"Portress" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he remembered from former occasions were accurately repeated. He rang at the main gate, waited long in the darkness, and heard at last the slapping and shuffling of shoes along the pavement within, as the portress and another nun came to let him in. Then there were faint rays of light from their little lamp, quivering through the cracks of the old weather-beaten door upon the cracked marble steps on which Sor Tommaso was ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... animosity that was entertained against me by the infernal portress of this solitary mansion. Gines, the expelled member of the gang, had been her particular favourite. She submitted to his exile indeed, because her genius felt subdued by the energy and inherent superiority ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... about ten o'clock. It was already full of women. It is built of stone, in the shape of a dome, with no windows but in the roof, which gives light enough, There were five of these domes joined together, the outmost being less than the rest, and serving only as a hall, where the portress stood at the door. Ladies of quality generally give this woman the value of a crown or ten shillings; and I did not forget that ceremony. The next room is a very large one paved with marble, and all ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... you're a faithful portress of a cloister! What is't you whisper to Lucretia? On your ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... support for the purpose of changing that seminary to a monastery of nuns; but he was unable to attain his purpose, for God cut short the thread of his life. They have their own chaplain, their rectoress, and their portress; and they live safely retired and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... weary, having deposited his living freight upon one of the rude benches of the chapel, bringing also his luggage, left him in God and our Lady's hands. The mother superior at the close of mass, hastily summoned the strong-armed portress, who with the assistance of the officiating priest, carried him to the adjoining hospital. You all doubtless observed traces of unusual beauty in Brother Thomas, but in the emaciated form you have seen, can form no conception of his comeliness, ere wasted by slow lingering fever; yes! he was ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... "the douceur of the key," i.e. the gratuity which it is customary to give to the porter or portress on hiring a house or lodging. Cf. the French denier Dieu, Old ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... the portress to hold herself at his disposal in the garden, and made Madame Beju accompany him to the studio. Barely twenty minutes had elapsed since the housekeeper had been terror-struck by the dreadful spectacle which had met her eyes there. When she entered with the superintendent of ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... to thee and I know how to rear the birds; and my husband was town-captain of Baghdad. Now I wish to have the reversion of my husband and my daughter wisheth to have that of her father." The Caliph granted both their requests and she said, "I ask of thee that I may be portress of thy Khan." Now he had built a Khan of three stories, for the merchants to lodge in, and had assigned to its service forty slaves and also forty dogs he had brought from the King of the Sulaymaniyah,[FN213] ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... which doth behedge a king" capable of sanctifying a woman's shame, transforming a foul leman into an angel of light! Catherine of Russia was an able woman, but a notorious harlot, foul as Milton's portress of Hell; a woman who, as Byron informs us, loved all he-things except her husband. Is that why the masqueraders preferred the character of Empress Catherine to that of Martha Washington? Did they consider it more in keeping ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... uninteresting stuccoed wall which faces the quiet street, and in which there are a few plain windows without shutters and a large wooden door, painted a dull green. This door, which is the main entrance, is opened and shut by the portress as often as a hundred times a day and more; but when it is open there is nothing to be seen within but a dark vestibule paved with flagstones; and the portress's wooden face is no more prepossessing than the wall itself. If any one asks her a question, she answers ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... an odd-looking portress. She might be seventy-five or eighty; her cheeks were of the color of very yellow parchment drawn in dry wrinkles; her eyes were those large, dark, lustrous ones so common in her country, but seemed, in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... window had been hastily drawn, but the lamp which the portress carried was sufficient feebly to illuminate the room. The table-cloth and a broken vase lay upon the floor. A few feet off was an overturned chair. Upon the canopied bed lay a prostrate figure, the head ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... till first I know of thee, 740 What thing thou art, thus double-form'd, and why In this infernal Vaile first met thou call'st Me Father, and that Fantasm call'st my Son? I know thee not, nor ever saw till now Sight more detestable then him and thee. T' whom thus the Portress of Hell Gate reply'd; Hast thou forgot me then, and do I seem Now in thine eye so foul, once deemd so fair In Heav'n, when at th' Assembly, and in sight Of all the Seraphim with thee combin'd 750 In bold conspiracy against Heav'ns King, All on a sudden miserable pain Surpris'd ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... heart. Oh God! could this be death? Crouching against the iron gate, she laid Her weary head against the bars, and prayed: But nearer footsteps drew, then seemed to wait: And then she heard the opening of the grate, And saw the withered face, on which awoke Pity and sorrow, as the portress spoke, And asked the stranger's bidding: "Take me in," She faltered, "Sister Monica, from sin, And sorrow, and despair, that will not cease; Oh, take me in, and let me die in peace!" With soothing words the Sister ...
— Legends and Lyrics: Second Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... be alone in the house, and had taken the rooms one by one as they fell vacant. In his own room he had changed nothing; the furniture which I knew so well sixteen years ago looked the same as ever; it might have been kept under a glass case. Gobseck's faithful old portress, with her husband, a pensioner, who sat in the entry while she was upstairs, was still his housekeeper and charwoman, and now in addition his sick-nurse. In spite of his feebleness, Gobseck saw his clients himself ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... stood in their disguises before the gate of the convent of White Nuns. The portress ran as fast as she could in order to inform the abbess of the unexpected visitors. The abbess received them with conventual greetings, to which the Devil answered in a similar tone. Sweetmeats and wines were then brought in, and while partaking of them the ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... laid down on fixed lines. Thus Fiction is not the mere handmaid of History: she has a household of her own, and she claims to be the triumph of Art, which, as Goethe remarked, is "Art because it is not Nature." Fancy, la folle du logis, is "that kind and gentle portress who holds the gate of Hope wide open, in opposition to Reason, the surly and scrupulous guard." As Palmerin of England says, and says well:—"For that the report of noble deeds doth urge the courageous ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... The portress at Rue Boursault led him to Denis Ramel's apartment. Lying on his bed with a kindly smile on his face, the old journalist seemed as if asleep. The cold majesty of death gave a look of power to his face. One might almost ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie |
