"Poisoner" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Mganga of the Wasawahili and the Uganga of the Gaboon, exactly corresponds with M. Michelet's Sorciere of the Middle Ages, "physicienne," that is doctor for the people and poisoner; we cannot, however, apply in Africa the adage of Louis XIII.'s day, "To one wizard ten thousand witches." In the "Muata Cazembe" (pp. 57, et passim) we read "O Ganga or O Surjao;" the magician is there called "Muroi," which, like ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... Foochow, one hundred and fifty miles north of Amoy, barely escaped with his life. He was pounded with stones while the bystanders called out, "Kill the poisoner, ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... and hunter—thus sadly to succumb? No. Fate has not decreed his death by such insidious means. A circumstance, apparently accidental, steps in to save him. On this very day, when the poison it being prepared for him, the poisoner receives a summons that for the time at least, will frustrate his foul plans. His master commands him to make ready for a journey. It is an errand similar to that he has been several times sent upon before. ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... the end now," she said, holding the knife firmly in her hand. "You shall not escape hearing the end now, and you shall not murder me with your Indian poisoner here." She laughed again as she glanced at the ugly curve of the dagger. "I was talking with Zoroaster," she continued, "when I saw you upon the stairs, and then—oh, it was so sweet! I cried out that he should never leave ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... sentence, mercilessly arraigned him and the system of finance for which he stood; the manner of his life in the Tombs; his spectacular fight to beat the verdict, had all been worth columns of newspaper space. If Mr. Trimm had been a popular poisoner, or a society woman named as co-respondent in a sensational divorce suit, the papers could not have been more generous in their space allotments. And Mr. Trimm in his cell had read all of it with smiling contempt, even to the semi-hysterical ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... protector, insinuated himself into his confidence, became his trusted physician and apothecary, and gave him poison instead of medicine on the very first appearance of indisposition. As soon as symptoms of death appeared, the poisoner fled, aided by the emissaries of Ali, with whom the court of Berat was packed, and presented himself at Janina to receive the reward of his crime. Ali thanked him for his zeal, commended his skill, and referred ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... true, those tales of poisoned knives and flowers, of prelates and even dilatory popes being suppressed by a drop or a grain of something administered to them in their morning chocolate. That passionate tragical Santobono was really a poisoner, Pierre could no longer doubt it, for a lurid light now illumined the whole of the previous day: there were the words of ambition and menace which had been spoken by Cardinal Sanguinetti, the eagerness to act in presence of the probable death of the ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... of admiration swept through the assemblage. It was not admiration of the decree that had been delivered by Tom, for the propriety or expediency of pardoning a convicted poisoner was a thing which few there would have felt justified in either admitting or admiring—no, the admiration was for the intelligence and spirit which Tom had displayed. Some of the low-voiced remarks ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the stomach the odor alone would have betrayed it. You smelt it when you crushed a seed. But the poisoning had been devised to avoid just that chance of discovery. There was no poison in the stomach. Death was delayed long enough, also, to divert suspicion from the real poisoner. Some one has been diabolically clever ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... is a poisoner, or an incendiary, one who has slain her husband, her guru, or her child, shall be put to death by bulls, her ears, hands, nose, and ...
— Hindu Law and Judicature - from the Dharma-Sastra of Yajnavalkya • Yajnavalkya
... a lot of the fellows think he's guilty. And Sam keeps his crowd on edge about it. He's always referring to Tom as the 'poisoner' and so he keeps the thing alive, when, if it wasn't ...
— Tom Fairfield's Pluck and Luck • Allen Chapman
... Rene Blanc were the happy pair on this occasion; the name of the bridegroom amused me, as I was reminded of the perfumer and poisoner of Queen Catherine, Rene Bianco, who had lately furnished me with a hero for a romance. This Rene was, however, a very harmless-looking personage, a daily labourer, but "bien riche," as was his bride, who also worked in the fields, ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... every cafe of Paris some witness was telling the incidents of the show to breathless listeners, and the crowds which stopped to see the funeral procession of the great Marshal Pelissier divided their attention between the warrior and the poisoner,—the latter obtaining the ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... love of me, base poisoner!" answered Douglas, "wouldst thou have committed so horrible, so unprovoked a murder, and mentioned my ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... that long war, there had been no Stuart who had hated the Puritans so much, or who had been so much hated by them, as himself. They had tried to blast his honour and to exclude him from his birthright; they had called him incendiary, cutthroat, poisoner; they had driven him from the Admiralty and the Privy Council; they had repeatedly chased him into banishment; they had plotted his assassination; they had risen against him in arms by thousands. He had avenged himself on them by havoc such as England had never before seen. Their heads and quarters ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... is the most damn'd Italian Trick I ever heard of; why, this outdoes the famous Poisoner Madam Brenvilliers; well, here's no jesting, I perceive ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... humility, chastity, poverty, in a word, holiness, had not already done much more damage to life than all imaginable horrors and vices.... The pure soul is a pure lie.... So long as the priest, that professional denier, calumniator and poisoner of life, is accepted as a higher variety of man, there can be no answer to the question, What is truth? Truth has already been stood on its head when the obvious attorney of mere emptiness is mistaken for ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... resource of logical argument and formidably arrayed proofs, unearthed by tireless diligence and pursuit. Thus we are told that the story of William Tell is a romantic myth; that Lucretia Borgia, far from being a poisoner and murderess, was really a very estimable person; and that the siege of Troy was a very insignificant struggle, between armies counted, not by thousands, ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle
... whom they acknowledge to be so powerful. For it is impossible to guard against such a mysterious and divine power. Against other dangers we may take adequate precautions. He who summons a murderer before the judge comes into court with an escort of friends; he who denounces a poisoner is unusually careful as to what he eats; he who accuses a thief sets a guard over his possessions. But for the man who exposes a magician, credited with such awful powers, to the danger of a capital sentence, how can escort or precaution or watchmen save ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... sounds of itself with relishing denunciations; but for all displays of the truly diabolic—envy, malice, the mean lie, the mean silence, the calumnious truth, the backbiter, the petty tyrant, the peevish poisoner of family life—their standard is quite different. These are wrong, they will admit, yet somehow not so wrong; there is no zeal in their assault on them, no secret element of gusto warms up the sermon; it is for things not wrong ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... at the floor. This, then, was the reason why the sporting world had cut him dead; for a horse-poisoner is ranked in the same category as that assigned to the horse-stealer of the Western frontier. There, a man's horse is his life; to the turfman it is his fortune—one and the same. And so Crimmins ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... of his peasants, forgetting to receive his tithes, a model of abnegation, to the hunting monk, dressed like a layman, big, fat, with a head as shiny as a ball, who will make one day the finest abbot in the world, to the degenerate friar, who lives at the expense of others, a physician become poisoner, who destroys instead of healing them, and to the pardoner, a rascal of low degree, who bestows heaven at random by his own "heigh power" on whoever will pay, and who manufactures precious relics out of ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... agreed, and fell silent, shivering a little, for there is something horrible and revolting about the poisoner. ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... when we read that Overbury was first brought to the Tower, and then had creatures who could be relied on set about him there, with whose help the victim was removed out of the way by means of poison. Lady Frances was not the only female poisoner among the higher classes of society. This mode of assassination had spread in England as it had done in Italy and at times in France. In these transactions the most abandoned profligacy allied ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... Hogan, the dog poisoner — aged man and very wise, Who was camping in the racecourse with his swag, And who ventured the opinion, to the township's great surprise, That the race would go to Father Riley's nag. 'You can talk about your riders — and the horse has not been schooled, ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... that all suspicion against Sergeant Overton was forgotten, but the men now remembered that Hinkey had been the most active and bitter poisoner of minds against Hal. So, now, reaction had its natural effect—somewhat in Hal ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... suspicion, although in my own heart I knew I was a rogue. But the man I thought had rotted away in jail was alive and revenged himself upon me. The first wife who bore my name was my accomplice, the second was a poisoner. She murdered every one who stood in her way; my son and Valentine became her victims; my other son sprung from a criminal attachment. I tried to kill him by burying him alive; as a punishment for me, he was rescued to die on ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... he proceeded, "what I thought of Mr. Keller's extraordinary recovery, and what I feared when I found Mrs. Wagner (as I then firmly believed) dead. My suspicions of poisoning pointed to the poisoner. Madame Fontaine's wonderful cure of Mr. Keller, by means of her own mysterious remedy, made me suspect Madame Fontaine. My motive, in refusing to give the burial certificate, was to provoke the legal inquiry, which I knew that Mr. Keller would institute, on the mere expression of a doubt, on my ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... Besides the surgeon-poisoner I met at the Hutuktu's a lad of thirteen years, whose youthfulness, red robe and cropped hair led me to suppose he was a Bandi or student servant in the home of the Hutuktu; but it turned out otherwise. This boy was the first Hubilgan, also ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... chalices, which might else all have an equal power to conciliate notice, one specially—namely, that which contains the poison—is armed by Providence with a power to bias the choice, and commend itself to the poisoner's favour. ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... upon LOUISA'S corpse in silent anguish, starts suddenly up, and throws the purse before the MAJOR'S feet.) Poisoner, take back thy accursed gold! Didst thou think to purchase my child with it? (Rushes distractedly out ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the great detective arrest the poisoner of her father? If he will look behind the book case he will find something that will prove everything—the ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... me that in the possession of the young man was found a lady's silver powder-puff box filled with what looked and smelt like toilet-powder. This, on being examined, was discovered to be a most subtle and dangerous poison—one evidently prepared by that diabolical poisoner, Badmayev. ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... to die?—thou, who hast sworn so deeply to dye thine hands in my gore, in the gore of all who loved their country? Art thou afraid to die, stabber, adulterer, poisoner, ravisher, parricide, Catilinarian? Art thou afraid to die? I should have thought, when thou didst put on such resolves, thou wouldst have cast aside all that is human! Once more, I say, art ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... sepulchre of his father or mother, or at a spot where three ways meet. But to the wizards themselves we must address a solemn preamble, begging them not to treat the world as if they were children, or compel the legislator to expose them, and to show men that the poisoner who is not a physician and the wizard who is not a prophet or diviner are equally ignorant of what they are doing. Let the law be as follows:—He who by the use of poison does any injury not fatal to a ...
— Laws • Plato
... only passing mention. The beautiful poisoner, Marquise de Brinvilliers, must have suggested to Dumas his later portrait of Miladi, in the Three Musketeers, the mast celebrated of his woman characters. The incredible cruelties of Ali Pacha, the Turkish despot, should ...
— Widger's Quotations from Celebrated Crimes of Alexandre Dumas, Pere • David Widger
... those which usually go with a certain amount of discretion. That she should suddenly lose her head and throw herself away in a voluptuous frenzy hardly comports with the type. Nor is there anything in the inventory of her qualities that prepares us for her sudden assumption of the role of poisoner, when she is already, as she must suppose, the mistress of the situation. In her altercation with Leonora in the second scene of Act II she uses a number of coarse expressions befitting a woman of vulgar birth,—wherein some of the critics see an evidence of Schiller's unfamiliarity ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... lifted. This mysterious illness, this slow silent decay of bloom and beauty, by a process inscrutable as the devilry of medieval poisoner or Hecate-serving witch—this was murder. Murder! The disease, which had hitherto been nameless, had found its name at last. It was all clear now. Philip Sheldon's anxiety; the selection of an utterly incompetent adviser; certain looks and tones that ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... his misdoings; nothing had astonished this confessor. And yet, what could be the motive of a mover in the intrigues of kings? Lucien at first was fain to be content with the banal answer—the Spanish are a generous race. The Spaniard is generous! even so the Italian is jealous and a poisoner, the Frenchman fickle, the German frank, the Jew ignoble, and the Englishman noble. Reverse these verdicts and you shall arrive within a reasonable distance of the truth! The Jews have monopolized the gold ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... science of toxicology was never so ill-understood as now. I am assured that there are many poisons known only to a few chemists in the world, a single grain of which is sufficient to destroy the strongest man and leave not the slightest trace behind. If the poisoner be sufficiently accomplished he can pursue his—calling without the ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... put down to the account of Palmer the poisoner, who it was said had administered strychnine to Lord George as he did to some other ...
— The Portland Peerage Romance • Charles J. Archard
... Amiens,' said Savary, turning over the letter. 'A poisoner then, on the top of his other virtues. I wonder for whom this essence of almonds which leaves ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Death!—sweet poisoner of sleep; Where shall I seek for thee, oblivious drug, That I may steep thee in my drink, and creep Out of life's coil? Look, Idol! how I hug Thy dainty image in this strict embrace, And kiss this ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... at a high price, and if the gods give you a generous supply of this, they probably will be niggardly when it comes to that. But one thing the artist is usually long on, and that is whim. Let us all pray to be delivered from whim—it is the poisoner of our joys, the corrupter of our peace, and Dead-Sea fruit ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... neck: lays him down upon a bank of flowers: she, seeing him asleep, leaves him. Anon comes in a fellow, takes off his crown, kisses it, pours poison in the king's ears, and exit. The Queen returns, finds the King dead, and makes passionate action. The Poisoner with some three or four Mutes, comes in again, seeming to lament with her. The dead body is carried away. The Poisoner wooes the Queen with gifts; she seems loth and unwilling awhile, but in the end ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... Deppingham's portion. Drusilla declined and Bromley tossed a sandwich to Pong, who was always lying in wait for such scraps as might come his way. Lady Agnes always ate macaroons—never touching the sandwiches. This fact, of course, it was argued, might not have been known to the would-be poisoner. Her ladyship, as usual, partook of the macaroons and felt no ill effects. It was, therefore, clear that the poison was intended for but one of them, as, on this occasion, a single sandwich came up from the buffet. No one but Deppingham believed that it was ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... delicate Italian hand sent a chill through Alfred. What on earth was all this? Was he to be poisoned? Was his life aimed at now instead of his reason? What was this mysterious drama prepared for him the very moment he set his foot in the place, perhaps before? A poisoner, and a friend! Both strangers. He went down to dinner: and contrived to examine every lady and gentleman at the table. But they were all strangers. Presently a servant filled his glass with beer; he looked and saw it was poured from a small ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... form of legislation of the instinct age is provision of penalties for those who poison food, water, or fellow-man. There are districts in America where hygiene is supposed to be taught to children that are conscious of no other sanitary legislation but that which punishes the poisoner. ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... interesting and the music may well entertain us for an evening, {186} though its value often lies only in the striking harmonies. The libretto cannot inspire us with feelings of particular pleasure, the heroine, whose part is by far the best and most interesting, being the celebrated murderess and poisoner Lucrezia Borgia. At the same time she gives evidence in her dealings with her son Gennaro of possessing a very tender and motherly heart, and the songs, in which she pours out her love for him are really ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... an end too. So thoroughly at an end, that no happy memories remain. The last was fouled by the poisoner.... ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... horn," would have managed to set the whole female portion of the romance-reading community to whimpering and blowing their noses over the sorrows of Tardee and Gibbs—the wholesale pirates and murderers, the loves of Mina—the poisoner, the trials of Malbone Briggs—the counterfeiter, or the buffetings in the flesh that Satan was permitted to bestow upon the old Adam of that god-fearing saint, ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... render a witch, according to our modern notions of witchcraft, Exodus 22:15, Philo and Josephus understood of a poisoner, or one who attempted by secret and unlawful drugs or philtra, to take away the senses or the lives ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... Pope's Poisoner, a Tale of the Borgias." That is a historical romance, I got it up out of Histories of the Renaissance. The hero (Lionardo da Vinci) is the Pope's bravo, and in love with ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... Evil Spirit is a functionary liable to be dismissed for not attending to his duty, is, so far as my reading goes, utterly unknown in theology. My first wrinkle on the subject was the remark of the Somersetshire farmer upon Palmer the poisoner— "Well! if the Devil don't take he, he didn't ought to be allowed to be ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... has Tiber heard such a name as that breathed on a lover's mouth to the sigh of the mandoline, uttered in revel or in combat, or as a poisoner whispered it stealing to mix the drug with the wine in the goblet. Madama Flavia! All Italy seemed in it—all love, all woe! There is ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... government is in power and keep his own skin, it is his idea of living well. Egypt was immediately put under martial law, but there was plenty of scope for a while for the midnight assassin and the poisoner. Here and there soldiers would disappear and street riots would be started by the wind. Who would not turn round on seeing an R. S. V. P. eye in a face whose veil enhanced the beauty it did not hide? But there would always be some sedition-monger to ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... foresee the destiny that awaited me?... Could I, if in my right senses, suppose that one day, the man I was, and yet remain, should be taken, without any kind of doubt, for a monster, a poisoner, an assassin, the horror of the human race, the sport of the rabble, my only salutation to be spit upon, and that a whole generation would unanimously amuse themselves in burying me alive? When this strange revolution first happened, taken by unawares, ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... served them, with all sorts of Oriental delicacies; and during the repast, at which several slaves attended, Captain Burnett described in Hindostanee, as if speaking to Reginald, a wonderful rod he possessed, which had the property of discovering poison—as also the poisoner, by whirling itself about as soon as he appeared, and pointing towards him. He spoke in a natural, offhand manner, as if there was nothing unusual in what ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston
... of the Lord, bended it forward, and all that was deadly therein poured he into the hollow of his hand unmixed with the rest of the liquor; then making the sign of the cross, what remained he blessed, and, to the confusion of the poisoner and the admiration of all who sat around, drinking thereout, he received ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... figure? Looks as if his liver were cayenne pepper. Astrologer, botanist, poisoner, he is said to have been, ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... exclaimed Lady Exeter hastily; "I will not see him. You have done wrong to bring that poisoner here, my lord. You will ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... Workman's throat!" Shouts the fanatic. Which, then, fad or pelf, Cares really, solely, for the Poor Man's self? Nay; the Monopolist fights for his money, The Monomaniac for his craze. How funny To hear one shout for freedom, t'other cheer The poisoner's cant about ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various
... jury south of the Potomac; the triumphant prohibitionists of his native state would be denouncing him (he had a still at Mount Vernon) as a debaucher of youth, a recruiting officer for insane asylums, a poisoner of the home. The suffragettes would be on his trail, with sentinels posted all along the Accotink road. The initiators and referendors would be bawling for his blood. The young college men of the Nation and the New Republic would be ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... meditated upon her a long time that morning from the opposite pavement. An oval locket at her throat contained, I knew, my likeness: for eight years previously I had given it her. It was Clodagh, the poisoner. ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... so-called witches were patients and victims, that the devil took advantage of their diseased condition to delude them, and that there was no consent of an evil will on the part of the women. He argued that the word in Leviticus translated "witch" meant "poisoner," and besought the princes of Europe to hinder the further spilling of innocent blood. These heresies of Wier threw Bodin into such a state of amazed indignation that if he had been an ancient Jew instead of a modern ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... said, is it not? This Doctor Querolle has only pretended to be able to make great disclosures, only to prolong his own life a few hours. He has poisoned his wife, in order to marry his mistress, and the poisoner is executed." ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... is a fine one," said he. "Moriarty himself is enough to make any letter illustrious, and here is Morgan the poisoner, and Merridew of abominable memory, and Mathews, who knocked out my left canine in the waiting-room at Charing Cross, and, finally, here ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was at that time mainly occupied with devising antidotes to poison, which he well knew was offered to his master on frequent occasions, and in the most insidious ways. Andrada, the famous Portuguese poisoner, amongst others is said, under direction of Fuentes and Ybarra, to have attempted his life by a nosegay of roses impregnated with so subtle a powder that its smell alone was relied upon to cause death, and De la Riviere was doing his best to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... old muck with me, you rotten big poisoner!" roared McQuiggan: "or you'll get the hot end of it. How about that girl that went batty after ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... life of Derues bears testimony to the truth of this observation. An avaricious poisoner, he attracted his victims by the pretence of fervent and devoted piety, and drew them into the snare where he silently destroyed them. His terrible celebrity only began in 1777, caused by the double murder of Madame de Lamotte and her son, and his name, unlike those ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... country-woman, for I must give her some hints as to her conduct in this delicate matter, on which the honour and life of all three may depend. For instance, if it were discovered that I had come here, I might be taken for the poisoner." ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... light in England, which I had already read forwards from the beginning. Throwing it away from me in disgust, I reach out my other hand for a book. The one I lay hold of is "Laurel-Water," the melancholy drama of Sir Theodosius Boughton by insidious poisoner killed. I dashed it away, backwards, over my head, and, turning off the gas, abandoned myself to the strange influences that breathed hotly upon me from the clammy vegetation festering in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the palace of the Pontiffs of Rome; and now acting, in the capacity of Secretary, or, more properly, writer of the Apostolic Letters, to a Pope who was a poisoner. John XXIII. was even worse than that: he was a most atrocious violator of laws, human and divine; and some crimes he committed were so heinous that it would be indecent to place them before the public. One can imagine how agreeable ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... days of Tidy and Lauder Brunton. Still, people must often have died natural deaths even in the Middle Ages—though nobody believed it. All the world began to speculate what Jane Shore could have poisoned them. A little earlier, again, it was not the poisoner that was looked for, but his predecessor, the sorcerer. Whoever fell ill, somebody had bewitched him. Were the cattle diseased? Then search for the evil eye. Did the cows yield no milk? Some neighbour, ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... the two families, owing to the friendly exertions of the Edmonstone as above, that ended in a superannuated lady, the late Miss Edmonstone of Corehouse, entailing or settling her estate upon the present George Cranstoun of Corehouse,[34] nephew of the poisoner, to the exclusion of the late Roger Ayton, and her other heirs at law. In this manner the Cranston family may be said to have benefitted by his atrocity, and advantage to have resulted from evil; the friendship or kindness of the Edmonstones having been rivetted and ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... and to whom? Horrible as is this crime, and next in atrocity to parricide, thou deemest it a lighter one than stealing a fig or grape. The stealer of these is scourged by thee; the sentence on the poisoner is to cleanse out the receptacle. There is, however, a kind of poisoning which, to do thee justice, comes before thee with all its horrors, and which thou wouldst punish capitally, even in such a sacred personage as an aruspex or diviner: I mean the poisoning ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... cotemporary writers assert that Leicester fell a victim to poison; Naunton declares that he, by mistake, swallowed the potion he had prepared for another person; and, as there can be no doubt that the Earl was a poisoner of great eminence and success, the story is far from being improbable. The Privy Council must have believed that his death was not natural, for they minutely investigated a report that he had been poisoned by the son of Sir James Crofts, in revenge for the imprisonment of his father. Some suspicious ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 233, April 15, 1854 • Various
... superstitious monomaniacs of the middle ages imagined, that the Bible established the existence of the power of divination by its edicts against those who pretended to it. From the best authorities, it appears that the Hebrew word, which has been rendered venefica and witch, means a poisoner and divineress, a dabbler in spells, or fortune-teller. The modern witch was a very different character, and joined to her pretended power of foretelling future events that of working evil upon the life, limbs, and possessions of mankind. ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... Majesty. Wait till the usurper, the poisoner, commits himself with the Papists. When he's made himself thoroughly unpopular throughout the country, then sound a few regiments. It's only a matter of a year or two. If you'll wait for a year or two you'll see yourself invited over. Besides, a sudden rising in the West ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... Greeks bear; and it serves us right; I see excellent grounds for the opinion they have of us. Greek after Greek who enters their service sets up (in default of any other practical knowledge) for wizard or poisoner, and deals in love-charms and evil spells; and these are they who talk of culture, who wear grey beards and philosophic cloaks! When these, who are accounted the best of us, stand thus exposed, when men observe their interested servility, their gross ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... Emperor, enacted a strict and peculiar divorce law (allowing a wife to divorce her husband only when he was a homicide, a poisoner, or a violator of sepulchres), which could not be maintained. In 497, therefore, Anastasius decreed divorce by mutual consent. This was abolished by Justinian, who only allowed divorce for various specified causes, among them, however, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... she had beggared, for the young hearts she had corrupted, sought plunder still by crimes, to which law is less lenient; charged with swindling, with fraud, with forgery, and at last more than suspected as a practised poisoner, she escaped by suicide the ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Lettice Countess of Essex: and now the same Lettice, Countess of Leicester, had not forgotten her lesson. Leicester was tired of her; perhaps, too, he was a little afraid of what she knew. The deft and practised poisoner administered a dose to his wife. But Lettice survived, and poisoned him in return. And so the last of the Dudleys passed ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... forward, and turning a stern look on the alarmed pottingar, broke out as follows: "Thou walking skeleton! thou asthmatic gallipot! thou poisoner by profession! if I thought that the puff of vile breath thou hast left could blight for the tenth part of a minute the fair fame of Catharine Glover, I would pound thee, quacksalver! in thine own ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... superior of the convent sent to inform the Musketeers that the burial would take place at midday. As to the poisoner, they had heard no tidings of her whatever, only that she must have made her escape through the garden, on the sand of which her footsteps could be traced, and the door of which had been found shut. As to the key, ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... on his mind, as he thought of all this, that such a deed as that would never come in his way. But he told himself, that if he chose to make the attempt, he would certainly be able to carry it through without detection. Then he remembered Rush and Palmer—the openly bold murderer and the secret poisoner. Both of them, in Vavasor's estimation, were great men. He had often said so in company. He had declared that the courage of Rush had never been surpassed. "Think of him," he would say with admiration, "walking into a man's house, with pistols sufficient to shoot every one there, and doing ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... exhibition of waxworks next door to the hall was quite unable to compete with the living hero. Messrs. Burke and Hare, Parnell and Informer Carey, Tim Healy and Breeches O'Brien, Mr. Gladstone and Palmer the poisoner, with other benefactors and philanthropists, were at a discount. The outsiders were waiting to see Mr. Balfour, but they were disappointed. Lord Iveagh's carriage suddenly appeared in Poolbeg Street at the pressmen's entrance, and the hero slipped into the hall almost ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... foeticide, or he that is ill of consumption, or he that keeps animals, of is destitute of Vedic study, or is a common servant of a village, or lives upon the interest of loans, or he that is a singer, or he that sells all articles, or he that is guilty of arson, or he that is a poisoner or he that is a pimp by profession, or he that sells Soma, or he that is a professor of palmistry, or he that is in the employ of the king, or he that is seller of oil, or he that is a cheat and false ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... within the range of our comprehension, and co-ordinated with other mental phenomena which we can and do understand. But of such illumination we find nothing in Bella Donna. It leaves the working of a poisoner's mind as dark to us as ever. So far as that goes, we might just as well have read the report of a murder-trial, wherein the facts are stated with, perhaps, some superficial speculation as to motive, but no attempt is made to penetrate to underlying soul-states. Yet this ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... were human beings who could not love. Let the cowl cover the man who could impose such a covering—whose heart dared not beat under it. Is not such an act a sin against God? Is not this the murder of a human being—this slow killing of one in the likeness of God? Does the poisoner do anything worse when he gives his victims the means of passing away slowly? Have not other men discovered the antidote for it? You do not know this perhaps. See! As easy as it is to put on this sable cowl, this shroud for a living body, just so easy is it to strip it off. ...
— Peter the Priest • Mr Jkai
... contemptuous pity. I brought them here, to Mortallone, to play with them; and as soon as they tired me, they—went. It was power I wanted; power I achieved; and in power, as I thought, lay the secret. The tools in this world say that a poisoner is always a coward: it is one of the phrases with which fools cheat themselves. For long I was sure of myself; and then, when the thought began to haunt me that, after all, I had missed the secret, I sought out ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... and he would illustrate the growth of the rings of Saturn. As a lecturer he was a star, the only chemist and scientist to offer experiments. His lectures were always attended by crowds of admirers. As a toxicologist he was marvellous in his accuracy; no poisoner could escape his exact analysis. His compressed cartridges, made waterproof and coated with collodion, were used in the blasting operations at the Mont Cenis tunnel through eight miles of otherwise impenetrable stone, solid ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... moon," shouted Tom Thurnall, who had just come up to the window. "I advise you to change that name of yours, Jack, to Sidney, or Percy, or Walker if you like; anything but the illustrious surname of Briggs the poisoner!" ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... out of the way there, then; it is, indeed, the Bagdad and Bassora of the 'Thousand and One Nights.' The sultans and viziers who rule over society there, and who constitute what in France we call the government, are really Haroun-al-Raschids and Giaffars, who not only pardon a poisoner, but even make him a prime minister, if his crime has been an ingenious one, and who, under such circumstances, have the whole story written in letters of gold, to divert their hours of idleness ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... little acquainted with him. In his own domain he governed despotically, either burning or plundering the lands and houses of his open enemies, or taking off his secret ones by the assistance of his cook, who was his poisoner in chief. He had two servants who married without his consent; he said, "You shall have enough of each other," and stowed them in a dungeon, that had been a well for three weeks. When he came to the Tower, he told ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... with its bared fangs,[31108] but also the slimier desires, unite in fury against women whose noble or infamous repute makes them conspicuous; against Madame de Lamballe, the Queen's friend; against Madame Desrues, widow of the famous poisoner; against the flower-girl of the Palais-Royal, who, two years before, had mutilated her lover, a French guardsman, in a fit of jealousy. Ferocity here is associated with lewdness to add debasement to torture, while life is violated through outrages on modesty. In Madame de Lamballe, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... whisper. . . . She had something to do during the night. . . . There was no light in the room; but the moon shone in, and gave light enough to open a box and read the names of the poisons inside it—the unfailing drugs of an Eastern poisoner. Athalie chose among them, and smiled to herself. What a good jest it would be if to-morrow, at the moment of drinking some toast, the words should die on the lips of the feasting guests! if each saw the face of his neighbor turn yellow and green; if they all sprung up crying ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai |
