the same page). Miss Novello, who was born on June 10, 1818, became the Countess Gigliucci, and survived until March 12, 1908. Clara Novella's Reminiscences, compiled by her daughter, the Contessa Valeria Gigliucci, with a memoir by Arthur Duke Coleridge, were published in 1910. In them is this ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... was a sovereign remedy for those terrible ague seizures. Indian remedies did not stand as high in popular esteem as they do now; but they were in desperate straits and jumped at the chance. To their delight, it proved a positive specific, and a Spanish lady of rank, the Countess Chincona, was so delighted with her own recovery that she carried back a package of the precious Peruvian bark on her return to Europe, and endeavored to introduce it. So furious was the opposition of the Church, however, to this "pagan" ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... introduced some cases of petty larceny to the notice of the grand-jurors of Hull. The alarm sounded with such touching eloquence from the judgment-seat was taken up last autumn, if we remember, by a venerable Countess, who, in an address to an assemblage of Cumbrian lasses, aspirants to the kitchen and the dairy, took occasion to read them a lecture on the duty of dressing with the simplicity befitting their station. Both the learned Recorder and the venerable Countess ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... he treated his ill-luck with such a raillery of contemptuous wit, that we must needs laugh with him. Comyn, too, lost, and at supper excused himself, saying that he had promised his mother, the dowager countess, not to lose more than a quarter's income at a sitting. But I won and won, until the fever of it got into my blood, and as the first faint light of that morning crept into the empty streets, we were still at it, Fox vowing that he never waked up until daylight. That the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... at eleven o'clock. Mr. Speaker Orr escorted Lady Napier to the table, followed by Lord Napier escorting the Countess de Sartiges. It was a bountiful repast, with a profusion of champagne. Dancing was kept up until a late hour. A few days afterward Lord Napier embarked on an English ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... Edition. 'Of these mediaeval romances, which are now gaining ground, "The Countess Tekla" is the very best ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... judge by his portraits, had forgotten how to smile. Then again, the atmosphere of the Madrid court, for all its dulness and secrecy and unhealthy ways, was not as it became under Charles III., when Godoy played the part of Count Olivarez, and the Countess Benavente, the Duchess of Alba, and other women as frail as they were beautiful, did not hesitate to indulge in open intrigue with the king's painter. Turn to the canvases of Velazquez and you will not find a woman who was fascinating enough to have been worth the trouble and danger of an intrigue. ...
— Velazquez • S. L. Bensusan
... Said he was a baronet or something, if he had his rights, and made love to Sally. Old fool Peters believed him, and lent him three hundred dollars to start a lawsuit over his English property with. Dessay Peters thought red-haired Sally would look well trailing round as a countess in a gold-hemmed dress. The baronet took the money, but wanted some more, and lit out the same night with Lou ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... chosen ewerer for Sir Henry Wyatt, his father." "When all things were ready and ordered, THE QUEEN, under her canopy, came into the hall, and washed; and sat down in the middest of the table, under her cloth of estate. On the right side of her chair stood the Countess of Oxford, widow: and on her left hand stood the Countess of Worcester, all the dinner season; which, divers times in the dinner time, did hold a fine cloth before the Queen's face, when she list to spit, or do otherwise at her pleasure. ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... great a marvel as that you return a bachelor. Why did you not marry a German princess or some reduced English countess?" ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... the ghost dares not venture. The innate desire for the marvellous was met at this period not by the novel, but by oral tradition and by such works as Galland's translation of The Arabian Nights, the Countess D'Aulnoy's collection of fairy tales, Perrault's Contes de ma Mere Oie. Chapbooks setting forth mediaeval legends of "The Wandering Jew," the "Demon Frigate," or "Dr. Faustus," and interspersed with anecdotes of freaks, monsters ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... three days. I had too much experience in all affairs of this kind not to see presently the influence I had on him; but I was at that time so entirely free from all ambition, that even the prospect of being a countess had no effect on me; and I then thought nothing in the world could have bribed me to have changed my way of life. This young lord, who was just in his bloom, found his passion so strong, he could not endure a long absence, ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding
... believing him to have some personal motive for his interference, they disregarded the caution;[360] and the fact of their mutual passion at length became so well authenticated, that Henry, whose pride rather than his heart was wounded by the levity of the Countess, reproached her in the most insulting terms with her misconduct.[361] Madame de Moret did not attempt to deny her attachment to the Prince, but excused herself by reminding the monarch that, honoured as she was by his preference, she ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... lady, a Countess, who lived with her husband, the Count, near the Vijver. She was childless and very jealous of other women who were mothers and had children playing around them. On this day, when the beggar woman, with her two ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... for she's been a good mistress to us all. Maybe if she had taken snuff she'd have lived to a good old age,' which suggests wonder as to what his conception of longevity really was. Probably the famous Countess of Desmond, who died from the effects of a fall from a cherry-tree in her one hundred and fortieth year, would ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... same, inasmuch as HIS was simply to live at her expense; but at least she couldn't say that he hadn't taken a line. If she insisted on believing in him he offered himself to the sacrifice. My impression is that her secret dream was that he should have a liaison with a countess, and he persuaded her without difficulty that he had one. I don't know what countesses are capable of, but I have a clear notion of ...
— Greville Fane • Henry James
... read quite plainly the name that is written in the corner. It is not Marcia; it looks as if it was done in gold. The name is Mircalla, Countess Karnstein, and this is a little coronet over and underneath A.D. 1698. I am descended from the Karnsteins; that ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... lightning the abductor carried the countess into an open chapel and seated her behind the confessional on a wooden bench. By the light of the tapers burning before the saint to whom the chapel was dedicated, they looked at each other for a moment in silence, clasping hands, and amazed at their own audacity. The countess ...
— Maitre Cornelius • Honore de Balzac
... Countess Saito, like her husband, spoke excellent English; and her manner in greeting Asako was of London rather than of Tokyo. She took both her ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... and that a lunatic aunt, black in the face with suppressed mania, would burst into my chamber, it was comparatively a harmless fancy, and not particularly disturbing. Between these and the 'Yellow Dwarf,' who (though only the invention of the Countess D'Aulnoy) might frighten a nervous infant into hysterics, I personally had as bad a time of it in the night watches as any happy British child has survived. But our ogres are nothing to the bogies which make ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... exquisite lines, and have given delight to innumerable readers, but they gave no delight to Lady Mary. In writing to her sister, the Countess of Mar, then at Paris, she says in allusion to these "most musical, most melancholy" verses—"I stifled them here; and I beg they may die the same death at Paris." It is not, however, quite so easy a thing as ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... show you how we are done. It is not about myself, but about my opposite neighbour, Madame Mahuchet, a ladies' shoemaker. I had loaned money to a countess, a woman who has too many passions for her means,—lives in a fine apartment filled with splendid furniture, and makes, as we say, a devil of a show with her high and mighty airs. She owed three hundred francs to her shoemaker, and was giving a dinner no later than yesterday. The shoemaker, ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac
... characters of the sixteenth century was Elizabeth, Countess of Shrewsbury, familiarly known as "Bess of Hardwicke," where she was born, and who managed to outlive four husbands, thus showing what success is in store for a woman of tact and business talent. She ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... though he was in his time the popular idol, was not long in finding a successful rival. Seven years before his death Sir Philip Sidney, in a period of retirement from the Court wrote "The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia"; it was published ten years after it had been composed. The Arcadia is the first English example of the prose pastoral romance, as the Shepherd's Calendar is of our pastoral verse. Imitative ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... the end of January. The most noted of these gentlemen were Hoogstraaten, Brederode, the younger Mansfeld, Culemburg, and Noircarmes. Before they parted with the envoy, they drew up a paper which they signed with their blood, and afterwards placed in the hands of his Countess. In this document they promised, on account of their "inexpressible and very singular affection" for Egmont, that if, during his mission to Spain, any evil should befal him, they would, on their faith as gentlemen and cavaliers of honor, take vengeance, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... to see all these pretty women, I have undoubtedly given you pleasure, at the same time I have gratified a little innocent curiosity of mine:—but then the chance is such a good one! We will now visit the Countess ——, for she has a very desirable apartment to let; after which we will proceed seriously to take rooms ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... household officials, menservants, squires, pages, and chaplains. Montfort horses and hounds crowd our good steeds out of their stalls. Besides the twenty stabled here, eighteen were put in the brewery in the Hundsgasse, and eight belong to Countess Cordula. Then the constant turmoil all day long and until late at night! It is fortunate that they do not lodge with us in the front of the house! It would be very bad for ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... there, it is true, but he was afraid of death, and wanted to get back to his world again, back to the European trip where he had left his friends, and especially a gay young countess who had smiled upon him. He was impatient of death and sorrow. Hazel saw that he could not comprehend her loneliness, so she bade him go as soon as decency would allow, and he was not long in obeying her. He had had ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... beautiful amongst them was the young Countess of Exeter, whose magnificent black eyes did great execution. The lovely Countess was mounted on a fiery Spanish barb, given to her by De Gondomar. Forced into a union with a gouty and decrepit old husband, ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... Regent's Park, and they had moved into a maisonette in Mayfair—a little white-fronted house, with boxes full of scarlet geraniums, a second man-servant to open the door, and an electric brougham in place of the somewhat antiquated carriage, which the Countess had brought with her from abroad. His banking account was entirely satisfactory. There were many men and women who were only too pleased to welcome him at their houses. And yet he was at all times subject to ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... walks like an Andalu-sian, and has all the seductiveness of a Polish countess!" the quick-witted rascal thought, as they strolled into the museum, which the departed General Rath knew not would be the scene of many a hidden love intrigue, when he endowed it with a benevolent vanity. ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... same moment, and as a boy handed Caroline the edging, wrapped in paper, for which she had already paid, and which she took mechanically, she heard one of the bystanders whisper to another: "The Countess D——!" (one of the most celebrated ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... the adopted daughter!" Maude exclaimed. "Don't you remember. She was in the front row and we heard those people talking about her. I think she's distinguee myself. She looks like a Russian countess." ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... of the beautiful Countess of Dufferin, by her son and biographer, Lord Dufferin, that when the surgeons were consulting round her bedside which they should save—the mother or the child—she exclaimed, "Oh, never mind me; save my baby!" If you knew the facts ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... Henrietta Howard, the neighbor of Pope, the friend of Swift and Arbuthnot, and the admired of Lord Peterborough, Mrs. Haywood made herself offensive in the nostrils of the literary trio. The King's mistress, later the Countess of Suffolk, conducted herself with such propriety that her friends affected to believe that her relations with her royal lover were purely platonic, and they naturally failed to welcome the chronicle of her amours and the revelation of the slights which ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... my lord," replied Durward, "but use your interest with the Count of Crevecoeur to permit me an interview with the Countess Isabelle of Croye, who is the party possessed of my secret, and I doubt not that I can persuade her to be as silent as I shall unquestionably myself remain, concerning whatever may incense the Duke against ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... when he was already a man of forty-four, Addison married. His wife was the Dowager Countess of Warwick, and perhaps she was that great lady whom he had lost a few years before when he lost his post of Secretary of State. Of all Addison's pleasant prosperous life these last years ought to have been most pleasant and most prosperous. But it has been ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... being observed, except by one old woman, who, being nearly "high-gravel blind," was only conscious that something very fine and glittering was passing by, and dropped as deep a reverence to Madge as she would have done to a countess. This filled up the measure of Madge's self-approbation. She minced, she ambled, she smiled, she simpered, and waved Jeanie Deans forward with the condescension of a noble chaperone, who has undertaken the charge of a country miss on her ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... friends and countrymen of the sovereigns who had accompanied them in their voluntary exile caused a note of discord in the general harmony of the first days of the empire, indicative of the cacophony which was soon to follow. Prince and Princess Zichy and Countess Collonitz soon returned home, but a number of men remained to occupy lucrative and confidential positions about the ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... fine collection of medieval needlework is preserved for the admiration of people to-day is due to the faithful execution of the Countess of Shrewsbury's will, in which she left all her household furnishings, entailed as heirlooms, to always remain ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... a countess gave me her hand to kiss to-day, i' the presence: did me more good by that light than — and yesternight sent her coach twice to my lodging, to intreat me accompany her, and my sweet mistress, with some two or three nameless ladies more: O, I have been graced by them beyond ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... neat remark of the Countess's, all those gentlemen would have remained in poverty and obscurity within the walls or ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... men, and fair ladies, worthy of the days when the gentry of England were by due right the leaders of the people, by personal prowess and beauty, as well as by intellect and education. And first, there is my lady Countess of Bath, whom Sir Richard Grenville is escorting, cap in hand (for her good Earl Bourchier is in London with the queen); and there are Bassets from beautiful Umberleigh, and Carys from more beautiful Clovelly, and Fortescues of Wear, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... in my noble Compeeres: and this my Countess shall be led by two: and so proceed we to ...
— The Scornful Lady • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... has the title of Countess. There is nothing to be said of the Countess of Rosebery beyond what you read of her in HARPER'S BAZAR. She is a very estimable and charitable ...
— Harper's Young People, June 8, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... grave suspicion fell even upon persons of high position. Thus it was believed that Cardinal Bonzy had obtained from La Voisin the means of bringing to an untimely end all those persons to whom, as Archbishop of Narbonne, he was obliged to pay annuities. So also the Duchess de Bouillon, and the Countess de Soissons,[9] whose names were found on the list, were accused of having had dealings with the diabolical woman; and even Francois Henri de Montmorenci, Boudebelle, Duke of Luxemburg,[10] peer and marshal of the kingdom, was not spared. He too was prosecuted by the terrible Chambre Ardente. ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... again. You will never see Budapesth again, either," was the menacing continuation of the criminologist's methodical speech. "But a very old lady, the Countess Laschlas, will see the accounts of her son's wretched death, in the New York papers which will be sent to her, in care of the ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... being much older than her companion, and having been in the service of her mistress for many years, seemed to enjoy a certain degree of familiarity near the countess—who was a Russian as well as herself—which permitted her many observations not ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue
... 10 The Countess of Jersey (see Letter 30, note 6), like her husband, was a friend of Bolingbroke's. Lady Strafford speaks of her having lately (November 1711) "been in pickle for her sins," at which she was not surprised. Before the Earl succeeded ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... go up-stairs for a bit of pen-and-ink practice—to cover a sheet with such words as these: Lady Rosamund This-or-that; Rosamund, Countess of Thus-and-so; the Honourable Rosamund Such-a-one. She lingered fondly over the baptismal "Rosamund"; what word could match more fitly with a title, or harmonize more completely with the grand old names of the peerage? Once she wrote on the extreme lower corner of the ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... his hand was once in existence, and a number of paintings, said to have been by him, hung on the walls at Earl's Croombe until they were used to patch broken windows there in the last century. Butler went into the service of Elizabeth, Countess of Kent, at Wrest in Bedfordshire, where he had the use of a good library and the friendship of John Selden, then steward of the Countess's estate. It was there and in association with Selden that he began his literary work. Some time afterward he held a servitor's position in the family ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... table, and one was a woman. The priest knew her well. She had been called the most beautiful woman in Venice—Catherine, Countess of Treviso. Still young, with a face which spoke of ambition and of love, her white neck glittered with the jewels it carried, her dress of blue velvet was such a dress as only a noblewoman of Venice could wear. A queenly ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... action sufficiently in the vindictive spirit of the times, and yet not altogether so bad as represented; for the Earl was no child, as some writers would have him, but able to bear arms, being sixteen or seventeen years of age, as is evident from this (say the Memoirs of the Countess of Pembroke, who was laudably anxious to wipe away, as far as could be, this stigma from the illustrious name to which she was born); that he was the next Child to King Edward the Fourth, which his mother had by Richard ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... Rochambeau, and in addition to the papers formerly communicated relating to the same subject, I now transmit to the House of Representatives, for their consideration, a memorial to the Congress of the United States from the Countess d'Ambrugeac and the Marquise de la Goree, together with the letter which accompanied it. Translations of these documents ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... in the sobbing Recital that Hubert had presented her with a $900 prize-winning Pomeranian, directly related to the famous Fifi, owned by the Countess Skidoogan of Bilcarty. ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... Rasoumowsky and the Minister of Denmark,—not which of the brides would be false to her marriage vows,—that was taken for granted with regard to all,—but which would be so first! It turned out that he who bet on the Countess Anne Voronzoff, daughter of the Vice-Chancellor of the Empire, and bride to Count Strogonoff, who was the plainest of the three and at the time the most innocent and childlike, won the wager. The bet was wisely laid; for she was likely to be ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... of an entertainment presented to the Countess Dowager of Darby at Harefield, by som Noble persons of her Family, who appear on the Scene in pastoral habit, moving toward the seat of ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... Mr. Gimble, who declared that her principal charm was in her complexion—her fair, clear, wonderful complexion—which he would defy any artist alive to paint, let him try ever so hard, or be ever so great a man. Then came the Dowager Countess of Brambledown, the frolicsome old aristocrat, who was generally believed to be "a little cracked;" who haunted Mr. Blyth's studio, after having once given him an order to paint her rare China tea-service, and her favorite muff, in one group; and who differed entirely from the little ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... of Bonaparte and Byron show again a conjunction, by the almost simultaneous announcement of changes in the lot of women with whom they were so intimately connected;—the Archduchess of Parma, Maria Louisa, is dead; the Countess Guiccioli is married. The Countess I have seen several times; she still looks young, and retains the charms which by the contemporaries of Byron she is reputed to have had; they never were of a very high order; her best expression is that of ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... in conflict with the Tscherkes. In February of 1841 we find the poet again at Petersburg, where the second edition of his masterpiece, "A Hero of Our Own Time," was just appearing. Yet toward the end of April again he was obliged to leave,— this time through the influence and hatred of the Countess Benkendorff. For the third time he went to the Caucas in exile. Here in Petigorsk he was forced into close relation with one Major Nikolai Solomonowitsch Martynow,—whom he did not spare from his well deserved ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi
... Palace an old woman called Countess Caramel, who had been governess to Charming when he was young. When the Queen lay dying, the Countess had promised her that she would look after her youngest boy for her, and Charming had often confided in Caramel since. One morning, when ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... "My niece, the Countess of Camperdown, asks me to meet him to-day at luncheon. Explain yourself, my young friend. There is a fresh glass ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... incident like the present tale as there is in that fine novel of manners: "A Hungarian Nabob." Yet even in "Szegeny Gazdagok," many of the minor characters (e.g., the parasite Margari, the old miser Demetrius, the Hungarian Miggs, Clementina, the frivolous Countess Kengyelesy), are not without a mild Dickensian flavour, while in that rugged but good-natured and chivalrous Nimrod, Mr. Gerzson, the Hungarian novelist has drawn to the life one of the finest types we possess of the better sort of ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... afterwards, O'Donahue received a note from a German widow lady, a Countess Erhausen, particularly requesting he would call upon her in the afternoon, at three o'clock. As he had not as yet had the pleasure of being introduced to the countess, although he had often heard her spoken of in the first society, O'Donahue did not fail in his appointment, ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... soon after left France for Italy. There he lived for some time in the palace of a particular friend of mine and the Marquis, my husband, the Countess Francese Tressino, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... afterwards, and the last I heard of her was in the situation of companion to a Russian Countess, with whom she was an immense favorite. She made some effort to gain possession of these letters; but I reminded her, that, as they had been written exclusively for my benefit, I considered I had a right to keep them. To this she simply ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... a German; he is economical—that is all!" observed Tomsky. "But if there is one person that I cannot understand, it is my grandmother, the Countess Anna Fedorovna!" ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... fresh-complexioned as a babe, his supple, not ungraceful figure tawdrily clad in showy clothes of poor material the worse for hard usage and spilt wine. The Countess bade him sit, and with her own hands she poured a cup ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... groaned, and amongst the crowd of courtiers a murmur of horror and disgust was heard. The king stood near the coffin, and Sophia Dorothea looked at him so steadily, so piercingly, that he had not the courage to meet her glance, and fixed his eyes upon the ground. The queen stood up quietly. The Countess Hacke held out her hand to assist her, but she waved ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach |
