"Embrasure" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on the morning of the 3d of June 171-, the report of a cannon was heard rolling along the waters of the Hudson. Smoke issued from an embrasure of a small fortress, that stood on the point of land where the river and the bay mingle their waters. The explosion was followed by the appearance of a flag, which, as it rose to the summit of its staff and unfolded itself heavily in the light current of air, showed the blue field and ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... did not like this door with its stairway in the open. He must find another exit, and he inspected the window, opened it, and looked out. With simian agility, laughing with joy at his discovery, he sprang over the embrasure and disappeared, seeking with feet and hands the irregularities of the rubble-work, the deep, stair-like sockets left by the stones when they had fallen loose from the mortar. Febrer looked out and saw him picking up ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... midst of the saloon of the First Consul, where one saw with chagrin this young woman, formerly glittering in beauty, and who gracefully performed the honors of the palace, retire into a corner or into the embrasure of a window, with some one of her intimate friends, sadly to confide her griefs. During this interview, from which she would return with her eyes her husband would remain pensive and silent at the end ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... battery could see the French officers searching the opening with their eyes, and eagerly talking together; but they did not hesitate, apparently not realising that the place had been put in a state of defence, for the gun was drawn back, and the embrasure was of so rugged a construction that it did not resemble the ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... later the death-agony began, and M. Colbert begged the King to listen to him in an embrasure. There, taking a pencil, he made out a list of all the millions which the Cardinal had hidden away in various places. The monarch bewailed his minister, his tutor, his friend, but so astounding a revelation dried his tears. He affectionately thanked ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... daughters of the city watched their progress with keen interest and applauding laughter. As the shadows deepen and darkness falls upon the plain, our visitor joins the groups which are now fast leaving the meadow, and re-passes the great embrasure just as the rushlights begin to twinkle in the windows and a swinging oil-lamp to cast a dim light here and there in the streets. But as his company passes out of a narrow lane debouching on to the chief market-place, ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... the sweet slender voice of a linnet, the sunshine falling on his rosy breast. The gateways show the thickness of the hedge, as an embrasure shows the thickness of a wall. One gives entrance to an arable field which has been recently rolled, and along the gentle rise of a "land" a cock-pheasant walks, so near that the ring about his neck is visible. Presently, becoming conscious ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... pitched like tents In meads of heavenly azure; And each dread gun of the elements Slept in its hid embrasure. ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... outside, if perchance I might find one or more of the missing ones lying there wounded and bring them aid. I went to a gun of the Sixth Ohio battery, posted a short distance east of the cotton-gin, to get over; and as I stepped up into the embrasure, the sight that met my eyes was most horrible even in the dim starlight. The mangled bodies of the dead rebels were piled up as high as the mouth of the embrasure, and the gunners said that repeatedly when the lanyard was pulled the embrasure was ...
— The Battle of Franklin, Tennessee • John K. Shellenberger
... of a battery which remains above the platform, and under the gun after the opening of the embrasure. Of course a knee-step. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... looked through his embrasure to see if all had been served, his eye fell on the group in the corner and he heard the woman suppressing the sobbing of her little girl. He walked out into the waiting-room to ask what the trouble was. He learned afterward that she was the wife of a gambler, ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... gleamed with an anxious light over the furrows of flesh which encircled them, as she promptly deserted Miss Fosby, who had been sitting next to her, for the purpose of livelier entertainment;—and in a moment there was a general gathering together in the wide embrasure of the window nook, and an animated discussion as to who should play Bridge and who should not. Maryllia watched the group silently. There were varying shades of expression on her mobile features. She held Cicely's ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... and go sharply downward. Plainly this lay no longer in the direction of his inn; but the hope of a little more light tempted him forward to reconnoitre. The lane ended in a terrace with a bartizan wall, which gave an outlook between high houses, as out of an embrasure, into the valley lying dark and formless several hundred feet below. Denis looked down, and could discern a few tree-tops waving and a single speck of brightness where the river ran across a weir. The weather was clearing up, and the sky had lightened, so as to show the outline of the ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... and the light of a lantern flashed to the ceiling. Wondering that such a place should excite the cupidity of housebreakers, yet convinced that such the intruders were, Alec moved gently into the embrasure of one of the windows, against the corner of which abutted a screen of book-shelves. A certain light rustling, however, startled him into doubt, and the doubt soon passed ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... such an instant change, from the most contemptuous serenity, to the most furious state of passion, as that which Sir Piercie Shafton exhibited. It was the difference between a cannon lying quiet in its embrasure, and the same gun when touched by the linstock. He started up, every limb quivering with rage, and his features so inflamed and agitated by passion, that he more resembled a demoniac, than a man under the regulation ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... lighting a cigarette, laughingly retired to the embrasure. Mrs. Newell flung herself down and signed to Garnett to take a seat ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... Barminster sat in the dining-room of Barminster Castle. His eyes, their expression no less keen, but far more gentle than in former years, were bent, sometimes on the cheerful fire, sometimes on the calm face of his ward, where she stood in the deep embrasure of the window, gazing ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... between the portieres, glanced out the window and saw that a leap from the balcony would land him in the arms of three patrolmen. He shook open the window and then shrank back into the far corner of the embrasure. ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... with gloomy desperation. I was suffering from my wounds, from fatigue, and from hunger too, for our provisions had almost failed us. I could have gone on, however, as long as a man remained alive to help me work my guns. At last a shot came through the embrasure at which was a gun I was on the point of firing. Suddenly I felt my arm jerked up—the match dropped from my nerveless arm, and I fell. At that moment the signal was given to cease firing. Another flag of truce was going forth. I felt that ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... moment all the household were busied in fulfilling the cure's orders. He took advantage of the opportunity to draw the baron aside in the embrasure of a window. ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... to the kitchen. He had been two hours with the merchant, and it was now the time of midday eating. Every one was hurrying to and fro, with no time to heed anything that did not pertain to the business in hand, so placing the bucket in a darkened embrasure, the intruder flung off the gabardine beside it, and searching, found a back stair which ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... arrangements being religiously preserved. It was in the plainest possible style, homely, indeed, and almost mean,—an ordinary paper-hanging, and everything so commonplace that it was only the deep embrasure of the window that made it look unlike a bedchamber in a middling-class lodging-house. It would have seemed difficult, beforehand, to fit up a room in that picturesque old edifice so that it should be utterly void ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... People were crowded together without means of escape from each other. The greatest received their dependents, and often ate their meals, in their bedrooms. A confidential interview would be held in the embrasure of a window. Such customs disappeared but gradually from the sixteenth century to our own. But by the latter part of the eighteenth, modern ways and ideas were coming in. Yet the etiquette of the French court was still old-fashioned. It infringed ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... her hat on a chair and herself upon a snug little sofa that stood invitingly in the embrasure of a window, which, by drawing the crimson curtains, could be shut off from the rest of the room, leaving a cosy den—her favorite place for dreaming and reading, where her eyes, straying from her book, rested on an ever-varying picture of sky ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... already there, in front of our gun, and to build a short "traverse" to the right, for protection from enfilade fire. We worked all night, six of us, and by morning we had a slight and rough artillery work, with an embrasure for the gun; the whole thing about four feet high, and two and one-half feet thick, at the top. It was the best that could be done by six, tired, and hungry fellows, all young boys, working with two picks and three shovels through a short ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... by the fireside until Evangeline brought the draught-board to her father and Basil and arranged the pieces for them. They were soon deep in the game, while Evangeline and her lover sat apart in the embrasure of a window and whispered together as they watched the moon rise over the sea. Their hearts were full of happiness as they looked into the future, believing ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... fortress—the castle of Danvilliers in Luxembourg, of which he was governor—where all perished save his wife and himself, and, when they came to dig among the ruins, they excavated at last the ancient couple, protected by the framework of a window in the embrasure of which they had been seated, without a scratch or a bruise. He was a Biscayan by descent, but born in Medina del Campo. A strict disciplinarian, very resolute and pertinacious, he had the good fortune to be beloved by his inferiors, his ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... choked that it could not be used until the debris could be removed. Hastily renewing the blindage of brush-wood that had been used to conceal the work from view of the enemy during the construction, the detail of engineer soldiers then on duty, in the battery, cleared the embrasure of the obstructions, removed the blindage, and the gun resumed its fire. Just after that incident, I asked Captain Lee what he now thought in regard to the proper dimensions for the embrasures. He replied: "They must be made greater when the battery ...
— Company 'A', corps of engineers, U.S.A., 1846-'48, in the Mexican war • Gustavus Woodson Smith
... met the General and some of his staff inspecting the Boer position with a huge telescope. I had a good look, and clearly saw our shells burst in the embrasure of a gun, which was hurriedly ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers
... boy's hand shook. And finally, as though he heard the mute voices of his judges delivering sentence and admitted its justice, he actually bowed to the portraits on the wall. As he raised his head, he saw Lieutenant Sutch in the embrasure of the doorway. ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... my newspaper in the box, gave the bell a tremendous pull, and then hid myself in the embrasure of ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... to play with him; but the Italian's tale arrested her, she crept near, her lustrous eyes fixed on the speaker. Either watching the crowd in the park, or occupied by painful reflection, we were all silent; Ryland stood by himself in an embrasure of the window; Adrian paced the hall, revolving some new and overpowering idea—suddenly he stopped and said: "I have long expected this; could we in reason expect that this island should be exempt from the universal visitation? The evil is ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... it, mamma?" asked Laura, as, with her books and Fido, she sat in the embrasure of the large hall window, ...
— The Princess Idleways - A Fairy Story • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... their camp, and stopped behind a snow-ridge, on the other side of an open and level stretch a mile wide. He dug the sleeping-hole on the crest of the ridge, making it larger than usual, and piled up a snow breastwork in front of it, with an embrasure through which he could look or fire ...
— The Keeper • Henry Beam Piper
... rode on my way to Dieppe, and from the same embrasure at the wall where my horses had trampled down the foliage many times, I watched her coming. It was not for long. More hurriedly than was her custom she glided, a glorified young creature, in and out amongst the shrubbery, until the envious chapel door ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... point facing the western shore of Lake Memphremagog, with only a narrow strip of land separating it from the waters of the lake. The blankness of the entire rear facade of the structure was broken only by one window, built into a deep embrasure. Above the window was a small circular opening about the size of ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... year and nine months after his first arrival at the prison, he climbed to the embrasure of the window, as usual, oyster-shell in hand. He always chose a time for this when he knew that the court would most probably be deserted, to avoid the danger of being recognized through the grating. He was therefore, not a little startled at being disturbed ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... the middle watch of the night a dusky figure crept through the low embrasure of the Commander's apartment. Other figures were flitting through the parade ground, which the Commander might have seen had he not slept so quietly. The intruder stepped noiselessly to the couch and listened to the sleeper's deep-drawn inspiration. Something glittered in the firelight as the ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... had reached the top he caught sight of Granoux, by the light of the moon which glided through an embrasure; the ex almond dealer was standing there hatless, and dealing furious blows with a heavy hammer. He did so with a right good will. He first threw himself back, then took a spring, and finally fell upon the sonorous bronze as if he wanted to crack it. One might ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... directed straight for Allatoona, northwest, distant eighteen miles. The signal-officer on Kenesaw reported that since daylight he had failed to obtain any answer to his call for Allatoona; but, while I was with him, he caught a faint glimpse of the tell-tale flag through an embrasure, and after much time he made out these letters-" C.," "R.," "S.," "E.," "H.," "E.," "R.," and translated the message—"Corse is here." It was a source of great relief, for it gave me the first assurance ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... ice, my head was on fire. At last you took pity on me, you ceased to sing, you disappeared. The reflection of the dazzling vision, the reverberation of the enchanting music disappeared by degrees from my eyes and my ears. Then I fell back into the embrasure of the window, more rigid, more feeble than a statue torn from its base. The vesper bell roused me. I drew myself up; I fled; but alas! something within me had fallen never to rise again, something had come upon me from ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... Morgan valued not their prayers a rush, Gideon strode forth, his eyes twinkling grievously as the drizzling rime came on his face. His long ungainly figure, surmounted by a high-peaked hat, was seen cautiously stealing through the trenches. Near to the embrasure by Morgan's mortar-piece he made a sudden halt. After preparing his drum, he first beat the roll to crave attention. He then stepped upon the redoubt, drumming the usual signal for a parley. It was soon answered ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... she pointed to a sort of flying buttress which sprung sideways, with a wide span, across the angle the tower made with the hall, from an embrasure of the battlement of the hall to the outer corner of the tower, itself more solidly buttressed. I think it must have been made to resist the outward pressure of the roof of the hall; but it was one of those puzzling ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... then turned away, as if willing to be left to his own thoughts. Krantz perceived it, and laid down under the embrasure, and ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... paces, he came face-up against a wall lying at right angles to the direction in which he had been moving. Peering cautiously round the corner, he saw, at the end of a shallow embrasure, a ponderous door of dark wood, braced with iron, standing partly open, with a key in the keyhole, as if some one had just come out, and, in his haste, had forgotten to shut and lock the door behind him. Archibald now slowly ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... she felt that she could not do was to lie here alone in the dark, with only the silvery light of the moon creeping in weirdly through the dulled panes of the tiny window. So she picked up her black skirt, and stuffed it into the narrow window embrasure, until not a ray of light from within could be seen to peep through on the other side. She had placed the storm-lantern in the corner, and this she left alight. It threw a feeble, yellowish glimmer round the room; after a few ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... the shady embrasure of a window, Arthur Pendennis chose to assume a very gloomy and frowning countenance, and to watch Miss Bell dance her first quadrille with Mr. Pynsent for a partner. That gentleman was as solemn and severe as Englishmen are upon such occasions, and walked through the ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... comprised the square-shaped window, on the sill of which she cultivated nasturtiums and mignonette in summer, and in the embrasure stood a window-seat covered with blue cloth, that was really the remains of an old ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... himself for a moment why he shouldn't ring the bell and obtain his needed information from the servant, who would be sure to be able to give it to him. He had just dismissed this method, as of questionable taste, when he heard the door of the house open, within the deep embrasure in which, in Charles Street, the main portals are set, and which are partly occupied by a flight of steps protected at the bottom by a second door, whose upper half, in either wing, consists of a sheet of glass. It was a minute before he could ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... Zouaves in the Crimea,—âmes perdus, the most reckless before the enemy, the most licentious in the camp. These were merry fellows, launching witty shafts against Austrians, Pope, and Cardinals,—maladetti tutti, and good-humoured gibes at their comrade, who, standing in an embrasure, bent his back with laudable patience to the right angle for an easel, while my friend was making sketches of the rocky islets and lateen-sail vessels reflected on the mirror-like sea, or of the amphitheatre of mountains at the ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... cast by the embrasure of the casement, Jaime saw a sparkle, the cause of which his covetous eye at once detected. Three bounds, and he stood under the window. Rita passed her arm through the bars, and a jewelled ring dropped into ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... suddenly and turned, while Rotherby, too, looked up and stepped quickly from the window-embrasure ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... drowned by the most frightful shouts. He had hardly got in, when he was so closely surrounded, that he had been unable to close the parlor-door after him, and had been driven and backed against the embrasure of ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... have seen some of these nests, under the tiles of a shed, spreading over an area of five or six square yards. When the colony was hard at work, the busy, buzzing crowd was enough to make one giddy. The under side of a balcony also pleases the Mason-bee, as does the embrasure of a disused window, especially if it is closed by a blind whose slats allow her a free passage. But these are popular resorts, where hundreds and thousands of workers labour, each for herself. If she be alone, ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... could not take in enough oxygen, while his heart thumped like a ship's engine. Sweat coursed down his face. At the twentieth step he completed the first revolution of the tower and came face to face with the first window, which was set in a high embrasure. ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... were interrupted in many places by the antique stone groinings of alcoves and cup-boards, one of which, close beside the mantlepiece, was closed by a curiously carved door of heavy oak-work, itself sunk above a foot within the embrasure of the wall. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... slowly along the parapet; the stars and stripes blew out from the lofty flag-staff. The plan of Fort Sumter may be briefly described as five-sided, with each angle just so much truncated as to give room for one embrasure in every story. Its whole air ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various |
