"Intriguer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for a moment likely to rob the intriguer of the fruits of his ingenuity. The Iroquois who had escaped in the skirmish contrived to reach Fort Frontenac some time after the last visit of the Rat. He told what had happened; and, after being treated with the utmost attention, he was sent to Onondaga, charged with explanations and ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... device to throw the British Ministry off its guard. The terms of the two notes are widely divergent; and, in such a case, Pitt naturally accepted that of Lebrun and scouted that of Maret, as of a busybody or an intriguer. Grenville objected to this double-dealing;[174] and probably the presence of Burke at the Cabinet meeting sharpened ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... number of Africans, Cuba, Santo Domingo, San Juan [Puerto Rico], and Jamaica would require. It was replied that it would be sufficient to send four thousand. This answer being almost immediately made known by some intriguer to the Flemish governor of Bressa, this courtier obtained the monopoly of the trade from the sovereign and sold it to some Genoese for twenty-five thousand ducats on condition that during eight years no other license ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... But he won't write anonymous letters to the old lady; that would be too audacious a thing for him to attempt; but I dare swear the very first thing he did was to show me up to Aglaya as a base deceiver and intriguer. I confess I was fool enough to attempt something through him at first. I thought he would throw himself into my service out of revengeful feelings towards the prince, the sly little beast! But I know him better now. As for the ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... out. The humour lies in Estifania's having ordered the Old Woman to tell these tales of her; for though an intriguer, she is not represented as other than chaste; and as to the metre, it ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... and a scheming intriguer in his own interests, Chatellerault, as I have said before, was not by nature a quick man. His wits worked slowly, and he needed leisure to consider a situation and his actions therein ere he was in a position to ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... parallel. Then as now he had been a comedian; and the part that he had played then was, when you came to think of it, akin to the part he was to play this evening. For what had he been at Rennes but a sort of Scaramouche—the little skirmisher, the astute intriguer, spattering the seed of trouble with a sly hand? The only difference lay in the fact that to-day he went forth under the name that properly described his type, whereas last week he had been disguised as ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... small-boned, skinny, and her face had the expression that people have when they have just taken medicine. Under other circumstances I should never have noticed her, but the extreme smallness of her cunt was a novelty. I thought at first she was a regular intriguer, but came to the conclusion that I had had the first of her; and that until then she had been a masturbatrix, and frigged her flesh off her bones. Rub her clitoris for a second, her eyes would open wide and roll with such intense voluptuousness that for a moment her face looked beautiful. ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... is a first-rate writer, terse, sagacious, concise, almost a minor Thucydides;[589] but which of his two books you have—for these are two works—I don't know. That about Dionysius is my favourite. For Dionysius himself is a magnificent intriguer, and was familiarly known to Philistus. But as to your postscript—are you really going in for writing history? You have my blessing on your project: and since you furnish me with letter-carriers, you shall hear to-day's transactions on the ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... his sentiments had been shocked to the last degree; the hopeful tenderness with which he had taken his place upon the bench was transformed into repulsion and despair; old Mr. Scrymgeour, he reflected, was a far more kindly and creditable parent than this dangerous and violent intriguer; but he retained his presence of mind, and suffered not a moment to elapse before he was on the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... upon himself, Dan was too loyal and generous of nature to be pleased with this description of his native place. But Carne, too quick of temper for a really fine intriguer, cut short his expostulations. ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... Khan remained in contemptuous repose at Agra, only interrupted by a short and successful dash at some Rajput malcontents, who had been stirred up, it is thought, at the instigation of his rival Majad-ud-daulah. That inefficient but unscrupulous intriguer is also shown by Captain Grant Duff to have been at the same time engaged in a correspondence with Madhoji Sindhia, in view to joining, when once he should have gained possession of the power of the Empire, ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... gentle business, not old Richelieu was better fitted with a set of arrant scoundrels. There was the cunning right hand of Hawk Rufe, the slick, villainous intriguer, Lem Marks. No diplomatic imp, serving his master in the kingdoms of the world, moved with more unscrupulous smoothness. There was Malan with his clubfoot, owned by the devil, the drovers said, and leased to Woodford for a lifetime. ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... to be regretted that a word, used in the days of Charles II. and still intelligible in our times, should have become obsolete; viz. the feminine for intriguer—an intriguess. See the Life of Lord Keeper North, whose biographer, in speaking of Lord Keeper Bridgeman, says, "And what was worst of all, his family was no way fit for that place (of Chancellor), his lady being a ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... reading, I felt thankful that the message had not fallen into the hands of the zemindar, else had the intriguer's identity been quickly determined and his fate as ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... silent. He knew too well that the man walking at his side was as clever an intriguer and as bold an adventurer as had ever moved up and down Europe "working the game" in search of pigeons to pluck. His shabbiness was assumed. He had alighted at Bordighera station from the rapide from Paris, spent the night at a third-rate hotel in order not ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... intriguer like Crispi, therefore, easily inflamed Italian indignation, so recently excited by the seizure of Tunis and by Clerical intrigues, and he counted it a gay feather in his cap when, in 1889, he declared a tariff war on France. Hard times for Italy followed; the commerce of the country was dislocated, ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... well? Other places? My advices are bad. All the prelates are on their knees to him—with blessings on their lips and curses in their pockets. Archbishop of Paris is as bad as any. Berwick is at Biarritz—an inexhaustible intriguer; the only priest I fear. I hear from one who never misled me that the Polhes brigade has orders to be in readiness. The Mary-Anne societies are not strong enough for the situation—too local; he listens to them, but he has given no pledge. We must go deeper. ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... splendid establishment at Nanterre, with a eulogy of Jenkins and a glorification of Jansoulet: "O Bernard Jansoulet, benefactor of childhood!" It was a sight to see the vexed, scandalized faces of the guests. What an intriguer was this Moessard! What an impudent piece of sycophantry! And the same envious, disdainful smile quivered on every mouth. And the deuce of it was that a man had to applaud, to appear charmed, the master of the house not being weary as yet of incense, and taking everything very ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... the lesser symptoms of agitation or embarrassment. In this revelation of a secret, that he now instinctively felt was bound up with his own future happiness, he exhibited none of the signs of a discovered intriguer or unmasked Lothario. He said quietly and coldly: "I am afraid I have not the pleasure of knowing the young lady, and certainly have never before addressed her." Yet he scarcely heard his companion's voice, and answered mechanically, ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... Catholicism, that grand thing, should serve as a plaything for the daughter of a pirate who aims at an aristocratic marriage. It may, too, amuse you that my holy friend, Cardinal Guerillot, should be the dupe of that intriguer. But I, Monsieur, who have received the sacrament by the side of a Sonis, I can not admit that one should make use of what was the faith of that hero to thrust one's self into the world. I do not admit that one ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... himself for this attitude towards Peak, but was heartily glad that Marcella seemed to have learnt to regard the intriguer with a ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... politics, and in turbulence and intrigue against the government. I never believed for a moment that this could make any impression on you, or that your knowledge of me would not overweigh the slander of an intriguer, dirtily employed in sifting the conversations of my table, where alone he could hear of me; and seeking to atone for his sins against you by sins against another, who had never done him any other ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... irrationality and fundamental injustice in the present order, coupled with a new terror of the proximate issue as this already is revealing itself amongst many peoples. We resent the high estate, purchasable and purchased, of the cynical intriguer and the vulgar profiteer, of the tradesman in "big business," the cheap prophet and the pathetic progeny of "successful men" fast reverting to type. We know our city councils and our state legislatures and ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... but a comedy? Could a gentleman have treated me so? But you have deceived yourself, Jonker van Zonshoven. I gave my heart to a young man without fortune, whose upright and noble character I admired, and in whom I had more confidence than in myself; but for the intriguer, who, to seize upon my aunt's fortune and make sure of it, has put on a disguise to win the heart of the woman he was ordered to marry, for this hypocrite, this pretended sage, I have nothing ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... single exception of Townshend, the colleagues whom his jealousy dismissed plunged into an opposition more factious and unprincipled than has ever disgraced English politics. The "Patriots," as they called themselves, owned Pulteney, a brilliant speaker and unscrupulous intriguer, as their head; they were reinforced by a band of younger Whigs—the "Boys," as Walpole named them—whose temper revolted alike against the inaction and cynicism of his policy, and whose fiery spokesman was a young cornet of horse, William Pitt; ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... been alluding, and I felt no curiosity about it; but it annoyed me that a Jesuit should interfere and try to make my friends do anything otherwise than through my instrumentality, and I wanted that intriguer to know that my influence was greater ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Begam, or the Begam Sahib, was the elder daughter of Shahjahan, a very able intriguer, the partisan of Dara Shikoh and the opponent of Aurangzeb during the struggle for the throne. She was closely confined in Agra till her father's death in 1666. After that event she was removed to Delhi, where she died in 1682. (Tavernier, Travels, ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... a step-mother to the greater number of her children. He whom fortune has placed in an obscure station is ignorant of that ambition which devours the courtier; knows nothing of the inquietude which deprives the intriguer of his rest; is a stranger to the remorse, an alien to the disgust, is unconscious of the weariness of the man, who, enriched with the spoils of a nation, does not know how to turn them to his profit. The more the body ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... iteration persist in ascribing to him, even at the moment when they are enumerating the defeats which the party of Hebert was able to inflict upon him in the very bosom of the Mother Club itself. They make him the sanguinary dictator in one sentence, and the humiliated intriguer in the next. The latter is much the more correct account of the two, if we choose to call a man an intriguer who was honestly anxious to suppress what he considered a wicked faction, and yet had need of some dexterity to keep his own ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... expiring his breath rather sharply, almost in a hiss. "I am rather doubtful about that fellow. I'm afraid he's an intriguer." ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... myself, from the hints you kindly gave me, that I behaved as you wished I should behave. Indeed, Madam, I could not help it, for I pitied most sincerely the unhappy lady; and though I could not but rejoice, that I had had the grace to escape the dangerous attempts of the dear intriguer, yet never did the story of any unfortunate lady make such an impression upon me as hers did: she loved him, and believed, no doubt, he loved her too well to take ungenerous advantages of her soft passion for him: and so, by degrees, put herself into his power; ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... appetites, whether for food or wine. He is no debauchee, no voluptuary, no gambler. He is faithful to old friends and comrades. He has high ideals, and is not ashamed of them. He is neither indolent nor fussy; neither a cynic, nor an intriguer, nor a fool; he is neither wrong-headed nor stubborn; he is honest and sincere to a degree that does him honour as a man, if it has sometimes proved perilous and blameworthy in him as a monarch. He is optimistic, and ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... the states were constantly changing, while Athens and Sparta remained generally on terms of friendliness, the two prominent figures at Athens being the conservative Nicias and the restless and ambitious young intriguer Alcibiades. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... extraordinary instances of disguise was that of the Chevalier d'Eon, who was born in the year 1728, and was an excellent scholar, soldier, and political intriguer. In the service of Louis XV., he went to Russia in female attire, obtained employment as the female reader to the Czarina Elizabeth, under which disguise he carried on political and semi-political negotiations with wonderful success. In the year ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... "Nay, Clowes, he's no intriguer against my lass, that I am bound to say. 'T was only this morning, the moment he had news of Hennion's death, he came to me like a man, to ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... "Unless," said Monmouth to his female agents, "Sir John is under a fate, unless he is out of his mind, he will take my counsel. If he does, his life and honour are safe. If he does not, he is a dead man." Then this strange intriguer, with his usual license of speech, reviled William for what was in truth one of William's best titles to glory. "He is the worst of men. He has acted basely. He pretends not to believe these charges against Shrewsbury, Russell, Marlborough, Godolphin. And yet he knows,"—and Monmouth ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... (manuscript) of M. de Stael," Swedish Ambassador, with his court, copied from the archives at Stockholm by M. Leouzon-le-Duc. Letter from M. Stael of April 21, 1791: "M. Laclos, secret agent of this wretched prince, (is a) clever and subtle intriguer." April 24: "His agents are more to be feared than himself. Through his bad conduct, he is more of a nuisance than a benefit ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... are! What you least wanted has happened. The world at large, represented by two lady tourists—whom I had not sent for, as I am not an intriguer—the world has seen how you became reconciled to your former husband, and how you sneaked back repentantly into his faithful arms. Isn't ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... cousin?" suddenly shrieked the princess so loud that those in the drawing room heard her and were startled. "Why do you remain silent when heaven knows who permits herself to interfere, making a scene on the very threshold of a dying man's room? Intriguer!" she hissed viciously, and tugged with all her ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... human race, individual by individual, are separated one from the other by differences more or less minute, and wherever two human beings are placed together one must inevitably begin to assert mastery over the other. The method of self-assertion may be that of the athlete, or that of the intriguer, or that of the clear-sighted over the purblind, or that of the subtle over the simple; it matters not, the effort for mastery may be made either roughly or gently, or subtly, or even clownishly, ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... fame from Galileo's deduction of a great natural law from the swinging lamp before its altar, was not an archbishop after the noble mould of Borromeo and Fenelon and Cheverus. Sadly enough for the Church and humanity, he was simply a zealot and intriguer: he perfected the plan for entrapping ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... chiefly because he does not know you. For instance, if some one were to tell him that you are a straightforward, courageous young man, a gentleman with an unquenchable taste for danger, that you are not a low-born adventurer and intriguer, that you have nothing in particular against his government, he might not be quite so angry. Pardon me if I say that he is not disposed to take your expedition any more seriously than is your own Federal government. The little Baron is irascible, choleric, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... was human enough to feel a certain sense of satisfaction on hearing that this woman who treated her with such contempt was herself something of an intriguer. ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... "So there is to be one! Well, it's about time. The travellers of the other European firms have been going it lately in that quarter. Jacob, your mademoiselle also is a bit of an intriguer!" ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... you have yourself occasionally told me, that your father had money on the baron's estate. But when I was abroad, I heard that a great danger threatened the baron, and I was even authorized to warn him against an intriguer." Bernhard watched Anton's lips in agony. Anton shook his head. "And yet," said he, "it was one who is no stranger in your house. It ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... and his band through Praeneste, and this festival had been postponed. Consequently, the projected murder had been postponed a few days also. Agias had tried to penetrate into the secrets of Pratinas, but found that judicious intriguer had, as a rule, carefully covered his tracks. He spent a good deal of time and money, which Cornelia gave him, trying to corrupt some of the gladiators of Dumnorix's band and get at the intentions of their master; but ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... was Mr. Pitt's brother-in-law, a restless and impracticable intriguer. He had some such especial power of influencing Mr. Pitt—who, it is supposed, must have been under some pecuniary obligation to him—that he was able the next year to prevent his accepting the office of Prime Minister when the King pressed it ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... of intrigue is certainly well calculated to effect the all-desired short duration of an important action. For the intriguer is ever expeditious, and loses no time in attaining to his object. But the mighty course of human destinies proceeds, like the change of seasons, with measured pace: great designs ripen slowly; stealthily and hesitatingly the dark suggestions of deadly malice quit the abysses ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... magnanimity that bears misfortune well: when he could no longer play the master of kingdoms, he was content to quarrel about valets; and having lost the world, to make a little occupation for himself in complaining of the want of etiquette in his dungeon. But the spirit of the intriguer survived every other spirit within him, and it is by no means certain that the return of O'Meara and Gourgaud to Europe was not a part of that intrigue in which Napoleon played the Italian to the last hour of his life. It ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... slimy but harmless toad or a stinging fly? It seemed ridiculous, contemptible and pitiable to think of hate in connection with the melancholy figure of this discomfited intriguer, this fallen leader of ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... compound of incongruous qualities—at once enthusiast and philosopher, statesman and intriguer, a model of chivalrous courage, and a profound dissembler. We cannot compass his character by adopting the wayward estimate given of him by Anthony a Wood, who tells us that his common nickname was ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... trouble. But the Hun may promise faithfully, may enter into the most solemn obligations not to take active or passive part further in the war; but, nevertheless, he seems unable to keep himself from betraying our trust. Such a born spy and intriguer is he that he cannot refrain from intimidating the native, of whose quietness he is now assured by the presence of our troops, by threats of what will befall him when the Germans return, if he, the native, so much as sells ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... was a mere intriguer, without talent or ability, living but in the moment, often caught in her own snares; according to others, by her intelligence, ability, and strength of character she advanced a cause truly national—that of French ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... on tiptoe, and her nonchalance was a piece of acting which she enjoyed for its effect upon the others. She most mischievously enjoyed her privilege. And she had a new cause for triumph, a double success. She felt herself a schemer, an intriguer, which she was not. She was merely an opportunist, seizing the main chance. Not only had she a secret understanding with Gaga; she had also a secret understanding with Gaga's mother. She was most marvellously Sally Minto. The world was open to her. It was ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... married the rapacious and tyrannical daughter of Will Murray—of old the whipping-boy of Charles I., later a disreputable intriguer. Lauderdale's own ferocity of temper and his greed had created so much dislike that in the Parliament of 1673 he was met by a constitutional opposition headed by the Duke of Hamilton, and with Sir George Mackenzie ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... me to tell you," replied Bridgenorth, "and perhaps it is a word too much—that you are a discovered intriguer—a spied spy—who carries tokens and messages betwixt the Popish Countess of Derby and the Catholic party in London. You have not conducted your matters with such discretion, but that this is well known, and can be sufficiently proved. To this charge, which you are ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... he spoke, had in it so much of frank gayety, and his manner was so simple, that Maltravers could with difficulty fancy him the same man who, five minutes before, had been uttering sentiments that might have become the oldest-hearted intriguer whom the hot-bed of ambition ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... animosities; handsome, witty, brilliant; preacher, courtier, student; as full of hypocrisy as an egg is of meat; with eyes wide open, and thoughts disguised; all eyes and no heart; reserved or communicative as it suited his purpose. This was that arch-intriguer who was seeking all the while, not the sceptre of the King, but the power of the King. Should you say that this non-committal, agreeable, and amiable politician—who quarrelled with nobody, and revealed nothing to anybody; who had cheated ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... won his admiration. Such a woman, he thought, was worthy of a better fate than that which put her in the position of a bought intriguer. But Cynthia was near, waving her hands gleefully, and executing a nymph-like thanksgiving dance on a strip of turf by the roadside, so Medenham's views of Mrs. Devar's previous actions were tempered by conditions extraordinarily favorable ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... their picturesque relative, under whose roof, by the way, Princess Helen of Serbia, his grand-daughter, happened to be staying. The bombs were carried in an ordinary portmanteau to Kotor, where they were discovered. Those who believed that Nikita, the arch-intriguer, was using this method for discrediting the Karageorgevi['c] dynasty, can point to the fact that he never wanted a public trial, and it seems probable that Nikita—who was aware that a group of his young, discontented subjects was planning against him a demonstration, ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... certainly no friend! and yet, if Clemenceau would only help her a little, she might cope with the arch-intriguer. If, indeed, Felix did not save her, she would be lost. It was a dreadful game, but glorious to win it, and she would be another and worthy woman if she came out unwounded. In her distress, she would ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... the parties and was esteemed the head of that small body known by the denomination of "trimmers." This conduct, which is more natural to men of integrity than of ambition, could not, however, procure him the former character; and he was always, with reason, regarded as an intriguer rather than a patriot. Sunderland, who had promoted the exclusion bill, and who had been displaced on that account, was again, with the duke's consent, brought into the administration. The extreme duplicity, at least variableness, of this man's conduct, through the whole course ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... hardly warranted by the circumstances. "It is humiliating, it is base, to submit to be the tool of a Del Ferice—we all know who and what Del Ferice was, and how he came by his title of count, and how he got his fortune—a spy, an intriguer! In a good cause? Perhaps. I was not born then, nor you either, Signor Principe, and we do not know what the world was like, when it was quite another world. That is not a ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... the letters from English Jesuits which were afterwards to play so fatal a part in begetting a belief in the plot, and in the correspondence of Coleman. Coleman was secretary of the Duchess of York and a busy intriguer, who had gained sufficient knowledge of the real plans of the king and of his brother to warrant him in begging money from Lewis for the work of saving Catholic interests from Danby's hostility by intrigues ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... could be more inopportune, nothing more contrary to the welfare of the distracted country! From the time that the notorious "Spanish marriages" had become facts, the Duke of Montpensier had been an intriguer. The birth of heirs to the throne of Spain (it is useless to go back to those long-past scandals) had completely upset the machinations of Louis Philippe and his Ministers. So long as Don Francisco ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... was one of the leading chiefs or "khans" of the Bakhtiyaris, and another chief was the self-styled Minister of War. These chieftains have always been a strange and changing mixture of mountain patriot and city intriguer—of loyal soldier and mercenary looter. The mercenary instincts, possibly aided by a sense of their own comparative helplessness against Russian Cossacks and artillery, led them to accept the stranger's gold and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... for the Kutb from Humayun's tomb (page 207) the Dargah of the great Chisti saint and political intriguer, Nizam ud din Aulia, is passed on the left. He died in 1324 A.D. Just at the point where the cross road meets the Gurgaon road is the tomb of Safdar Jang, the second of the Nawab Wazirs of Oudh. He died after the middle of the eighteenth ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... is most absurd in the adventure was that, when I pointed out Mme. du Barry to her—whose figure and favourite domino I knew—the Queen expressed the most anxious desire to hear her speak and bade me intriguer her. She answered me flippantly, and I am sure if I had offered her my other arm, the Queen would not have objected to it. Such was the esprit d'aventure at that time in the court of Versailles and in the head of the haughty daughter ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... this vulgar intriguer with such a fixed stare of terror, that he thought she had gone mad, ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... not reappear in three-quarters of an hour. The conversation was satisfactory, and Mirabeau, as he kissed the queen's hand, declared with chivalrous fervour that the monarchy was saved. He spoke sincerely. The comedian and deceiver was not the wily and unscrupulous intriguer, but the inexperienced daughter of the Empress-queen. She never believed in his truth. When he continued to thunder against the Right, the king and queen shook their heads, and repeated that he was incorrigible. The last decision they came to ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... far as I have met him in fiction, has usually been a highly successful intriguer on behalf of anyone prepared to make the necessary bargain. Sir RONALD ROSS, however, to judge from the rather confused mediaeval happenings in the Alps which are faithfully described in The Revels of Orsera (MURRAY), has rather ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 8th, 1920 • Various
... new Crecys and Agincourts roused the ardour of the young king; and the campaign of 1512 opened with his avowal of the old claims on his "heritage of France." But the subtle intriguer in whose hands he lay pushed steadily to his own great ends. The League drove the French from the Milanese. An English army which landed under the Marquis of Dorset at Fontarabia to attack Guienne found itself used as a covering force ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... without success, made violent love to Benjamin Constant, who was no friend of Napoleon's at the time. Her letters to him were passionate, and Napoleon told Gourgaud at St. Helena that she even threatened to kill her son if Benjamin would do what she wished him to. This fussy female intriguer suggested to Napoleon that if he would give her two million francs she would write anything he wished. She was ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... hand were crushing the heart in her bosom. This man whom she had trusted, this peerless champion of her cause, to be nothing but a self-seeker, an intriguer, who, to advance his own ends, had made a pawn of her. She thought of how for a moment he had held her in his arms and kissed her, and at that her whole soul revolted against the notion that here was no more ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... to the heart. He perceived by what facility, by what unmanly fear of ridicule, he had been brought down to be the gull of this intriguer; and his wrath flowed forth in almost equal measure against himself, against the woman, and against Somerset, whose idle counsels had impelled him to embark on that adventure. At the same time a great and troubled curiosity, and a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... appear grotesque and funny, but as seen they are awful. Three things characterized this religion of the slave,—the Preacher, the Music, and the Frenzy. The Preacher is the most unique personality developed by the Negro on American soil. A leader, a politician, an orator, a "boss," an intriguer, an idealist,—all these he is, and ever, too, the centre of a group of men, now twenty, now a thousand in number. The combination of a certain adroitness with deep-seated earnestness, of tact with consummate ability, gave him his preeminence, ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... army leaders, from the commander in chief down to the regimental commanders, stood arrayed on the side of the Duma. So clever an intriguer as ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... press of business, no sinecure, plenty to do, many irons in the fire, great doings, busy hum of men, battle of life, thick of the action. housewife, busy bee; new brooms; sharp fellow, sharp blade; devotee, enthusiast, zealot, meddler, intermeddler, intriguer, busybody, pickthank[obs3]; hummer, hustler, live man [U.S.], rustler * [U. S.]. V. be active &c. adj.; busy oneself in; stir, stir about, stir one's stumps; bestir oneself, rouse oneself; speed, hasten, peg away, lay about one, bustle, fuss; raise ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... is displeased with him, and [so is] the Duchesse, so that she will not see him; but he tells me the Duke of York seems pretty kind, and hath said that he do believe that W. Coventry did mean well, and do it only out of judgment. He tells me that he never was an intriguer in his life, nor will be, nor of any combination of persons to set up this, or fling down that, nor hath, in his own business, this Parliament, spoke to three members to say any thing for him, but will stand upon his own defence, and will stay by ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... fellow; his manners are vulgar—vain to excess he considers himself a profound politician. Was he induced to throw himself into the midst of events by one of the monomanias which are engendered by periods of storm and revolution? Was he simply an intriguer, plying his trade? It is difficult to tell. But however that may be, the established fact is that we find him in England in September 1870 besieging with his projects the entourage of ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... impostor and intriguer. You want to lead me on into philosophy and enthusiasm and to bring about a reconciliation so as to disperse my anger, and then, when I am reconciled with you, beg from me a note to ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... good fortune, as the poets would represent it, attended him from his birth, and bore him on her rapid wings, exhibiting him sometimes as a man of beneficent character, promoting the interests of his friends, though often also a formidable intriguer, and cruel and mischievous in the gratification of his enmities. As long as he lived he had great power, owing to the magnificence of his gifts and to his frequent possession of office, and yet he was at times timid towards the ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... we know that Paesiello, who was a famous intriguer against his musical rivals, was a devoted husband whose wife was an invalid and who died soon after her death. Cherubini married Mademoiselle Cecile Turette, when he was thirty-five, and the marriage was not a success. ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... argued no ordinary confidence on the part of the intriguer to speak in such a fashion of the Autocrat of ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... the intriguer, who had colleagued with Gumbo Rollins and conspired with Cump Glass, who came in the evening to the Twelfth Ward tabernacle and sought a seat on a bench well up toward the front where he could be fairly conspicuous and yet not too conspicuous; neither was it the persuasive ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... is a marvellous one. Success and unquestioned dominion far more often deprave and distort than ennoble and purify the moral nature of man. But something like this transformation was seen when Octavian, the crafty and selfish intriguer, ripened into the wise and statesmanlike Augustus. Nor have our own days been quite ignorant of a similar phenomenon, when the stern soldier-politician of Germany, the man who once seemed to delight in war and whose ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... various other difficulties that now beset him, agitated his mind considerably. He saw with pain that he should but place in peril both the cause of Greece and his own character, by at all relying, in such an enterprise, upon troops whom any intriguer could thus seduce from their duty; and that, till some more regular force could be organised, the expedition ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... was wholly intent upon fulfilling the sudden purpose that brought her, and she was no more self-conscious than she was finely intelligent. For Sibyl Sheridan belonged to a type Scriptural in its antiquity. She was merely the idle and half-educated intriguer who may and does delude men, of course, and the best and dullest of her own sex as well, finding invariably strong supporters among these latter. It is a type that has wrought some damage in the world and would have wrought ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... calumny. That the man who challenged rather than shunned investigation, should be thrown into prison, as if he were a detected felon upon the point of absconding, seemed a heartless and superfluous precaution. Yet Davison and others still feared the man whom they felt obliged to regard as a baffled intriguer. "Touching the restraint of Ste. Aldegonde," wrote Davison to Lord Burghley, "which I had order from Mr. Secretary to procure underhand, I find the difficulty will be great in regard of his many friends and favourers, preoccupied with some opinion of his innocence, although I have ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Patch, Towle's secretary and factotum, his exact opposite in every way. Where Towle was brutally straight to the point, Mr. Patch was as smooth an intriguer as ever connected himself with secrets by way of keyholes and transoms. It is a Beacon Hill tradition that for years Towle on final-payment day would have the members of the Massachusetts Legislature march through his private offices ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... the Sundal Malam, or Polianthes Tuberosa. This flower, being the same with our own tuberose, can have no place among those that are unknown in Europe; but I mention it for its Malay name, which signifies "Intriguer of the night," and is not inelegantly conceived. The heat of this climate is so great, that few flowers exhale their sweets in the day; and this in particular, from its total want of scent at that time, and the modesty of its colour, which is white, seems negligent ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... the politician was really very open and candid in all the affairs of life, in his own estimation he was a very dexterous and dangerous intriguer: he often deceived himself into the belief, that the success, which was in fact the result of his manly candor, was attributable only to his cunning management. He was always forming, and attempting to execute, schemes for circumventing his political opponents; but, if he bore down all ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... told me," rejoined de Marmont. "The money is there though: stolen from the Empress Marie Louise by that arch-intriguer Talleyrand. Twenty-five millions in notes and drafts! the Emperor reckons on it for current expenses until he has reached Paris and ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... poison, which led him to his death amidst long-drawn agonies eight days later. This ought to have been the death of Mahdism as well, but superstitions die hard in that land of fanatics. The Mahdi's factotum, an able intriguer named Abdullah Taashi, had previously gained from his master a written declaration that he was to be Khalifa after him; he now produced this document, and fortified its influence by describing in great detail a ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... the court to have believed that Madame La Mothe had really been admitted to the queen's presence and intrusted with such a commission.[11]" And Marie Antoinette gave open expression to her indignation at the acquittal "of an intriguer who had sought to ruin her, or to procure money for himself, by abusing her name and forging her signature," adding, with undeniable truth, that still more to be pitied than herself was a "nation ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... frequently to the engagements with Mahommed. They did not disturb him. The Turk might clamor—no matter, there was the ever ready answer about the unready stars. The veteran intriguer even laughed, thinking how cunningly he had provided against contingencies. But there was a present practical requirement begotten of these schemes—he must have money—soldans ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... Gungadhura, isn't the saving kind; he's a spender. He'd give his eyes to get hold of that treasure. And if he had it, we'd need an army to suppress him. We made a mistake when Bubru Singh died; there were two nephews with about equal claims, and we picked the wrong one—a born intriguer. I'd call him a rascal if he weren't a reigning prince. It's too late now to unseat him—unless, of course, we should happen to catch him ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... tonight in her plain white frock and sober conventional surroundings she seemed to show something of the quiet poise of a nurse or a nun. She seemed to exemplify the thought that the ideal woman is both wood-nymph and madonna. By contrast to the Nietzschian intriguer I had left that morning at Briar Hills, she was a paragon of all virtues. Nietzsche! The philosopher of ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... policy consequent upon it. He was, in fact, sinking more and more into an apathetic voluptuary; but he could rouse himself, and exhibit some proofs of ability, under the impulse of his brothers, the honest Duke of York and the arch-intriguer, the ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... affair. The queen was greatly cast down by the result. "Condole with me," she said, in a broken voice, to Madame Campan; "the intriguer who wanted to ruin me, or procure money by using my name and forging my signature, has just been fully acquitted." But it was due, she declared, to bribery on the part of some and to political passion on that of others, with an audacity towards authority which such people loved to ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... which the intriguer decided was one requiring such delicate handling in both strategy and marksmanship that he dared not trust it to either young Pete Doane or ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... The third intriguer was General Charles Lee, who, like Gates, was an Englishman, and had served under General Braddock, being in the disaster of Fort Duquesne. When the Revolution broke out, he took sides with the Americans, and being a glib and forth-putting person he talked himself into the repute of ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... writer of review articles and as a hater of everything Teutonic, I was presented to a crowd of literary men who, though at that moment striking the stars with their lofty heads, have since dropped into oblivion. Among these I especially remember mile de Girardin, editor, spouter, intriguer—the "Grand mile,'' who boasted that he invented and presented to the French people a new idea every day. This futile activity of his always seemed to me best expressed in the American simile: "Busy as a bee in a tar-barrel.'' There was, indeed, one thing to his credit: he had somehow inspired ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... has gone to sleep.... You're an intriguer.... Oh, my heart!... And it's an open secret that before the last elections you bri... I can ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... giving his opinion in these matters Sir Anthony has! I dare not trust him with the truth.—I wonder what old wealthy hag it is that he wants to bestow on me!—Yet he married himself for love! and was in his youth a bold intriguer, and ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... and ever to be praised, if we overlook her erroneous opinions in religion," says Godwin. She had been grievously wronged from her youth upwards. In Elizabeth she had a sister and a rival, a constant intriguer against her, and a kinswoman far from amiable. Despite "the kindness and attention of Philip" (Lingard), affairs of State demanded his absence from England. The disappointment as to her expected child was cruel. She knew that she had become unpopular, and she could not look for the success ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... independence is certain."—Besides all the perils of want and famine which he shared with his soldiers, Washington was called upon to suffer from envy and calumny. General Conway, a cunning, restless intriguer, formed a cabal of officers against Washington. Their plan was to wound his feelings so that he would resign. In that event Gates, whose reputation was very high, would succeed to the command. Pennsylvania ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... of Ismail (i.e. circ. A.D. 770), still remained believers, declaring only that the true teaching of the Prophet had descended to Mohammed, who was not dead but would return in the fullness of time and that he was the Mahdi whom Moslems must await. But in about A.D. 873 an intriguer of extraordinary subtlety succeeded in capturing the movement, which, hitherto merely schismatic, now became definitely subversive, not only of Islamism, but ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... unforgettable. Let us remember the tragedy of Azzolati the ruthless, the ridiculous financier with a criminal soul (or shall we say heart) and facile tears. No wonder, then, that for me, who may flatter myself without undue vanity with being much finer than that grotesque international intriguer, the mere knowledge that Dona Rita had passed through the very rooms in which I was going to live between the strenuous times of the sea-expeditions, was enough to fill my inner being with a great content. ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... vulgar creature in Beryngford, whose many amours and bold defiance of law and order rendered her name a synonym for indecency. This woman had begun her career in early girlhood as a mercenary intriguer; and yet Joy Irving knew that the majority of people would make small distinctions between the conduct of this creature and that of her mother, were the facts of Berene's life and her own birth to be ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... will not surprise you, some honourable women and a few men who call you a cynic; who speak of "the withered world of Thackerayan satire;" who think your eyes were ever turned to the sordid aspects of life—to the mother-in-law who threatens to "take away her silver bread-basket;" to the intriguer, the sneak, the termagant; to the Beckys, and Barnes Newcomes, and Mrs. Mackenzies of this world. The quarrel of these sentimentalists is really with life, not with you; they might as wisely blame Monsieur Buffon because there are snakes ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... a diplomatist, and he writes of other diplomatists, and one in particular, with most significant detail. It need not be supposed that he intends the "arch intriguer" Aerssens to stand for himself, or that he would have endured being thought to identify himself with the man of whose "almost devilish acts" he speaks so freely. But the sagacious reader—and he need not be very sharp-sighted—will very certainly see something ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... whole were probably as corrupt as their rivals, and less astute—"an evil and foolish company," as Dante afterwards called them by the mouth of Cacciaguida. Corso Donati, on the other hand, was a bold and reckless intriguer. He followed up the conspiracy of the Santa Trinita by hastening to the Papal Court, and inducing Boniface to send at once for Charles of Valois, brother of the French king, Philip the Fair. Charles obeyed the summons ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... sure of that, Monsieur," was Elizabeth's answer, and she glanced quizzically at Leicester, who made a gesture of annoyance. "Our cousin France makes you to us a dark intriguer and conspirator, a dangerous weed in our good garden of England, a 'troublous, treacherous violence'—such are you ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of the house of Abbas, A.D. 809-13, a sanguinary and incapable prince, whose contemplated treachery against his brother El Mamoun, (whom, by the advice of his vizier, the worthless intriguer Fezl ben Rebya, the same who was one of the prime movers in the ruin of the illustrious Barmecide family and who succeeded Yehya and his sons in the vizierate (see my Essay), he contemplated depriving of his right of succession and murdering,) was deservedly requited with the loss of his ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... opposed to France; the whole German people, both north and south, is unanimous in its intense hatred against Napoleon. The nations do not allow him to deceive them; they see through the Caesarean mask, and perceive the face of the tyrant, despot, and intriguer, lurking behind it. They do not believe a word of his pacific protestations and promises of freedom and liberal reforms; for they see that he always means war when he prates about peace, that he means tyranny ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... high. Some Liberals, on the other hand, began to see in Lloyd George an intriguer for the position of Prime Minister, and Lloyd George, not the first time in his life, throwing past prejudices and principles to the winds, came out as a strong supporter of conscription for the nation. Every young man must be serving his country either in the munition-factory ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... him by Edward's will, but destined and given to him—words founded, perhaps, solely on the promise referred to, before Edward came to the throne, corroborated by some messages in the earlier years of his reign, through the Norman Archbishop of Canterbury, who seems to have been a notable intriguer ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Wilhelm so loves, is by no means a beautiful man; far the reverse. Bodily,—and the spirit corresponds,—a stiff-backed, petrified, stony, inscrutable-looking, and most unbeautiful old Intriguer. Portraits of him, which are frequent, tell all one story. The brow puckered together, in a wide web of wrinkles from each temple, as if it meant to hide the bad pair of eyes, which look suspicion; inquiry, apprehension, habit ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... in Egypt at this time was not without cause for anxiety. Some months earlier the Khedive Abbas Hilmi, an intriguer against Great Britain, had been replaced by Prince Kamil Hussein, who was proclaimed Sultan under a British protectorate. Sir Arthur Henry McMahon was High Commissioner, but the country was virtually under martial law administered by the G.O.C. in Egypt—Lieut.-General ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... but this was not so with other Ministers, whose antecedents were dubious. Had his advice been taken, Ismail would have now been Khedive of Egypt. Any one who knows Cherif will agree to this account of him, and will rate him as infinitely superior to his other colleagues. He is essentially not an intriguer. ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger |
