"Lackey" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the footman, flirting desperately with the pretty waitress in the kitchen below, heard his master's swift, heavy step on the veranda, and hastened out only in time to clamber into his seat as Merwyn drove furiously away in the rain and darkness. Every moment the trembling lackey expected they would all go to-wreck and ruin, but the sagacious animals were given their heads, and speedily ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... bitterly as a servant and a servant's son, for my mother spent five or more years of her life as a menial; my father's family escaped, although grandfather as a boat steward had to fight hard to be a man and not a lackey. He fought and won. My mother's folk, however, during my childhood, sat poised on that thin edge between the farmer and the menial. The surrounding Irish had two chances, the factory and the kitchen, and most of them took the factory, with all its dirt and ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... myself in my solemn doctor's gown. But your information was right; that book was indeed a very respectable work. Yet nobody reads it; and if I had writ nothing else, I should have been reckoned, at best, a lackey to Hippocrates, whereas the historian of Panurge is an eminent writer. Plain good sense, like a dish of solid beef or mutton, is proper only for peasants; but a ragout of folly, well dressed with a sharp sauce of wit, is fit to be served up at ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... his bluster and convinced him that the elusive Mamise was some tremendous super-spy. He became servile at once, and took pride in being the lackey of her unexplained and unexplaining majesty. Mamise liked him even less in ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... it, but seems unsuspecting—Grand Mistress denies that she meant mischief, but I upbraid her unmercifully—Threaten to dismiss her like a thieving lackey 251 ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... and stood rubbing his hands before the grateful blaze. "Scotch or Irish, sir?" inquired a lackey, hovering at his side. He had scarcely given his order when the door opened and a second motor load of the party appeared, shivering and rushing for the fire. In a couple of minutes they were all assembled—and roaring with laughter ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... the other stop dancing and follow the Guests in silence. For some time a single couple remain circling on the floor, but they too join the others at last. The musicians, however, continue to play, making the same desperate effort. The lackey turns out the electric lights, leaving only one light in the farthest chandelier. The figures of the musicians are vaguely seen in the dim light, swaying to and fro with their instruments. The outline of Someone in Gray is sharply visible. The flame of the candle flickers, illuminating His stony ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... coronation—the first scene in a comic pantomime!—I have my gendarmes!—I have my guard royal!—I have my attorney general—that I do!" he continued enthusiastically. "Do you think that I would allow madame to go anywhere on foot unaccompanied by a lackey in livery? Is not that the best style? Not to count the pleasure she takes in saying to everybody, 'I have my people here.' It has always been a conservative principle of mine that my times of exercise should coincide with those of my wife, and for two years I have proved to her that I take an ever ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... became certainty. Up a shallow and winding stair, along a long and broad corridor, hung with rich tapestries, the polished parquet glistening faintly in the dim light, through splendid suites of gilded apartments with old pictures and splendid furniture... here a lackey with powdered hair yawning on a landing, there a sentry in field-grey immobile before a door...I was in ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... her element; she forgot everything but the toil of her fellow-spiders, and it was almost impossible to get her away from any piece she once became interested in. Madam, busy in telling who she was and asking questions, gave me little attention; so that I found myself more in the position of a lackey than a companion. I had regretted that her footman did not accompany us; but what need was there of a footman as long ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... lackey boyes, give the word as ye passe, look about to my guests there; score up at the Bar there; again, agen, my fine Mercuries; if youle live in the facultie, be rulde by instructions, you must be eyed like a Serjeant, an eare like a Belfounder, your conscience a Schoolemaister, ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... crept closer to the curb, and the man slouched back against the wall close to the exit from which the revelers would soon emerge. A distant clock over a jeweler's window chimed the hour of four. A moment later the door opened, and a lackey came out and loudly called the number of the Hawley-Crowles car. That ecstatically happy woman, with Carmen and the obsequious young Duke of Altern, appeared behind him in the flood ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... to this witness was the manner of a lackey who hangs on every syllable that falls from ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... and forty maitres d'hotel, ninety ladies of honor to the queen, in the sixteenth century! There were also an usher of the kitchen, a courier de vin (who took the charge of carrying provisions for the king when he went to the chase), a sutler of court, a conductor of the sumpter- horse, a lackey of the chariot, a captain of the mules, an overseer of roasts, a chair-bearer, a palmer (to provide ananches for Easter), a valet of the firewood, a paillassier of the Scotch guard, a yeoman of the mouth, and a hundred more ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... better sort of Aristippus, so wise under all his seeming levities, "the cue thus given, everything favors it. If that rogue of a lackey quoted Shakspeare as much in the servants' hall as he did while I was binding him neck and heels in the kitchen, that's enough for all the household to declare he was moon-stricken; and if we find it necessary to do anything more, why, we must induce him to go into Bedlam ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... arms be our conscience, swords our law. March on, join bravely, let us to't pell-mell; If not to heaven, then hand in hand to hell.— What shall I say more than I have inferr'd? Remember whom you are to cope withal;— A sort of vagabonds, rascals, and runaways, A scum of Britagnes, and base lackey peasants, Whom their o'er-cloyed country vomits forth To desperate adventures and assur'd destruction. You sleeping safe, they bring to you unrest; You having lands, and bless'd with beauteous wives, They would restrain ...
— The Life and Death of King Richard III • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... energetic investigations soon altered that notion. I might myself have doubted my mental soundness had it not been for the cross in my hand, which I at once recognized as being that worn by the nun, and had not a lackey finally confessed to having beheld the strange figure. He was coming from the colonnade with a tray of refreshments when he saw me in conversation with her. The mask had something familiar about her, he said, but he could not remember ...
— The Gray Nun • Nataly Von Eschstruth
... But lackey and lass, and page and groom, all denied stoutly that they had ever seen such a bag of money as my gudesire described. What was waur, he had unluckily not mentioned to any living soul of them his purpose of paying his rent. Ae quean had noticed something ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... a good one, when all my life I have been in the habit of running in and out of your room, to do your bidding like a lackey," the young man retorted, mockingly. "But really this is an unexpected treat," he added, wickedly. "Miss Richards, in these fine togs, is the most beautiful woman that I have ever seen. And—'pon my word, Aunt Marg, I ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... Madame de Lucenay, with a burst of sardonic laughter. "Know that when a lackey robs me—I do not break with ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... goblets, the ruddy tone of the punch, the many fruits, the bright-colored granite and the ices, Vaudrey stopped, releasing the arm of the young girl but remaining beside her and passing her the sherbet which a lackey handed ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... manly English Dr. John, who attended the pupils of the school, and was none other than the gentleman whose directions to an hotel I had failed to follow on the night of my arrival in Villette. And the puppet, the manikin—a mere lackey for Dr. John, his valet, his foot-boy, was the favoured admirer of ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... JEAN. You lackey-love, you mistress of a menial—shut up and get out of here! You're the right one to come and tell me that I am vulgar. People of my kind would never in their lives act as vulgarly as you have acted to-night. Do you think any ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... ideas which you concrete in your journals, we public men are servants of the general animus, which in its turn serves the blind and burning instinct of justice. This is eminently satisfactory to me, who would wish no better fate than to be a humble lackey in that house." He had no sooner, however, spoken those words than Joe Petty's remarks about Public Opinion came back to him, and he added: "But are you really the general animus, or are you only the animus of Mayors, that ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... with all his suggestion of barbaric magnificence, and all his Oriental obsequiousness. His one fault was that he was not English. Fashion forbade the rich to avail themselves of one of the finest products of the country. The lackey who took his place had the English superciliousness, and marked the advance of American civilization by adding a new discomfort and deformity to the ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... handsome face, with awfully sad eyes, and a beard long and quite grey. He did not make the least complaint, but slunk out of the way, piteously shaking his shoulder. The sight of that indignity gave me a sickening feeling of disgust. I shouted out to the cursed lackey to hold his hand, and forbade him ever in my presence to strike old or young more; but everybody is doing it. The whip is in everybody's hands: the Pasha's running footman, as he goes bustling through the bazaar; the doctor's attendant, as he soberly threads the crowd on his mare; the negro ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to heav'n is saintly chastity, That when a soul is found sincerely so, A thousand liveried angels lackey her. 300 ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... you shall be my lackey,—the chief messenger," laughed Blackbeard, showing his yellow teeth. "Hat in ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... in the wrong beside such unquestionable right. He even did not think himself so good-looking as he had formerly done. It seemed to him that he looked much older than Ida. When they went out together he felt like a lackey in attendance on an empress. In his own home, it came to pass that he seldom made a remark when guests were present without a covert glance at his wife to see what she thought of it. He could always tell what she thought, even if her face did not change and she made no comment ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... The lackey stood astounded at my answer, as though he had not heard aright. Then he retired with less assurance than he had come, and John Paul sprang to his feet and laid his hands upon my shoulders, as was his wont when affected. He reproached himself for having misjudged me, and added a ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... fawn about; But when the prey's divided;—Keep away! I have some beef about me and bear up Against an insolence as basely set As mine own infamy; yet I have been Edged to the outer cliff. I have been weak, And played too much the lackey. What am I In this waste, empty, cruel, land of England, Save an old castaway,—a buccaneer,— The hull of derelict Ambition,— Without a mast or spar, the rudder gone, A ...
— The Treason and Death of Benedict Arnold - A Play for a Greek Theatre • John Jay Chapman
... of his heavy boot caught the man upon the point of the elbow. His arm was flung up; the pistol exploded and then dropped onto the floor. That assailant was for the time out of action, but at the same moment the lackey came running across the floor, his shoulders thrust forward, a ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... can harm us now, Who are in Love's hand? I do not think I'd care Though the vile world should with its lackey Slander Trample and tread upon my life; why should I? They say the common field-flowers of the field Have sweeter scent when they are trodden on Than when they bloom alone, and that some herbs Which have no perfume, on being bruised die With all Arabia round them; so it is With ...
— The Duchess of Padua • Oscar Wilde
... unconquered virgin, Wherewith she freezed her foes to congealed stone, But rigid looks of chaste austerity, And noble grace that dashed brute violence With sudden adoration and blank awe? So dear to Heaven is saintly chastity That, when a soul is found sincerely so, A thousand liveried angels lackey her, Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt, And in clear dream and solemn vision Tell her of things that no gross ear can hear; Till oft converse with heavenly habitants Begin to cast a beam on the outward shape, The unpolluted temple of the ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... toilet, and without waiting for my hair to be dressed I proceeded to the bishop's palace, and making a great deal of noise I almost compelled the servants to take me to his room. A lackey who was at the door informed me that his lordship ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... sir, am disappointed. A moment since I took you for an original; but it appears you share our common English vice of looking at the world like a lackey." ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... in a sort a barbarian, the backwoodsman would seem to America what Alexander was to Asia—captain in the vanguard of conquering civilization. Whatever the nation's growing opulence or power, does it not lackey his heels? Pathfinder, provider of security to those who come after him, for himself he asks nothing but hardship. Worthy to be compared with Moses in the Exodus, or the Emperor Julian in Gaul, who on foot, and bare-browed, at the head of covered or mounted legions, marched so through ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... you that he owes his life. He dared to strike me as if I had been a lackey, but the thoughts of you stayed my hand. I turned and fled, and never again will I enter that accursed house. I renounce the Duke de Champdoce, he is no longer my father, and I will never look upon his face again. Would that I could forget that such ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... was one of the first public declarations of it, and after its publication many were led to consider that Wagner's art was a sort of resurrection of the Dionysian Grecian art. Enemies of Nietzsche began to whisper that he was merely Wagner's "literary lackey"; many friends frowned upon the promising young philologist, and questioned the exaggerated importance he was beginning to ascribe to the art of music and to art in general, in their influence upon the world; and all the while Nietzsche's ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... were all dead. Then is there here one Master Caper, at the suit of Master Three-pile the mercer, for some four suits of peach-coloured satin, which now peaches him a 10 beggar. Then have we here young Dizy, and young Master Deep-vow, and Master Copper-spur, and Master Starve-lackey the rapier and dagger man, and young Drop-heir that killed lusty Pudding, and Master Forthlight the tilter, and brave Master Shooty the great traveller, and 15 wild Half-can that stabbed Pots, and, I think, forty more; all great doers in ...
— Measure for Measure - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... A lackey entered with a silver tray of cups of coffee and a silver jar in the centre. Talking slowly and earnestly about the "great Karmic law," the Swami bade us drink the coffee, which was of a vile, muddy, Turkish variety. Then from the jar he took ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... to live for love; to-day I know what it means to die for vengeance. Yes, I will give my life to seek him wherever he may be, to meet him, seduce him, make him mine! If I do not have that man, who dared to despise me, at my feet humble and submissive, if I do not make him my lackey and my slave, I shall indeed be base; I shall not be a woman; I shall ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... them were the Copper King, gleaming ruddy and brave, and the Tin King, strutting in his trimmings of gaudy tinsel which looked nearly as well as silver, but were more economical. And this fine troop of lackey kings most politely led Thor and Loki into the palace, and gave them of the best, for they never suspected who these seeming ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... The lackey opened a door which gave access to a magnificent reception-room, sparsely furnished with pieces of the best Louis XIV period. Mirrors reflected the canvases of famous painters, family pictures of immense artistic value, and still more valuable ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... whole, and her colour flamed high. At this signal of distress Archie awoke to a sense of his ill-behaviour. What had he been doing? He had been exquisitely rude in church to the niece of his housekeeper; he had stared like a lackey and a libertine at a beautiful and modest girl. It was possible, it was even likely, he would be presented to her after service in the kirkyard, and then how was he to look? And there was no excuse. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to grass with that old King, For I am weary of clothes and cooks. I long to lie along the banks of brooks, And watch the boughs above me sway and swing. Come, I will pluck off custom's livery, Nor longer be a lackey to old Time. Time shall serve me, and at my feet shall fling The spoil of listless minutes. I shall climb The wild trees for my food, and run Through dale and upland as a fox runs free, Laugh for cool joy and sleep i' ...
— Songs from Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... courtiers, who, as unsuspicious as himself of what was to follow, paid their usual homage, awaiting his commands. After a short interval appeared Martinengo, accompanied by two adjutants, no longer the supple, cringing, smiling courtier, but overbearing and insolent, like a lackey suddenly raised to the rank of a gentleman. With insolence and effrontery he strutted up to the prime minister, and, confronting him with his head covered, demanded his sword in the prince's name. This was handed to him with a look of silent consternation; Martinengo, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... dust. He waited until the cloud sank, then he said, "Do you know—but you cannot know what it is to be sent from pillar to post and wait in antechambers where the air stifles, and doff cap—who have been captain of ships!—to chamberlain, page and lackey? To be called dreamer, adventurer, dicer! To hear the laugh and catch the sneer! To be the persuader, the beggar of good and bad, high and low—to beg year in and year out, cold and warmth, summer and winter, sunrise, noon and sunset, ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... so ornamented, with crowds of swinging chairmen, with servants bawling to clear the way, with Mr. Dean in his cassock, his lackey marching before him; or Mrs. Dinah in her sack, tripping to chapel, her footboy carrying her ladyship's great prayer book; with itinerant tradesmen, singing their hundred cries (I remember forty ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... what had gone before. So it is for this that you have wormed your sneaking way into my home? And thought you that Simon de Montfort would throw his daughter at the head of the first passing rogue? Who be ye, but a nameless rascal? For aught we know, some low born lackey. Get ye hence, and be only thankful that I do not aid you with the toe of my boot where it would do ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Oh! wouldn't I make them know the difference between their Sovereign Lady and Sam the Lackey? If I had been in your place and that dastard Le Noir had said to me what he said to you, I do believe I should have stricken him dead with the lightning of my eyes! But what shall you do, my ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... Green, where, in two hours, aided by a single clerk, he transacts the business of the day, returning early in the afternoon to take his drive on the road. He despises show and ostentation in every form. No lackey attends him; he holds the reins himself, With an estate of forty millions to manage, nearly all actively employed in iron works and railroads, he keeps scarcely any books, but carries all his affairs in his head, and manages them ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... aristocracy; in fact, everybody of standing felt glad to attend the marriage feast of the house of Mortimer & Co. Just now the sounds of a quadrille commenced, and the various pairs began to arrange themselves for the occasion, when the lackey in attendance was pushed aside and a horse's head looked inquisitively into ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... And when I come home, I hear that the one member of our family who understood—not me but the truth—has thrown over both her betrothed to whom she had promised her love, and the truth, and is going to marry a lackey, a liar... ...
— The Light Shines in Darkness • Leo Tolstoy
... nobles among her friends. Her floors were carpeted with velvet rugs, her walls hung with golden cloth, and her tables loaded with costly bric-a-brac. The Spanish courtier suddenly turned and spat copiously in the face of his lackey and then explained to the slightly startled company that he chose this objective rather than soil the splendor he saw around him. The disgusting act passed for a delicate ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... to Pye, but went to my own cabin in an irritable condition. It ought not to have mattered to me that the sister of a millionaire, my employer, should treat me more or less as a lackey; but it did. I threw myself on my bunk and took down a book at random from my little shelf. Out of its pages tumbled an evening news-sheet which I now remembered to have bought of a screaming boy ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... be 'the lackey to eternity,' and Death be the porter of heaven's gate, and we shall pass from the land of setting suns and waning moons and change and sorrow, to that land where 'thy sun shall no more go down,' and 'there shall be ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... hand. My Lord Marlborough—the most talked of man in Europe, and some say, at this juncture, as powerful as half a dozen Kings—rose and handed his Majesty the piece of linen as simply as if it were but becoming that he should serve as lackey a royalty so important—and with such repose of natural dignity that 'twas he who seemed majestic, and not the man he waited on. Since then all goes with comparative smoothness. If a Queen's favoured counsellor and greatest ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the gendarmes, stank of musk. She had on, besides a thousand crowns of lace, a black India cashmere shawl, worth six thousand francs. And her chasseur was marching up and down outside with the insolence of a lackey who knows that he is essential to an exacting princess. He spoke never a word to the footman, who stood by the gate on the quay, which ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... servant to announce Master Peter Godolphin, and close upon the lackey's heels came Master Godolphin himself, leaning upon his beribboned cane and carrying his broad Spanish hat. He was a tall, slender gentleman, with a shaven, handsome countenance, stamped with an ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... atmosphere of compromise, to keep honour bright and abstain from base capitulations? How are you to put aside love's pleadings? How are you, the apostle of laxity, to turn suddenly about into the rabbi of precision; and after these years of ragged practice, pose for a hero to the lackey who has found you out? In this temptation to mutual indulgence lies the particular peril to morality in married life. Daily they drop a little lower from the first ideal, and for a while continue to accept these changelings with a gross complacency. ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... one's lights, I grant 'Twere well to be; But, on my word, Child, any one, to hear you speak, Would take you for a Protestant, (Such fish I do foresee When the charm'd fume comes strong on me,) Or powder'd lackey, by some great man's board, A deal more solemn than his Lord! Know'st thou not, Girl, thine Eros loves to laugh? And shall a God do anything by half? He foreknew and predestinated all The Great must pay for kissing things so small, And ever loves his little ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... to join you in the walk, gentlemen," said Count Caspar, immediately instructing a lackey to send the carriage after them. He and Lorry walked on together, Anguish lingering behind, having caught sight of the Countess Dagmar. That charming and unconventional piece of nobility promptly followed the ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... trip hup. The mud's no respecter h'of an H'english gentleman nor h'an American millionaire, don'cher know?" and the pompous Mr. Devonshire handed his hand-grip to Job, while he poked out his shoes for the gray-haired lackey to ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... for the truth of it is that his strength was all in his lungs, and himself a poor, weak, clout-faced, wizen-bellied, pin-shanked bloke anyway, who at Trinity Hall had spent the most of his time in reading Hume (that was Satan's lackey) and after taking his degree did a little in the way of Imperial Finance. Of him it was that Lord Abraham Hart, that far-seeing statesman, said, "This young man has the root of the matter in him." I quote the epigram rather for its perfect form ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... or fisherman takes with him his lackey to carry his game. If game is plentiful and the hunter successful, he would, otherwise, soon be compelled to discontinue his hunt from the burden of fish and game. But, freed from that care and burden, he can continue his ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... behind and copies it all afterwards, while he takes his afternoon-ride towards Charlottenburg, or saunters along Unter-den-Linden, ogling the pretty English girls, and spying every chance of saluting, whenever a royal equipage, preceded by a monkey-looking lackey, rolls by. These are, of course, exceptions, rarer in the present than formerly. In Padua, in the sixteenth century, it became notorious that the richer students never attended in person, but always sent one of their servants who wrote a good hand. Laws were enacted to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... haughty, familiar, capricious, vain, impulsive, clear-sighted, and easily flattered; intensely pleased to be in a position to command the services of artists and very unwilling to pay. Cellini was a blend of lackey, child, and genius. He left Francis I in order to serve Cosimo and never ceased to regret the change. The Perseus was his greatest accomplishment for Cosimo, and the narrative of its casting is terrific and not ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... charm or any acquired one that wins or beguiles or attracts; without a single grace of mind or heart or hand that any tramp or prostitute could envy him; an unfaithful private in the ranks, an incompetent stone-cutter, an inefficient lackey; in a word, a mangy, offensive, empty, unwashed, vulgar, gross, mephitic, timid, sneaking, human polecat. And it was within the privileges and powers of this sarcasm upon the human race to reach up—up—up—and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... leave," I said, interposing quickly. "M. de Sillery may say too much or too little. Let a lackey take a message, bidding him go to the queen's closet, ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... fellow knows his dupe, and makes the most on't, He fools him with a hundred masks of virtue, Gets money from him all the time by canting, And takes upon himself to carp at us. Even his silly coxcomb of a lackey Makes it his business to instruct us too; He comes with rolling eyes to preach at us, And throws away our ribbons, rouge, and patches. The wretch, the other day, tore up a kerchief That he had found, pressed in the Golden Legend, ...
— Tartuffe • Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Moliere
... lackey, "the count isn't at home, and it wasn't necessary to ring so horribly loud to ...
— A Conspiracy of the Carbonari • Louise Muhlbach
... Joseph and Louis Bonaparte, with Madame Fouche, Madame Roederer, the cidevant Duchesse de Fleury, and Marquise de Clermont. They were conversing with M. Mathew de Montmorency, the contractor (a ci-devant lackey) Collot, the ci-devant Duc de Fitz-James, and the legislator Martin, a ci-devant porter: several groups in the several apartments were composed of a similar heterogeneous mixture of ci-devant nobles and ci-devant valets, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... "Lackey, impostor, and thief!" he sternly answered. "There you have the catalogue of all my rightful titles. And besides, it pleases me, for a reason I cannot entirely fathom, to be unpardonably candid and to fling my destiny into your lap. To-night, ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... would have the United States play the role of a bully, or enact the demagogue. But surely there is a medium between that and the despicable inconsistency of unfriendliness towards those of our own political faith, and of lackey serviceableness towards a crowned head. Kings do not hesitate to discourage republicanism everywhere. A republic should not hesitate to encourage it anywhere. Self-respect in such a matter would win the respect of the world by deserving it. But when ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... tell you that neither," replied the lackey, "for I have not once seen her face during all the journey, though I have often heard her groan and ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... be in the fire in no time. I wonder you don't show him that respect—it wouldn't hurt you one morsel, I guess.' Says he, quite miffy like, 'Don't he know the way to court as well as I do? If I thought he didn't, I'd send one of my niggers to show him the road. I wonder who was his lackey last year, that he wants me to be his'n this time. It don't convene to one of our free and enlightened citizens, to tag arter any man, that's a fact; it's too English and too foreign for our glorious institutions. He's bound ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... for one moment. Isidore, indignant at seeing these men thus hunt for his master in every corner, ventured to defy them. He opened a drawer and said, "Look and see if he is not in here!" The Commissary of Police darted a furious glance at him: "Lackey, take ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... the gentleman sitting alone inside it had hit upon the peculiar idea of being carried to the csarda on man-back instead of on horseback. He mounted, therefore, on to the shoulders of his huntsman, a broadly built, sturdy fellow, and leaving his lackey in the carriage to look after whatever might be there, and making the postillion march in front with the carriage lamp, he trotted in this humorous fashion to the csarda, where the muscular huntsman safely deposited him ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... duchess and her ladies loved to send him on their dainty missions. His temper was bright and joyous; his only fault, if fault it can be called, was an over-generosity of nature. His purse was always empty; and when he had no money, any trifling service of a lackey or a groom would be requited with a silver button, a dagger, or a clasp of gold. And such was to be his character through life. Time after time, in after years, his share of treasure, after some great victory, would have paid a prince's ransom; ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... rejoicing lackey had disappeared, "having secured the future, we can afford to be more lenient with the past. I am not in an official position, and there is no reason, so long as the ends of justice are served, why I should disclose all that I know. As to Hayes, I say nothing. The gallows awaits him, ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... fact common enough to see a hair-dresser or a lackey converted into a governor; a sailor or a deserter, transformed into a district magistrate, collector, or military commander of a populous province, without other counsellor than his own crude understanding, or any other guide than his passions. Such a metamorphosis would ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair
... island; and did so, making his way as best he could to Stamford, in Ireland, where he obtained a menial's place in the service of a knight, retainer to one of the earls of that Country, and so abode there a long while, doing all the irksome and wearisome drudgery of a lackey or groom. ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... devoured you, and you could not tell me to my face, 'You are too happy.' Then, like a coward, you dishonored me in the dark. Bertha was only the instrument of your rancor; and she weighs upon you to-day—you despise and fear her. My friend, Hector, you have been in this house the vile lackey who thinks to avenge his baseness by spitting upon the meats which he puts on his ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... in nearly the same forms, as that which simultaneously took place in the bazaar close by between extortionate traders and thrifty housewives. "Listen to me," a priest would say, as an ultimatum, to a lackey who was trying to beat down the price: "if you don't give me seventy-five kopeks without further ado, I'll take a bite of this roll, and that will be an end to it!" And that would have been an end to the bargaining, for, according to the rules of the Church, a priest cannot ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... "His wretched lackey!" vociferated the judge. "By all the fiends in flames, I'll shoot that scoundrel Vincent with less remorse than ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... asked the way to the cabinet, and no one ventured to refuse. So he was passed from lackey to lackey, until he reached the antechamber. "Here," said the servant that had accompanied him, "here your highness will find a person ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... indicate in what sort of toilet ladies were expected to appear. The gown must come up high about the neck and might be of any colour desired, or of black silk if the wearer was in mourning. Jewelry was not forbidden. A lackey in red livery would usher the strangers into the audience-chamber. Their petition must be carried in the hand. In the throne-room—where ladies were permitted to gaze to their hearts' content on the splendid display of Japanese porcelain—the major-domo would marshal the company in a double ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... enough reason for suspicion to require that he should leave the country. Thrice the Duke, forcibly encouraged by Mirabeau, refused to go. Thrice the general insisted, and the Duke started for England. Mirabeau exclaimed that he would not have him for a lackey. A long inquiry was held, and ended in nothing. The man who knew those times best, Roederer afterwards assured Napoleon that, if there was an Orleanist conspiracy, Orleans himself was ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... reason for giving up his work, Latisan evasively decided that the thing was now up to Echford Flagg. He had warned Flagg man fashion. He had given his word to Flagg as to what would happen if Flagg persisted in treating him like a lackey. Flagg had persisted. Latisan had kept his word. He could not retreat from that stand; he could not crawl back to Flagg and still maintain the self-respect that a drive master must have in ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... vindictive hatred was visited also upon all associated with Bonaparte in the conduct of affairs at that time. Murat was "a brute and a thief"; Josephine, Hortense, Pauline, and Mme. Letitia were courtesans; Berthier was a shuffling, time-serving lackey and tool; Augereau was a bastard, a spy, a robber, and a murderer; Fouche was the incarnation of every vice; Lucien Bonaparte was a roue and a marplot; Cambaceres was a debauchee; Lannes was a thief, brigand, and ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... or the dunning letter that Mr. Newbery has sent. Treading heavily on the gravel, and rolling majestically along in a snuff-coloured suit, and a wig that sadly wants the barber's powder and irons, one sees the Great Doctor step up to him (his Scotch lackey following at the lexicographer's heels, a little the worse for port wine that they have been taking at the Mitre), and Mr. Johnson asks Mr. Goldsmith to come home and take a dish of tea with Miss Williams. Kind faith of Fancy! Sir Roger and Mr. Spectator are as real to us now as ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... during the evening. What is to be the end of this? To-morrow I go to see Miss Courtland, and I have made up my mind to confess everything. Perhaps she will think no worse of me. The queen still loved Ruy Blas after she found he was a lackey. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... crumbs, or cleared off the parings of fruit and cheese into his basket. The torn cards were thrown into the fire, the guests rose, rapiers were re-hung, and belts buckled on. The post news was heard, and the reckonings paid. The French lackey and Irish footboy led out the hobby horses, and some rode off to the play, others to the river-stairs to take a pair of oars ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... Paladin, I had a dream last night, and you were the only one among us that got an appointment. It wasn't a high one, but it was an appointment, anyway—some kind of a lackey or body-servant, or ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... ladies is discovered at the further end of the room. Two of them are seated at the piano, with their backs to the audience, playing a duet. Another is at the harp. They are playing at sight, amid much laughter and many interruptions. A lackey ushers in a modestly dressed young girl who is accompanied by an officer of the Austrian Cavalry. Seeing that no one notices their entrance, these two remain standing a moment in a corner. The COUNT DE BOMBELLES comes in from the door on the right ...
— L'Aiglon • Edmond Rostand
... head. "Mine elected,—lost to me! Lofty and beautiful,—brave and craven! Death-devoted head! Death-devoted heart!" Starting awake at the ring of her own words, she laughs unpleasantly and, turning to Brangaene: "What do you think of the lackey yonder?" Brangaene's glance follows Isolde's. She does not understand. "Whom do you mean?"—"The hero over there who averts his glance from mine, who in shame and embarassment gazes away from me. Tell me, how does he impress you?"—"Are you inquiring, my dear lady," ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... of the Commodore, when the captain visits the deck, his subordinate officers generally beat a retreat to the other side and, as a general rule, would no more think of addressing him, except concerning the ship, than a lackey would think of hailing the Czar of Russia on his throne, and inviting him to tea. Perhaps no mortal man has more reason to feel such an intense sense of his own personal consequence, as the captain of a ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... than a palanquin. Devices come and devices go. Change is the essence of progress. All is development. The end of rapes and romances is the same—perpetuation. There may be head love as well as heart love. And in the time to come, when the brain ceases to be the servant of the belly, the head the lackey of the heart, in that time stirpiculture, which is scientific perpetuation, will take the place of romantic love. And in the present there may be men ready for that time. There must be a beginning, else would we still be jolting in ox-carts. ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... and night, to see but one thing—to see flashy, overdressed, fat and vulgar men and women gorging themselves! Oh, this will teach me to feel—this at least! I go about with my whole being one curse of rage—I could throttle them! And to bow and smirk and lackey them—all day! All day! Oh, what shall I ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... joy, surrounding and shaking hands with him. The boxes were filled with ladies, and the scene was very amusing. Seor M——, whose box we occupied, ordered in cakes and wine, and about one o'clock we left the ball-room and returned home, one of our soldiers acting as lackey.... ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... of the Louvre, and consulted his friends upon the use he had best make of his share of the forty pistoles, Athos advised him to order a good repast at the Pomme-de-Pin, Porthos to engage a lackey, and Aramis to provide himself with a ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... dignified to be a singin' of nigger-catches that way. So says I to myself, 'This ain't respectful to our great nation to keep a high functionary a waitin' arter this fashion, is it? Guess I'd better assart the honour of our republic by goin' away; and let him see that it warn't me that was his lackey last year.' ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... Seventh Regiment,"—its title. First is Thomas Brown, Lieutenant, Then is Arthur Progg, Lieutenant, Then comes Edward Beck as Ensign; J—n Smith and W. Talbot, Are the first and second Sergeants; Sergeants third and fourth then follow, Samuel Scott, S. Long, in order. Joseph Brady and James Lackey, J—s Brunt and C—s Silvers, Are the Corporals, four in number. Forty Privates are recorded, At the ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... [The lackey, having collected these and given them to the PRINCE, goes out. The PRINCE writes. Pause, during which he tears the letter he has begun in two and throws the pieces ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... the palace of the Sleeping Beauty, deep in the heart of the woodlands, for any evidence to the contrary, perceptible to Clarissa in this drowsy noontide; but presently, as the carriage drove up to the hall door, a dog barked, and then a sumptuous lackey appeared, and anon another, who, between them, took Miss Lovel's travelling-bag and parasol, prior to escorting her to some apartment, leaving the heavier luggage ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... liege! Fetch the beaker, lackey," identifying Cyril with a royal gesture. "Also crystal water from the well, which by the command of our Cousin Ann will speedily flow in a pipe within the castle walls. There are healths to be drunk this day when we assemble under the Hamilton maple, and first and most loyally the health ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... son was to give when he and von Hetzler arrived at the place where I am to meet them. Give me the paper—quick! quick! Tear the fastenings, if they will not come undone else. One cannot keep a von Hetzler waiting like a lackey for a scrap of ribbon and a ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... which burned on a large, circular flagstone, the flames of which had heated red-hot the legs of a tripod, which was empty for the moment, some wormeaten tables were placed, here and there, haphazard, no lackey of a geometrical turn having deigned to adjust their parallelism, or to see to it that they did not make too unusual angles. Upon these tables gleamed several dripping pots of wine and beer, and round these pots were grouped many bacchic visages, purple with the fire and the wine. ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... looking over the house at the Italiens to see if some one wears a red flower or a white in her hair, or watching along the Corso for a gloved hand on a carriage door, as we used to do at Milan; instead of snatching a mouthful of baba like a lackey finishing off a bottle behind a door, or wearing out one's wits with giving and receiving letters like a postman—letters that consist not of a mere couple of tender lines, but expand to five folio volumes to-day and contract ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... a way through the crowd—which is already moving at the top of the Sacred Way—to the point where you turn off on the left and ascend to the entrance to the Palatine Hill. Some of the clients will walk behind, where also will be a lackey or two in waiting. On the way Silius may perhaps meet with Manlius, another noble, whom he probably greets with "Good morning, brother," and a kiss upon the cheek. This kissing, it may be remarked, ultimately became an intolerable nuisance, ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... went softly through the second anteroom to the hall. Again, all was empty and silent; neither page, nor sentry, nor lackey to be seen. She knew not why, but a feeling of desolation came over her. She had bidden adieu to the etiquette due to her rank, but this, she thought, was carrying the ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach |
