"Old French" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... London, Conn., died in Jay, Maine, in January, 1831; aged ninety years and six months. He served in the old French war; afterwards settled and married in Boston, and removed thence to Bridgewater. During the Revolutionary war, he was taken prisoner, carried to Halifax, and detained fourteen months. Placed on board a transport for New York, and destined to the horrible Jersey prison-ship; after ...
— Tea Leaves • Various
... and unrolling endless descriptions of dresses, trappings, gardens, etc. He invented plots and situations full of fine possibilities by which later poets have profited, but his own handling of them was feeble and prolix. Yet there was a simplicity about the old French language and a certain elegance and delicacy in the diction of the trouveres which the rude, unformed ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... to see me, daughter?" he said, with his inalienable old French courtesy. Father Antoine had come of a race which had noble blood in its veins. His ancestry had worn swords, and lived at courts, and Antoine Ladeau never once, in his half century of work in these Canadian forests, forgot ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... of our own men, like C.S.M. Shields, Sgt. Tabbron, etc., who had been left behind as battle surplus, going down gassed. Fortunately, most of them rejoined the battalion later. During this day's fighting some L.F's. were staggered to find an old French woman in a cellar in Bucquoy, and they had the utmost difficulty in persuading her to leave her "home." That was her abode and she was prepared to live in it whatever ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... my poor old French colonel and his broken parole; and was silent. "Can you not tell me the circumstances?" I suggested ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cannot be said, however, that the necessity of this qualification has been invariably recognised by enthusiastic inquirers into the history of instruments played with a bow. We have a curious instance of its non-recognition in a treatise on the Viol,[1] written by a distinguished old French Violist named Jean Rousseau. The author, bent upon going to the root of his subject, begins with the Creation, and speaks of Adam as a Violist. Perhaps Rousseau based his belief in the existence of ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... was sich like about the place, long as I remember it, till she came to Knowl, old witch! with them unmerciful big bones of hers, and her great bald head, grinning here, and crying there, and her nose everywhere. The old French hypocrite!' ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... pretty, and acts charmingly as young Mrs. Goldfinch; Miss HORLOCK is very nice as Lucy Lorimer, delivering herself of a little bit of picturesque sentiment about feeding the birds (Les Petits Oiseaux is the title of the old French piece, if I remember rightly) in a rather too forcedly ingenuous manner, but behaving most naturally in the interrupted courtship scene, and being generally very sympathetic. I mustn't omit Miss HUNTER, pink of parlour-maids, not the conventional ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various
... small library of erotic literature, five or six hundred pieces, worth a couple of thousand, I should say. Some wonderful old French stuff, and as many Rops as you like, and Persian and Chinese things—I can see you gloating over them! Don't thank me. And now I'm ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... to the screw hole, it often becomes worn to an oval shape just above the trench owing to the screw being too short. This is frequently found in old French bows, even by the best makers, and causes the unsightly tilting of the tip. In Fig. 41 is shown a section of the nut and handle showing the action of the screw and the way the hair is inserted. The screw in this diagram is the exact length necessary ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... will learn with pleasure that its example has been followed, not only by the Old French Text Society which has done such admirable work under its founders Profs. Paul Meyer and Gaston Paris, but also by the Early Russian Text Society, which was set on foot in 1877, and has since issued many excellent editions ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... early morning walk had sharpened his appetite, and he was breakfasting quite unconcernedly after all that had passed. Lucien saw the dignified face of M. de Negrepelisse, the old provincial noble, a relic of the old French noblesse, sitting ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... it can be known almost whether all sparks of life are extinct or no. Such management, and the lamentations one hears made by the great, that they should thus be forced to keep bad company after death, remind me for ever of an old French epigram, the sentiment of which I perfectly recollect, but have forgotten the verses, of which however these ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... that became him, and looked like as full an assurance of his security as was possible to put on." It is imagined that Louis the Eighteenth would be the ablest commentator on this piece of secret history, and add another twin to Pierre de Saint Julien's "Gemelles ou Pareiles," an old French treatise of histories which resemble one another: a volume so scarce, that I have ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Church from their chairs, became alienated from Catholicity in proportion as they cherished the spirit of resistance, and, unhappily, imbibed the fatal conviction that to overthrow the despot's throne they must break down the altar. Rightly interpreted, the old French Revolution, although bitterly anti-Catholic and infidel, was not so much hatred of religion, and impatience of her salutary restraints, as the indignant uprising of a misgoverned people against a civil despotism that affected injuriously all orders, ranks and conditions ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... had lounged with her daily at the end of the pier, telling her stories, was the most mordant wit in Europe, "the German Aristophanes"; and that those nursery tales, grotesquely compact of mermaids, water-sprites, and a funny old French fiddler with a poodle that diligently took three baths a day, were the frolicsome improvisations of perhaps the greatest lyric poet of his age. She recalled their parting: "When you go back to England, you can tell your friends that you ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... dance of exactly 8 measures (an old French Tambourin taken from Weckerlin's Echos du Temps Passe) we see clearly the influence of the metrical stanza of words and of the balanced phrases in the instrumental part, necessary to accompany the steps of the dancers. The melody of the accompaniment was played on a flute ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... told you a great deal about this good man, Melody. He came of old French stock, like ourselves,—like most of the people in our village; only his people had always been Catholics. His village, where he had a little wooden church, was ten or twelve miles from ours, but he was the only priest for twenty ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... sport, and Villon above all, that he should strain his eyes a little and tilt his head slightly to see what manner of literature prevailed in these wilds. And the book gave him great cheer, for it was an old French folio of arms, "Les Arts de l'Homme d'Epee; ou, Le Dictionnaire du Gentilhomme," by one Sieur de Guille. Doom Castle was a curious place, but apparently Hugh Bethune was in the right when he described its ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... the ground is rugged and stony, the laborer's horses are but skin and bone, weak and exhausted. There is but one alert figure, the skeleton Death, who with a whip skips nimbly along at the horses' side and urges the team. Under the picture is a quotation in old French, to the effect that after the laborer's life of travail and service, in which he has to gain his bread by the sweat of his brow, here comes Death to fetch him away. And from so rude a life does Death take him, says George ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... consul, and I shared the table d'hote with three tearful old French ladies, each of whom had husband or son at the front. That would seem to have been enough without being shelled at home. It is a commonplace, but it is nevertheless true that in war it is the women who suffer. The proprietress walked around the table, ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... close together; at the upper end stands the house, all on the ground-floor, but on a high stoep: rooms eighteen feet high; the old slave quarters on each side; stables, &c., opposite; the square as big as Belgrave Square, and the buildings in the old French style. ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... She liked his deep rich voice, and his dark face, with its lean strength, and almost southern colour. During his illness he had grown a small peaked beard, and it pleased her artistic sense, by giving him a look of Cardinal Richelieu—as that great man stood figured in an old French print she had picked up once in a box on the Paris quays. Moreover his friendship offered her so much fresh knowledge of the world and life. Here, again, was comradeship. She was lucky indeed. Harry Tatham—and now this clever, interesting man, entering on his task. It was a great responsibility. ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... day of the Conference with a delightful little dinner at St.-Quentin. The traditions of the old French cuisine are not yet extinct in the provinces, nor, for that matter, in the private life of the true Parisians of Paris. They all centre in the famous saying of Brillat-Savarin, that a man may learn how to cook, but must be born to roast—a saying worthy ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... through most of it, holding their arms on high as in the days of the old French minuet, but the men perform many more elaborate steps to a rattling time and tune. The Russian mazurka is a very long performance—indeed, it may go on all night; and as there are many figures, and all intricate, some one has to lead by ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... show himself, in the fear of displeasing their master, who had not asked for a physician. The doctor obeyed; Athos was a sort of model for the gentlemen of the country; the Blaisois boasted of possessing this sacred relic of the old French glories. Athos was a great seigneur compared with such nobles as the king improvised by touching with his yellow fecundating scepter the dry trunks of the heraldic trees ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... produced a branch which yielded red magnum bonums.[815] Mr. Rivers, of Sawbridgeworth, informs me (Jan. 1863) that a single tree out of 400 or 500 trees of the Early Prolific plum, which is a purple kind, descended from an old French variety bearing purple fruit, produced when about ten years old bright yellow plums; these differed in no respect except colour from those on the other trees, but were unlike any other known kind ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... Ovidius Nuso an ancestor of yours? Talking of ancestors, why do the Ayrshire folks speak of theirs as four bears (forbears), it sounds very ursine. But to our muttons, as my old French master used to call it. Do you do anything in the classico-historical line, for the Charivaresque enlightenment of the British public; if so, here is a specimen of a work in that style, "done ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... great deal of trouble, as he himself acknowledges, traced out the true meaning and derivation of this word: for after he had long despaired of discovering the origin of it, mere chance, he says, offered to him what he took to be the genuine one: 'In an old French book I met,' says he, 'with a passage where the author, speaking of a company that had sat up late, makes use of this expression, "l'ennuit les avoit gagnes," by the context of which it was plain he meant, that the common influence ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 191, June 25, 1853 • Various
... in the town was something pandemoniacal. Only three drums were found, but tin kettles and pans were not wanting, and these, superintended by Hugh Barr, the town drummer, did great execution. Three key-bugles, an old French horn, and a tin trumpet of a mail-coach guard, were sounded at intervals in every quarter of the town, while the men were marshalled, and made to march hither and thither in detached bodies, as if all were busily engaged in making preparations for ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... more degenerate than theirs, forasmuch as its quaintness ariseth from its sweetnesse, so that it is not attainable without a strange descent from its principle. Thus le Capo of the Italians, le Cabo, of the Spaniards, le Cap, of the old French and le Kef of Picardy are all variously alterd from Caput of the Latins, but none so much as le Chef of the French, which ...
— A Philosophicall Essay for the Reunion of the Languages - Or, The Art of Knowing All by the Mastery of One • Pierre Besnier
... Lauds after 2 o'clock, p.m., and this could be lawfully done every day in the year, and in every land. Another opinion—and St. Alphonsus calls it sententia verior—denies that such a course is lawful. The old French Breviaries gave a horarium arranging the hour of anticipation of Matins and Lauds, so that no one should, through temerity or ignorance, begin the anticipation before the sun had passed half way in its ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... is unjust, but God is just; and finally justice Triumphs; and well I remember a story, that often consoled me, When as a captive I lay in the old French fort at Port Royal." This was the old man's favorite tale, and he loved to repeat it When his neighbors complained that any injustice was done them. "Once in an ancient city, whose name I no longer remember, Raised ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... know what consideration Williams bestowed on the hammer, or the ship carpenter's mallet, which is the same thing. Gentlemen, I give you another great hammer—Charles the Hammer, the Marteau, or, in old French, the Martel—he hammered the Saracens till they were all as dead as ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... Count for his son; and if all the French nobility would have given their sons the same kind of instruction about rank, the old French aristocracy would have been as prosperous at this moment as the English peerage and squireage. I sent the tract to Capt. Speke,[102] shortly after his arrival in England, thinking he might like {71} to see the old names of the Ethiopian provinces. But I first made a copy ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... afternoon. The sun was shining down with that intense brilliancy which, I think, is only to be seen in Canada, or in the sunny climes of those countries bordering on the Mediterranean sea. The little village of Rimouski seemed this afternoon all asleep, for the heat made every one drowsy, and the old French Canadian women at their doorsteps were nodding sleepily over their spinning-wheels. Spinning-wheels, improbable as it sounds to nineteenth century ears, are not yet out of date in this part of the country, and many a table-cloth and fine ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... showed themselves extraordinarily anxious to inform him about things, to explain themselves and things about them exhaustively. One young student took him to various meetings and showed him in great detail the scene of the recent murder of the Grand Duke Sergius. The buildings opposite the old French cannons were still under repair. "The assassin stood just here. The bomb fell there, look! right down there towards the gate; that was where they found his arm. He was torn to fragments. He was scraped up. He ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... who appear in old French ballads, as well as the "Three Sailors," whose adventures are related in the Lithuanian and Provencal originals of Thackeray's Little Billee. Then there is "the league, [v.03 p.0266] the league, the league, but barely three," ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... war, making peace, and levying general taxes vested in the Federal Government—What part of the internal policy of the country it may direct—The Government of the Union in some respects more central than the King's Government in the old French monarchy. ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... look, this distinguished judge was at this moment a living embodiment of the law which ought to supply us with the noblest examples of civic courage. In this brief instant he was on a level with the magistrates of the old French Parlement in the time of the civil wars, when the presidents found themselves face to face with death, and stood, made of marble, like the statues that ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... remained in France several weeks, and during that time visited the old French cathedrals with their interesting windows; and saw in the Louvre much glass of early French make as well as many beautiful Venetian mirrors with all sorts of unique histories. One mirror was that famous seventeenth century possession of Marie de ...
— The Story of Glass • Sara Ware Bassett
... On a plain near the old French-Indian-English trading village, called Logstown (just below the present Economy, Pa., on the north side of the Ohio, 18 miles below Pittsburg), Wayne's army lay encamped from November, 1792, to April 30, 1793. The army ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... this collection the story of the so-called haunted house in Royal street is the only one that must ask a place in literature as partly a twice-told tale. The history of the house is known to thousands in the old French quarter, and that portion which antedates the late war was told in brief by Harriet Martineau as far back as when she wrote her book of American travel. In printing it here I fulfill an oft-repeated promise; for many a one has asked me if I would not, or, at ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... this great gift of conscientiousness, aided by the grace of God, that he who has left us owed the greatest blessing of his life—his submission to the one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. The obstacles which stood in the way of his entering the Church must have been great. The old French saying does not stand good when one who is not a Catholic is thinking of entering the Church. It is not the first step towards the Church which, in this country at least, costs the sacrifice. The first step costs little; ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... the most lovely old French chateaux I have ever imagined. Half chateau, half farm, fifteen miles behind the line. We remain here for two or three days. Arrived late last night, tired and grubby. But, O ye gods, when dawn began to reveal this old courtyard with its hens ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... establishment as a clerk; joined the Confederate army (4th Mississippi Cavalry) at the age of nineteen; at the close of the war engaged in civil engineering, and in newspaper work in New Orleans; and first became known in literature by sketches and stories of old French-American life in that city. These were first published in Scribner's Monthly, and were collected in book form in 1879, under the title of Old Creole Days. The characteristics of the series—of which the novelette Madame Delphine (1881) ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... 't'. The old Count de Gauvon was going to reply, when happening to cast his eyes on me, he perceived I smiled without daring to say anything; he immediately ordered me to speak my opinion. I then said, I did not think the 't' superfluous, 'fiert' being an old French word, not derived from the noun 'ferus', proud, threatening; but from the verb 'ferit', he strikes, he wounds; the motto, therefore, did not appear to mean, some threat, but, 'Some strike who do not kill'. The whole company fixed their eyes on me, then on each other, ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... coat becomes him, thought I. The descendant of some fine old French settler, how superbly he ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... between ghosts and eternal gods. The word Kalou is applied to all supernal beings, and mystic or magical things alike. It seems to answer to mana in New Zealand and Melanesia, to wakan in North America, and to fee in old French, as when Perrault says, about Bluebeard's key, 'now the key was fee.' All Gods are Kalou, but all things that are Kalou are not Gods. Gods are Kalou vu; deified ghosts are Kalou yalo. The ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... roman, fabliau, and lai, are so often used indifferently by the old French writers, that it is difficult to lay down any positive rule for discriminating between them. But I believe the word roman particularly applies to such works as were to be supposed strictly historical: such are the romances of Arthur, Charlemagne, the Trojan War, &c. The fabliaux were generally, ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... quarters. What they cannot stand are repeated, long, hard marches; their legs give out under the load of rifle and pack. But their hearts are in the war, and right there is one very practical reason why they will fight well—and they have fought better as they hardened with time and the old French spirit revived in their blood. "Allons, messieurs!" said the tall major, who wanted us to see battlefields. It required no escort to tell us where the battlefield was. We knew it when we came to it, as you know the point reached by high tide on the sands—this field where many Gettysburgs ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... admit a coffin. Then, as soon as filled, they are sealed up. These tombs contain from two to six or eight, or even more of these cells, and their general appearance from the front is not unlike that of a section of mail boxes in a postoffice. Other places of interest were the old French market, the public squares and gardens, the old Catholic churches, and some of the relics of slavery days in the shape of pens where slaves were exposed for sale. One of these was in the basement of the Hotel Royal, which ...
— Thirty Years a Slave • Louis Hughes
... proved that the settlers had learned something from the lessons taught in the old French War. Our people on the border knew all this and they were confident that in the struggle now upon them they would bring the count down to one for one.[1] So let the youngsters of the new day learn the truth; that is, that the ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... unveiling of a noble monument in memory of Jacques Cartier and his hardy companions of the voyage of 1535-36, and of Jean de Brebeuf, Ennemond Masse, and Charles Lalemant, the missionaries who built the first residence of the Jesuits nearly a century later on the site of the old French fort, and one of whom afterwards sacrificed his life for the faith to which they were ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... simple Whitehead[333] taught to creep Silent and soft, lay Fontenelle asleep; Let them with Browne,[334] contrive, no vulgar trick, To cure the dead, and make the living sick; 110 Let them, in charity, to Murphy give Some old French piece, that he may steal and live; Let them with antic Foote, subscriptions get, And advertise a summer-house of wit. Thus, or in any better way they please, With these great men, or with great men like these, Let them ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... cripple (he would swear sometimes and tipple), He had heard the bullets whistle (in the old French war) before,— Calls out in words of jeering, just as if they all were hearing,— And his wooden leg thumps fiercely on the dusty ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... he had almost forgotten! He and Nat were going up to Laguerre's, on the Bronx, to an old French cafe, where they often lunched and painted; that Nat had suggested just as he left the studio that it would be a good thing if Felix and that dear child Masie would go with them, and that they would go Saturday, which was to-morrow, if that would suit O'Day and Masie. And if that wouldn't ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... and rocks, a fair sky and white clouds. I have walked there in the footsteps of good Saint Francis, and I transcribed his canticle to the sun in old French rhymes, simple ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... consequence of negotiations that had been carried on for some time—Miss Blunt had her desires gratified by the arrival of a fine Pyrenean puppy—like a small white bear with brown points—from Cauterets, one of the identical pair about which we had such a lively scene with the old French fancier. He was christened "Riou," after the Col of that name, and his owner has very kindly drawn his portrait among his native ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... believe they are coming, after all. I think they might have telephoned," she said, glancing up at the old French ormula clock on the mantelpiece. "Half-past four. We will wait a few minutes longer and ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... little rudiment of a hint of a ghost of a sunny, funny old French remembrance long forgotten—a brand-new old remembrance—a kind of will-o'-the-wisp. Chut! my soul stalks it on tiptoe, while these earthly legs bear this poor old body of clay, by mere reflex action, straight home to the beautiful Elisabethan house on the hill; through the great warm hall, ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... cognate with Old Du. slijpen, to polish, sharpen, and Ger. schleifen. Sometimes a very simple problem is left unexplained, e.g. in the case of the name Tyas, where the medieval instances of le tyeis are to a student of Old French clearly le tieis or tiois, i.e. the German, cognate with ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... still apply the old French term "aver," averium, in Guernsey, to the hog or pig; in Jersey, to a child. In France "aver" denoted the animal produce or stock on a farm; and there were "averia lanata" likewise. Similar apparently whimsical adaptations of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 58, December 7, 1850 • Various
... from Havre-de-grace to New York, with General the Marquis de Lafayette and suite as passengers. A noble, venerable looking veteran advanced from the poop towards us, and offered his greetings with the courtesy of the old French school. He was Lafayette. My explanation of who we were, and the motive of our visit, appeared to excite his surprise. That five officers of the land service, unaccompanied by a single sailor, should leave their ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... France—where the bearers of dangerously historical names live out their lives with a singular suppression and patience. They are either biding their time or else they are content with the past and the part played by their ancestors therein. For there is an old French and a new. In Paris the new is spoken—the very newest. Were it anything but French it would be intolerably vulgar; as it is, it is merely ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... muscular, athletic temperament. Whatever the cause, the effect is undeniable. The skilled and dainty pessimism of De Maupassant was accompanied by a vigor and physique very unusual. His sensations are in turn those of a hunter and of a sailor, who have, as the old French saying expressively puts it, "swift foot, eagle eye," and who are attuned to ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... last, simultaneously with the enforcement of like treaties with the other powers, except France, whose convention did not go into operation until August 4, the United States being, however, granted up to that date all the privileges and rights accorded to French citizens under the old French treaty. By this notable conventional reform Japan's position as a fully independent sovereign power is assured, control being gained of taxation, customs revenues, judicial administration, coasting trade, and all other domestic functions of ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley
... Heine. He was much amused when she said: 'And who is Heinrich Heine?' The poet and the child used to lounge on the pier together; she sang him old English ballads, and he told her stories in which fish, mermaids, water-sprites, and a very funny old French fiddler with a poodle, who was diligently taking three sea-baths a day, were mixed up in a fanciful manner, sometimes humorous, often very pathetic, especially when the water-sprites brought him greetings ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... seen out in Flanders. They cheered us greatly, and after some drinks we sat in one and tried to learn from the map something of the new country in which we were to ride. We rejoiced that we had come once again upon a Belgian sheet, because the old French map we had used, however admirable it might have been for brigadiers and suchlike people, was extremely unsuited to a despatch ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... and one whose temper is still uncertain, and to be watched anxiously in earthquake times. The Etang du Vieux Bourg is its name; for, so tradition tells, in the beginning of the seventeenth century the old French town stood where the white coral- reef gleams under water; in fact, upon the northern lip of the crater. One day, however, the Enceladus below turned over in his sleep, and the whole town was swallowed up, or washed away. The sole survivor was ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... the word tabby chiefly as the name of a kind of striped cat, but this use of the word came from the Old French word tabis, and described a material with marks which the markings on a "tabby" cat resemble. The French word came from the Arab word utabi, which perhaps came from the name of a suburb of the ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... been added since conforms in method to the work of his 'prentice days. No doubt the war with Prussia enlarged his outlook on life; and there is more depth in the satires this conflict suggested and more pathos in the pictures it evoked. The "Last Lesson," for example, that simple vision of the old French schoolmaster taking leave of his Alsatian pupils, has a symbolic breath not easy to match in the livelier tales written before the surrender at Sedan; and in the "Siege of Berlin" there is a vibrant patriotism ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... laurestines. Here, in severe order, a pair of palms, prim as mediaeval queens, stood over against each other; and in the midst of the garden, rising high against the sky, appeared the pillared veranda and immense, four-sided roof of an old French colonial villa, as it ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... that night; and it is well known to the readers of old French trials, how wonderfully Providence supplied by a chain of apparent accidents, an important witness ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... and the women esteemed none worthy of their love but such as had given proof of their valour in three several battles. Thus was the valour of the men an encouragement for the women's chastity, and the love of the women a spur to the knight's bravery." Or, as an old French version has it, "Love which made the women more chaste made the knights more valorous and famous." We have here a new conception of love which has profoundly influenced life and thought ever since—love no longer a weakness ...
— Mediaeval Wales - Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures • A. G. Little
... inquire for her last name; all that was known of her was that she was a decayed French laundress, miserably poor, her trade long since ruined by Chinese competition. Augustine cooked well, but she was otherwise undesirable, and Trina lost patience with her at every moment. The old French woman's most marked characteristic was her timidity. Trina could scarcely address her a simple direction without Augustine quailing and shrinking; a reproof, however gentle, threw her into an agony of confusion; while Trina's anger promptly reduced her to ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... English Canadians approximate to the native Americans. In the United States it is the European immigrants who maintain the general population at a productive level, and thus indirectly oust the Anglo-Saxon element. In Canada the chief dividing line is between the Anglo-Saxon element and the old French element in the population; and here it is the French Canadians who are gaining ground on the English elements in the population. Engelmann ascertained that an examination of one thousand families in the records of Quebec Life Assurance companies shows ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... called the alexandrine (probably from the name of an Old French poem in this metre). It is still the standard line in classical French verse; but the French alexandrine differs from the English, principally in having four stresses instead of six. In English it is usually awkward when used for long stretches, ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... Comte de Lalain. Unfortunately for me, the gentleman was absent, and his lady only was in the castle. The courtyard being open, we entered it, which put the lady into such a fright that she ordered the bridge to be drawn up, and fled to the strong tower.—[In the old French original, 'dongeon', whence we have 'duugeon'.]—Nothing we could say would induce her to give us entrance. In the meantime, three hundred gentlemen, whom Don John had sent off to intercept our passage, and take possession of the castle of Fleurines; ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... into a single attitude, almost into a gesture and a speech, as by some overwhelming situation. I disagreed with him about everything, but I admired him beyond words. With the exception of some early poems founded upon old French models, I disliked his poetry, mainly because he wrote Vers Libre, which I associated with Tyndall and Huxley and Bastien-Lepage's clownish peasant staring with vacant eyes at her great boots; and filled it with unimpassioned description of ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... old French romances, with their horrid spellings of 'filz' and 'ung' and 'ilz' and ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... before going. To-morrow morning early we start out. Merrifield and I go on horseback, each taking a spare pony; which will be led behind the wagon, a light "prairie schooner" drawn by two stout horses, and driven by an old French Canadian. I wear a sombrero, silk neckerchief, fringed buckskin shirt, sealskin chaparajos or riding-trousers; alligator-hide boots; and with my pearl-hilted revolver and beautifully finished Winchester rifle, I shall feel ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... appears to have been reserved at nine guineas, was bought in at eight-and-a-half guineas. Frequenters of Christie's of the present day who have seen such furniture realize as many pounds as the shillings included in such sums, will appreciate the enormously increased value of really good old French furniture. ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... saying to you what the dear old French archbishop said to the small child," Peter smiled, marvelling a little nonetheless at her untouched serenity. "He was speaking to all the children in some institution, and came to this little one: 'ET TU ETES NEGRE? AH, BIEN—BIEN, ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... look at a model of Dunrobin—their castle on the Sutherland estate. It is in the old French chateau style in general architecture, something like the print of Glamis. It is curious that the French architecture has obtained in Scotland. Her grace kindly invited me to visit Dunrobin on my return to ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... some memorial of Brice as well as of Beardsley; but could not at the time call up any remembrance more definite than an impression that this memorial was something which had belonged to a descendant of Joab Brice, who had been in his youth a soldier in the old French War, and later a subaltern in the "State line" ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... humblement. In old French humblement means courteously. In Froissart there is a passage quoted by La Curne: "Li contes de Hainaut rechut ces seigneurs d'Engleterre, l'un ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... increase in wages would. Some French syndicalists, visiting London, were greatly impressed with this new cunning. But as they had no ready translation for the Scottish ca'canny, they ingeniously abstracted the same idea from the old French saying "Travailler a coups de sabots"—to work as if one had on wooden shoes—and sabotage thus became a new and expressive ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... poisoning throughout the whole inquiry, that Sir Edward Coke gave the trials the name of 'The Great Oyer of Poisoning.' Oyer has long been a technical term in English law; and it is almost unnecessary to explain, that it is old French for to hear—oyer and terminer meaning, to hear and determine. The same inscrutable reasons which make the evidence so imperfect against the chief offenders, affect the whole of it. But while the exact causes of the death of Sir Thomas Overbury may be left in doubt, as well as the motives ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... attachment with us, and there is a consolation in the deceit ("the homage," according to the old mot of Rochefoucauld) "which vice pays to virtue"; for the very falsehood shows that the virtue exists somewhere. We once heard a furious old French colonel inveighing against the chastity of English demoiselles: "Figurez-vous, sir," said he (he had been a prisoner in England), "that these women come down to dinner in low dresses, and walk out alone with the men!"—and, pray heaven, so may they walk, fancy-free in all sorts of maiden meditations, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... ammunition for a general hunting-match, on account of a great feast, and to promise to bring them meat; the report of the firing at the Commandant's, to be the signal to fall at once upon, and kill the French: that then we shall be able to prevent those who may come from the old French village, (New Orleans) by the great water (Missisippi) ever ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... The outdoor room was furnished with luxuries he had never seen. He sniffed as though he smelled the money that was evident everywhere. Beside Margaret's chair, where she had dropped it when she went to sleep, was a book. It was a beautifully bound copy of the Memoirs of some titled harlot of the old French court. He was staring absent-mindedly at the floor where the book lay when she came ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... agent that brings us more undesirable conditions than fear. We should live in fear of nothing, nor will we when we come fully to know ourselves. An old French proverb runs: ...
— Thoughts I Met on the Highway • Ralph Waldo Trine
... which was already well known; another to make a road across what is now the State of Vermont, from Crown Point to Charlestown, or "Number Four," on the Connecticut; and another to widen and improve the old French road between Crown Point and Ticonderoga. His industry was untiring; a great deal of useful work was done: but the essential task of making a diversion to aid the army of Wolfe was ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... crimson. On his ample buckler were emblazoned the bars of the arms of Arragon, granted to his warlike ancestors by the kings of that country; and likewise quartered thereon, was a lion rampant, in field argent, a device which, tradition says, was adopted by the famous Trojan, Hector, from whom the old French chroniclers assert the Ponces de Leon to be descended. Beneath the arms was legible in red letters the ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... The present spelling is a mere etymological blunder, exactly similar to that which has turned the old English word igland into island, through the false analogy of isle, which of course comes from the old French isle, derived through some form akin to the Italian isola, from the original Latin insula. Kair Leil is the spelling in Geoffrey; Cardeol (by a clerical error for Carleol, I suspect) that in the English Chronicle, which only once mentions the town; and Carleol that ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... An old French prayer-book was lying on the corner of the tomb; the volume was open, and the page exposed to view was that which contained the office for the celebration of the 25th of August. A sudden revelation dashed across Servadac's ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... grounds of an old French chateau not far from Beauvais on the river Andelle that Pen's battalion camped for their period of rest and recuperation. There were long, sunshiny days, nights of undisturbed and refreshing sleep, ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... blocking-out chisel. Small frseuated eyes, a short nose, flanked by widely distended nostrils, round cheeks, a square chin, thick, but not curling lips—this unattractive and ludicrous physiognomy, sometimes animated by an expression of cunning which recalls the shrewd face of an old French peasant, is often lighted up by gleams of gentleness and of melancholy good-nature. The external characteristics of these two principal types in the ancient monuments, in all varieties of modifications, may still be seen among the living. The profile copied from a Theban mummy taken ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... essentials, by which we mean the pickled beet appetizers, the minestrone soup, the delicious soft bread with its brittle crust, and the thick slices of rather pale roast beef swimming in thin, pinkish gravy. And the three old French waiters, hardened in long experience of the frailties of mortality, smile to see a former friend. One, grinning upon us rather bashfully, recalls the time when there was a hilarious Oriental wedding celebrating ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... massive key of that old French prison-house, the Bastile, presented to General Washington by that friend of freedom and humanity, General Lafayette, soon after the destruction of that monument of terror. We noticed that depredations had been committed by visitors upon the costly marble fire-frame, ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams |
