"Postern" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in the upper part of the town. Outside her door lounged a young Moor of fourteen or fifteen, smoking a cigarette, it was Ali, her brother. When the two visitors arrived he knocked twice on the postern and retired from the scene. The door was opened and a negress appeared, who, without saying a word, conducted the two gentlemen across a narrow interior courtyard to a small, cool room where the lady awaited them, posed ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... has been slow to develop itself it is not necessarily sluggish or deficient when once it is come. But Englishmen are rarely heroic lovers except in their novels. There is generally a little bypath of caution, a postern gate of mercantile foresight, by which they can slip quietly out at the right moment and forget ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... priory by the western postern and went up the Rue des Trois Piliers. The three pillars, which give its name to the street, mark the boundary between the jurisdiction of the Chapter of St. Hilaire and the town of Poitiers. They ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... key to your fetters. A knife to your release. Once free of your dungeon take every passage Bearing to the left; so shall you reach the postern. There one shall wait, wearing a white scarf. Follow him and God speed you. You will be visited ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... alley. They stopped just within the entrance. O'Toole distinguished three horses, he saw the three riders dismount; and while one of the three held the horses, the other two walked on foot towards the postern-door. ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... anything more saucily self-reliant than this little Briton. Without looking at us, or deigning any apology for the great gate,—which, it seems, is a mere barricade, not made to be opened,—she unlocked a side-postern, a rude door, consisting of two or three rough boards, and made a motion for us to enter. As we trod the time-worn pavement of the outer court, and gained an open quadrangle round which various apartments were grouped, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... retired, advances hastily.] Haste, Caesario, You must away! the king's returned, I see His train now loitering near the garden-gate, Fly by the private postern. ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... moved into the sharp air. Hussin led us out of an old postern and then through a place like an orchard to the shelter of some tall evergreen trees. There horses stood, champing quietly from their nosebags. 'Good,' I thought; 'a feed of ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... "I will ask him myself, if he knows aught of Isabella; he is not worthy I should converse farther with him." She was going to open the casement, when they heard the bell ring at the postern-gate of the castle, which is on the right hand of the tower, where Matilda lay. This prevented the Princess from renewing the conversation with ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole
... the greater part of them, having feasted in the towers, were either asleep from the effects of wine, or else, half asleep, were still drinking. A few of them, however, they surprised in their beds, and put to the sword. They began then to break open a postern gate near the Hexapylos, which required great force; and a signal was given from the wall by sounding a trumpet, as had been agreed upon. After this, the attack was carried on in every quarter, not secretly, but by open force; for they had now reached ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... not had time to cover them, are flower-beds, shrub-plots, meandering walks. Too genteel and ambitious for the most aesthetic of workhouses or advanced of hospitals, we wonder what the building is; and our wonder is not decreased by seeing a postern opened in a huge black wall, from which a handful of conspirators creep silently. We rub our eyes. Are we dreaming? Is this, or is it not, the age of scientific marvels, levelling of castes, rampant communism, murder, agrarian outrage, sudden massacre?—the olla ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... stirrup, and Joris, and he; I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three; "Good speed!" cried the watch as the gate-bolts undrew; "Speed!" echoed the wall to us galloping through; Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest, And into the ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... stood close by the river's edge, with a broad postern-sill actually overhanging the tide, and a flight of steps, scarcely less broad, curving up and around the south-west angle ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... an ancient alley door, low, vaulted, narrow, solid, entirely of oak, lined on the inside with a sheet of iron and iron stays, a genuine prison postern. The blows from the butt end of the gun made the house tremble, but did not ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... none of that stir and liveliness one expects to see about the houses of the great. No visitors passed in or out, and the big iron gates were shut, as if none were looked for. Of a truth, the persons who visited Monsieur these days preferred to slip in by the postern after nightfall, as if there had never been a time when they were proud to ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... down the hillside. It was indeed romantic. The wind, in plaintive, melodious tones, searched our ears as it came perfumed from the tufted walls. We penetrated through a scene of high and mossy rocks, bound in the lean embrace of knotted ivy, and finally by a dismantled postern we intruded into the castle. Sacrilege again! The stone-masons were tranquilly working here and there, solidifying old ruins and very probably fabricating new ones. The wind, whose sighing we had admired, was the cat-like harmony of the aeolian harps: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... much imagination," said the Boy, "or you wouldn't have asked such a question. How do you suppose I come every night, after all the world is barred and bolted out of your sacred Close, and the alternative lies between the porter at the postern, whom you know I shun, ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... encircled by a sea of fire, which blocked up all the gates of the citadel, and frustrated the first attempts that were made to depart. After some search, we discovered a postern gate leading between the rocks to the Moskwa. It was by this narrow passage that Napoleon, his officers and guard escaped from the Kremlin. But what had they gained by this movement? They had approached nearer to the ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... lower the drawbridge over the moat, for their exit. Without expressing any astonishment at the strange scene thus presented to him, Conrad D'Amboise glided from his post, and favored by the shadows of the frowning battlements, gained a postern in an angle of the wall, and stealthily left ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... ladies, whence Eustacie was to descend at about eleven o'clock, with her maid Veronique. Landry Osbert was to join them from the lackey's hall below, where he had a friend, and the connivance of the porter at the postern opening towards the Seine had ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... though the King was just at hand with the troops, and though M. Mold, Keeper of the Seals, was at the gate demanding entrance for the King, the Duchess crossed the river in a barge, made the watermen break down a little postern, which had been walled up for a long time, and marched, with the acclamations of multitudes of the people, directly to the Hotel de Ville, where the magistrates were assembled to consider if they should admit the Keeper of the Seals. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... city of Agra, and desires to gain his way into the fort. He has with him as travelling-companion my foster-brother Dost Akbar, who knows his secret. Dost Akbar has promised this night to lead him to a side-postern of the fort, and has chosen this one for his purpose. Here he will come presently, and here he will find Mahomet Singh and myself awaiting him. The place is lonely, and none shall know of his coming. The world shall know of the merchant Achmet no more, ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... upon my view at eight o'clock. The little servant happening to be entering the fortress with two hot rolls, I passed through the postern and crossed the drawbridge in her company, and so came without announcement into the presence of Wemmick as he was making tea for himself and the Aged. An open door afforded a perspective view of the Aged ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... and then I turned to the window, thinking that, as better was not to be, I might dive thence into the moat, and take my chance of escape by the stairs on the further side. But the window was heavily barred. Yet again, if I went forth by the door, and lurked on the postern stair, there was Robin Lindsay's dirk to reckon with, when he came, a laggard, to ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... the blow aimed at him by the marquis, and passed on. All this I saw ere I gave up hopes of getting out by the gate; but seeing this was hopeless, I pursued my way back again, with intent to get out by one of the postern windows, and hurry homeward across the fields; and having opened a window near unto the buttery, I hung by my hands, and then shutting my eyes and commending my soul to Heaven, I let go, and dropt safely down upon the greensward. But ere I could recover ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... through the postern, and arrived on the crest of the bluff overlooking the Prescott road just as a horseman turned up the height. The news that the La Paz courier had arrived spread rapidly through the quarters, and every man not on ...
— Captured by the Navajos • Charles A. Curtis
... in arm, approached the postern gate beside the wide iron grille that was never opened save for the passage of horses or a motor car. There was a little round shutter in the postern at the height of a man's head; for aforetime the main gateway had been ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... to pace the keep; To climb the turret is too steep; My lord the earl is dozing deep, His noonday dinner over: The postern-warder is asleep (Perhaps they've bribed him not to peep): And so from out the gate they creep, And cross the fields ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the danger of delay written before me in huge characters. From that moment forth I seem not to have sat down or breathed. Now I would be at my post with the Master and his Indian; now in the garret buckling a valise; now sending forth Macconochie by the side postern and the wood-path to bear it to the trysting-place; and, again, snatching some words of counsel with my lady. This was the verso of our life in Durrisdeer that day; but on the recto all appeared quite settled, as ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... granted, for the God Consented with the usual nod. After hard throes of many a day Van was delivered of a play, Which in due time brought forth a house, Just as the mountain did the mouse. One story high, one postern door, And one small chamber on a floor, Born like a phoenix from the flame: But neither bulk nor shape the same; As animals of largest size Corrupt to maggots, worms, and flies; A type of modern wit and style, The rubbish of an ancient pile; So chemists boast they ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... gate; postern; porch, portico. Associated words: lintel, jamb, sill, threshold, stile, panel, rail, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... upon them when suddenly Mike, whose devotion seemed of the briefest, sprang to his legs, and with a spirit of levity but little in accordance with his late proceedings, commenced a series of kicking, rapping, and knocking at a small oak postern sufficient to have aroused a whole convent from their cells. "House there! Good people within!"—bang, bang, bang; but the echoes alone responded to his call, and the sounds died away at length in the distant streets, leaving all as silent and ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... castle of Ellangowan by a postern door-way, which showed symptoms of having been once secured with the most jealous care, Brown (whom, since he has set font upon the property of his fathers, we shall hereafter call by his father's name of Bertram) wandered from one ruined apartment to another, surprised at ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... Devil-upon-two-sticks, when he lifted the roofs of Madrid at night, scarcely did more for his friend than was here done for us in the bright sunshine and open air. The keys that were to be made use of in this journey, to gain us a passage through many a tower, stair, and postern, were in the hands of the authorities, whose subordinates we never failed to ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... departed from the Palace of the Princesses, who went forth[FN183] with him, to farewell him. Then they turned back and Hasan fared on, over wild and wold, two months and ten days, till he came to the city of Baghdad, the House of Peace, and repairing to his home by the private postern which gave upon the open country, knocked at the door. Now his mother, for long absence, had forsworn sleep and given herself to mourning and weeping and wailing, till she fell sick and ate no meat, neither took delight in slumber but shed tears night ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... embrace, pressing the now soft perfumed hair and warm moist skin of his neck. "Ah! You lucky fellow! But know that silence is golden." With this she as suddenly seized his hand and led him swiftly along the dark corridor. At its end an amado was slipped back, and they were in the garden. To a postern gate she fitted the key. Pack adjusted he would turn to make salutation. Two slender firm hands laid on his shoulders sent him flying into the roadway. The gate closed with a sharp bang, and all sign of this fairy ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... like the people of this world, For no thought is contented. The better sort, As thoughts of things divine, are intermix'd With scruples, and do set the word itself Against the word: As thus: 'Come, little ones'; and then again, 'It is as hard to come as for a camel To thread the postern of a needle's eye.' Thoughts tending to ambition, they do plot Unlikely wonders; how these vain weak nails May tear a passage through the flinty ribs Of this hard world, my ragged prison walls; And, for they cannot, die in their own pride. Thoughts tending to content flatter ...
— The Tragedy of King Richard II • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... loud shouts of war, rushed to the battlements. Then ensued a fight most desperate between the noble Champion of England and the black King, in which the latter would most assuredly have been slain had he not, like a recreant, turned his back and fled, among his followers, through a postern gate, which, happily for him, stood open,—proudly asserting that he would return ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... her trials. It was astonishing to see so delicate and beautiful a being buffet so resolutely with hardships. She determined on a desperate means of escape. One dark unruly night, she issued secretly out of a small postern gate of the castle, which the enemy had neglected to guard. She was followed by her female attendants, a few domestics, and some gallant cavaliers who still remained faithful to her fortunes. Her object was to gain ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... "by this outrage? Know ye not that this is the Monastery of St. John, and that it is sacrilege to lay a hand of violence even against its postern? Begone," he said, "or we'll lodge a ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... postern door, and unfastened it, and went out through the streets of Beaucaire, keeping in the shadow, for the moon shone very bright; and she went on till she came to the tower where her lover was. The tower was shored up ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... he saw a crowd assembled, and soldiers' and custom-house officers' uniforms, mingled with the shabby, dirty blouses of barracks-loafers. The old man instinctively approached. A customs officer, seated on the stone step below a round postern with iron bars, was talking with many gestures, as if he were ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... pass from a rich cream colour to a soft grey. A very marked feature is 'the great number of projections carried on machicoulis, through the openings of which stones and other missiles could be thrown on the heads of assailants.' Both the chief doorway and a postern gate to the south ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... afternoon he stopped before the closed gateway of the Palazzo Chiaromonte and pushed the little postern that stood ajar. The big porter was within, standing dejectedly before the door of his lodge, and already dressed in the deep mourning which is kept in readiness in all the great Roman houses. The painter asked in broken Italian if the bad news was true, and the man nodded gravely, pointing ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... wide palace with his dolorous cries Echo again. Oh, well do I remember! Electra swiftly bore me through this hall Thither where Strophius in his pitying arms Received me—Strophius, less by far thy father Than mine, thereafter—and fled onward with me By yonder postern-gate, all tremulous; And after me there ran upon the air Long a wild clamor and a lamentation That made me weep and shudder and lament, I knew not why, and weeping Strophius ran, Preventing with his hand my ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... while I have strength to save you," returned the officer, with energy. "If the savages have not penetrated to the rear, we may yet escape. I saw the postern open just now, on my passage round the rampart, and the boat of the schooner upon the strand. Ha!" he exclaimed, as he flew to the window, and cast his eye rapidly below, "we are lost! The gate is still clear, and not an Indian ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... it was noticed by the chaplain (an observant man) that the dress she wore was stained with blood about the knees, and that there were traces of small blood-stained hands low down on the staircase walls, so that it was conjectured that she had really been at the postern-door when her husband fell and, feeling her way up to him in the darkness on her hands and knees, had been stained by his blood dripping down on her. Of course it was argued on the other side that the blood-marks on her dress ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... and used it as a pigment; he treated it, as the metaphysicians say, objectively. He was not discomposed, disturbed, haunted by it, in the manner of its usual and regular victims, who had not the little postern door of fancy to slip through, to the other side of the wall. It was, indeed, to his imaginative vision, the great fact of man's nature; the light element that had been mingled with his own composition always clung to this rugged prominence of moral responsibility, like the mist that hovers ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... leads straight up to the postern gate of the castle, and many stirring sights have the successive inhabitants of the little village looked upon, as the fortunes of the owners of the castle waxed and waned throughout the many centuries ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... discharged, and the three gentlemen were not long in discovering the small door, which was a sort of postern in a lane between two garden walls. It still wanted ten or fifteen minutes of the appointed time; the rain fell heavily, and the adventurers sheltered themselves below some pendent ivy, and spoke in low ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... went right. The Champion's bat Seemed twice the breadth of postern door. The leather flew at pace immense To crackle on the boundary fence, Acknowledged by the public roar. Dobbin went on with Tweaks, Robin obliged with Sneaks, And Diccory Dizzard, as fast as a blizzard, Exhibited ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale
... built against the blank wall of the wing. He imagined the monotonous prospect from its windows of the tufted chasm, the coldly profiled northern hills beyond,—and shivered. A little further on, sunk in the wall like a postern, was a small door that evidently gave easy egress to seekers of this stern retreat. In the still air a faint grating sound like the passage of a foot across gravel came to him as from the distance. He paused, thinking he had been followed by one of the card-players, but saw no one, and ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... length of the chateau, with screening to keep out the summer pests of mosquitoes and flies and the night prowling insects attracted by light. Into this they went, up wide birch steps, and ahead of them was a door so heavy it looked like the postern gate of a castle. Black Roger opened it, and in a moment David stood beside him in a dimly lighted hall where the mounted heads of wild beasts looked down like startled things from the gloom of the walls. And then David heard ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... great Theban, in his midnight tramp, A sleeping guard beside the postern saw, He slew him on the instant, that the camp Might read in blood a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... guess how thoroughly Popinot had picketed the house, in co-operation with Roddy's murderer, by way of provision against mischance; but the adventurer was satisfied that, in his proper guise as himself, he needed only to open that postern door at the street end of the passage, to feel a knife slip in between his ribs—most probably in his ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... servant? Listen! 'We could not come with the last moon, for we have not gathered sufficient strength, nor have we been able to collect the twenty thousand crowns which are your price. But with the next turn of the moon in the darkest hour we will come and you will be paid your money at the small postern gate with the rowan-bush beside it.' Well, rogue, what ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a gentle provost: seldom when The steeled gaoler is the friend of men. [Knocking within. How now! what noise? That spirit's possessed with haste That wounds the unsisting postern with these ...
— Measure for Measure - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... of the Orsini lights flitted to and fro, through the gratings of the great court. Angelo Villani might be seen stealing from the postern-gate. Another hour, and the Moon was high in heaven; toward the ruins of the Colosseum, men, whose dress bespoke them of the lowest rank, were seen creeping from lanes and alleys, two by two; from these ruins glided again the form of the son of Montreal. Later yet—the Moon is sinking—a ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... calling upon Zeus? The thing is even as I say. I cannot stop them any longer from lusting after the men. They are all for deserting. The first I caught was slipping out by the postern gate near the cave of Pan; another was letting herself down by a rope and pulley; a third was busy preparing her escape; while a fourth, perched on a bird's back, was just taking wing for Orsilochus' house,[444] when I seized her by the hair. One and all, they are ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... foregrounds for the Cathedral towers. In Pound Lane the wall continues in a furtive and rather desultory fashion until it ends at the West Gate. Opposite Lady Wootton's Green there still remain indications of a narrow postern, which is generally accepted as that through which Queen Bertha was wont to pass on her way to her devotions at St. Martin's Church. This, however, presupposes that the portion of the wall immediately surrounding this particular point is Roman or very Early Saxon, and also that the walls of ...
— Beautiful Britain • Gordon Home
... you to bed, and rise not on the morn till I come to you, for the castle of Tintagil is but ten miles hence; so this was done as they devised. But the duke of Tintagil espied how the king rode from the siege of Terrabil, and therefore that night he issued out of the castle at a postern for to have distressed the king's host. And so, through his own issue, the duke himself was slain or ever the king came at the ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... they found the draw-bridge down and the postern open, so confident and unsuspecting were the Basques, and entered, cutlasses drawn and pikes forward, into the great hall. There were killed seven young men, who had barricaded themselves behind tables and would there make sport with ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... laurels a little shorn, even on this narrow field. While his charger was caracoling over the cloisters, and his veterans from the cellars and counters of Paris were popping off their muskets at the unfortunates who started up against the old casement, I heard a sudden rush and run; a low postern of the cloister had been flung back, and the prisoners within the building had made a sally on their tormentors. A massacre at the Bicetre, in which six thousand had perished, had warned these unhappy people that neither the prison wall, nor night, was to be security against ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... path, vaulting the little gate leading into the shrubberies, and dashing down a back way almost dark with the thick laurel-bushes overhead, he soon reached what was known as the postern door. Entering a low passage, narrow and dimly lighted from some invisible opening, he pursued his way along various twists and turns of the old house, with now and again a few stairs up, till he finally came upon a crimson-baize door, opening on a long panelled ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... shut) door—a position all the more awkward that the knight himself expires immediately after he has reached shelter. The situation is saved, however, by the guardian damsel of romance, Lunet (the Linet or Lynette of the Beaumains-Gareth story), who emerges from a postern between gate and portcullis and conveys the intruder safe to her own chamber. Here a magic bed makes him invisible: though the whole castle, including the very room, is ransacked by the dead knight's people and would-be revengers, at the bidding of ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... Minthy intrenched in a Sebastopol which must have cost a good half-hour's engineering, and the terrible Bytes Gridley besieging the fortress with hostile manifestations of the most singular character. He was actually discharging a large sugar-plum at the postern gate, which having been left unclosed, the missile would certainly have reached one of the garrison, when he paused as the door opened, and the great round spectacles and four wide, staring infants' eyes were levelled ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the twelve years' drama which followed this double plot now laid by the Guises and also by the Reformers, had arrived at Blois from different directions, each riding at full speed, and leaving their horses half-dead at the postern-gate of the chateau, which was guarded by captains and soldiers absolutely devoted to the Duc de Guise, ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... came and told her, "Madame, if you would like to see your son he is on horseback all ready to start," the good lady went bravely down to the little postern door behind the tower and sent for Pierre to come to her. As the boy rode up proudly at her summons and bending low in his saddle took off his plumed cap in smiling salutation, he was a gallant sight for loving eyes to rest upon. Bayard never ...
— Bayard: The Good Knight Without Fear And Without Reproach • Christopher Hare
... went to look at the drawbridge, with a faint hope that she might chance upon some unexpected means of escape, but all was secure there, and a little postern, opening on the moat, which she discovered near by, was also carefully fastened, with bolts and bars strong enough to keep out an army. As these seemed to be the only means of exit from the chateau, she felt that she was a prisoner indeed, ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... Uther died himself, Moaning and wailing for an heir to rule After him, lest the realm should go to wrack. And that same night, the night of the new year, By reason of the bitterness and grief That vext his mother, all before his time Was Arthur born, and all as soon as born Deliver'd at a secret postern-gate To Merlin, to be holden far apart Until his hour should come; because the lords Of that fierce day were as the lords of this, Wild beasts, and surely would have torn the child Piecemeal among them, had they known; ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... turned squarely, and walked out across the parade to the postern. Here I saw Captain Simpson inspecting the four guides, one of whom, to me, seemed unnecessarily burdened with hunting ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... dishonor fetched me once and again to this one sally-port of death. And when it came to this; that I had searched in vain for other outlet, you will not think it strange that I sat down in spirit at this postern to see if I might open it with my ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... the dunes by the company of sappers, and the capture. But instead, it was all distant and dry. A "Good-night" such as one might have thrown at a dog—no, he would not throw the word at Whitefoot. For even as she passed the postern window, looking out she saw Stair crossing the court in the direction of the barn, side by side with Whitefoot. The dog's eyes were raised to those of his master in a kind of adoration, and his tail waved triumphantly. ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... little postern of the Castle. Gerhardt rapped at the door, and after two or three repetitions, ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... to retreat, and in a moment we were standing in the street. It would not have surprised me if he had celebrated his freedom by some noisy extravagance there; but he refrained, and contented himself—while Maignan locked the postern behind us—with cocking his hat and lugging forward his sword, and assuming an air of whimsical recklessness, as if an adventure ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... parallelograms of golden light, shining through the thick growth of trees, his hands and feet were cold, his heart beat hard. "I'm acting like a girl," he thought, indignantly, straightened himself, and marched on to the front door, as if it were the postern of a fortress. ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... would be well to dine to-night in one of the handsome villas scattered through these hills. Still following the slipper, we shall choose one somewhere east of the inn and present ourselves confidently at the front door. Failing there, we shall assault the postern and, perhaps, enrich our knowledge of life ...
— The Madness of May • Meredith Nicholson
... prisoners were lowered by ropes. From the village the entrance to the castle is through the barbican, or outer gate, a work of gigantic strength and massive grandeur, which has been the scene of many a brave encounter. Near by is the Postern Tower, a sally-port adjacent to the "Bloody Gap" and "Hotspur's Chair." The history of this famous stronghold is practically the history of this portion of the realm, for in all the Border warfare that continued for centuries it was conspicuous. In the reign of William Rufus ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... at once gave the alarm to the country people, but they arrived too late to prevent the enemy from landing. Duncan MacGillechriost was on the mainland at the time; but flying back with all speed he arrived at the postern of the stronghold in time to kill several of the Islesmen in the act of landing; and, entering the castle, he found no one there but the governor and watchman; almost immediately after, Donald Gorm Mor furiously attacked the gate, but without success, the brave trio having ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... and, having divided their band into two parties, assigned to each man his post. One band, led by Oishi Kuranosuke, was to attack the front gate, and the other, under his son Oishi Chikara, was to attack the postern of Kotsuke no Suke's house; but as Chikara was only sixteen years of age, Yoshida Chiuzayemon was appointed to act as his guardian. Further it was arranged that a drum, beaten at the order of Kuranosuke, should be the signal for the simultaneous attack; and that if any one slew ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... Fernando, without going anywhere else, he continued his journey to this city, where he arrived at two o'clock, and was received with a salvo. He entered the coach of the governor, and going from the fort of Santiago (by the postern gate of which he made his entry), he reached the palace. On the plaza a body of troops had been formed in order, who received him with a general salute of arquebus-shots. He spent about an hour with the governor, at the time making known to him only ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... erroneous; the ladders were too short; the rescuers broke into a postern door. Scrope told this to his Government on the day after ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... had turned her face away, bolted out, like a streak of smoke, as he hugged his shoulders with his hands (from intense cold.) As luck would have it, the hour was as yet early, so that the inmates of the house had not all got out of bed; and making his escape from the postern door, he straightaway betook himself home, running back the ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... I had to lie hid in the forest a few days. I did not think flight would be so difficult a matter, but I knew that every moment spent in Mortimer's Keep was at peril of my life; and I had but just made my escape through a small postern door before I heard the alarm bell ring, the drawbridge go up, and knew that the edict had gone forth for ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... they would not perhaps have rested so securely on the hopes which their unexpected success very naturally engendered. Attack on one side they knew they could resist; their only dread had been that, from the numbers of the English, the angle towers, each of which covered a postern, might be attacked at once, and thus discover the real weakness of their forces. The obstinate struggle for the barbacan, the strongest point of the castle, had been welcomed with joy by the Scotch, for there they could overlook every movement of the besiegers. ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... come to thee anon; but the little postern door is seldom locked since thou art gone, and I can get out thus. Linger not beside the house, Cuthbert; speed to the chantry—I will meet thee there. He might hear or see thee here. Do not linger; go. I will be with thee anon; I will not keep thee but a few ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... a narrow street leading to the postern or gate, called Standish-gate. In those days it was not, as now, a wide and free thoroughfare for man and beast. At the accustomed fairs, toll is, to this time, demanded on all cattle changing owners at the several outlets, where formerly stood four ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... chance fell downstairs (but still without hurting her hood that was upon her head), yet the inhabitants will tell you there that she was conveyed from her usual chamber where she lay, to another where the bed's head of the chamber stood close to a privy postern door, where they in the night came and stifled her in her bed, bruised her head very much broke her neck, and at length flung her down stairs, thereby believing the world would have thought it a mischance, and so have blinded their villainy. But behold the mercy and justice of God in revenging ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... profess themselves conscience- stricken with regard to the past. They are not aware of themselves as conspicuous sinners, or indeed, it may be, as sinners at all. The experience of penitence and of Divine forgiveness must come to them, if it is to come at all, at a later stage. It is not by that postern that they enter upon the Way ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... designate it by the word 'reason'." [1] Absolute, unconditioned intelligence is the Theos we acknowledge. This is the formulary of our philosophical creed, and as Luther fastened his forty theses to the doors of the Wuertemburg Cathedral, I affix my two humble propositions to the postern of the ethical church, namely, first, that "In the beginning was Mind," and next, that the moral law is the highest expression of that Mind. And, moreover, that as the mind in man is so ordered as to naturally proceed from the more known to the less known, from the ascertained ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... leave." "They would return to-morrow, but now they must go; before the sun set—good-by, good-by." "You shall not go," cried Rudolph, seizing hold of Solanum and Farinacea, who struggled hard to evade him, while their companions swiftly passed them, and vanished through a little postern gate he had never seen before, into the forest beyond. "Why should you want to go? Do you not love me?" said Rudolph, as the two struggled yet more earnestly to escape his grasp. "I assure you we have hearts, but we cannot now stay," was all they could utter, for ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... Sole, neither in the wall nor in the buildings, nor in the valley below, is there any trace of cyclopean wall stones;[34] fourth, at the point where the cross wall and the long wall must have met at the east, the wall makes a change in direction, and there is an ancient postern gate just above the jog in the wall; and last, the cyclopean wall from this junction on down to near the Porta del Sole is later than that ...
— A Study Of The Topography And Municipal History Of Praeneste • Ralph Van Deman Magoffin
... troubles. What with intermittencies (safe hidings in one's MARQUISAT, or vacant interlunar cave), with alternations of offence and reconcilement; what with occasional actual flights to Paris (whitherward Voltaire is always busy to keep a postern open; and of which there is frequent talk, and almost continual thought, all along), flights to be called "visits," and privately intending to be final, but never proving so,—the Voltaire-Friedrich relation, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... convent. On a sudden the darkness was full of flames and blood; but while the other nuns ran hither and thither, clinging to the Abbess's feet or shrieking on the steps of the altar, I slipped through an unwatched postern and made my way to the hills. The next day the Emperor's soldiery descended on the carousing heathen, slew them and burned their vessels on the beach; the Abbess and nuns were rescued, the convent walls ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... the great gate of Malepartus; examines it with his nose; goes on to a postern; examines that also, and then another, and another; while I perceive afar, projecting from every cave's mouth, the red and green end of a new fir-faggot. Ah, Reinecke! fallen is thy conceit, and fallen thy tail therewith. Thou ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... unlucky being that I am," asked Sancho, "when I cannot stir my knee-caps for these boards that are bound so tightly to my body! What you must do is to carry me in your arms, and lay me across or set me upright in some postern, and I shall hold it either with this lance ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the home that she loved so well, And the deathless fame of a woman's name whom nothing but love could quell. Who, when the men would have yielded, with her own sweet lily hand, Led them straight from the postern gate, and drove the foe from the land. There's many a little homestead that is cosy and sung to-day, Because of a woman who stood in the door and ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... up the drive, curiously at his ease, in a state of suspended animation, which knew no hope and feared no disappointment. Just before he reached the front door, the postern gate in the wall on his left-hand side opened, and Philippa stood there, muffled up in her fur coat, framed in the faint and shadowy moonlight against the background of seabounded space. He ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the cry, Roland jumped out of bed, and, without staying for clothes or horse, ran off in his shirt, escaping by a postern gate which opened on the forest just as de Menon entered by another. He found Roland's bed still warm, and took possession of his clothes, finding in a coat pocket a purse containing thirty-five Louis, and ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Tamar; "What did I do, but press him to act as an honourable man, but of this I am resolved," she added, "that I will now see him again," and as she spoke, she proceeded through the postern into the courts, still passing on towards the principal door of the Tower, Rebecca following her, and pouring upon her no measured abuse. Tamar, however, remarked, that the old woman lowered her voice as they advanced nearer the house, on which she raised her own tones, and ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]
... N.E. angle of the curtain projects a spur work protected by two curtains, one of which, 4 feet thick and 24 feet high, only remains, with a shouldered postern door opening on the scarp of the ditch at its junction with the main curtain. This spur work was the entrance to the Castle, and contains a deep pit, now called the Dungeon, and a Barbican or Sally-port beyond. The pit is 12 feet deep and measures 27 feet x 10 feet ...
— The Hawarden Visitors' Hand-Book - Revised Edition, 1890 • William Henry Gladstone
... as soon as it was dark, Lina came to her master, and let him understand she wanted to go out. He unlocked a little private postern for her, left it so that she could push it open when she returned, and told the crocodile to stretch himself across it inside. Before midnight she came back with ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... led him, through a postern, into the garden; and there on a wide lawn, out of earshot of any possible listeners, the Bishop and the Knight walked up ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... was the last to quit the fields and the out-buildings. When he reached the postern in the palisadoes, he stopped to call to those above him, in order to learn if any yet lingered without the wooden barriers. The answer being in the negative, he entered, and drawing-to the small but heavy gate, he secured it with bar, bolt, and lock, carefully and ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... received him; through the thick barrier of trees skirting the walled precincts scarcely a light winked; only the large domed conservatory behind him threw a pale radiance before his feet as he crossed the terrace and moved off by a winding path in the direction of a small postern concealed ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... wishing to examine the town (as beautiful as a suit of antique armor) may walk alone, not without sadness, through a deserted street, where the mullioned windows are plastered up to avoid the window-tax. This street ends at a postern, flanked with a wall of masonry, beyond which rises a bouquet of trees planted by the hands of Breton nature, one of the most luxuriant and fertile vegetations in France. A painter, a poet would sit there silently, ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... the great Knight's Hall, which had a small cabinet adjoining where Freiherr Roderick von R—— used to sleep when engaged in making his astronomical observations. Between the door of this cabinet and that of a second was a postern, leading through a narrow passage immediately into the astronomical tower. But directly Daniel (that was the house-steward's name) opened this postern, the storm, blustering and howling terrifically, drove a heap of rubbish and broken pieces ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... secret of the place." Therewith he unlocked that press let into the wall there, pushed away the panels at the back, and stepped into a little room, where, stooping down, he lifted up a trap-door. We descended a flight of steep, narrow stairs, and came to a narrow postern, which he unlocked, and let us out into the court-yard. Then the old gentleman, the previous owner of the house, stepped up to the wall and pressed an iron knob, which projected only very triflingly from it; immediately ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann |
