"Provencal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and they had been of service to Count Thibaut during his stay in England. This Giffard had never been so far south before, and he seemed to feel that he had got into some sort of enchanted realm. He was more soldier than courtier, but his eyes said a great deal. The luxurious abundance of a Provencal castle, the smooth ease of the serving, the wit and gaiety of the people, all were new to him. He had attended state banquets, but they were as unlike the entertainment here provided as was the stern simplicity of his boyhood ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... place at a Provencal restaurant in the Rue Dauphine, celebrated for its literary waiters and its "Ayoli." As it was necessary to leave room for the supper, they ate and drank in moderation. The acquaintance, begun the evening before ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... exerted so profound an influence upon the literary history of other peoples as the poetry of the troubadours. Attaining the highest point of technical perfection in the last half of the twelfth and the early years of the thirteenth century, Provencal poetry was already popular in Italy and Spain when the Albigeois crusade devastated the south of France and scattered the troubadours abroad or forced them to seek other means of livelihood. The earliest lyric poetry of Italy is Provencal in all but language; almost as much may be said of Portugal ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor
... borrower. Chaucer, it seems, drew continually, through Lydgate and Caxton, from Guido di Colonna, whose Latin romance of the Trojan war was in turn a compilation from Dares Phrygius, Ovid, and Statius. Then Petrarch, Boccaccio, and the Provencal poets, are his benefactors: the Romaunt of the Rose is only judicious translation from William of Lorris and John of Meun: Troilus and Creseide, from Lollius of Urbino: The Cock and the Fox, from the Lais of Marie: The House of Fame, from the French ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... conceived and blended, which link together so many of the main poems of "Men and Women," close with "Cleon." Rudel, the troubadour, presenting, in the self-abandonment of his offering of love to the Lady of Tripoli, an impersonation of the chivalric love characteristic of the Provencal life of the twelfth century, intervenes, appropriately, last of all, between the preceding poems and the epilogue, which devotes heart and brain of the poet himself, with the creatures of his hand, to ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... back of his neck, above the low collar of his jersey, showed itself seamed into glazed irregular lozenges, like the hide of a crocodile. He cursed me and my kind healthily in very bad French and apostrophized his friends in Provencal, who in Provencal and bad French made responsive clamour. I had knocked him down on purpose. He was crippled for life. Who was I to go tearing through peaceful towns with my execrated locomotive and massacring innocent people? I tried to explain that the ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... always began with great enthusiasm and then something happened. For a time he studied French with tremendous eagerness. But he soon found that for a real knowledge of French you need first to get a thorough grasp of Old French and Provencal. But it proved impossible to do anything with these without an absolutely complete command of Latin. This Juggins discovered could only be obtained, in any thorough way, through Sanskrit, which of course lies at the base of it. So Juggins devoted himself to Sanskrit until he realised ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock
... Jansoulet might well have believed that he was in one of the frightful dens along the water front in Marseille, listening to a quarrel between a prostitute and a nervi, or looking on at some open-air fracas between Genoese, Maltese and Provencal women gleaning on the quay around bags of grain in process of unloading, and reviling each other at full speed in eddies of golden dust. She was the typical seaport Levantine, the spoiled, neglected child, who from her terrace, or from her ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... had recovered all my usual vigour, and I accompanied my converter to church every day, never missing a sermon. We likewise spent the evening together at the cafe, where we generally met a great many officers. There was among them a Provencal who amused everybody with his boasting and with the recital of the military exploits by which he pretended to have distinguished himself in the service of several countries, and principally in Spain. As he was truly a source of amusement, everybody pretended ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... often," he says, "have we not seen hearers agitated by terrible spasms, weep and laugh at once, and manifest all the symptoms of delirium and fever, while listening to the masterpieces of our great masters." He relates the case of a young Provencal musician, who blew out his brains at the door of the Opera after a second hearing of Spontini's "Vestale," having previously explained in a letter, that after this ecstatic enjoyment, he did not care to remain in this ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... ruddy-faced youth, with gray eyes and auburn hair; "let me play the air that Rene, the troubadour, taught me yesterday. I'll warrant thee 't will set thy feet a-flying, if I can but master the strain," and he hummed over the gay Provencal measure: ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... us that "Nowhere, except, perhaps, in some Persian or Provencal love-songs, can be found more ardent expressions ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... outset. Before he could reach Italy Urban had died in Perugia (October, 1264), having never entered Rome during his pontificate. His successor, Clement IV, a Provencal and therefore a subject of Charles, had been overpersuaded to accept the tiara, and naturally continued his predecessor's work. Charles arrived by sea, was welcomed in Rome where he assumed the ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... his thirty-ninth year. As a scholar, in his professional work, he had acquired a versatile knowledge of the Romance languages, and was an adept in old French and Provencal poetry; he had given a course of twelve lectures on English poetry before the Lowell Institute in Boston, which had made a strong impression on the community, and his work on the series of British Poets in connection with Professor Child, especially his biographical ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... experiments in the dialects of Cremona, Brescia and Verona, cities near Mantua, helped to form the Tuscan tongue. But besides the brief record of Dante, there are certain accounts of Sordello's life, very confused and conflicting, in the early Italian Chronicles and the Provencal lives of the Troubadours. Tiraboschi sifts these legends, leaving very little of them. According to him, Sordello was a Mantuan of noble family, born at Goito at the close of the twelfth century. He was a poet and warrior, though not, as some reports profess, captain-general or governor of Mantua. ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... Enimie is fully set forth in a Provencal poem of the thirteenth century by the troubadour Bertrand de Marseilles, who received his information from his friend the Prior of the monastery at Sainte-Enimie, which in the Middle Ages was the most important religious house ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... gulps—a performance that it would make a cow shudder to watch—threw back his head, and, with a hoarse burr, called for another. This time he spoke English; but the burr was decidedly Scotch. Pigalle now looked around at him—gross, pleasant, Provencal Pigalle—and nodded; then went on placidly shuffling the tiny cards in his ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Arts expired, resistless Dulness rose; 35 Goths, Priests, or Vandals,—all were Learning's foes. Till Julius[55] first recall'd each exiled maid, And Cosmo own'd them in the Etrurian shade: Then, deeply skill'd in love's engaging theme, The soft Provencal pass'd to Arno's stream: 40 With graceful ease the wanton lyre he strung; Sweet flow'd the lays—but love was all he sung. The gay description could not fail to move, For, led by nature, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... my simple song set you jingling? Nay, if I took and translated that hard heart into our Provencal facilities, I could so play about ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... how hot or how cold it was—what month in the year? It is unnecessary for Inness to cover his ground with snow to make his picture express a certain degree of cold, neither is it necessary for Montenard to fill his Provencal roads with clouds of dust to show how hot they are. This is done by the opalescent tones of the sky, by the values expressed in reflected lights and in the illuminated shadows, so that you feel in looking ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... exactness from data supplied by himself. In the poems of the Vita Nuova, Beatrice, until her death, was to him simply a poetical ideal, a type of abstract beauty, chosen according to the fashion of the day after the manner of the Provencal poets, but in a less carnal sense than theirs. "And by the fourth nature of animals, that is, the sensitive, man has another love whereby he loves according to sensible appearance, even as a beast.... ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... found widely spread, especially in Romance tongues, French, Italian, Provencal, and Portuguese; but it is also found in Ireland (see Celtic Fairy Tales), Hanover, Transylvania, Esthonia, and Russia; so that it has claims to be included in the fairy book of all Europe. Cosquin, ii., 209-14, gives ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs
... up to the age of five-and-forty, the dreadless Tarasconian had never once slept outside his own room. He had not even taken that obligatory trip to Marseilles which every sound Provencal makes upon coming of age. The most of his knowledge included Beaucaire, and yet that's not far from Tarascon, there being merely the bridge to go over. Unfortunately, this rascally bridge has so often been blown away by the gales, it is so long and frail, ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... a draught of vintage, that hath been Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth, Tasting of Flora and the country-green, Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth! O for a beaker full of the warm South, Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, And purple-stained mouth; That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, And with thee fade ...
— A Day with Keats • May (Clarissa Gillington) Byron
... I went back to sea, a lieutenant still, on board the Hercule, 100 guns—Captain Casy. Captain, petty officers, crew, all hands in fact save a few officers, were Provencal. Before a week was out I caught myself ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... villa, in a dell Above the fragrant warm Provencal shore, The dying Rachel in a chair they bore Up the steep ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... settled himself on the couch in the required attitude. His back was turned, but all the same the conversation continued for another moment, for he had that very morning received a letter from Plassans, the little Provencal town where he and the artist had known each other when they were wearing out their first pairs of trousers on the eighth form of the local college. However, they left off talking. The one was working with his mind far away from the world, while the ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... of vintage! that hath been Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth, Tasting of Flora and the country green, Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth! O for a beaker full of the warm South, Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, And purple-stained mouth; That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, And with thee fade ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... in the letter to La Fiammetta, prefixed to this poem, vulgar latino is evidently Italian ("Trovata una antichissima storia ... in latino volgare ... ho ridotta"), and not the Provencal tongue, as Mr. Craik suggests in his Literature and Learning in England, vol. ii. p. 48., where he supposes Boccaccio to have translated from, and not, as is ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 183, April 30, 1853 • Various
... Roger de Loria, advancing at daybreak to attack the Provencal Fleet of Charles of Naples (1283) in the harbour of Malta, "did a thing which should be reckoned to him rather as an act of madness," says Muntaner, "than of reason. He said, 'God forbid that I should attack them, all asleep as they are! Let the trumpets and nacaires sound to awaken ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... divined the hall beyond the porch. The hall delighted us, and I said to Doris as we passed through that the hotel must have been a nobleman's house some long while ago, when Orelay had a society of its own, perhaps a language, for in the seventeenth or the eighteenth century Provencal or some other dialect must have been written or spoken at Orelay. We admired the galleries overlooking the hall, and the staircase leading to them. We seemed to have been transported into the eighteenth century; the atmosphere ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... accepted literally or only in a figurative sense does not affect the transcendent power of his influence. His entire life and work illustrate the beauty of holiness. "Art in its widest sense gained a marvellous impulse from his work and effort," says Canon Knox Little. The French and Provencal literature and the schools of Byzantine art preceded the life of Francis; but his influence imparted a powerful wave of sympathetic and vital insight and awakened a world of new sensibilities of feeling. Indeed, it is a proverb of Italy, "Without Francis, ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... King of France, and accompanied him in the crusade that he was so foolish as to take part in. She had women-warriors, who did their cause immense mischief; and unless she has been greatly scandalized, she made her husband fit for heaven in a manner approved neither by the law nor the gospel. The Provencal ladies had no prejudices against Saracens. After her return to Europe, she got herself divorced from Louis, and married Henry Plantagenet, who was much her junior, she having previously been the mistress of his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... addressed himself to the porter at the gate in excellent French—almost too excellent for comprehension. For though French was at that date the Court tongue in England, as now in Belgium, it was Norman French, scarcely intelligible to a Parisian, and still less so to a Provencal. The porter understood only the general scope of the query—that the speaker wished to know if he and his companions might find lodging ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... traditions of Guienne seem to be much less vivid than those of Normandy or Brittany. I have heard Bretons speak of the Duchess Anne as the Scotch Jacobites still speak of the Stuarts. But though Coeur de Lion is still a popular hero in the land of Bertrand de Born, there is nothing there like the Provencal feeling in Provence. At St. Remy, the beautiful birthplace of Nostradamus, a lively waiter in the excellent hotel of the 'Cheval Blanc,' taking me for a Frenchman of the north, contrived very skilfully to let ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... said Adele, darting toward him, and snatching it from his hand, with a fire in her eye he had never seen there before,—a welling-up for a moment of the hot Provencal blood in her veins; "de grace! je vous en prie!" (in ecstatic moments her tongue ran to her own land and took up the echo of her first speech,)—then growing calm, as she held it, and looked into the pitying, wondering eyes of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... 15. Danger, in the Provencal Courts of Love, was the allegorical personification of the husband; and Disdain suitably represents the lover's corresponding difficulty from ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... of the old Latin speech in Gaul with that of the Teutonic invaders gave rise there to two very distinct dialects. These were the Langue d'Oc, or Provencal, the tongue of the South of France and of the adjoining regions of Spain and Italy; and the Langue d'Oil, or French proper, the language of the North. [Footnote: The terms Langue d'Oc and Langue d'Oil arose from the use of different words for yes, which in ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... tide of European civilization. Chanson and carole, dance-songs, troubadour lyrics, the ballade, rondel and Noel, amorous songs of French courtiers, pious hymns of French monks, began to sing themselves in England. The new grace and delicacy is upon every page of Chaucer. What was first Provencal and then French, became English when Chaucer touched it. From the shadow and grimness and elegiac pathos of Old English poetry we come suddenly into the light and color and gayety of Southern France. [Footnote: See ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... courteous signor, and of noble state, and virtuous; and in his time they did honourable things; and to his court came by custom all the gentlemen of Provence, and France, and Catalonia, for his courtesy and noble state; and there they made many cobbled verses, and Provencal ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... Provencal nobleman was known to dabble in magic, and there were one or two dark passages in his past life of which more than a whisper had gone abroad. Of being a student of alchemy, a "philosopher"—that is to say, a seeker after the philosopher's ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... but superficial, and though personally brave, sure to be bewildered when he found himself for the first time working the wheels and springs of that puzzling machine, an army in the field. A caustic old Provencal marquis, with his breast glittering with the stars of a whole constellation of knighthood, yet who sat with the cross-belts and cartouche-box of the rank and file upon him, agreeing with all the premises, stoutly denied the conclusions. "He is a coxcomb," ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... listened with rapture to this improvised poem of the king. When it was concluded, the fiery Provencal called out, in an ecstasy of enthusiasm: "You are not a mere mortal, sire; you are a king—a hero—yes, ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... see vol. ix. 108. It is the origin of the Fr. "Douane" and the Italian "Dogana" through the Spanish Aduana (Ad-Diwan) and the Provencal "Doana." Menage derives it from the Gr. {Greek} a place where goods are received, and others from "Doge" (Dux) for whom a tax on merchandise was levied at Venice. Littre (s.v.) will not decide, but rightly inclines to the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... singular dells, at once soft and secluded, fruitful and wild. We have thus one branch of the Northern religious imagination rising among the Scandinavian fiords, tempered in France by various encounters with elements of Arabian, Italian, Provencal, or other Southern poetry, and then reacting upon Southern England; while other forms of the same rude religious imagination, resting like clouds upon the mountains of Scotland and Wales, met and mingled with the Norman Christianity, ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... venerable Abbe, her tutor, was of a degree of culture rarely found in one so young. Though scarce eighteen summers had flown over her head at the time when we introduce her to our readers, she was intimately conversant with the French, Italian, Spanish, and Provencal tongues. The abundant pages of history, both ancient and modern, sacred and profane, had been opened for her by her devoted instructor. In music she played with exquisite grace and accuracy upon both the spinet and the harpsichord, while her voice, though lacking something in compass, was ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... shore, acquires possession of its treasures, and gives it his name. The claim of Petrarch was indeed somewhat like that of Amerigo Vespucci to the continent which should have derived its appellation from Columbus. The Provencal poets were unquestionably the masters of the Florentine. But they wrote in an age which could not appreciate their merits; and their imitator lived at the very period when composition in the vernacular language began to attract general attention. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... which one feels certain he had read, or at the very least containing some information which one feels certain he possessed. A real "Dante's library"[2] would comprise pretty well every book in Latin, Italian, French, or Provencal, "published," if we may use the term, up to the year 1300. Of course a good many Latin books were (may one say fortunately?) in temporary retirement at that time; but even of these, whether, as has been suggested, ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... are sometimes determined by accident. Glamour (see p. 145) was popularised by Scott, who found it in old ballad literature. Grail, the holy dish at the Last Supper, would be much less familiar but for Tennyson. Mascot, from a Provencal word meaning sorcerer, dates from Audran's operetta La Mascotte (1880). Jingo first appears in conjurors' jargon of the 17th century. It has been conjectured to represent Basque jinko, God, picked up by sailors. If this is the case, it is ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... as the word went, and yet remain grossly ignorant of the simplest elements of the history of language. In those days Latin was held by scholars to be derived from Greek—where the Greek came from nobody knew or cared, though it was thought, from Hebrew. German was a jargon, Provencal a 'patois,' and Sanscrit an obsolete tongue, held in reverence by Hindoo savages. The vast connections of language with history were generally ignored. Hebrew was assumed, as a matter of course, to have been the primeval language, and it was wicked to doubt ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... book is the Provencal town of Plassans, and the tragic events attending the rising of the populace against the Coup d'Etat are told with accuracy and knowledge. There is a charming love idyll between Silvere Mouret, a son of Ursule Macquart, and a young ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... But the Provencal student declared that history was a thoroughly despicable exercise of rhetoric. According to him, the only true history was the natural history of man. Michelet was in the right path when he came in contact with the fistula of Louis XIV., but he fell back into ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... sure that we had. The Provencal women, the women of a part of South Germany, and certain favoured spots of Italy, might challenge us, he thought. This was a point I could argue on, or, I should rather say, take up the cudgels, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... activity without which one cannot become a good officer. Having by this means got together some capital, he married a French woman, Mlle. Lamarre, the daughter of an Antibes surgeon, and settled in this town, where he had built up a small business in olive oil and dried Provencal fruit, when the Revolution of 1789 ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... your principal residence, Pezenas Toulouse, or Bordeaux; but do not be persuaded to go to Aix en Provence, which, by experience, I know to be at once the hottest and the coldest place in the world, from the ardor of the Provencal sun, and the sharpness of the Alpine winds. I also earnestly recommend to you, for your complaint upon your breast, to take, twice a-day, asses' or (what is better mares' milk), and that for these six months at least. Mingle turnips, as much as ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... series of such unmatchable little dinners; chief parts, under that charming Presidency, being done by "Grand-Chamberlain Baron de" Something-or-other, "by your humble servant Bielfeld, M. Jordan, and a Marquis d'Argens, famous Provencal gentleman now in the suite of her Highness:" [Bielfeld, ii. 74-78.]—feasts of the Barmecide I much doubt, poor Bielfeld being in this Chapter very fantastic, MISDATEful to a mad extent; and otherwise, except as to general effect, worth little ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... down in the west and their shadows to stream down the road in front of them. Wary and careful they must be, with watchful eyes to the right and the left, for this was no man's land, and their only passports were those which hung from their belts. Frenchmen and Englishmen, Gascon and Provencal, Brabanter, Tardvenu, Scorcher, Flayer, and Free Companion, wandered and struggled over the whole of this accursed district. So bare and cheerless was the outlook, and so few and poor the dwellings, that Sir Nigel began to have fears as to whether he might find food and quarters for his ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Richard Coeur de Lion has even been mentioned in this capacity. The courts were held at Pierrefeu, Digne, and Avignon according to tradition, women alone could act as judges, and appeals might be made from one court to another. This tradition but goes to show that after the decay of the Provencal civilization, its various ideas and ideals were drawn up into formal documents, that the spirit of the age might be preserved, and they in turn were taken by following generations in good faith as coexistent with the ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... Roche-Hugon was a young Provencal patronized by Napoleon; his fate might probably be some splendid embassy. He had won the Emperor by his Italian suppleness and a genius for intrigue, a drawing-room eloquence, and a knowledge of manners, which are so good a substitute ...
— Domestic Peace • Honore de Balzac
... Canto IX. The next spirit with whom Beatrice converses is the fair Cunizza, who like the Magdalen "loved much," and therefor obtained pardon for her sins. Before vanishing, she foretells coming political events, and introduces the Provencal bard Folco, whose poems on love were to be republished after five hundred years of oblivion. After relating his life, this poet informs Dante the harlot Rahab was admitted to this heaven in reward for saving Joshua's spies. This spirit concludes his ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... residence. The Queen at the Castle would thus be a near neighbour of the royal fugitives, and it is interesting to think of the meeting, the sympathy and mutual condolences of the two women. Margaret, the fervid Provencal, with her passionate sense of wrong and restless energy, and the hopeless task she had of maintaining and inspiring to play his part with any dignity her too patient and gentle king; and Mary, the fair and placid Fleming, ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... the alley, and among the outcries of all the waiting drivers, no one paid any heed to this wild yell, which might have been the woman's usual cry. But this gibberish, intelligible to Jacques Collin, sent to his ear in a mongrel language of their own—a mixture of bad Italian and Provencal—this important news: ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... with his Provencal accent, "a man is a sailor, or he is not; he knows his course, or he is nothing but a fresh-water lubber. I was obstinate, and wished to try the channel. The gentleman took me by the collar, and told ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... she laid a light hand on my arm; and I piloted her to the desired corner. It seemed that the chance was with me. The little fluent Provencal had just vacated his seat; and when the prima-donna had acknowledged the hasty mention of my name, with a bare inclination of her head, I was emboldened to succeed to it. And then I was silent. In the perfection of that dolorous ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... that only scholars were capable of writing in the old classical forms. The popular love-poetry, if it existed, has perished and left no traces; henceforth, for the five centuries that elapsed till the birth of Provencal and Italian poetry, love lay voiceless, as though entranced and ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... happily unhappy over the late disappearance of his Glorious Lady. The peerless beauty of Padua, the incomparable Ippolita, was gone. His business was to devise dirges, monodies, laments, descortz in the Provencal manner; to cry "Heigho!" and "Well-a-day!" not "Ban!" or "Out, haro!" To have these high frenzies, these straining states of the soul, disturbed by the unclaimed remains of a resolving Jew, was a cruel test. Yet, he reflected within himself, if his ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... a dozen or more architectural styles in what is known as the France of to-day. The Provencal (more properly, says Fergusson, it should be called "Gallia Narbonese,") one of the most beautiful and clearly defined of all; the Burgundian, with its suggestion of luxuriance and, if not massiveness, at least ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... 100%, rapidly declining regional dialects and languages (Provencal, Breton, Alsatian, Corsican, Catalan, ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... the forester to turn aside to the group of servants, but in blank amazement saw him lead the way through the poor at the gate; and advancing to the porch with a courteous bending of his head, he said in the soft Provencal—far more familiar than English to Adam's ears—"Hast room for ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... mentality, the language of the people make you realize that regarding Monaco as a separate country is not wholly a polite fiction to relieve the French Government of the responsibility for the Casino. These people are different, children as well as grown-ups. They are neither French nor Italian, Provencal nor Catalan, but as distinct as mountain Basques are from French and Spanish. It is not a racial group distinction, as with the Basques. In blood, the Monegasques are affiliated to ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... and his career are as unaffectedly charming as his style, and more of a piece than his elaborate works of fiction. A sunny Provencal childhood is clouded by family misfortunes; then comes a year of wretched slavery as usher in a provincial school; then the inevitable journey to Paris with a brain full of verses and dreams, and the beginning ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... of a good Provencal stock at Aix, in the year 1715. He had scarcely any of that kind of education which is usually performed in school-classes, and he was never able to read either Latin or Greek. Such slight knowledge as he ever got of the famous writers among the ancients was in translations. ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 2 of 3) - Essay 1: Vauvenargues • John Morley
... life became wonderful and heavenly, and a paradise was created as out of the wrecks of Eden. And as this creation itself is poetry, so its creators were poets; and language was the instrument of their art: 'Galeotto fu il libro, e chi lo scrisse.' The Provencal Trouveurs, or inventors, preceded Petrarch, whose verses are as spells, which unseal the inmost enchanted fountains of the delight which is in the grief of love. It is impossible to feel them without becoming a portion of that beauty which we contemplate: it were superfluous ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... says, corresponds to the writing, with planchette, of scraps from the Chanson de Roland, by a person who had never consciously read a line of it, and who did not even know what stratum of Old French was represented by the fragments. Miss X. seems not to know either; for she calls it 'Provencal'. Similar instances of memory revived are not very uncommon in dreams. Miss X. can consciously put a group of fanciful characters into the crystal, while this is beyond the power of the seer known to the writer, who has attempted to perceive what a friend is doing at a distance, but with ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... in here, I shall be inclined to throw a rind of cheese at his head," I thought; but he did not beard me in my den. The voice passed away, and presently I heard another, unmistakably that of a woman, giving vent to strange profanities in softest Provencal French. The speaker was apostrophising some person or animal, who was, according to her, the most insupportable of Heaven's creatures; and at last, with calls upon martyred saints, and cries of "Fanny-anny, Fanny-anny," there mingled a scuffling and trotting ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... was afterward so well known for his eloquent speeches against the Corn Laws. In 1840 came a small volume, bound, after the fashion of the time, in gray paper boards, and called "Sordello," after the Provencal poet mentioned in the "Purgatory" of Dante. The book appeared without preface or dedication, but in the collected edition of 1863 it bears a note addressed by Mr. Browning to his friend Monsieur Milsand, of Dijon, which contains the characteristic ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... on the following day, near Bazas, that these two encountered Adam de Gourdon, a Provencal knight, with whom the Prince fought for a long while, without either contestant giving way; in consequence a rendezvous was fixed for the November of that year, and afterward the Prince and de Gourdon parted, highly ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... look!' Christian exclaimed, on entering. 'We enjoyed your Provencal letter enormously. That's a ramble I have always meant to do. ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... principally, to the discovery of the mariners' compass. The first clear notice of it appears in a Provencal poet of the end of the twelfth century. In the thirteenth century it was used by the Norwegians in their voyages to and from Iceland, who made it the device of an order of knighthood of the highest rank; and from a passage in Barber's Bruce, it must have been known in Scotland, ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... to Upper Egypt under General Desaix, a Provencal [Footnote: Provencal. Provence was an ancient government of southeastern France. It became part of the crown lands in 1481 under Louis XI. The term Provencals is used loosely to include dwellers in the south of France.] ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... if it could not come up to breathe the air. The European eel will creep during the night upon the grass; but I have seen a very vigorous gymnotus that had sprung out of the water, die on the ground. M. Provencal and myself have proved by our researches on the respiration of fishes, that their humid bronchiae perform the double function of decomposing the atmospheric air, and of appropriating the oxygen contained in water. They ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... all that over there, speaking as though he were addressing the Chambre, and as though he had known Africa intimately from his childhood, he noticed gradually and with alarm that the topic was changing; just a moment ago it was Africa and its luckless niggers; the Provencal imagination picturing them in glowing colours, and the Provencal tongue rolling off their disabilities and woes. One would have fancied from the fervour of the man that is was Ferminard who had just returned from the Congo, ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... Gloucester, natural son of Henry I. Henry II. acquired a taste for the same narratives, and at his request Robert Wace, in 1155, wrote in French the first history of Arthur, thus opening the path in which walked after him a host of poets or imitators of all nationalities, French, Provencal, Italian, Spanish, English, Scandinavian, Greek, and Georgian. We need not belittle the glory of the first trouveres who put into a language, then read and understood from one end of Europe to ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... would translate them, "Because I see it in that true mirror who in Himself affords a likeness to [or of] all other things, while nothing gives back to Him a likeness of Himself." Here pareglio corresponds with the Provencal parelh and the later French pareil,—and the Provencal phrase rendre le parelha affords an example of similar application to that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... There were the Popes driven out of Rome by a people who, in their mediaeval nightmare, tried to restore at the bidding of Rienzi the ancient republic of the Consuls. Don Gil was not a man to live long in the pleasant little Provencal court; like a good archbishop of Toledo, he wore the coat-of-mail underneath his tunic, and as there were no Moors to fight he wished to strike at heretics instead. He went to Italy as the champion of the Church; all the adventurers of Europe and the bandits of the country formed his army. ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the Koran is taught as a dead language in the college of Mecca. By the Danish traveller, this ancient idiom is compared to the Latin; the vulgar tongue of Hejaz and Yemen to the Italian; and the Arabian dialects of Syria, Egypt, Africa, &c., to the Provencal, Spanish, and Portuguese, (Niebuhr, Description de ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... Trin-Chinese, Japanese), Danish (Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Laplandic), Hebrew (Antique, Rabbinic, Samaritan), Egyptian, or Coptic-Egyptian and Coptic, Arabic, Etrusean, Phoenician, Flemish, French (Breton-French, Lorraine-French, Provencal), Gothic and Visi-Gothic, and Greek and Greek-Latin, Modern Greek, Georgian or Iberian, Cretian or Rhetian, Illyrian, Indo-oriental (Angolese, Burmese or Avian, Hindostanee, Malabar, Malayan, Sanscrit), ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... Provencal is cleft in two; Arnold of Thoulouse through the breast before; Hubert of Tours, sir Dionysius, Hugh, And Claud, pour forth their ghosts in reeking gore. Odo, Ambaldo, Satallon ensue, And Walter next; of Paris are the four — With others, that by me ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... partly found in the preparation of the soil for their seed by the medieval heresies, but still more in the strong particularistic spirit of that region. The ancient provinces of Poitou and Guienne, Gascony and Languedoc, were almost as conscious of their southern and Provencal culture as they were of their French citizenship. The strength of the centralizing tendencies lay north of the Loire; in the south local privileges were more esteemed and more insisted upon. While Protestantism was ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... defeat!" Scornfully she looked upon me With a measured eye and cold— Scornfully she viewed the token, Though her fingers wrought the gold; And she answered, faintly flushing, "Hast thou kept it, then, so long? Worthy matter for a minstrel To be told in knightly song! Worthy of a bold Provencal, Pacing through the peaceful plain, Singing of his lady's favour, Boasting of her silken chain, Yet scarce worthy of a warrior Sent to wrestle for a crown. Is this all that thou hast brought me From thy fields of high renown? Is this all the trophy carried ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... horns, against which Elleen had rebelled; since York and even London were evidently behind the fashion. Margaret's hair was bound with a broad band of daisies, and Yolande's with violets, both in allusion to their names, Yolande being the French corruption of Violante, her Provencal name, in allusion to the golden violet. Jean thought of the Scottish thistle, and studied the dresses, tight-fitting 'cotte hardis' of bright, deep, soft, rose colour, edged with white fur, and white skirts ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Lettes, after leading a scandalous life, had professed a sort of Calvinism, had married, and retired to Geneva, and his successor had not found it possible to live at Montauban from the enmity of the inhabitants. Strongly situated, with a peculiar municipal constitution of its own, and used to Provencal independence both of thought and deed, the inhabitants had been so unanimous in their Calvinism, and had offered such efficient resistance, as to have wrung from Government reluctant sanction for the open observance of the Reformed ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... noteworthy that of all the cities of Italy Florence is the most modern. Genoa and Pisa had been rivals in commercial activity a hundred years before the merchants of Florence were known out of Tuscany. Sicily had caught the gift of song from the Provencal troubadours half a century before the Florentine singers. Too insignificant to share in the great struggle of the Empire and the Papacy, among the last to be divided into Guelph and Ghibelline, Florence emerged into communal greatness ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... the philosophic student in doubt, whether the language has not since then lost more in sweetness and flexibility, than it has gained in condensation and copiousness)—I read with sedulous accuracy the Minnesinger (or singers of love, the Provencal poets of the Swabian court) and the metrical romances; and then laboured through sufficient specimens of the master singers, their degenerate successors; not however without occasional pleasure from the rude, yet interesting strains ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... poems (like that of Robert Wace) are connected with the Confrerie, to him is due the beginning of those "Palinods" sung in honour of the Virgin in the Church of St. Jean des Pres, which were called the "Puy de Conception," like the Puy d'Amour of the Provencal troubadours. The name probably originated in the refrain which ran through all the various metres allowed in the poems which were sent in for competition, as Pierre Grognet describes ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... Charles, "I know it; it is Valetta, so named from the noble Provencal Valette, who, after vainly endeavoring to defend the holy sepulchre from the defilements of the infidels, was by them driven with his faithful Christian army from island to island, until he ultimately planted the standard of the ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... ideals of courtesy and woman service which were soon to become the cult of European society. The Countess Marie, possessing her royal mother's tastes and gifts, made of her court a social experiment station, where these Provencal ideals of a perfect society were planted afresh in congenial soil. It appears from contemporary testimony that the authority of this celebrated feudal dame was weighty, and widely felt. The old ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... population); rapidly declining regional dialects (Provencal, Breton, Alsatian, Corsican, ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... was very pretty, too, with the brown oval face and the great black soft eyes and the beautiful form of the Southern blood that had run in the veins of her father, who had been a sailor of Marseilles, while her mother had been a native of the Provencal country. Altogether, Reine Allix knew that her beloved one could not have done better or more wisely, if choose at all he must. "Some people, indeed," she said to herself as she climbed the street ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... enough, the characters have nothing original in their conception, and yet we are fascinated by the detailed truth of the portraiture from the first page to the last. The scenes are laid in Farnoux, a town in the old Provencal districts. The ancient views and manners are still retained, and interest us by the force of contrast with our own. Mademoiselle Le Marchand, an odd old maid, with a genius for painting, is really the character of the book. Denise, the heroine, is ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... comforter he took off when he began to sing. Old France and New France, and the loves and hates and joys and sorrows of all lands, met that night in the soul of this dwarf with the divine voice, who did not give them his name, so that they called him, for want of a better title, the Provencal. And again two nights afterwards it was the same, and yet again a third night and a fourth, and the simple folk, and wise folk also, went mad ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... survived long enough to become the vehicle of lyric strains, mostly on subjects of love and gallantry, still familiar in mention, and famous as the songs of the troubadours. The flourishing time of the troubadours was in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Provencal is an alternative name ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... name and its more modern form of Almond came to us through the French amande (Provencal, amondala), from the Greek and Latin amygdalus. What this word meant is not very clear, but the native Hebrew name of the plant (shaked) is most expressive. The word signifies "awakening," and so is a most fitting name for a tree whose beautiful flowers, appearing ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... people, with just the slightest infusion of the courtlier Norman element, which gives to his writings something of the high-bred air that the short upper-lip gives to the human countenance. In his earlier poems he was under the influence of the Provencal Troubadours, and in his "Flower and the Leaf," and other works of a similar class, he riots in allegory; he represents the cardinal virtues walking about in human shape; his forests are full of beautiful ladies with coronals on their heads; courts ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... derivation of the word Noel, some say it is a contraction of the French nouvelles (tidings), les bonnes nouvelles, that is "The good news of the Gospel"; others take it as an abbreviation of the Gascon or Provencal nadaue, nadal, which means the same as the Latin natalis, that is, dies natalis, "the birthday." In "The Franklin's Tale," Chaucer alludes to "Nowel" as a festive cry at Christmastide: "And 'Nowel' crieth every ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... and that of their children was to do so much to cheer Stevenson during his remaining months on the Riviera. The French painter Robinet (sometimes in his day known as le Raphael des cailloux, from the minuteness of detail which he put into his Provencal coast landscapes) was a chivalrous and affectionate soul, in whom R. L. S. delighted in spite of his ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... age, and without other fortune than his fine presence and that southern beauty which, when it reaches perfection, may be called sublime (of which Antinous, the favorite of Adrian, is the type), Charles resolved to wager his Provencal audacity—taking it, like many another youth, for a vocation—on the red cloth of war. On his way to the base of the army at Nice he met the Breton. The pair became intimate, partly from the contrasts in their characters; they drank from the same cup at ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... spouted pyramids of thin, gold flame against a sky of violet, and the indefinable fragrance of spring was in the air. We met handsome, up-standing peasants in red or blue berets, singing melodiously in patois—Provencal, perhaps—as they walked beside their string of stout cart-horses. And the songs, and the dark eyes of the singers, and the wonderful horned harness which the noble beasts wore with dignity, all seemed to answer us: "Yes, you ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... brougham turning round took the lead. Long before this convoy reached the town another carriage containing four gentlemen (of whom one was leaning back languidly with his arm in a sling) whisked past and vanished ahead in a cloud of white, Provencal dust. And this is the last appearance of Captain Blunt in Monsieur George's narrative. Of course he was only told of it later. At the time he was not in a condition to notice things. Its interest in his surroundings remained of a hazy and nightmarish kind for many days together. From time ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... said. She was a confirmed Oh-looker. I had noticed this at Cannes, where she had drawn my attention in this manner on various occasions to such diverse objects as a French actress, a Provencal filling station, the sunset over the Estorels, Michael Arlen, a man selling coloured spectacles, the deep velvet blue of the Mediterranean, and the late mayor of New York in a striped one-piece bathing suit. "Oh, look at that sweet little star ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... started long ago Upon their journey to a-Becket's shrine, Were happy that a poet's pen divine Inspired by all a genial wit can know, Or sympathetic human heart bestow, Recorded in immortal rhythmic line, As sweet as breath of old Provencal wine, Their pilgrim tales and songs of ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... of the ballade in its most elaborate and highly-finished form, which it cannot be said to have reached until the 14th century. It arose from the canzone de ballo of the Italians, but it is in Provencal literature that the ballade first takes a modern form. It was in France, however, and not until the reign of Charles V., that the ballade as we understand it began to flourish; instantly it became popular, and in a few years the out-put of these poems was ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... watched her with an unceasing jealousy. Much had happened since those days. Madame de Camours' watchings had not been in vain, a decree had been obtained from the Pope annulling the marriage. Much had happened. But even after twenty years the memory of that formal life in the Provencal chateau was vivid enough; and Mrs. Thesiger yawned. Then she laughed. Monsieur de Camours and his mother had always been able to ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... for a draught of vintage, that hath been Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth, Tasting of Flora and the country-green, Dance, and Provencal song, and sun-burnt mirth! O for a beaker full of the warm South, Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... illustrious prisoner, and placed him in the strong Castle of Triefels. Months passed away, and no tidings reached him from without. He deemed himself forgotten in his captivity, and composed an indignant sirvente in his favorite Provencal tongue. The second verse we give in the original, for the sake of being brought so near to the ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... yellowish wash, and roofed with hollow tiles of a good red, constitute the grange. The rafters bend under the weight of this brick-kiln. The windows, inserted casually, without any attempt at symmetry, have enormous shutters, painted yellow. The garden in which it stands is a Provencal garden, enclosed by low walls, built of big round pebbles set in layers, alternately sloping or upright, according to the artistic taste of the mason, which finds here its only outlet. The mud in which they are set is falling away ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... drink water, and are satisfied; whereas English wine-merchants add brandy to a good many foreign wines, or they would be quite unacceptable from being deficient in combustible. It is for the same reason, also, that Russians can swallow, without wincing, bumpers of brandy which would kill a Provencal outright: and that the Swedish Government has no end of trouble to keep the country people from converting into brandy the corn that ought to go to the miller; whilst the Mohammedan Arabs accept without difficulty that ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... MIDI, an Episode of the French Revolution. Translated from the Provencal of Felix Gras. By ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... a Provencal gentleman, and lord of the manors of Caille and of Rougon, in 1655 married a young lady called Judith le Gouche. As is common in France, and also in certain parts of Britain, this local squire was best known ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... A very clownish Provencal rustic heard of the extremity of the King, while on his way from Marseilles to Paris, and came this morning to Versailles with a remedy, which he said would cure the gangrene. The King was so ill, and the doctors so at their wits' ends, that they consented to receive him. Fagon tried to ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... of the French Revolution. Translated from the Provencal by Mrs. Catharine A. Janvier. With an Introduction by Thomas A. Janvier. ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... young and old best learn cheerfulness, patience, self-control, and the spirit of service and of duty. The home is the true school of courtesy, of which woman is always the best practical instructor. "Without woman," says the Provencal proverb, "men were but ill-licked cubs." Philanthropy radiates from the home as from a center. "To love the little platoon we belong to in society," said Burke, "is the germ of all public affections." The wisest and best have not been ashamed to own it to be their greatest joy and happiness to sit ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... and imagination of the time broken out in one great swell as an inspiration to glorious deeds, illuminating the world, and making an immortal epoch. Such, in one of its aspects, is the significance of chivalry, whose crest-wave broke into bloom in the Provencal literature; whose consummate flower, lifted far aloft, was Dante's homage to Beatrice. The inspiration of chivalry was the love of woman; but that love was spiritual. It aimed not at a personal ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... the neighborhood of Aix, he betrayed, when animated, a slight Provencal accent that gave a peculiar flavor ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... in literary subjects, and especially in the romances of the Carlovingian cycle. This interest was not confined to the upper circles of society, but spread through all classes, and was no doubt largely increased by the songs and the improvisations of strolling minstrels and Provencal story-tellers. First of all the Florentine Pulci, and after him Boiardo and Bello of Ferrara, sought inspiration in the same source, and later on their example was followed by Ariosto and Tasso. And Poggio, writing in the fifteenth century, tells us how ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... Nostre-Dame, called Nostradamus (1503-1566), a Provencal astrologer, whose prophecies were published under the title of "Centuries." He was invited to the French court by Catherine de' Medici, and became the ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... tamable and affectionate of his tribe, and therefore, I suppose, fastest vanishing from field and wood, the buzzard. That name comes from the Latin "buteo," still retained by the ornithologists; but, in its original form, valueless, to you. But when you get it comfortably corrupted into Provencal "Busac," (whence gradually the French busard, and our buzzard,) you get from it the delightful compound "busacador," "adorer of buzzards"—meaning, generally, a sporting person; and then you have Dante's Bertrand de Born, the first troubadour of war, bearing witness to you how the love of mere ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... that Southern Provencal blood: alas, collisions, as was once said, must occur in a career of Freedom; different directions will produce such; nay different velocities in the same direction will! To much that went on there History, busied elsewhere, would not specially give heed: to troubles of Uzez, troubles of Nismes, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... company consisted of a tall well-looking officer, wearing the croix d'honneur; a shrewd old Provencal merchant, to whom we were indebted for much valuable travelling information; two young friends, one of whom sang very agreeably and unaffectedly, and the other, a lively French Falstaff ate and talked enough for both; and last, not least, an old gentleman ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... what philologer, if he had nothing but the vocabulary and grammar of the French and English languages to guide him, would dream of the real causes of the unlikeness of a Norman to a Provencal, of an Orcadian to a Cornishman? How readily might he be led to suppose that the different climatal conditions to which these speakers of one tongue have so long been exposed, have caused their physical differences; and how little would he ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... France the poet was called a trouvere, in Provence a troubadour, in Germany a minnesinger. The traveling minstrel was in France a jongleur (Provencal jogleur). The distinction between trouvere or troubadour and jongleur is not always to be sharply drawn. Sometimes in France and Provence the same poet composed his verses and sang them—was both trouvere or troubadour and jongleur; while ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... Catalonia may divide with Provence the glory of being the region where the voice of song was first awakened in modern Europe. Whatever may be the relative claims of the two countries to precedence in this respect, [86] it is certain that under the family of Barcelona, the Provencal of the south of France reached its highest perfection; and, when the tempest of persecution in the beginning of the thirteenth century fell on the lovely valleys of that unhappy country, its minstrels found a hospitable asylum in the court of the kings of Aragon; ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... Lantier returned. He was a young fellow of twenty-six, a short, dark, and handsome Provencal. He pushed her aside, and when she upbraided him, shook her violently, and then sent her out to pawn a few ragged, soiled garments. When she returned with a five-franc-piece he slipped it into his pocket and lay down on the bed and appeared to fall asleep. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... strolled along le Passage, looking at the fans, the bangles and the litter of cheap trinkets that each window was filled with. On the left at the corner of the Boulevard was our cafe. As I came forward the waiter moved one of the tin tables, and then I saw the fat Provencal. But just as if he had seen me yesterday he said, "Tiens! c'est vous; une deme tasse? oui ... garcon, une deme tasse." Presently the conversation turned on Marshall; they had not seen much of him lately. ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... the world; Marseilles, Arles, Avignon, Montpellier, Toulouse, were the wonted stapes of their active traders. What civilisers, what teachers they were—those same Saracens! How much in arms and in arts we owe them! Fathers of the Provencal poetry they, far more than even the Scandinavian scalds, have influenced the literature of Christian Europe. The most ancient chronicle of the Cid was written in Arabic, a little before the Cid's death, by two of his pages, who were ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and cathedral towns. And when a new taste for chivalrous romances was awakened in Germany; when the stories of Arthur and his knights, of Charlemagne and his champions, of Achilles, AEneas, and Alexander, in their modern dress, were imported by French and Provencal knights, who, on their way to Jerusalem, came to stay at the castles of their German allies, the first poets who ventured to imitate these motley compositions were priests, not laymen. A few short extracts from Konrad's "Roland" ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... that without his interpreter; for in those days the Provencal tongue was an accomplishment of all well-born persons, and it was not unlike certain dialects ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... her dresses, assisted by Blanche's Provencal maid, Louise. About eleven o'clock, however, Jean tapped at her door and said: "A peasant from Allamont, across the valley, has brought a letter, mademoiselle. He says an English gentleman gave it to him to deliver to you personally. He ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... A good rule is to boil in the wine a quince stuck full of cloves—the thorough cooking of the quince shows that the wine is cooked too. Set to cool in earthen pans, and when cold bottle and cork and seal. The Provencal cooked-wine goes back to Roman times. Martial speaks of "Cocta fumis ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... unacquainted with music. The few that play upon instruments, attend only to the execution. They have no genius nor taste, nor any knowledge of harmony and composition. Among the French, a Nissard piques himself on being Provencal; but in Florence, Milan, or Rome, he claims the honour of being born a native of Italy. The people of condition here speak both languages equally well; or, rather, equally ill; for they use a low, uncouth phraseology; and their pronunciation is extremely vitious. Their vernacular tongue ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... navigators, was to rock my youth, the providing of the cradle necessary for that operation was entrusted by Fate to the most casual assemblage of irresponsible young men (all, however, older than myself) that, as if drunk with Provencal sunshine, frittered life away in joyous levity on the model of Balzac's "Histoire des Treize" qualified by a dash of romance de ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... that the four travellers were now lodged. A place was assigned to them where to bestow their baggage; and they took possession of their quarters amid the silent stares of the whole community. They asked their renegade countryman, the Provencal, if they were safe. He replied that they were; but this did not wholly reassure them, and they spent a somewhat wakeful night. In the morning, they opened their budgets, and began a brisk trade in knives, awls, beads, and other trinkets, which they exchanged ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... one comes across an expression which is in the vocabulary of everybody to-day, and one realises how very ancient some of these popular aphorisms must be. 'It is not alle golde that glareth,' wrote Chaucer, and the same theme was sung in Provencal by Amanieu des Escas near a hundred years before. But, like 'A bird in the hand,' it is so applicable to the failings to which mankind is prone, that its origin must surely have been far beyond even the classics of the old world, back in the dim ages of man's history. Common ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... Provencal declared; "and those chaps must be crazy to take them through the forest, where the rains of the past few days have left the roads in such a state that they sink in the mud up to ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... arrangement of matter in the two large volumes of M. Petit de Julleville and his fellow-labourers, to whom and to the writings of M. Gaston Paris I am on almost every page indebted. Many matters in dispute have here to be briefly stated in one way; there is no space for discussion. Provencal literature does not appear in this volume. It is omitted from the History of M. Petit de Julleville and from that of M. Lanson. In truth, except as an influence, it forms no part of literature in the ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... of the Gospel as inculcated in the Bible and delivered to them by their fathers. Their ancient manuscripts, still extant, attest to the purity of their doctrines. They are written, like the Nobla Leycon, in the Romance or Provencal—the earliest of the modern classical languages, the language of the troubadours—though now only spoken as a patois in Dauphiny, Piedmont, Sardinia, the north of Spain, ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... the brown soil in an acre of violets— Large odorous violets—and answers slowly A child's swift babble; or else at noon The labourers come. They rest in the shadow, Eating their dinner of herbs, and are merry. Soft speech Provencal under the olives! Like a queen's raiment from days long perished, Breathing aromas of old unremembered Perfumes, and shining in dust-covered palaces With sudden hints of forgotten splendour— So on the lips of ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... lady of great and ancient rank relate that the late Cardinal du Bellay, whilst a Bishop and Cardinal, married Madame de Chastillon, and died married; and this lady said it in conversing with Monsieur de Manne, a Provencal of the house of Seulal, and Bishop of Frejus, who had attended the said Cardinal during fifteen years at the Court of Rome, and had been one of his private protonotaries. The conversation turning upon the said Cardinal, this lady asked Monsieur de Manne if he (the Cardinal) had ever said ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... sense of the word 'ballad,' or rather of its French and Provencal predecessors, balada, balade (derived from the late Latin ballare, to dance), was 'a song intended as the accompaniment to a dance,' a sense long obsolete.[1] Next came the meaning, a simple song of sentiment or romance, of two verses ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... national languages, the independent Romance language, which is still used in some parts of the Canton of Graubuenden, that which is known specially as Romansch, is not recognized. It is left in the same position in which Welsh and Gaelic are left in Great Britain, in which Basque, Breton, Provencal, Walloon, and Flemish are left within the borders of that French kingdom which has grown so as ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... sounds trumpetlike along the track of the Paris-Lyons-Mediterranean, in the limpid, vibrant blue of a Provencal sky, inquisitive heads are visible at all the doors of the express train, and from carriage to carriage the travellers say to each other: "Ah! here is Tarascon!.. Now, for a ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... the type and depict purely rustic scenes. Others—and the fact is at least significant—serve to convey allusions, political, personal or didactic: a variety found as early as the twelfth century in Provencal, and about the fourteenth in northern French. Wandering scholars adopted the form from the knightly singers and produced a plentiful crop of Latin pastoralia, usually of a somewhat burlesque nature. An idea of the general style of these may be gathered ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... her most beloved poet. Like Vernon Lee and like Mary Robinson, she had fallen in love with the life and art of Tuscany; and, without even finishing her Tristan, the first part of which had inspired in Burne-Jones dreamy aquarelles, she wrote Provencal verses and French poems expressing Italian ideas. She had sent her 'Yseult la Blonde' to "Darling," with a letter inviting her to spend a month with her at Fiesole. She had written: "Come; you will see the most beautiful things in the world, and ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... have gone back, as men for four centuries have constantly gone back, to the manner of the ancient Greeks. Just as that clever experimenter in verse, Mr. Ezra Pound, has created something of an effect by repeating the very metres, melodies, and mannerisms of the Provencal troubadours, so Mr. Hewlett, modelling his style upon the far finer Greek originals, produced an effect which was better than Mr. Pound's in proportion as the Greek tragedians are superior to the troubadours. In his execution ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... acquaintance with the ordinary French literature; I took lessons in various bodily exercises, in none of which, however, I made any proficiency; and at Montpellier I attended the excellent winter courses of lectures at the Faculte des Sciences, those of M. Anglada on chemistry, of M. Provencal on zoology, and of a very accomplished representative of the eighteenth century metaphysics, M. Gergonne, on logic, under the name of Philosophy of the Sciences. I also went through a course of the higher mathematics ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... was occupied during the beginning of the glee maiden's lay; but objects which called his attention powerfully, as the songstress proceeded, affected the current of his thoughts, and riveted them on what was passing in the courtyard of the monastery. The song was in the Provencal dialect, well understood as the language of poetry in all the courts of Europe, and particularly in Scotland. It was more simply turned, however, than was the general cast of the sirventes, and rather resembled the lai of a Norman minstrel. It ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... perhaps as many as two hundred years, the little Provencal village of Sur Varne was all bustle and stir, for it was the week before Christmas; and always, in all the world, no one has known better how to keep the joyous holiday than have the happy-hearted people of Provence, the southeastern corner ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... man who looked like an Italian or Provencal fisherman, with a shrewd, sunburnt, clean-shaven face. He was leaning over a pack of cards, and was enveloped in ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... do not despair of this stout Nautilus, as you do; and in four days we shall know what to hold to on the Pacific tides. Besides, flight might be possible if we were in sight of the English or Provencal coast; but on the Papuan shores, it is another thing; and it will be time enough to come to that extremity if the Nautilus does not recover itself again, which I look upon as ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... athletic set they were, dressed in what we should call the Montfort livery—a garb which set off their natural good looks abundantly—the dark features of Drogo; the light eyes and flaxen hair of the son of a Provencal maiden, our Hubert; were fair types of the varieties of appearance to be met amongst ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... three thousand years ago, it has scarcely an edifice of greater antiquity than three or four centuries, and the tourist must content himself with wandering through the narrow streets of the old town, observing the Provencal costumes, or strolling among Turks and Moors ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... prospered more rapidly even than himself. That grey look was out of the boy's face within three weeks. It was wonderful to watch him come back to life, till at last he could say, with his dreadful Provencal twang, that he felt "tres biang." A most amiable youth, he had been a cook, and his chief ambition was to travel till he had attained the summit of mortal hopes, and was cooking at the Ritz in London. When he came to us his limbs seemed almost to have lost ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... exactions of its subordinate agents, Master Martin, Master Marin, Peter Rubeo, and all the rest of them. Even the King surrounded himself with foreigners. To his own relations and to the relations of his Provencal wife fell the most profitable places, and the advantages arising from his paramount feudal rights; they too exercised much influence on public affairs, and that in the interests of the Papal power, with which they were allied. Riotous movements occasionally ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... an angry groan; and at this juncture Miss Spencer's cousin, the fortunate possessor of her sacred savings and of the hand of the Provencal countess, emerged from the little dining-room. He stood on the threshold for an instant, removing the stone from a plump apricot which he had brought away from the table; then he put the apricot into his mouth, and ...
— Four Meetings • Henry James |
