"Dungeon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cell being left open, he rushed out, and entered the prison chapel during divine service—a horribly ludicrous figure. The committee, on the conclusion of the incident, say, 'he was immediately seized and carried back into the sad dungeon; where, through the cold, and the restraint, and for want of food, he lost his senses, languished, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various
... Forst's stately walls Loom grandly from the darkening moor, Where still a dungeon-keep recalls The ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... the Sun was flecked with bars,[28] (Heaven's Mother[29] send us grace!) As if through a dungeon grate he peered With broad ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... who is presently brought in by Carpezan himself, and fainting on his shoulder, but Sybilla herself? A little sister nun (that gay one with the red lips) had pointed out to the Colonel and Ulric the way to Sister Agnes's dungeon, and, indeed, had been the means of making her situation known ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... monarchs unquestionably ruling by Divine right, were called upon by every earthly, as well as heavenly consideration, to prove their zeal in the cause of God, by destroying His adversaries. Heretics have been consigned to dungeon and to name, for His glory, and His satisfaction. All inquisitors from St. Dominic downward, have indignantly repelled the charge that they have punished heretics just to glut their own appetite for cruelty. Worshippers of a God who saith, 'vengeance is ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... was with Reginald Cruden when finally the whole bitter truth of his position broke in upon his mind. If the first sudden shock drove him into the dungeon of Giant Despair, a night's quiet reflection, and the consciousness of innocence within, helped him to shake off the fetters, and emerge bravely and serenely from ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... head, having eyeholes only; in other words, dressed as friars of the order of Misericordia. One of these struck me on the head with a heavy short sword, and when I regained consciousness I learned I was a prisoner in a dungeon under the cloisters of the monastery of Agnoli. My friend, Ser Nuto, had engineered the capture, which had been ordered by the Bologna legate for my gross insults to him and consequently to the church. My captors, who belonged to the Guelph faction, had cheerfully executed the commission because ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... the quickly visioned dream-facts of twenty-four! Full long shall be the interval betwixt the bright Utopia and the heavenly reality:—the dungeon, the Storm, the death chamber and e'en the shining ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... despair, they made a last stand, until, worn out by fatigue and hunger, they surrendered and came down. Bertulf the Provost, Burchard, and a few of the other ringleaders had fled some days before, and so escaped, for a time at least, the fate of their companions, who, having been imprisoned in a dungeon, were taken to the top of the church tower and flung down one by one on to the stones of the Bourg. 'Their bodies,' says Mr. Gilliat-Smith, 'were thrown into a marsh beyond the village of St. Andre, ...
— Bruges and West Flanders • George W. T. Omond
... in this dungeon; and soon there will be an end, and peace. But for the letters of fire that burns one's brain the place would be as black as night; and it is still as night; one can sit and listen. And now that dull throbbing sound—and a strain of ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... the roof descend. The gruesome old story of the imprisoned prince flashed into her mind; the wretched captive, young and life-loving, who used to wake up, each morning, to find that of the original seven windows of his dungeon, one had disappeared, while the walls had advanced a foot, and to-morrow yet another foot, till at length the last window had closed up, and the walls shrank together and crushed ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... of torture. The dungeons must be underground, and only a single ray of light must penetrate. He is much troubled to find that the dungeon in the Castle of Chillon is much more cheerful than he had supposed it was. The Bridge of Sighs in Venice disappoints him in the same way. Indeed, there are few places mentioned by Lord Byron that are as gloomy as they are in ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... Wednesday, January 19th, with Frulein Lehmann—Niemann being the Florestan on both occasions. The enthusiasm was boundless, though the silly laugh of a woman in one of the boxes at the first performance so disconcerted Frulein Brandt at the beginning of the duet in the dungeon scene that she broke down in tears, and Mr. Seidl had to stop the orchestra till she could sufficiently recover her composure to begin over again. Now, the popular interest was so great that Mr. Stanton ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... to remain in Rome, and returned to Carthage, where a martyr's death awaited him. It is related that he was placed in a barrel covered over with iron nails, and thus perished. Other writers state, in addition, that, after his eyelids had been cut off, he was first thrown into a dark dungeon, and then suddenly exposed to the full rays of a burning sun. When the news of the barbarous death of Regulus reached Rome, the Senate is said to have given Hamilcar and Bostar, two of the noblest Carthaginian prisoners, to the family of Regulus, ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... stinking, and out of repair. The Corso is like a street in an English town, broad, long, the houses low, and with a trottoir on both sides. The Castle, surrounded by a moat, stands in the middle of the town, a gloomy place. In it lives the Cardinal Legate. I went to see the dungeon in which Tasso was confined; and the library, where they show Ariosto's chair and inkstand, a medal found upon his body when his tomb was opened, two books of his manuscript poetry; also the manuscript of the 'Gerusalemme,' ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... world without its right and wrong sides? It seemed there was no room in Charles' time for aught but evil. "The ribaldry of Etherege and Wycherley was, in the presence and under the special sanction of the head of the church, while the author of the Pilgrim's Progress languished in a dungeon for the crime of proclaiming the gospel ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... upon their literary style, their thought and life. Like all the supreme things in eloquence, this chapter is a spark struck out of the fires of war and persecution. Its author was not simply an exile—he was a slave who had known the dungeon and the fetter. Bondage is hard, even for savages, naked, ignorant, and newly drawn from the jungle, but slavery is doubly hard for scholars and prophets, for Hebrew ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... by the help of Freydisa, the priestess of the god, won entrance to the dungeon where Steinar lay awaiting his doom. This was not easy to do. Indeed, I remember that it was only after I had sworn a great oath to Leif and the other priests that I would attempt no rescue of the victim, nor ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard
... in Greek mythology, were the children of Uranus (heaven) and Gaea (earth), and of gigantic size. They engaged in a conflict with Zeus, the king of heaven, which lasted ten years. They were completely defeated, and hurled down into a dungeon below Tartarus. Very often they are confounded with the Giants, as has apparently been done here by Pope. These were a later progeny of the same parents, and in revenge for what had been done to the Titans, conspired to dethrone Zeus. In order to scale heaven, they piled ...
— An Essay on Criticism • Alexander Pope
... the thought That she that was born free, and to dispense Restraint, or liberty to others, should be At the devotion of her Brother, whom She only knows her equal, makes this place In which she lives (though stor'd with all delights) A loathsome dungeon to her. ...
— The False One • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... betray the cause to which they had sworn fealty. However, there were traitors sufficient at work to cause great damage in individual cases, and send many a brave fellow into the gloomy depths of a British dungeon. Nearly all the injury in this connection, however, appears to have been done at home, as treason of this character was totally powerless under any foreign flag—or at least not so capable of direct mischief. From the first moment of the inception ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... decided that the worst conspirator against his life was the physician, who wanted to kill him by the slow death of hunger. He said he thought it best to have him thrust into a dungeon. And then he asked for a piece of bread and four pounds of grapes, feeling sure that no poison would be in them, announcing at the same time as his maxim that if he were going to be able to combat enemies he would have ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... heretic were essentially null and void, and could be rescinded as soon as his guilt was discovered, either during his lifetime or after his death. In view of such a penal code, we can understand why Lea should write: "While the horrors of the crowded dungeon can scarce be exaggerated, yet more effective for evil and more widely exasperating was the sleepless watchfulness which was ever on the alert to plunder the rich and to wrench from the poor the hard-earned gains on which a family depended ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... good to see you! I thought you were pining again in a Yankee dungeon, or had got knocked on the head crossing the lines. Where have you sprung from, and ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... I. "Of what avail that this man lie pent in dungeon or sweating in chains and I not there to see his agony? I must behold him suffer as I suffered, hear his groans, see his tears—I that do grieve a father untimely dead, I that have endured at this man's will a thousand shames and torment beyond ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... rat. Pilate had been rebuked by the emperor already; he had no wish to incur further displeasure. Sejanus, the emperor's favorite, to whom he owed his procuratorship, had for suspected treason been strangled in a dumb dungeon only a little before. Under Tiberius there was quiet, a future historian was to note; and Pilate was aware that, should a disturbance occur, the disturbance would be ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... lay in his dungeon, lost in bitter thought and tormented by fears for Elissa, Aziel could not tell, for no light came there to mark the passage of the hours. In the tumult of his mind, one terrible thought grew clear and ever clearer; he ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... mantled the old walls, the bright green creepers dangled from their summits, the gardens and vineyard covering the slope in front of the convent, teemed with vegetable life. From where he stood Paco could discover the very point where he had entered the forest after his escape from the dungeon. As he gazed, it suddenly occurred to him that the same friendly shelter which had enabled him to leave the neighbourhood of the convent unperceived, put it in his power to return thither without detection. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... so scou{m}fit of his scylle, lest he skae hent, [Sidenote: He is unable to reply.] at he ne wyst on worde what he warp schulde. 152 [Sidenote: The lord commands him to be bound, and cast into a deep dungeon.] e{n} e lorde wonder loude laled & cryed, & talke[gh] to his tormentto{ur}e[gh]: "take[gh] hym," he bidde[gh], "Bynde[gh] byhynde, at his bak, boe two his hande[gh], & felle fett{er}e[gh] to his fete festene[gh] bylyue; 156 ...
— Early English Alliterative Poems - in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century • Various
... repeated phrases of loathing with which he contemplates, chiefly from the man's side, the forced union of two irreconcileable or ill-matched minds:—"a creature inflicted on him to the vexation of his righteousness"; "a carnal acrimony without either love or peace"; "a ransomless captivity"; "the dungeon-gate as irrecoverable as the grave"; "the mere carcase of a marriage"; "the disaster of a no-marriage"; "counter-plotting and secret wishing one another's dissolution"; "a habit of wrath and perturbation"; "heavenly with hellish, fitness with unfitness," &c. "God commands ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... storm beats down on the gloomy Norman Castle of Falaise, in a deep dungeon of which lies imprisoned the boy Prince Arthur, lawful heir to the crown of England, but now, alas! a helpless victim of the cruelty and injustice of his bad uncle, John Plantagenet, the usurper of his throne. The thunder peals so loudly, and the ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... that his name will be all the better for dieting a few weeks in a dungeon, and—did not the same thing make Harvey ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... think it very, very wrong of me if I did something that wasn't in itself the very best thing to do, but something that I had to do to prevent a dreadful ogre putting me down into a dark dungeon? Would it be very wrong of me to do a very little ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... in his dungeon, but his presence of mind and his dissimulation in no wise deserted him, and he swore afresh every day to the truth of his statements. But his last false assertion turned against him: the bond for a hundred thousand livres which he professed ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... OF THE MODERN PRISON.—In addition to the principle of the indeterminate sentence, modern penology has approved a whole series of supplementary measures. The ideal prison of to-day is not a gloomy dungeon, but a great plant which attempts to turn criminals into useful citizens through the use of the school, the chapel, the workshop, the gymnasium, the library, and even the theatre. Discipline, the fundamental weakness of offenders ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... one whose kindness hath asked the question. But, in my youth I learned to love solitude, though it was forced on me in the beginning. The dungeon and the chain introduced me to its acquaintance; yet, such is the kindness of Providence, that, what at first I hated, I afterwards learned to love. Know, too, that I have lived in the boundless forest, until an inhabited street cramps my breast and stifles my breath; nor am I ever less alone ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... the villain says, my good fellow," said the Duke of Shoreditch; "you have captured him bravely, and I will take care your conduct is duly reported to his majesty. To the castle with him! To the castle! He will lodge to-night in the deepest dungeon of yon fortification," pointing to the Curfew Tower above them, "there to await the king's judgment; and to-morrow night it will be well for him if he is not swinging from the gibbet near the bridge. Bring ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the attorney-general were in another less wide, but not less important province. On the Continent, the conspirators against the state would have been thrown into dungeon for life, or shot. In France, the idol of the revolutionist of all countries, they would heave been carried before a mob tribunal, their names simply asked, their sentences pronounced, and their bodies headless ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... prepared to execute his will, how ambitious, wanton, or cruel soever, should, in the giddiness of their pride, elevate themselves many degrees above those their tools, seems not difficult to be imagined, or indeed accounted for. But that a man in chains, in prison, nay, in the vilest dungeon, should, with persevering pride and obstinate dignity, discover that vast superiority in his own nature over the rest of mankind, who to a vulgar eye seem much happier than himself; nay, that he should discover heaven and providence (whose peculiar care, it seems, he is) at that very ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... more willingly than I, Mr. Mareschal?" said Earnscliff, haughtily,—"than I, who had the satisfaction this morning to liberate her from the dungeon in which I found her confined, and who am now escorting her back to the Castle ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... Capuzzi, "justice is still to be had in Rome; I will have you arrested, sir,—arrested and cast into the deepest dungeon there is," and off he was rushing out of the room, blustering like a hailstorm. But Salvator took fast hold of him with both hands, and drew him down into the chair again, softly murmuring in his ear, "My dear Signor Pasquale, don't you perceive that I was only jesting with you? You shall have ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... are pretty comfortable in your 'dungeon cell.' Would you like a serenade when the moon comes? Hope you will soon be up again, for we miss you very much. Shall be very happy to help in any way I can. Love to your mother. Your ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... he lived until the earthquake of 1658, when a rock fell from the roof of the cave, closing the entrance and burying the guilty man in a tomb where, it is presumed, he perished of thirst and hunger. Dungeon Rock, of Lynn, is the name that the place has ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... chamber in the Mamertine prison, over what is said to have been—and very possibly may have been—the dungeon of St. Peter. This chamber is now fitted up as an oratory, dedicated to that saint; and it lives, as a distinct and separate place, in my recollection, too. It is very small and low-roofed; and the dread and gloom of the ponderous, obdurate ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... to two buildings, in which it was raging fiercely. Its spread, however, seemed certain; and, as it was surrounded by warehouses of valuable goods, moving was in full swing. A frantic white man stood at the low doorway of one of these dungeon-like stores hastening the movements of an unending string of porters. As each emerged bearing a case on his shoulder, the white man urged him to a trot. I followed up the street to see where these valuables were being taken, and what were the precautions ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... would grow and unfold themselves into flower; bright wit that would shine like diamonds could it be brought into the sun: and the tyrant in possession crushes the outbreak of all these, drives them back like slaves into the dungeon and darkness, and chafes without that his prisoner is rebellious, and his sworn subject undutiful and refractory. So the lamp was out in Castlewood Hall, and the lord and lady there saw each other as they were. With her illness and ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... sublime things—but when I sit down to put them on paper something always comes up that prevents my going on with them. There are dozens whirling through my brain begging to be written. There is one about the earl who has imprisoned the young princess in a dungeon, and her lover, a knight of the cross, comes home from a crusade and is put in the cell next to her. A bird that she has been feeding through her prison window takes a lock of her golden hair to the window where her lover is looking out across the beautiful world, not knowing that she, too, ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... They had heard of his lifelong struggle against tyranny in his native land. They knew him as the gallant knight who had dealt hard blows in the cause of freedom. They cared little about the turmoils of French politics, but knew that this champion of liberty had been for five years in an Austrian dungeon. ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell
... Paine insulted Washington, and was therefore a "thorough-paced rascal." But he did nothing of the kind. He very properly remonstrated with Washington for coolly allowing him to rot in a French dungeon for no crime except that he was a foreigner, when a word from the President of the United States, of which he was a citizen, would have effected his release. Washington was aware of Paine's miserable plight, ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... rather seduced, by the interest thrown around a manner that was so wayward, while it was never gross, felt a sensation, as he disappeared, like that produced by breathing a freer air, after having been too long compelled to respire the pent atmosphere of a dungeon. The former regarded her pupil with eyes in which open affection struggled with deep inward solicitude; but neither spoke, since a slight movement near the door of the cabin reminded them they were ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... folded flocks, penned in their wattled cotes, Or sound of pastoral reed with oaten stops, Or whistle from the lodge, or village cock Count the night-watches to his feathery dames, 'T would be some solace yet, some little cheering, In this close dungeon of innumerous boughs. But, oh, that hapless virgin, our lost sister! Where may she wander now, whither betake her From the chill dew, amongst rude burs and thistles Perhaps some cold bank is her bolster now, Or 'gainst the rugged bark of some broad elm Leans her unpillowed ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... green frog's head! And a green frog's suit! There was a witch's hat and cape! And a hump on the back! There were bows and arrows! There were boxes and boxes of milliner's flowers! There were strings of beads! And yards and yards of dungeon chains made out of silver paper! And a real bugle! And red ...
— Fairy Prince and Other Stories • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... or by death, 70 Preserve inviolate her guardian rights, To Britons ever sacred, that her sons Might give them up to Spaniards?—Turn your eyes, Turn, ye degenerate, who with haughty boast Call yourselves Britons, to that dismal gloom, That dungeon dark and deep, where never thought Of joy or peace can enter; see the gates Harsh-creaking open; what a hideous void, Dark as the yawning grave, while still as death A frightful silence reigns! There on the ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... narrow, dungeon-like passages with the cold, damp smell of an unused cellar. Now and then, through barred windows in the stone walls, I caught glimpses of tall forms lying in a row, covered with dingy red ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... I must pine, In this dungeon close and low, Where the sun can never shine, Where the breeze can never blow, Whence my voice scarce reaches thee, ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... I looked around in alarm, but Paddy was nowhere to be seen. Toward the wall there was a square black hole, and, rushing up to it, we knew at once what had happened. Paddy had danced a bit too heavy on an old trap-door, and the rusty bolts had broken. It had let him down into a dungeon that had no other entrance; and indeed this was a queer house entirely, with many odd nooks and corners about it, besides the disadvantage of Sir Goddard Oxenbridge tramping through ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... Summer's burning sun, or thinly clad exposed to every blizzard and all the whirling storms of Winter, until my early manhood had vanished and the best years of my prime were all melted away, and at last I came forth from my dungeon, but with the mark of suffering and desolation burned deep upon me, to face a world of which I ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... come home to Prudence. In the lower hall, under the staircase, was a small dark closet which they called the dungeon. The dungeon door was big and solid, and was equipped with a heavy catch-lock. In this dungeon, Prudence kept the family silverware, and all the money she had on hand, as it could there be safely locked away. But more often than not, ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... priest, named Father Eloy. The priest won clean away over the wall; only Mark saith that Colle hath a piece of his hose for a remembrance. Sir Roland and Ivo were taken, and be lodged in the dungeon." ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... sentenced to a term of imprisonment. But he will not serve it. He will escape, or it will be commuted. And while he is in gaol he will have a good time. He will smoke and play cards, or, leaning out of his dungeon casement, hold a levee of his friends. Recently the soldiers at Bergamo mutinied because they were supplied with worse bread than the denizens of the gaol. I trust the ringleaders were sent to prison so as to remedy this ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... would have wish'd to die, If through the shudd'ring midnight I had sent From the dark dungeon of the tower time-rent, That fearful voice, a famish'd father's cry— That in no after-moment aught less vast Might stamp me mortal! A triumphant shout Black horror scream'd, and all her goblin rout From the more with'ring scene diminish'd pass'd. Ah! Bard tremendous ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... the Pilgrim, "that I desire no recompense. If among the huge list of thy debtors, thou wilt, for my sake, spare the gyves and the dungeon to some unhappy Christian who stands in thy danger, I shall hold this morning's service to ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... He lived more and more alone: the Theatre Francais, a silent game of chess at his cafe, the deadly absinthe, were his only sources of excitement. It is a comfort to learn that the last ray of pleasure which penetrated his moral dungeon, reviving for an instant the generous glow of enthusiasm, was the appearance of Ristori: inspired by her, he began a poetical address which he never finished, nor even wrote down, but a fragment of it was preserved orally by one or ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... regions of despair, was barbarous beyond expression. As much resentment as I feel towards Miller and his subalterns, I cannot wish either of them to suffer the pangs I felt at the idea of this floating dungeon. ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... eyes with a quick denial, but I closed them again without speaking. After all, why not please her? Could I suffer more at this wedding than in thinking over it in my dungeon of a room at home? She would be there, of course, but I need not look at her; and if he or she meditated any treachery, where ought I to be but in the one place where my presence would be most useful? I decided ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... at once for Ralph of Evreux, a skilful architect, whose line lay in the raising of castles and such like, who knew how to dig the dungeon and embattle the keep, and into his hands he committed the rebuilding of ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... knew that his name, his honor, and perhaps his life were in the hands of a wretched girl like this. All the peace and happiness of his life were gone, and he felt like some unhappy prisoner who through the bars of his dungeon sees his jailer's children sporting with lighted matches and a barrel of gunpowder. He was at her mercy, for well he knew that it would resolve into this—that the smallest wish of this girl would become ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... fell king enjoy'd not long The triumph of his impious wrong: The vengeance of the god soon found him, And in a rocky dungeon bound him. There, sightless, chain'd, in woful tones He pour'd his unavailing groans, Mingled with all the blasts that shriek Round Athos' thunder-riven peak. O Thracian king! how vain the ire That urged thee 'gainst the Bacchic ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... The prisoner in the dungeon finds no difficulty in making up his mind to leave; the insurmountable task is to carry out his intention; and the days and nights passed without the first glimmer of hope appearing in the ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... the story of the tragedy is always pretty much the same. There is a rightful heir, who loves a young lady, and is beloved by her; and a wrongful heir, who loves her too, and isn't beloved by her; and the wrongful heir gets hold of the rightful heir, and throws him into a dungeon, just to kill him off when convenient, for which purpose he hires a couple of assassins—a good one and a bad one—who, the moment they are left alone, get up a little murder on their own account, the good one killing the bad one, and the bad one wounding the good one. Then the rightful heir is ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... her, Joan was most anxious to return in order to continue her mission. While in the castle of Beaulieu she made a desperate attempt to escape. She managed to squeeze herself between two beams of wood placed across an opening in her prison, and was on the point of leaving her dungeon tower when one of the jailers caught sight of her, and she was retaken. Probably in consequence of this attempt, Joan of Arc, after an imprisonment of four months at Beaulieu, was transferred thence by Ligny to his castle of Beaurevoir, near the town of Cambrai, a place far removed from the neighbourhood ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... leading down into darkness. By this staircase she hoped to find the wine-cellars, and presently descended, her candlestick in one hand, and the two great keys in the other. As she went down into the stone basement, which was built with the solidity of a dungeon, she heard the plash of the tide, and felt that she was now on a level with the river. Here she found herself again in a labyrinth of passages, with many doors standing ajar. At the end of one passage she came to a locked door, and on trying her keys, found one of them to fit the lock; it was "Ye ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... to send with me a guard to attend upon his prisoner. I seemed as if conducting to one of those fortresses, famed in the history of despotism, from which the wretched victim is never known to come forth alive; and when I entered my chamber, I felt as if I were entering a dungeon. I reflected that I was at the mercy of a man, exasperated at my disobedience, and who was already formed to cruelty by successive murders. My prospects were now closed; I was cut off for ever from pursuits ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... night. I have traced your history up to a certain period. ("What I know of my own, I would fain not contemplate," interrupts Anna.) Beyond that, all is darkness. And yet there are circumstances that go far to prove you the child I seek. Last night I dreamed I saw a gate leading to a dungeon, that into the dungeon I was impelled against my will. While there I was haunted with the figure of a woman of the name of Mag Munday-a maniac, and in chains! My heart bled at the sight, for she, I thought, was the woman in whose charge I ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... daily, and to see that nothing was lost or stolen) to the harder work of scrubbing the engine-room, which now fell to his share; while Austin, used as he was to out-door exercise, felt quite miserable in this dungeon-like hole, where he could not even see to read. He was on duty from dawn till dusk, and even liable to be roused up at night should anything be wanted. His meals were given him after all the rest were served, and only very rarely ...
— Harper's Young People, March 23, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... savagely round the courtyard and, pointing to the door of a small dungeon-like guardroom, receiving light and air through one heavily barred window, said: ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... from the balcony, and now I could only see his head as he peered into a cabinet at the other side of the room. It was like the opera of Aida, in which two scenes are enacted simultaneously, one in the dungeon below, the other in the temple above. In the same fashion my attention now became divided between the picture of Raffles moving stealthily about the upper room, and that of the husband and wife at table underneath. And all at once, as the man replenished his glass with ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... get some sustenance. A person of note, long held captive for a political offence, is said to have owed the preservation of his reason to a pin, out of which he contrived to get exercise and excitement by throwing it down carelessly on the dark floor of his dungeon, and then hunting for it in a series of systematic explorations ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... destitution, when it is in your power to relieve its sufferings, and save it, so that it may live to be a blessing and solace to me. If not for my sake, if not for the sake of the child, let me appeal to you for charity, for the sake of him, who is now imprisoned in a foreign dungeon. He left me to defend you from the enemy—left his wife and children to starve and suffer, for the purpose of aiding in that holy cause we are now engaged in conflict for. For his sake, if for no other, give me the means of saving ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams
... Sir Bevis of Hamtoun, (Earl of Southampton,) he is represented as a kind of infant Hercules, who, when fifteen, killed sixty Saracen knights. He afterwards was imprisoned at Damascus in a den with two dragons, but destroyed them. He was kept in a dungeon, ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... mountains dissolving with the sky, a low building, like a powder magazine, arrested our attention; for numerous sentinels moved rapidly in every quarter round it, and many brass guns, ready primed, and bearing an earnest signification, flashed in the bright beams of the morning sun. In this dungeon, from which Beelzebub himself could not escape, it seems a notorious highwayman, called Ole, is confined. During the time he was master of his limbs and liberty, he struck such terror into the hearts of his countrymen, that he was imagined an immortal fiend. No ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... stars think of us? Yet if the prisoner see them shine into his dungeon, wouldst thou bid him turn away from their lustre? Even so from this low cell, poverty, I lift my eyes to Pauline and forget my chains.—[Goes to the picture and draws ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the sergeant threw open my prison door, and Van Deck appearing, took me by the hand and led me out of my noisome dungeon, followed by Jack, who gave a shout of joy as he found himself in ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... a day in June, early in the eighties, that Jim trudged across the coal-sprinkled ridge upon which rose the great gray, weather-beaten, rat-infested fence, which was dignified by the name of stockade. To go out of life into a dungeon like that, and at noon of a day in June. That Jim made no sign was accredited to his hardness of heart. That, having registered and heard an official sneer at the name, Jim Royal, and having passed ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... thyself the vilest thing who ever stood within these walls. On thee also must fall the curse of Menkau-ra, thou false priest! thou forsworn patriot! thou Pharaoh shameful and discrowned! Here, where we set the Double Crown upon thy head, we doom thee to the doom! Go to thy dungeon and await the falling of its stroke! Go, remembering what thou mightest have been and what thou art, and may those Gods who through thy evil doing shall perchance ere long cease to be worshipped ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... brow; that within this phantom home was a woman, not, indeed, all your young romance might have dreamed of, but faithful and true, every beat of her heart all your own,—would you not cry from the depth of your dungeon, 'O fairy! such a change were a paradise!' Ungrateful man! you want interchange for your mind, and your heart should suffice ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... so there is no doubt that a Kshatriya (in distress) may take wealth from every one except ascetics and Brahmanas. For one afflicted (by an enemy and seeking the means of escape) what can be an improper outlet? For a person immured (within a dungeon and seeking escape) what can be an improper path? When a person becomes afflicted, he escapes by even an improper outlet. For a Kshatriya that has, in consequence of the weakness of his treasury and army, become exceedingly humiliated, neither a life of mendicancy nor the profession ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... by the door in the great tower, under the spiky remnants of the spiral stair projecting from the huge circular wall. To the right, a steep descent, once a stair, led down to the cellars and the dungeon; a terrible place, the visible negations of which are horrid, and need no popular legends such as Alec had been telling Kate, of a walled-up door and a lost room, to add to their influence. It was ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... saw the dungeon where the Indian chief, Osceola, was shut up during the Seminole war. It was a dreary place. There was another chief, Wild Cat, who was imprisoned with Osceola, and one night Osceola "boosted" him to a high window, ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... of the skipper's bales, where they could both sit down. "You're brown as an old salt, Noll; but you haven't grown a bit! Oh, but you may believe I'm glad to see you! I thought you'd be dying by this time to see some one from Hastings, and when the skipper pointed out the old stone dungeon where you live, I thought likely you were dead already. What a horrid old fortress 'tis! and weren't you awful homesick? and aren't you terribly moped up in such quarters? and, you dear old Noll, how have you managed to ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... In its glorious days of feudal youth its fortress-castle was invincible. The walls were so thick that in days before gunpowder no assaults could hope to break through them. Down in its underground depths was a dungeon, where trapped enemy princes lay rotting and starving through weary years, never released save by death, unless tortured into signing shameful treaties. The very sound of the name, "Peronne," is an echo of history, ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... friend Theseus, and at his intercession Arcite was liberated, on the condition that on pain of death he should never again be found in the Athenian dominions. Then the two knights grieved in their hearts. 'What matters liberty?' said Arcite,—'I am a banished man! Palamon in his dungeon is happier than I. He can see Emily and be gladdened by her beauty!' 'Woe is me!' said Palamon; 'here must I remain in durance. Arcite is abroad; he may make sharp war on the Athenian border, and win Emily by the sword.' When Arcite returned to his native city he became so thin and ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... though light, 's a dungeon grown, The windows of my soul are closed; Therefore to sleep I lay me down, My verse ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... me, show kindness to me and speak for me to Pharaoh and bring me out of this prison; for I was unjustly stolen from the land of the Hebrews, and here also I have done nothing that they should put me in the dungeon." ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... so tenacious of the common cause, 190 As not to lend the king against his laws; And, in a loathsome dungeon doom'd to lie, In bonds retain'd his birthright liberty, And shamed oppression, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... Tercera islands an officer was in waiting to put Sampayo in irons, with which he landed at Lisbon and was carried to a dungeon in the castle, in which was confined at the same time Reis Xarafo the visier of Ormuz. After two years confinement, the chief crime alleged against him being his unjust proceedings in regard to Pedro de Mascarenas, the duke of Braganza ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... drink; there, in that foul attic, from whose casement you see the beggar's rags hang to dry, or rather to crumble in the reeking and filthy air; farther on, within those walls which, black and heavy as the hearts they hide, close our miserable prospect,—there, even there, in the mildewed dungeon, in the felon's cell, on the very scaffold's self, Ambition hugs her own hope or scowls upon her own despair. Yes! the inmates of those walls had their perilous game of honour, their 'hazard of the die,' in which vice was triumph and infamy success. ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... word, a scent, a sound, the look on a face, the glow of an evening sky, may bring all the foul past up again. A puff of wind clears away the mist of oblivion, and the old sin starts into vividness as if done yesterday. You touch a secret spring, and there yawns in the floor a gap leading down to a dungeon. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... yourself over, you have ample opportunity. There are stone sentry-boxes where you can sit hidden from the wind and everything else, and look far and wide over the country, and down into the garden if you can do so without growing giddy. There is also a dungeon tenanted by nothing more subject to suffering than potatoes and other roots, for which it is a most favorable receptable, the walls being so thick and the roof so low that cold cannot get in in winter nor heat in summer: there is ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... and that it contained a cypher or cryptograph which would give a clue to the whereabouts of the treasure? If so it was obvious that it would be one of the simplest nature. A man confined by himself in a dungeon and under sentence of immediate death would not have been likely to pause to invent anything complicated. It would, indeed, be curious that he should have invented anything at all under such circumstances, and when he could have so little hope that the riddle would ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... lips and hard, steely eyes, sitting in solemn state in a gloomy hall and dispensing death, disgrace, or long terms of prison, at the very least, to all comers. For her, the police-station was a dungeon, and she fancied the Count chained to a dank and slimy wall in a painful position, chilled to the marrow by the touch of the dripping stone, his teeth chattering, his face distorted with suffering. Of course he was in a solitary cell, behind a heavy door, braced with clamps and bolts ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... late! The prison door, With bolt, and bar, and chain, Was opened to take Willie in, And then was shut again. He saw the handcuffs on the wall, The fetters on the floor; And heavy keys with iron rings To lock the dungeon door. ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... George, from good Old England sprung, My famous name throughout the world hath rung, Many bloody deeds and wonders have I shown, And made false tyrants tremble on their throne. I followed a fair lady to a giant's gate, Confined in dungeon deep to meet her fate. Then I resolved with true knight-errantry To burst the door, and set the captive free. Far have I roamed, oft have I fought, and little do I rest; All my delight is to defend the right, and succour the opprest. And now I'll slay the Dragon bold, my wonders ...
— The Peace Egg and Other tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... of things began to dawn upon my mind, bringing despair in its train. For several months I had been a prisoner: the evils of my dungeon had whipped my soul to madness, but they had subdued my corporeal frame. I was weak and wan. Torella had used a thousand artifices to administer to my comfort; I had detected and scorned them all—and I reaped the harvest of my obduracy. What was to be done?—Should I crouch before my ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... followed the enemy across sandy deserts hitherto found impassable. In less than two years the war was over. The Moors, to whom Jugurtha had fled, surrendered him to Sulla; and he was brought in chains to Rome, where he finished his life in a dungeon. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... guard there in vain. I walk as in a cloud, concealed from mortal sight. You are the first to accost me for now three hundred years. I behold the reason. I see on your finger the seal-ring of Solomon the Wise, which is proof against all enchantment. With you it remains to deliver me from this awful dungeon, or to leave me to keep guard here for ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... elder brother of Sir W. Penn, was a wealthy merchant at San Lucar, the port of Seville. He was seized as a heretic by the Holy Office, and cast into a dungeon eight feet square and dark as the grave. There he remained three years, every month being scourged to make him confess his crimes. At last, after being twice put to the rack, he offered to confess whatever they would suggest. His ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... he tells us of this period, of which he might have told so much, and in this he shows a disposition to look at the affair rather in its humorous than in its Byronesque aspect. For his one recorded reminiscence of his four years of dungeon-life is, that "he had such abundant leisure for promenading that he wore in the rock pavement a little path as neatly as if it had been done with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... present almost any number of illustrations of the ways in which these human sharks pursue their villainy. If there were a dungeon deep, dark, and dismal enough for the punishment of such rascals, we should feel strongly inclined to petition to have them incarcerated in it. They defy all laws, civil as well as moral, but are cunning enough to keep outside of prison bars; and thus they wax rich by robbery, ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... with a real urgency; through the open lattice came the sound of the grating of the boat's keel upon the sand and a vigorous hail from a masculine throat—"Ahoy, Renny Potter, ahoy!" "Adrian, this is a matter of life and death to my hopes, hide me in your lowest dungeon for goodness' sake; I do not know my way about your ruins, and I am convinced the old lady will nose me out like ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... Rose-Mary-Lane, by one Quilt, a Domestick of Mr. Wild's though not without great opposition, for, he clapt a loaded, Pistol to Quilt's Breast, and attempted to shoot him, but the Pistol miss'd fire; he was brought back to New Prison, confin'd in the Dungeon; and the next Day carried before Justice Blackerby. Upon his Examination he Confess'd the three Robberies on the Highway aforemention'd, as also the Robbing of Mr. Bains, Mr. Barton, and Mr. Kneebone, he was committed to Newgate, and at ...
— The History of the Remarkable Life of John Sheppard • Daniel Defoe
... captured He lies in the lowest dungeon With manacles and chains around his limbs Weighing ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... passed agreeably, except that she was sometimes teased by the reverend clergy to enter a convent, and to "dedicate herself to God;" but as the young lady thought she could serve God to better purpose out of a convent than in one, she civilly declined their polite invitations to shut herself in a dungeon. ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... But that the position of the Pope under Odoacer and Theodorick was one of great difficulty and delicacy no one can doubt. Gelasius speaks of his having had to resist Odoacer "by God's help, when he enjoined things not to be done".[110] And in 526 Pope John I. paid with his life, in the dungeon of Ravenna, the penalty for not having satisfied the Arian exactions of Theodorick in the eastern embassy imposed ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... festal attire and ascends to the Capitol: there the victor lays down his laurel on the knees of Jupiter and thanks him for giving victory. After the ceremony the captives are imprisoned, or, as in the case of Vercingetorix, beheaded, or, like Jugurtha, cast into a dungeon to die of hunger. The triumph of AEmilius Paullus, conqueror of Macedon, lasted for three days. The first day witnessed a procession of 250 chariots bearing pictures and statues, the second the trophies of weapons and 25 casks of silver, ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos |
