"Sombre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... one of the most sombre of the houses, and our taxi-driver, with evident relief, made off in ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... the gloom. The wind, I was told, came through the windows on the sea side with such force as to overturn the chalices, and blow out the tapers on the altar, whereupon every opening was walled up, except a rose at the end of the chancel, and a few slits in the nave, above the side-aisles. A sombre twilight, like that of a stormy day, fills the edifice. Here the rustling of stoles and the muttering of prayers suggest incantation rather than worship; the organ has a hollow, sepulchral sound ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... sombre pessimism which threatened to overwhelm these young men after the war was a grave anxiety to Clerambault. The moral danger was a serious one, of which the Governments took no notice at all. They were like bad coachmen who flog their horses ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... lines of sombre thought, puzzled thought, it seemed to Anne. But to Lydia it looked as if this kidnapping of Madame Beattie from the past and thrusting her into the present discussion was only a pretext for talking about Esther. Of course, she knew, he was wildly anxious to enter ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... and requested her to take the paper, which I marked, to Mr. Livermore; and as soon as my breakfast was over, I hastened to make my usual call. I found him looking very sombre. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... was himself one of a family of fourteen, and yet his mother was alive and hearty. It was quite the exception for anything to go wrong. And yet in spite of his reasonings the remembrance of his wife's condition was always like a sombre background to all ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... shared his pleasures with his sons, and so the years passed on with rays of brilliant sunshine piercing the clouds of darkling deeds. Alexandre Dumas has well summed up the character of Cosimo de' Medici: "He had," he says, "all the vices which rendered his private life sombre, and all the virtues which made his life in public renowned for splendour; whilst his family experienced unexampled misfortune, his people ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... night was clear though cold, he threw His chamber door wide open[779]—and went forth Into a gallery of a sombre hue, Long, furnished with old pictures of great worth, Of knights and dames heroic and chaste too, As doubtless should be people of high birth; But by dim lights the portraits of the dead Have ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... to talk to me, he said, and I followed him out through the yard on to the soft road that climbs the hill to westward. The evening was falling slowly and mournfully; it was dark already in the folds of the sombre downs. ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... lee rigging, handing their eyes to shield the wind and spray. Faint as yet against the sombre monotone of sea and sky, a long line of breaking water leapt to their gaze, then vanished, as the staggering barque drove to the trough; again—again; there could be no doubt. Breakers! On ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... with an irresistible force. The great empires which followed each other in Western Asia, in destroying its hope of a terrestrial kingdom, threw it into religious dreams, which it cherished with a kind of sombre passion. Caring little for the national dynasty or political independence, it accepted all governments which permitted it to practise freely its worship and follow its usages. Israel will henceforward have ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... before they begin!' he said, and lay sombre and frowning on his pillows, till Chicksands had beguiled him by some letters from men in Desmond's own division which he had taken special trouble to collect ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 1894. All about us was the empty infinitude; the twilight desert swept by a great cold wind; the desert that rolled, in dull, dead colours, under a still more sombre sky which, on the circular horizon, seemed to fall on ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... could come back to earth the gloom of the forest shut in above their heads once more. They put the horses to a canter as soon as the ridge was cleared, for there were still ten miles to go and the light was waning. Jeremy was very much at home in the woods, but the chill, sombre depths that appeared and reappeared on either hand seemed to warn him to be prepared. He reached to the saddlebow, undid the flap of the pistol holster, and made sure that his weapon was loaded, then put it back, reassured. The footing was bad, and they had to ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... quickly, and, turning in the direction of Maria I saw her body being caught up by the current and sucked painfully forward into the opening her delicate hands had made.... It was too horrible to endure!... Now, while there is no blood of martyrs in my veins, and while I had PROMISED the sombre figure in Berlin TO DO A CERTAIN THING which a martyr impulse might prevent if I tried to be a hero in this instance, I simply could not look at that girl's struggles without going to her rescue no matter what ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... caught a glimpse of a hard-set jaw and a mouth about which strong lines of determination had woven themselves. Yet, as soon as Cumshaw fancied he was observed, the mask of his face melted into a smile, and the sombre eyes sparkled with a humor that somehow seemed too real ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... appearance of a beautiful Spanish town, with its Romanesque piazzas, churches, many arched buildings peeping through breaks in a line of mahogany, bread- fruit, mango, tamarind, and palm trees,—an irregular mass of at least fifty different tints, from a fiery emerald to a sombre bluish-green. But on entering the streets the illusion of beauty passes: you find yourself in a crumbling, decaying town, with buildings only two stories high. The lower part, of arched Spanish design, ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... rock, down which in certain seasons the torrents sweep vast quantities of stone into the river. These rocks are of a whitish brown, and towards the base of a gray colour, and so hard, that on striking them with steel, they yield a fire like flint. This sombre appearance is in some places scarcely relieved by a single tree, though near the river and on the creeks there is more timber, among which are some tall pine: several of these might be made into canoes, and by lashing two of them together, one of ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... justice in her being dressed as she was, for she really was not so old as she looked by two or three years; and there was reason in Mrs. Bowen's carrying in the hollow of her left arm the India shawl sacque she had taken off and hung there; the deep cherry silk lining gave life to the sombre tints prevailing in her dress, which its removal left free to express all the grace of her extremely lady-like person. Lady-like was the word for Mrs. Bowen throughout—for the turn of her head, the management ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... with the twenty cents for Miss Lowery. We saw her aboard her ferryboat, and stood watching her wave her handkerchief at us until it was the tiniest white patch imaginable. And then Tripp and I faced each other, brought back to earth, left dry and desolate in the shade of the sombre ...
— Options • O. Henry
... it was that the Frost King kept the land bound captive in icy chains, but at last the signal for freedom came. The trees awoke from their winter sleep, and, casting off their sombre garments of sheathed leaves, came forth in vestments of tender green; the bees, too, sent out their pioneers, who hastened back to the hives with the glad tidings of the sunshine and of awakening flowers. The birds flew hither and thither on joyous wings, twittering their simple gratitude to Him ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... Here was a sombre dining-room with decanters and glasses, bedrooms with satin down quilts spread over the foot of the bed, and adjoining one of them a dressing-room with pomades and perfumes and rows of boots just as its owner had left it. Who he might be, ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... fete of illuminations underwent a sensible abatement of splendour, then almost ceased. The walls assumed a crystallised though sombre appearance; mica was more closely mingled with the feldspar and quartz to form the proper rocky foundations of the earth, which bears without distortion or crushing the weight of the four terrestrial systems. We were immured within prison ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... naturally dealt in skins and furs, which, before the days of sombre black coats and tweed suits, were in great request, and were the distinguishing badge of rank and high estate. The Haberdashers united into one guild the Hat Merchants; the Haberdashers of Hats including the crafts ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... Court, a quiet, dull nook on the east side of the Temple, to the south of that sombre Grecian temple where the Master resides, was the scene of a very horrible crime. Sarah Malcolm, a laundress, aged twenty-two, employed by a young barrister named Kerrol in the same court, gaining access to the rooms of an old lady named Duncomb, whom she knew to have money, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... in this Poe excels Byron—is a psychic effect the same as that which remains after viewing certain pictures in black and white, the shade gradations of which are so artistic as to create an illusion of color—sombre, highly shaded, yet color. This color effect of Poe's poetry I have felt very slightly, if at all, immediately on a first reading, as I feel the music of his verse—a rereading, or the lapse of time, being required for its full development. I have not read a line of Poe in the last ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... translate his outward serenity into an impression of severity. But truth keeps one from being hysterical. Is a demagogue a friend of the people because he will lie to them to make them cry and raise false hopes? A search for perfect truths throws out a beauty more spiritual than sensuous. A sombre dignity of style is often confused by under-imagination and by surface-sentiment, with austerity. If Emerson's manner is not always beautiful in accordance with accepted standards, why not accept a few other standards? He is an ascetic, ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... Lord Henry, dreamily, "the costume of the nineteenth century is detestable. It is so sombre, so depressing. Sin is the only real ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... into dusk, and Jocelyn sat musing beside the corpse of Mrs. Pierston. Avice having gone away nobody knew whither, he had acted as the nearest friend of the family, and attended as well as he could to the sombre duties necessitated by her mother's decease. It was doubtful, indeed, if anybody else were in a position to do so. Of Avice the Second's two brothers, one had been drowned at sea, and the other had emigrated, ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... who might really coerce attention. There was in Mrs. Brookenham's way of looking up at her a dim despairing abandonment of the idea of any common personal ground. Lady Fanny, magnificent, simple, stupid, had almost the stature of her brother, a forehead unsurpassably low and an air of sombre concentration just sufficiently corrected by something in her movements that failed to give it a point. Her blue eyes were heavy in spite of being perhaps a couple of shades too clear, and the wealth of her black hair, the disposition ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... prays that God will send All pain from earth. Pain has its use and place; Its ministry of holiness and grace. The darker tones upon the canvas blend With light and colour; and their shadows lend The painting half its dignity. Efface The sombre background, and you lose all trace Of that perfection which is ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... points in its history I have no space to tell; as of the "Clercs de l'Echiquier" called the "Basoche," a merry company established in 1430, and enlivening the records of the law for many centuries afterwards, as you will see at the visit of Henri II. But after all, the main impression is a very sombre one. The bitter sarcasms of Rabelais are but too well founded. Mediaeval justice was almost as terrible as mediaeval crime, and both were followed only too frequently by death. For these old judges let no money ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... sharpness. People walked in silence without knowing why they did not care to speak. And even the girls, discreet in ribbons and shining boots, thought less of kisses than they generally did on Sunday. The older people, sober by temperament, became sombre under the influence of sad, breathless sky, and breathless waters. The coldness that lay in the bosom of nature soon found its way to the responsive bosom of humanity. It chilled Uniacke in the pulpit, Sir Graham in the pew below. The one preached without heart. The other listened ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... it seemed to her, an interminably long way, they stopped opposite a tall stone house, one of a row all just alike, and looking very monotonous and sombre to Lucy's eyes, accustomed to the ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... in the balconies, dressed in their best—like bands of fluttering ribbon stretched across the sombre-fronted palaces; aristocratic daughters, and dainty consorts. They are not chary of their charms. They laugh, fan themselves, lean over sculptured balustrades, and eye the crowded streets, talking with lip and fan, ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... with a challenging immensity, mocking the pitiful grasp of these pygmies on the thousand hills. The snow on the taller of the peaks still held the high lights. But all the valleys and the spaces between the mountains were wrapped in sombre shadows; the crazy house invading the great company of mountains, penetrating brazenly to the very threshold of their silent councils, seemed but a pitiful ant-hill at the mercy of some possible giant tread. The ill-adjusted family, disputing every ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... looked out meditatively at the dense and sombre wilderness, upon which this little clearing and humble log-cabin were but meagre suggestions of that strong, full-pulsed humanity that has elsewhere subdued nature, and ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... learned all that history and tradition has to tell us about Mary Blandy; but what do we really know of that sombre soul that sinned and suffered and passed to its appointed place so long ago? A few "facts," some "circumstances"—which, if we may believe the dictum of Mr. Baron Legge, cannot lie; and yet she remains for us dark and inscrutable as in her portrait, where she sits calmly in her cell, preparing ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... and a desire for revenge succeeded. I could see the officers passing back and forth talking and gesticulating. A dozen troopers under a flag of truce came forward to pick up the wounded, and without even challenging we permitted them to do their work. The house remained quiet, sombre, silent, nothing showing but the dark barrels of our carbines. The infantry battalion at the gate moved against the left of the cavalry, and couriers were despatched to hurry up more. Out by the ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... boulders—dripping silently from ledge to ledge, had the pathos of tears. The deathly stillness was broken only by the dismal caw of a crow taking abrupt flight from a blasted pine. Here and there a birch with its white satin skin glimmered spectrally among the sombre foliage. ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... purple of the night Is spread, wine-dark, above, But glistens with no gems of light, To hint of Heaven's love. A sombre pall hangs overhead, Fringed with lurid clouds of lead,— O'er the sleeping earth below One long, wide waste of silent snow, And the wind moans drearily As it wanders by, And the night wanes ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... a majesty in that slight figure, clad in its sombre mourning drapery, which awed him. There was a set, marble pallor upon the beautiful face, and Arthur Ferris could not see the sapphire blue eyes veiled with their fringing lashes. He had started forward, had stretched out appealing hands, and murmured "Alice," but the youthful heiress ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... on the countenances of those assembled slave-drivers as they listened to the delegates' report. The sombre silence that followed was broken at length by Mr Rushton, who suddenly started up and said that he began to think they had made a mistake in going outside the constituency at all to look for a man. It was strange but true that a prophet never received honour in his own land. They had ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... nodded, with sombre meaning. He was always a pessimistically inclined man; and, in his rough way, he had conceived a good deal of affection and ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... your comrades' praise— All that romance that seemed so fair Grows dim, and you are left to bear The prose of duty's sombre ways And labour of ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 23, 1914 • Various
... mysteries, wrapt in celestial reveries, yet going forth from dreary cells to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, and still more, to give spiritual consolations to the poor and miserable. It was a great scheme of philanthropy, as well as a haven of rest. It was always sombre in its attire, ascetic in its habits, intolerant in its dogmas, secluded in its life, narrow in its views, and repulsive in its austerities; but its leaders and dignitaries did not then conceal under their coarse raiments either ambition, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... grown sombre, and to Jimmie, gazing at him, it seemed that all the sorrows of the world were in his tired grey eyes. "Perhaps ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... youthfulness only make that fact more obvious. Forget-me-nots, mignonettes, certain pretty white flowers, the palest of pink roses, or the most delicate tint of yellow veiled with lace are not inappropriate for those who do not enjoy wearing sombre bonnets and hats which are composed only of rich, black textures. Lace cleverly intermingled with velvet and jewelled ornaments of dull, rich shades are exceedingly effective on the head-gear of ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley
... on the harp for Le Gardeur the airs which she knew he liked best. His sombre mood yielded to her fond exertions, and she had the reward of drawing at last a smile from his eyes as well as from his lips. The last she knew might be simulated, the former she felt was real, ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... night," says Mason, "the moon did not show itself, and the heavens, always more sombre when regarded from great altitudes, seemed to us to intensify the natural darkness. On the other hand, by a singular contrast, the stars shone out with unusual brilliancy, and seemed like living sparks sown upon the ebony vault ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... city of Mons, which they resolved to besiege with all possible expedition. They passed the Schelde on the third day of September, and detached the prince of Hesse to attack the French lines from the Haisne to the Sombre, which were abandoned at his approach. On the seventh day of September, mareschal de Boufflers arrived in the French camp at Quievrain, content to act in an inferior capacity to Villars, although his superior in point ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... The autumn scene, though sombre and sad, was far from depressing, but they all felt the change. John Hislop seemed to feel it more than all the rest; for besides being deeply religious, he was deeply in love. His nearest and dearest friend, Heney—happy, hilarious ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... nature of the enterprise they had undertaken, to indulge in general conversation. Gradually, however, the steady rapid motion, the sense of strength and reliance in themselves and each other, lessened the sombre expression, and a general talk began, mostly upon Indian fights, in which most of the older settlers had at one time or ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... we made our bed of some branches we lopped off from the trees, and which we joined together on the very moist soil in the interior of the vast forest, and there we slept soundly till the morrow, without fear, and particularly without having any sombre or disagreeable dreams. At the dawn of day we were on foot again, all Nature seeming to wake up with ourselves. Oh! how fine and calm did she appear to us! The vapours that arose from her breast covered ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... unconscious, she did not know, when, considerably later, she roused herself from what seemed like a heavy and unrefreshing sleep. Her dress was damp with dew, the sun had sunk so low as to fill the forest with a sombre shade; the happy life that had sported around her was hushed and hidden, and the wind now sighed mournfully through the trees. Gloom and darkening shadows had taken the place of the light and joyousness ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... is but the grouping of a few brilliant or sombre tableaux, which are like the famous lines in an epic that immortalize the whole. Maud's life was such a one, and her years had been rather unpicturesque until now, when the shadows began to deepen ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... filled up in the more elaborate, and, in many respects, most exquisite, poem of "Resignation." Virtue exacting all sacrifices, and giving no reward—Belief which denies enjoyment, and has no bliss save its own illusions; such is the sombre lesson of the melancholy poet—the more impressive because so far it is truth—deep and everlasting truth—but only, to a Christian, a part of truth. Resignation, so sad if not looking beyond the earth, becomes joy, when assured and confident of heaven. Another ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... the presence of death. Everywhere within the building were the evidences of a great sorrow. Crape was seen wherever the eye turned—surrounding the galleries, fronting the platform, encircling the choir. But there was one spot thrown into alto relievo by the sombre drapery of woe. In front of the pulpit, on a small table, were the exquisitely beautiful floral tributes of friendship and affection, whispering of the beauty and glory of that spring-time of the human race, when this "mortal shall ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... impartial verdict than Eyre was competent to do. Eyre, be it remembered, was struggling on for his life, Forrest travelled in comparative ease, being able to supply himself three times from the schooner during the journey; it is but natural that Eyre's report should bear a very sombre tinge. ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... sanction of my honour, however much it enlisted the approbation of my feelings. Some further time passed, and added, with its passing minutes, to my mental disquietude. One evening, when I was sitting meditating painfully on this sombre subject, a lackey, superbly dressed, was introduced to me by my servant, and stated that he had been commanded by his master Colonel P——, to request my attendance at his house without delay. I started at the mention of the name, and the nature of the message; and the man stared at me, as ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... time had one or more coats of light delicate green paint—the worst colour which could be chosen for endurance—put upon them, and many are now curiously black at the rear, through people leaning back against them. A glance round shows the various sombre places, and their relative darkness gives a fair clue as to the extent ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... sombre woods are richly sad, Their leaves are red and gold: Are thoughts in solemn splendour clad Signs that ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... bringing news—great news and glorious. A big naval battle had been fought in the North Sea! Ten British battleships had been sunk, but the whole German fleet had been destroyed! For the first time war took on some colour. Crimson and purple and gold began to shoot through the sombre black and grey. A completely new set of emotions filled their hearts, a new sense of exultation, a new pride in that great British Navy which hitherto had been a mere word in a history book, or in a song. The children who, after their manner, were quickest ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... It was not difficult for him to distinguish between the races, for Rais Ali had already told him that none but Turks were permitted to wear the turban, not even the sons of Turks by Algerine mothers, and that the Jews were by law commanded to dress in sombre black. ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... by the army of the Sombre-et-Meuse in 1796, and by Bagration in 1812, were secondary lines, as the former were merely secondary to the army of the Rhine, and the latter to ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... his reverie, he stood opposite to that wild and magnificent gloom of Nature which frowned on him from the canvas, the very leaves on those gnome-like, distorted trees seemed to rustle sibylline secrets in his ear. Those rugged and sombre Apennines, the cataract that dashed between, suited, more than the actual scenes would have done, the mood and temper of his mind. The stern, uncouth forms at rest on the crags below, and dwarfed by the giant size of the Matter that reigned around them, impressed ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Breathing their silent farewells, as they fade and wither and perish, Soon to be thrown away as is the heart of the giver." So through the Plymouth woods John Alden went on his errand; Came to an open space, and saw the disk of the ocean, Sailless, sombre and cold with the comfortless breath of the east-wind; Saw the new-built house and people at work in a meadow; Heard, as he drew near the door, the musical voice of Priscilla Singing the hundredth Psalm, the grand old Puritan anthem, Music that Luther sang to the sacred words of the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... recall the form of that happiness. I wanted to play it all over again—in my nursery—by myself. No! All I remember is the happiness and two dear playfellows who were most with me . . . . Then presently came a sombre dark woman, with a grave, pale face and dreamy eyes, a sombre woman wearing a soft long robe of pale purple, who carried a book and beckoned and took me aside with her into a gallery above a hall—though my playmates were loth to have me go, and ceased their game ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... be up now, but we cannot see it for the hills and buildings. My goodness, see that!" and the Englishman pointed to the east. A flood of delicate pink light was now pouring into the vast body of gray and was slowly driving the more sombre color toward the west. The line of separation was marked—so marked, indeed, that it seemed a vast, rose-colored billow rolling, widening and sweeping onward like a swell of the ocean shoreward. On it came rapidly, till the whole landscape was magically changed. The flowers, the trees, the ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... color, I usually choose red for books which come to binding or rebinding, for these reasons. The bulk of every library is of dark and sombre color, being composed of the old-fashioned calf bindings, which grow darker with age, mingled with the cloth bindings of our own day, in which dark colors predominate. Now the intermixture of red morocco, in all or most of the newly bound books, relieves the monotony of so much blackness, ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... been adapted to reassure her or console her. The state of suspense in which she now was did not give her any fresh strength. Her nervous system was disorganized, and her present position stimulated her morbid fancy, turning it toward dark and sombre forebodings. And now in this solitude and gloom which was about her, and in the deep suspense in which she was waiting, there came to her mind a thought—a thought which made her flesh creep, and ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... but from caprice and ill-humour. This subsequently became very evident, when we set out to take a walk, and Frederica joining Charlotte, with whom I was talking, the worthy gentleman's face, which was naturally rather sombre, became so dark and angry that Charlotte was obliged to touch my arm, and remind me that I was talking too much to Frederica. Nothing distresses me more than to see men torment each other; particularly ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... helpless despair of a man on a spar who watches the lifeboat put off with its last load for the shore. The young ladies, almost before nurse was gone, began to run along the rows of chairs, falling down once in twelve, and rapidly toning down the pretty pink of their frocks to a sombre brick hue. I was thankful when the crowd began to drop in, and I was able, by threats of taking them home before the races began, to reduce them at least to the nine seats for which I was responsible. How I wished I had some ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... still glanced. Weeds, too, had crept up around them in picturesque toils, weeds which had started to destroy, but remained to adorn with all the sweet abandon of unrestrained growth. Some of them had put forth brilliant blossoms of many hues, little spots of exquisite coloring against the sombre hue of the stonework and the deep green of the leaves. Everywhere nature had triumphed over science and skill. Everything was changed, and nature had shown herself a more perfect gardener than man. The gravel paths were embedded ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... half-shrinking, timid look upon their sombre countenances, but they came close up, lowered down the bucks at Mark's feet, slipped out the spears, and then turned and fled, plunging in amongst the bushes, and then under the pendant boughs of the outer lines of the ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... November—and the Glen is all grey and brown, except where the Lombardy poplars stand up here and there like great golden torches in the sombre landscape, although every other tree has shed its leaves. It has been very hard to keep our courage alight of late. The Caporetto disaster is a dreadful thing and not even Susan can extract much consolation out of the present state of affairs. The rest of us don't ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Caesar could mount in case of surprise or attack: before him and behind, both right and left, marched his army, their arms in rest, but without beating of drums or blowing of trumpets: this gave a sombre, funereal air to the whole procession, which at the gate of the city met Prospero Colonna awaiting it with ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... sang the wondrous song of the shaping of the earth. And all who heard were charmed with the sweet sound and with the pleasant words. He sang of the sunlight and the south winds and the summer-time, of the storms and the snow and the sombre shadows of the North-land. And he sang of the dead Ymir, the giant whose flesh had made the solid earth, and whose blood the sea, and whose bones the mountains, whose teeth the cliffs and crags, and whose skull the heavens. ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... it," said Kate. "I care nothing for a grand house. I should only be afraid of it. I know it is dark and sombre, for you have said so. Oh, Fred, any place will be Paradise to me, if I am ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... expense; you can do nothing much worth doing, in this world, without trouble, you can get nothing much worth having without expense. The main question is only—what is worth doing and having:—Consider, therefore, if this be not. Here is your iron railing, as yet, an uneducated monster; a sombre seneschal, incapable of any words, except his perpetual "Keep out!" and "Away with you!" Would it not be worth some trouble and cost to turn this ungainly ruffian porter into a well-educated servant; who, while he was severe as ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... in black, a sombre figure amidst the white muslins and rainbow sashes of her comrades. Her cashmere gown was of the simplest fashion, but it became the tall full figure to admiration. Below her linen collar she wore a scarlet ribbon, from which hung a silver locket, the only ornament she possessed. It was ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... Perkins, flushing faintly. "Each individuality gives out a spiritual vapour, like a cloud, which surrounds one. These are all in different colours, and the colours change with the thoughts we think. Black and purple are the gloomy, morose colours; deep blue and the paler shades show a sombre outlook on life; green is more cheerful, though still serious; yellow and orange show ambition and envy, and red and white are emblematic of all the virtues—red of the noble, martial qualities of man and white of the angelic disposition of woman," ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... of a very old song, and his heart cried out at the thought. He heaped more wood on the blaze from the little pile collected, and soon a roaring, boisterous fire burned in the glen, while giant shadows danced on the sombre hills. Then he rummaged in the tent till he found the rifles, carefully cleaned and laid aside. He selected two express 400 bores, a Metford express and a smooth-bore Winchester repeater. Then he filled his pockets with cartridges, and from a small ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... wound and twisted its firm white line amidst broken patches of snow and timber far away to either hand, and, where glacial affluents discharged into it, were finer, threadlike lines that marked the many mouths. The thick spruce mantling the slope in the foreground gave a sombre contrast to the fields of snow, and the yellow March sunshine was poured over all the wide landscape save where the great clouds ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... "A sombre thought, but I guess you're right. A fellow couldn't swim far or stick it out long in there," said Shad, waving his arm toward the dark waters. "I'm sure I owe my life to you. It was lucky ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... at the inn, and prepared to return. It was at the latter end of the month of May, and nature was adorned in the bridal ornaments of spring; the sun was sunk behind the groves, which cast their sombre shades over the valley, while the retiring beams of day adorned the distant eastern eminences with ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... stood silent, full of bitter thoughts, rapidly but minutely reviewing the whole of his past life. When he removed his hands he started, and a thrill passed over him, for he suddenly encountered the gaze of two piercing eyes glittering with a sombre lustre, and seeming to watch and enjoy his despair. A second glance showed him they belonged to the strange portrait which he had bought, many years before, in the Stchukin Dvor. It had remained forgotten and concealed amidst a mass of old pictures, and he had long since forgotten ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... mountains, on the barren tops of rocky passes, where the soul has seemed to hear in solitude a low controlling voice. It is almost necessary for the development of our deepest affections that some sad and sombre moments should be interchanged with hours of merriment and elasticity. It is this variety in the woof of daily life which endears our home to us; and perhaps none have fully loved the Alps who have not spent some days ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... Next after them they came to Corcyra, where Poseidon settled the daughter of Asopus, fair-haired Corcyra, far from the land of Phlius, whence he had carried her off through love; and sailors beholding it from the sea, all black with its sombre woods, call it Corcyra the Black. And next they passed Melite, rejoicing in the soft-blowing breeze, and steep Cerossus, and Nymphaea at a distance, where lady Calypso, daughter of Atlas, dwelt; and they deemed they ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... mountains, in whose mist or sunshine he had ridden for two days. The woods, with leaves that fell continually about him, seemed in some swoon of nature, with no birds carolling on the boughs; the cloisters were monastic in their silence. A season of most dolorous influences, a land of sombre shadows and ravines, a day of sinister solitude; the sun slid through scudding clouds, high over a world blown upon by salt airs brisk and tonic, but man was wanting in those weary valleys, and the heart of Victor Jean, ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... blue-black, dyed with indigo; some are glazed with gum. Many, however, are white, and ornamented in front about the neck with silken embroidery,—a costume which gives them a very chaste and elegant appearance. Sometimes the tobes are variegated in colour, as are the trousers; but the sombre, or pure white, are ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... from their sight. The meagre pleasures which we allowed ourselves—sympathizing looks, words spoken in whispers not to wake the count, hopes and fears repeated and again repeated, in short, the thousand incidents of the fusion of two hearts long separated—stand out in bright array upon the sombre background of the actual scene. Our souls knew each other to their depths under this test, which many a warm affection is unable to bear, finding life too heavy or too flimsy in the ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... they all met,—the father, the three children, and Mrs. Finn. How far the young people among themselves had been able to throw off something of the gloom of death need not here be asked; but in the presence of their father they were sad and sombre, almost as he was. On the next day, early in the morning, the younger lad returned to his college, and Lord Silverbridge went up to London, where he was supposed to have ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... hand on his arm and gazed, with round-eyed simplicity, into his sombre countenance. For an instant her witchery ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... strike organisations by the law, will avert this gathering storm? The Spectacle of Pleasure, the parade of clothes, estates, motor-cars, luxury and vanity in the sight of the workers is the culminating irritant of Labour. So long as that goes on, this sombre resolve to which we are all awakening, this sombre resolve rather to wreck the whole fabric than to continue patiently at work, will gather strength. It does not matter that such a resolve is hopeless and unseasonable; we are dealing here with the profounder impulses that underlie ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... flash of sombre glare With yellow tinged the forest's brown; Up rose the Wildgrave's bristling hair, And horror ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... few truffles—probably there was but little beef—for Goldsmith during this sombre period. "His threadbare coat, his uncouth figure, and Hibernian dialect caused him to meet with repeated refusals." But at length he got some employment in a chemist's shop, and this was a start. Then he tried practising in ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... modest-sized country gentleman's residence, built of variegated uneven stones, black and grey and white, which seemed to be chiefly flint; but the corners and settings of the windows and of the door-ways, and the chimneys, were of brick. There was something sombre about it, and many perhaps might call it dull of aspect; but it was substantial, comfortable, and unassuming. It was entered by broad stone steps, with iron balustrades curving outwards as they descended, and there was an open area round the house, showing that ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... as he went down into L'Houmeau; and when he took his way towards Marsac, with the last sombre thoughts gnawing at his heart, it was with the firm resolve to hide his death. There should be no inquest held over him, he would not be laid in earth; no one should see him in the hideous condition of the corpse that floats on the surface of the water. Before long he reached one of the slopes, ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... moral of which has little that can peculiarly recommend it. To exhibit the repentance of a lovely but erring woman, to show us how her soul may be restored to its primitive nobleness, by sufferings, devotion and death, is the object of Maria Stuart. It is a tragedy of sombre and mournful feelings; with an air of melancholy and obstruction pervading it; a looking backward on objects of remorse, around on imprisonment, and forward on the grave. Its object is undoubtedly attained. We are forced to pardon and to love the heroine; she is beautiful, and ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... appealed mournfully to the heart; the doctor, in presence of these touching regrets, felt his eyes fill with tears. At the very same place which Franklin and his companions passed full of energy and hope, there only remained a block of marble in remembrance! And notwithstanding this sombre warning of destiny, the Forward was going to follow in the track of the Erebus and the Terror. Hatteras was the first to rouse himself from the perilous contemplation, and quickly climbed a rather steep hill, almost entirely ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... served to whet curiosity, and the young scholars of the day applied themselves to Arabic in order to equip their minds, and to be in a more blissful state of preparation for the triumphant edition to follow. Captain Burton's first volume in sombre black and dazzling gold—the livery of the Abbasides—made its appearance three weeks ago, and divided attention with the newly-discovered Star. It is the first volume of ten, the set issued solely to subscribers. And already, as ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... were skimming up overhead from the placid surface of the Yukon, and robins were singing. The oblique rays of the hidden sun shot through the smoke, high-dissipated from forest fires a thousand miles away, and turned the heavens to sombre red, while the earth shone red in the reflected glow. This red glow shone in the faces of all, and made everything seem ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... of our own compatriots. These folks take their kef, as they do every thing else, quietly. Here you may see hundreds of revellers, and not a drunkard among them. Perhaps the repose of the scene draws some of its influence from those sombre burying grounds, of which two are just opposite. No where is such truth of funereal effect preserved as in this country. Pere la Chaise, and all European cemeteries are puerile in comparison. The stately evergreen which they have consecrated to the overshadowing of the dead fulfils ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... and a deathlike silence reigns through the forest, which is only now and then interrupted by the rattle of the rattlesnake (like a clock going down), and the chirrup of the chitnunck, or squirrel. The sombre colour of the foliage, the absence of all sun even at mid-day, and the vault-like chilliness one feels when entering a cypress swamp, is far from cheering; and I don't know any position so likely to give one the horrors as being lost in ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 460 - Volume 18, New Series, October 23, 1852 • Various
... it otherwise, the Failure would not lead to Despair. You know me too well to think it is Love; & I have had no quarrel or dissention with Friend or enemy, you may therefore be easy, since no unpleasant consequence will be produced from the present Sombre cast of my Temper. I fear the Business will not be concluded before your arrival in Town, when we will settle it together, as by the 20th these sordid Bloodsuckers who have agreed to furnish the Sum, will have drawn up the Bond. Believe me, my dearest Sister, ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... When their mother or Tom was with them, they would often linger until the stars came out or the moon rose. How glorious the water looked then, bathed in silvery radiance, like an enchanted lake! How dark and sombre the woods! What strange shadows used to lurk among the trees! Hatty would creep to Bessie's side, as they walked, especially if Tom indulged in ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... in an earlier stratum of his life than its predecessor. There is little here to recall the characteristic moods of his first years of desolate widowhood—the valiant Stoicism, the acceptance of the sombre present, the great forward gaze upon the world beyond. We are in Italy once more, our senses tingle with its glowing prodigality of day, we jostle the teeming throng of the Roman streets, and are drawn into the vortex of a vast debate ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... month of October 1880 that, in the course of his enterprise, Doctor Bataille reached Calcutta. Freemasonry, he informs us, invariably affects the horrible, and as he invests Calcutta with the sombre hues of living death and universal putrefaction, it naturally follows that the Indian city is one of the four great directing centres of Universal Freemasonry. Everywhere the pious Doctor discovered the hand of Lucifer; everywhere he beheld the consequences of superstition ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... in thin, floating white dresses and spangled veils, hurrying by like ghosts in the dark. Heavy silver ornaments jangled on their ankles, above their black slippers splashed with mud. Their sombre eyes stared out from circles of Kohl, and, with stained, claret-coloured hands, whose nails were bright red, they clasped their light and bridal raiment to their prominent breasts. They were escorted by a gigantic man, almost black, with a zigzag scar across the left side of his face, who wore ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... light, remarks that the rays prevent us from seizing the outline of a bright object, that then the flame is enveloped by a bright halo; then by a second one less vivid, and so on until the tones become dull and sombre. In short, to make myself understood, his picture seen from distance ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... repeated. "All combinations of sounds convey a sense of colour to the mind. Gregorians are obviously of a rich and sombre brown, just as a Salvation Army hymn ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... in the small room, so dimly lighted, holding the long, snake-like pipe-stem in his thin, artistic hands, he looked like an Eastern Jew. With a fez upon his head, Europe would have dropped from him. Even his expression seemed to have become wholly Eastern, in its sombre, glittering intelligence, and in the patience of ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... you?" exclaimed Black, a gleam of joy lighting up his sombre visage. "Eh, but I am gled to ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... looking so prosperous and solid. It was not only the flesh that he had put on, but also the clothes, that made him hard to recognise. In the old days, an imitation fur coat had seemed to be as integral a part of him as were his ill-shorn lantern jaws. But now his costume was a model of rich and sombre moderation, drawing, not calling, attention to itself. He looked like a banker. Any one would have been proud to be seen off ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... silence, through many dark and intricate passages in my progress to the studio of his master. Much that I encountered on the way contributed, I know not how, to heighten the vague sentiments of which I have already spoken. While the objects around me—while the carvings of the ceilings, the sombre tapestries of the walls, the ebon blackness of the floors, and the phantasmagoric armorial trophies which rattled as I strode, were but matters to which, or to such as which, I had been accustomed from my infancy—while I ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... his unnatural fit had passed away. He stretched out his hand and struck a silver gong which had been left within his reach. Almost immediately a man, pale-faced, with full dark eyes and olive complexion, dressed in the sombre garb of an indoor servant, stood at ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... name of "Egdon Heath," which has been given to the sombre scene of the story, are united or typified heaths of various real names, to the number of at least a dozen; these being virtually one in character and aspect, though their original unity, or partial unity, is now somewhat disguised by intrusive strips and slices brought under the plough with varying ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... of giving offence, Elizabeth had written to ask if it was the queen's pleasure that she should appear in mourning; but the queen would have no mourning, nor would have others wear it in her presence. The sombre colours which of late years had clouded the court were to be banished at once and for ever; and with the dark colours, it seemed for a time as if old dislikes and suspicions were at the same time to pass away. The sisters embraced; the queen was warm and affectionate, kissing ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... take "Sombre Foret," of "William Tell," in case I should be asked. Therefore I said that I had brought "Sombre Foret," and if he liked ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... and very black, and very grave, as Darry was also. There was Jem, full of life and waggishness, and bright for any exercise of his wits; and grave shadows used to come over his changeable face often enough too. There was Margaret, with her sombre beauty; and old Theresa with her worn old face. I think there was a certain indescribable reserve of gravity upon them all, but there was not one whose lips did not part in a white line when looking at me, nor whose eyes and ears did not watch ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... the little old man had evidently crept behind a long line of people who were listening attentively to Marianina's voice as she finished the cavatina from Tancred. He seemed to have come up through the floor, impelled by some stage mechanism. He stood for a moment motionless and sombre, watching the festivities, a murmur of which had perhaps reached his ears. His almost somnambulistic preoccupation was so concentrated upon things that, although he was in the midst of many people, he saw nobody. He ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... for a moment with drooping head, amid the sombre shadows, then, slowly, she drew the emblazoned morocco case ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... upon whom the sombre-robed, grim-visaged stranger did not make a favorable impression, broke from his hold and took refuge in the skirts of the Countess, as the ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... the common, James knew a wood of tall fir trees, dark and ragged, their sombre green veiled in a silvery mist, as though, like a chill vapour, the hoar-frost of a hundred winters still lingered among their branches. At the edge of the hill, up which they climbed in serried hundreds, stood here and there an oak tree, just bursting ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... dreary, and after passing Cruz Blanca, excepting occasional cornfields and sombre pine-forests, the scene had no objects of interest sufficient to enable us to keep our eyes open. The sun was set—it grew dusk, and by the time we reached Perote, where we were to pass the night, most of us had fallen into an uncomfortable sleep, very ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... there, without rest, till he be consumed. Human strength, never so Herculean, has its measure. Herald shadows flit pale across the fire-brain of Mirabeau; heralds of the pale repose. While he tosses and storms, straining every nerve, in that sea of ambition and confusion, there comes, sombre and still, a monition that for him the issue of it ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... just like old Pluto, Persephone's prigger; You'll follow Apollo the Younger—that's me! He's sombre as Styx, and as black as a nigger. His lady-love, LONDON! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, November 15, 1890 • Various
... the ninth hour and the shadows of evening were already drawing in very fast. A tall figure dressed in sombre garments walked slowly up the hill ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... finally found the way. By turning the pen over and writing with the back of the point, the upward strokes emerged fine and hair-like. This having somewhat altered the mechanism of the pen point, its reversal brought lines sombre and heavy. It was slow and laborious, and it spoiled an alarming number of pen points; but then it achieved fine lines upward and heavy lines downward, and that is ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin
... governess. Hence the year 1843 was passed by her at the Pensionnat Heger in that capacity, and in this period she undoubtedly widened her intellectual sphere by reading the many books in French literature that her friend M. Heger lent her. But life took on a very sombre shade in the lonely environment in which she found herself. She became so depressed that on one occasion she took refuge in the confessional precisely as did her heroine Lucy Snowe in Villette. In 1844 she returned to her father's house at Haworth, and the three ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... Vast, lofty, sombre; the walls hung with dark-green tapestry—a pattern of vertical stripes, dark green and darker green; here and there a great dark painting, a Crucifixion, a Holy Family, in a massive dim-gold frame; dark-hued ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... sombre shadows of seminary life still hovered. For years he had never seen the sun. He perceived it not even now, his eyes closed and gazing inwards on his soul, and with no feeling for perishable nature, fated to damnation, save contempt. ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... red trousers, fastened round his ankles by broad rings of gilt brass. His long caftan of black cloth, embroidered with scarlet and gold, was bound round his waist and wrist by other large rings of gilt metal. This sombre costume imparted to him an aspect still more ferocious. His thick and red-haired beard fell in large quantities down to his chest, and a long piece of white muslin was folded round his red head. A devout missionary in Germany ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... in his mind, it cost him an effort to piece in his awakening and to revive the meditative interval of the Silent Rooms. At first his memory leapt these things and took him back to the cascade at Pentargen quivering in the wind, and all the sombre splendours of the sunlit Cornish coast. The contrast touched everything with unreality. And then the gap filled, and he began to ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... broad shouldered man, reddish haired and ruddy cheeked, with cool grey eyes; his sandy mustache was closely cropped and turned up ever so slightly at the corners of his mouth. Despite his colouring, his face was somewhat sombre—even stern—when in repose. It was his fine, enveloping smile that made friends for him wherever he listed, with men and with women. More frequently than otherwise it made more ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... the back of the chair he slung his girdle and the scabbard hanging therefrom and placed his plumed hat so that none could see that his Castilian blade was not in its resting-place. And when the sombre chamber had the appearance of one having undressed in it before retiring Rodriguez turned his attention to the bed, which he noticed to be of great depth and softness. That something not unlike blood had been ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... Excitement was carried to such a point that in many places the people complained that they were not permitted to arm against the French. The Austrian generals industriously circulated the most sinister reports respecting the armies of the Sombre-et-Meuse and the Rhine, and the position of the French troops in the Tyrol. These impostures, printed in bulletins, were well calculated to instigate the Italians, and especially the Venetians, to rise in mass to exterminate the French, when the victorious army should ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... of a similar kind. It is a veritable chapter in morbid pathology, though it may have truly a beauty for experts, the beauty which belongs to all refined cases even of cerebral disturbance. That he should [79] have sought relief from his singular wretchedness, in that sombre company, is like the second stroke of tragedy upon him. At moments Pascal becomes almost a sectarian, and seems to pass out of the genial broad heaven of the Catholic Church. He had lent himself in those last years to a kind of pieties which do not make a winning ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... is the place for Marie now; indeed, dear girl, she knew that well herself. The Marquis pressed her hard to stay, and I said nothing; but Marie insisted on coming home. I thought Henri looked somewhat more sombre than is his wont, as he was leading her down the steps: but he cannot, must not, think of love now, Victorine. La Vendee now wants ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope |
