"Stiletto" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... work in her hand, and after she had spoken to all the little girls and asked them how their mothers were, she went and sat down in one of the front windows, and made little scollops and eyelets. I remember her long ivory stiletto, with a loop of green ribbon through the head of it, and the sharp, tiny, big-bowed scissors that lay in her lap, and the bright, tapering ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... uneasily of himself. "Why?" He had repeatedly told himself that any other man, in his position, would do as he had done, yet it was as though some one had slipped a stiletto under his armour and ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... tries two assumptions (s 1, b 2/3, and s 1/2 b 5/6), and (naturally) ends in contradictions. Then she returns to the first assumption, and finds the 3 unknowns separately: quod est absurdum. STILETTO identifies sandwiches and biscuits, as "articles." Is the word ever used by confectioners? I fancied "What is the next article, Ma'am?" was limited to linendrapers. TWO SISTERS first assume that biscuits are 4 a penny, and then that they ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... asked him the usual questions, but he maintained a dogged silence. That his object had been assassination no one could doubt, for in addition to the automatic pistol, which he had obviously intended using at short range, trusting to luck to make his escape, they found a long stiletto in ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... striking distance, and in a dark place where no one can see them. We know by history that most murders are committed on the stairs. Timar had no weapon with him, not even a walking-stick; but Herr Athanas had a stiletto two feet long. ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... your soul, most amiable; hers, a measure of faction. Her party supported the abolition, and regretted the disappointment as a blow to the good cause. I know this. Do not let your piety lead you into the weakness of respecting the bad, only because they hoist the flag of religion, while they carry a stiletto in the flagstaff. Did not they, previous to the 14th of July, endeavour to corrupt the guards? What would have ensued, had they succeeded, you must tremble ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... Grasshopper, with the powerful jaws; the irascible Wasp; the Bee, the Bumble-bee and other wearers of poisoned daggers must fall into the ambuscade from time to time. The duel is nearly equal in point of weapons. To the venomous fangs of the Lycosa the Wasp opposes her venomous stiletto. Which of the two bandits shall have the best of it? The struggle is a hand-to-hand one. The Tarantula has no secondary means of defence, no cord to bind her victim, no trap to subdue her. When the Epeira, or Garden Spider, sees an insect entangled in her ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... I knew it. The accursed one! Oh that I had him here again! I would bury my stiletto in his heart! Over the white hilt I would bury it! I would wash my hands in his blood, and think them blessed ever afterwards! Stay till daylight, Roberto. I have ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... now sounded nearer, he thrust his right hand into the bosom of his cassock, and drew out a long broad two-edged dagger, or stiletto; and as he unsheathed it, "Ready!" he muttered to himself, "ready for ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... assist Bianca and her father to alight, whilst the others surrounded Guerra as he set his foot on the ground, pinioning his arms and plunging their hands into his pockets, from whence they drew two small pistols and a black mask, such as was worn at the carnivals; besides these weapons, he carried a stiletto ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various
... look as near it as we can. Let me explain to you, Sir, that the stern of a Thorneycroft boat, which we are not, comes out in a pretty bulge, totally different from the Yarrow mark, which again we are not. But, on the other 'and, Dirk, Stiletto, Goblin, Ghoul, Djinn, and A-frite—Red Fleet dee-stroyers, with 'oom we hope to consort later on terms o' perfect equality—are Thorneycrofts, an' carry that Grecian bend which we are now adjustin' to our arriere-pensee—as the French would put ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... scene was illuminated by the light of several torches, and Antonio felt a stab in his shoulder. Quick as lightning he turned round, drew his sword, and attacked the fellow, who with his stiletto upraised was just preparing to aim a second blow. He perceived that his three companions were defending themselves against a superior number of gendarmes. He managed to beat off the fellow who had attacked him, and joined his friends. Although ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... side and then on the other. The borders of embroidered muslin collars, &c., are usually finished with buttonhole stitch, worked either the width of an ordinary buttonhole, or in long stitches, and raised like satin stitch. Eyelet holes are made by piercing round holes with a stiletto, ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... dissembler is in some respect beyond the ordinary, but wishes not to show himself otherwise than as an ordinary mortal with ordinary knowledge. The pretender is on the offensive, challenging attention: the dissembler is on his defence against notice. "Simulation," says Bolingbroke, "is a stiletto, not only an offensive but an unlawful weapon, and the use of it may be rarely, very rarely, excused, but never justified. Dissimulation is a shield, as secrecy is armour: and it is no more possible to preserve secrecy in the administration of public affairs without dissimulation than it is to succeed ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... O'Sullivan standing with arms folded and a murderous look in his dark eyes. And without slacking the speed of her entrance she leaped forward with a scream—leaped in time to catch and hang upon the arm of O'Sullivan that was suddenly uplifted, and to whisk from it the long, bright stiletto that he ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... better class of hotel keepers, and was always called the "Dodger" by them, being viewed in much the same light as the treacherous miscreant was by the Italian nobleman of the dark ages, who, because he was skilled in the use of the stiletto, was employed to remove ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... guard. The habit of wearing arms in private life exercised a kindred influence. So long as this habit continued, society was darkened by personal combat, street-fight, duel, and assassination. The Standing Army is to the nation what the sword was to the modern gentleman, the stiletto to the Italian, the knife to the Spaniard, the pistol to our slave-master,—furnishing, like these, the means of death; and its possessor is not slow to use it. In stating the operation of this system we are not left to ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner
... respite, a breathing spell which would soon be over. It would be necessary to provide for the morrow. But that reflection disturbed her little. She was free to pursue the object of her journey and satisfy the desire for revenge which filled her heart. As the train whirled toward London she whetted the stiletto of vengeance upon the grindstone of her wounded feelings. That paper exhibited by Dacre would furnish the needed proof of conspiracy, and then good-by, Lord Brompton, to your cherished schemes for fortune. It made her wince to think that she had been discarded for an awkward hoyden of ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... too late. The herald had raised his arm, turned round his head, and plunged the sharp stiletto into his ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... have a one-sided romance. Romance is an atmosphere breathed by two, not an emotion felt by one. To be sure, he was the most appallingly in earnest lover woman ever had. He wept for a kiss with his fingers twiddling on the hilt of his stiletto. Dear heart, these Italians!" ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... woman's face had set in grim determination. She went to the dresser and took out a small stiletto, which she quickly concealed in the bosom of her dress. "Get right in, just as you are! I will take care of Diego, if he comes! Santa Maria, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... long training in the kind of warfare attaching, of necessity, to Circulating Libraries, was very near to tears—also murder. She would have been delighted to pierce Joan's heart with a bright stiletto, had such a weapon been handy. She saw the softest, easiest, idlest job in the world slipping out of her fingers; she saw herself, a desolate and haggard virgin, begging her bread on the Polchester streets. She saw...but never mind her visions. They were terrible ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... When the melamed spoke of the fish Leviathan, so large that the whole world stood on it, and which, in the day of the Messiah, the scholars would eat from the head and the ignorant from the tail, a smile appeared on Meir's thin lips. It was a smile similar to the stiletto. It pierced the one on whose lips it appeared, and it seemed as though it would like to pierce the one who caused it. Ber answered this smile by a sigh. But the four young men who sat opposite Meir noticed it, and on their faces ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... of business, and we excuse them heartily from blame. But show us a miserable, unbreeched, human entity, whose whole profession it is to take a tub for a fortified town and a shaving-brush for the deadly stiletto, and who passes three-fourths of his time in a dream and the rest in open self-deception, and we expect him to be as nice upon a matter of fact as a scientific expert bearing evidence. Upon my heart, I think it less than decent: you do not consider how little ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... My teeth are not like yours when you are fasting—even cooked food must not be too tough for them to chew it, now-a-days. If you soak yourself in drink and fail in your blow, and I am not ready with the poisoned stiletto the thing won't come off neatly. But why did not the Roman let his ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... snatched forth a stiletto, put by the sword which trembled in his hand, and buried my poniard in his bosom. He fell with the blow, but my rage was unsated. I sprang upon him with the blood-thirsty feeling of a tiger; redoubled my blows; mangled him in my frenzy, grasped him by the throat, until ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... she drew forth a long, glittering Spanish stiletto, not much thicker than a coarse needle, but strong ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... looking in the direction he was pointing, I discovered the object of his amusement to be a small vessel just doubling an Easterly point of the key, about seven miles distant within the Reef, and bearing away for us. I had too often seen the grin of a Spaniard accompanied with the stab of his stiletto, to pass the circumstance unnoticed. By my request Manuel inquired of the Spaniards what vessel it was, and received for answer, that "it was the King's Cutter in search of Pirates." This answer satisfied us, and in a short ...
— Narrative of the shipwreck of the brig Betsey, of Wiscasset, Maine, and murder of five of her crew, by pirates, • Daniel Collins
... in that length of steel to reach a vital spot. The ruddy face of old Lenz paled at this threat, for the Swiss are a peace-loving people, and he told his daughter sadly that she was going to bring her father's grey hairs in sorrow to the grave through the medium of her lover's stiletto. This feat, however, would have been difficult to perform, as the girl flippantly pointed out to him, for the old man was as bald as the smooth round top of the Ortler; nevertheless, she spoke to her lover ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... however, two excellent knife-shops in the Boulevard du Palais, where every description of stiletto may be purchased, where, indeed, the enterprising may buy a knife which will not only go shrewdly into a foe, but come right out on the other side—in front, that is to say, for no true Corsican is so foolish as to stab anywhere but in the back—and, protruding ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... used to build castles in the air, was subject to fits of tender melancholy, and, like Miss Cornelia, adored moonlight, pensive music, and sentimental poetry. But she would have shrunk from contact with a brigand, in a sugar-loaf hat, with a carbine slung across his shoulder, and a stiletto in his sash, with precisely the same kind and degree of horror and disgust that would have affected her in the presence of a vulgar footpad, in a greasy Scotch-cap, armed with a horse-pistol and a sheath-knife. Her romantic tastes differed in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... student of more advanced years, of the "mugging" type, who had come off with flying colours in an elementary examination, showed signs of uneasiness as the advanced one approached. "Stick an observation into him," said Huxley. It was stuck, and acted like a stiletto, a jump into the air and utter collapse being ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... up his mind, that, come what might, enemy or no enemy, live or die, he would solve the mystery of Elsie Venner, sooner or later. He was not a man to be frightened out of his resolution by a scowl, or a stiletto, or any unknown means of mischief, of which a whole armory was hinted at in that passing look Dick Venner had given him. Indeed, like most adventurous young persons, he found a kind of charm in feeling that there might be some dangers in the way ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... blade. A stiletto—perhaps a kitchen knife. A long narrow blade. It gleamed. And his eyes gleamed. His white teeth, too. I could see them. He was very ferocious. I thought to myself: 'If I hit him he will kill me.' How could I fight with him? He had the ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... he said, with a laugh, and caught the girl by the wrist. "I will make you pay for that." As he tried to draw her to him, she whipped from her dress a small stiletto which she wore as an ornament, ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... hundreds of sharp quills, from ten to twelve inches in length, each of which can pierce like a little stiletto, does not sound like a particularly comfortable thing to have for a mother. But the baby porcupines were quite happy, and their mother, clumsy as she was, was clever enough never to let any of the quills touch ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin
... it before, thrusting her hand into her bosom, she had sprung to her feet, and a stiletto whizzed past his ear, and stuck quivering in the wall close to his head. Her supple body was still in motion, her face was pale, and her eyes were flashing: then with a sudden transition she threw ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... and thrust it gently within the breast of his waistcoat. There, guided by him, her fingers closed on the handle of a tiny stiletto. ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... speaking, she put her hand in her pocket and drew forth, after a few moments' consideration, a stiletto six inches long, which she placed ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... as well hunt with a lantern for a rat in a sewer as for him. Well, we have his boat, which shall be sent to the magistrate with letters of complaint. Only, Sir Hugh, be careful to wear mail when you walk about at night, lest that villain and his mates should come to collect their fare with a stiletto. Now, enter and fear not for your goods. My folk are honest. God's name! how fearful is this heat. None have known its like. ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... and lieutenant for the first time regarded the donkey-man, and they regarded him narrowly, red sash, earrings, stiletto and all. Constance caught the look ...
— Jerry • Jean Webster
... wrapping a mantilla about her, she followed the messenger to the street; then, as acting under sudden impulse, left him waiting for a moment, while she returned to bolt a door. In that moment, unseen by the messenger, she slipped a sheathed stiletto into the bosom of ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... senate think a fisherman of the Lagunes of sufficient importance to be struck by a stiletto? Do thy work, then!" he added, glancing at his brown and naked bosom; "there is nothing to ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... and he thoroughly stirred her enthusiasm by his descriptions of the strange wild beauty of the country, the peculiarities of its inhabitants, and their primitive hospitality and customs. Finally, he offered her a pretty little stiletto, less remarkable for its shape and copper mounting than for its origin. A famous bandit had given it to Captain Ellis, and had assured him it had been buried in four human bodies. Miss Lydia thrust it through her girdle, laid it on the table beside her bed, and unsheathed it twice over before ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... the spurge, when its stems begin to shoot, and its sombre flowers open in the sunlight? "It is the work of an insect. It is the shelter in which the Cicadellina deposits her eggs. What a miraculous chemist! Her stiletto excels the finest craft of the botanical anatomist" by its sovereign art of separating the acrid poison which flows with the sap in the veins of the most venomous plants, and extracting therefrom only ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... who loved a joke more than they feared a hit, would run the risk of an occasional thrust of the doctor's stiletto, for the sake of enjoying the mangling he gave other people; and such rollicking fellows as Murphy, and Durfy, and Dawson, and Squire Egan petted this ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... odious instincts have been the bane of humanity. They have given us the stiletto, the Morgue, the bowie-knife. Our race must inevitably in the end outlive them. The test of man's plane in the scale of being is how far he has outlived them. They are surviving relics of the ape and tiger. But we must let the ape and tiger ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... caused the Count to be kidnapped one evening and brought to the palazzo bound with cords. And there in one of the large halls, before freeing him, he compelled him to confess himself to a monk. Then he severed the cords with a stiletto, threw the lamps over and extinguished them, calling to the Count to keep the stiletto and defend himself. During more than an hour, in complete obscurity, in this hall full of furniture, the two men sought one another, fled from one another, seized hold of one another, and pierced ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... arms, and running to one of the carved cedarwood doors in the white wall of the bedroom, opened a little cupboard. There, fumbling among perfumed parcels, rolled as Arab women roll their garments, she snatched from a bundle of silk a small stiletto with a jewelled handle. Sanda had seen it before, and had been bidden to admire its rough, square emeralds and queerly shaped pearls. The thing had belonged to Ourieda's mother, and had been given to the daughter by the Agha on her sixteenth birthday, nearly a year ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... its face, and put it in the best light the room afforded, and coiled himself again on his chest, with his eye, and stiletto, glittering. ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... adopted another plan, viz., that we should kill him some evening with pistols, stilettoes, or rapiers, and that without delay. I started, therefore, for my country, to find one of my intimate friends, and a stiletto with a very thin blade, a much better weapon than a pistol for murdering a man. I travelled post, and they gave me some bills of exchange of Lorenzo Spinola at Genoa, to get money at Barcelona, and which, in fact, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... empty journals; in its center the Austrian bands play during the time of vespers their martial music jarring with the organ notes—the march drowning the miserere and the sullen crowd thickening round them—a crowd which if it had its will would stiletto every soldier that pipes to it. And in the recesses of the porches, all day long, knots of men of the lowest classes, unemployed and listless, lie basking in the sun like lizards; and unregarded children—every heavy glance of their young eyes full of desperation and stony ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... walks of literature we are startled at discovering genius with the mind, and, if we conceive the instrument it guides to be a stiletto, with the hand of an assassin—irascible, vindictive, armed with indiscriminate satire, never pardoning the merit of rival genius, but fastening on it throughout life, till, in the moral retribution of human nature, these very passions, ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... was very sensitive, very high-spirited, very impulsive, very patriotic, and singularly truthful. The letter of Mr. Seward to such a man was like a buffet on the cheek of an unarmed officer. It stung like the thrust of a stiletto. It roused a resentment that could not find any words to give it expression. He could not wait to turn the insult over in his mind, to weigh the exact amount of affront in each question, to take counsel, to sleep over it, and reply to it with diplomatic measure and suavity. One hour had ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... kind of embroidery is used only in round or long patterns. Trace first the outline of the hole, cut away a small round piece of material, not too close to the outlines (when the button-hole is very small merely insert the point of the scissors or a stiletto into the material), fold the edge of the material back with the needle, and work the hole in overcast stitch, inserting the needle into the empty place in the centre and drawing it out under the outline. ...
— Beeton's Book of Needlework • Isabella Beeton
... am concerned, take him, comrade, and free of cost. Only I warn you, watch him well or you will find a stiletto ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... to be met with in superstitious countries, these mydratic alkaloids are among the worst. They offer a chance for crimes of the most fiendish nature—worse than with the gun or the stiletto. They are worse because there is so little fear of detection. That crime is the production ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... thou wait? By the tomb of St. John there, get thee down, and quickly. Bravo, Shakib!—He rushes to the tribune, drags him down by the jubbah, and, with the help of another friend, hustles him out of the Mosque. But the thirst for blood pursues them. And Khalid receives in the court outside a stiletto-thrust in the back and a slash in the forehead above the brow down to the ear. Which, indeed, we consider a part of his good fortune. Like the muleteer of his Lebanon tour, we attribute his escape with two wounds to the prayers of his good mother. For he is now in the carriage with Shakib, the ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... with horror. Very slowly, and with the air of one engaged upon some interesting task, Oliver Hilditch had removed the blood-stained sheath of cotton wool from around the thin blade of a marvellous-looking stiletto, on which was also a long ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... countenance bronzed by a southern sun: he wore, at one time, enormous flowing black locks, which he sacrificed pitilessly, however, and adopted a Brutus, as being more revolutionary: finally, he carried an enormous club, that was his code and digest: in like manner, De Retz used to carry a stiletto in his pocket by way of ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... latter point, what has already been said about Machiavelli is enough.[3] Loyalty was a virtue but little esteemed in Italy: engagements seemed made to be broken; even the crime of violence was aggravated by the crime of perfidy, a bravo's stiletto or a slow poison being reckoned among the legitimate means for ridding men of rivals or for revenging a slight. Yet it must not be forgotten that the commercial integrity of the Italians ranked high. In all countries ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... the choir, When straight I perceived myself all on a fire; For the two forenamed things had so heated my blood, That a little phlebotomy would do me good: I sent for chirurgeon, who came in a trice, And swift to shed blood, needed not be called twice, But tilted stiletto quite thorough the vein, From whence issued out the ill humours amain; When having twelve ounces, he bound up my arm, And I gave him two Georges, which did him no harm: But after my bleeding, I soon understood It had cooled my devotion as well as my blood; ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... statue, with his long, slender pike tapering up like a lance into the air; or, beholds a long train of mules slowly moving along the waste like a train of camels in the desert; or, a single herdsman, armed with blunderbuss and stiletto, and prowling over the plain. Thus the country, the habits, the very looks of the people, have something of the Arabian character. The general insecurity of the country is evinced in the universal use of weapons. The herdsman in the field, the shepherd in the plain, has his musket ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 547, May 19, 1832 • Various
... authorities, and cast your eye over the motley collection of unredeemed articles. There are pistols of every pattern and almost of every age, the majority of them loaded. There are daggers in infinite variety, including the ingenious fan stiletto, which, when sheathed, may be carried in the hand without arousing suspicion; for the sheath and handle bear; an exact resemblance to a closed fan. There are entire suits of clothes, beds and bedding, tea, sugar, clocks—multitudes of them, a clock being one of the Chinese hobbies, ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... be in just a little while," she put in, following the confident assertion with a query that came as suddenly as a stiletto stab: "Who ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... spot near a brook Darragh lighted his pipe and sat him down to examine the booty in detail. Two pistols, a stiletto, and a blackjack composed the arsenal of Mr. Sard. A large wallet disclosed more than four thousand dollars in Treasury notes—something to reimburse Ricca ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... to watch her. She was fumbling at her waist. A little silver of light appeared. The thing was a slim stiletto. Her teeth were clicking as she extended the handle toward him. Their eyes met. In hers was shining a brute command. In his slowly came shock, amazement. She placed her fingers slowly over her heart; her hand slipped down and fell again at ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... his stiletto. The stranger took it and tried to cut the skin above the lettering; but when he had removed a thin shaving of leather from them, the characters still appeared below, so clear and so exactly like the surface impression, that for a moment he was not sure ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... pantry in the deckhouse amidships, without being seen and secured some polenta and a baraca of water; when, as I was creeping aft again and close to the poop, that villain of a mate caught hold of my arm, pointing a stiletto in my face at the same time, and threatening to stab me if I uttered a cry. But, before I could open my mouth, he shoved a gag in it and then proceeded to drag me to the side of the ship, lashing me to the spot whence your two officers ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... time that Madame De Berney plunged a stiletto into his pride. And the gaze of Balzac turned towards Poland, and he began to write letters to the imprisoned chatelaine, pouring out his soul to her. His heart was full of sorrow. To ease the pain he traveled for six months through Southern France and Italy, but ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... arranged so as to frame four excellent statues. These carvings have been esteemed so highly that artists came to study them all the way from Flanders. The altar is coloured, like most of the Spanish retablos. Cano was a pugnacious character, always getting into scrapes, using his stiletto, and being obliged to shift his residence on short notice. It is remarkable that his erratic life did not interfere with his work, which seems to have gone calmly on in spite of domestic and civic difficulties. Among his works at various places, where ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... "He tells me nothing; he tells no one but Tony, and Tony tells me nothing; but I saw them talking together to-night, and he was very angry. I overheard some words. I heard him say he would see your father to-night and make him sorry he had not done as he agreed, and he showed Tony a little stiletto which he carries with him, ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... cemetery; Micio's anxiety to ascertain whether the interview was preliminary or subsequent to the corpse's kiss was not acute enough to induce him to buy the book. There was another about a kiss, Bacio Infame, on which a lady with a stiletto was defending herself from a bad man. All these were enticing, but we hoped to do better, and I began to blush for the somewhat thin plot of Tristram Shandy and to be thankful that my copy was not in Italian. Finally he took La Mano ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... when Duroc stepped between them, seized her by the arm, and dragged her to an adjoining room, whither Bonaparte, near fainting from the sudden alarm his friend's interference had occasioned, followed him, trembling. In the right sleeve of Madame Encore's gown was found a stiletto, the point of which was poisoned. She was the same day transported to this capital, under the inspection of Duroc, and imprisoned in the Temple. In her examination she denied having accomplices, and she expired on the rack without telling even ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... minute the gods of destiny had given him birth. All things in the world were blotted out for him except one—the six inches of naked shank between the bootlegger's trouser-leg and his shoe. He dove in. His white teeth, sharp as stiletto-points, sank into it. And a wild and terrible yell came from Jed Hawkins as he loosed the girl's hair. Peter heard the yell, and his teeth sank deeper in the flesh of the first thing he had ever hated. ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... Bedros to her home, with a pledge to her father that she shall have a dowry of ten thousand lire when she marries. The father is pleased, the daughter is not. She sits and cries. She talks of herself getting at him with a stiletto." ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... doubted that it was murder. The confusion of the garage was proof of it; and the instrument, once I looked about me, was not far to seek. Divided between rage, horror, and pity, I saw a sort of sharp stiletto suitable for use as a penknife or letter opener, which, after doing its work, had been cast upon ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... themselves as fit for the purpose. I gathered a stock of them, laid them to dry in the sun, pulled apart the reticulated layers, and of these had soon begun to fashion two loose garments, one to hang from her waist, the other from her shoulders. With the stiletto-point of an aloe-leaf and various filaments, I sewed together three thicknesses ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... their broad humour, their love of shows, and their keen enthusiasm for the competitions, their interest in petty local elections, their advertising instincts, their insatiable fondness for scribbling on walls and pillars, whether in paint or with a "style," a sort of small stiletto with which they commonly wrote on tablets. The ancient world becomes very near when we read, side by side with the election notices, a line from Virgil or Ovid scrawled in a moment of idleness, or a piece of abuse ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... him to sit on the rugs and make jokes too, but some sort of false shame, some sneaky shyness before the boys, hinders me. I am leaning my elbow on the soft fur of the rug, and my head on my hand, and am staring up at the stars, cool and throbbing, so like little stiletto-holes pricked in heaven's floor, as they steal out in systems ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... occasioned all French Catholics to earnestly desire her conversion. I have stated already that the grade of Templar-Mistress is concerned partly with profanations of the Eucharist. For example, the aspirant to this initiation is required to drive a stiletto into the consecrated Host with a becoming expression of fury. When Miss Vaughan visited Paris in the year 1885, where Miss Walder had sometime previously established herself, she was invited to enter this grade, and accepted ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... top-knot, and, placing it upon some thick paper laid over the palm of his hand, to carry it for inspection by the witness. This ceremony has been explained above. If the head be bald, he should pierce the left ear with the stiletto carried in the scabbard of his dirk, and so carry it to be identified. He must carry thick paper in the bosom of his dress. Inside the paper he shall place a bag with rice bran and ashes, in order that he may carry the head without being sullied by the blood. ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... already love him too much to trust my vengeance to the stiletto of Monipodio, for he has treated me with such contempt that I must bring him to believe that the greatest honor he could win would be to have me for his wife! I wish to see him groveling at my feet, or I will perish in the attempt ...
— The Resources of Quinola • Honore de Balzac
... fought like tigers, making the lovely summer day hideous with their cries and shrieks—the women, the fiercer by far, tearing each other's hair. One fiendish creature drew her scissors, and, using them like a stiletto, drove the sharp point into a sister ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... motion with which this girl snatched the mask from the face of the Judge, (he stood as if appalled,) that, ere he had gained his self-possession, she drew from her girdle a pearl-hilted stiletto, and in attempting to ward off the dreadful lunge, he struck it from her hand, and into her own bosom. The weapon fell gory to the floor-the blood trickled down her bodice-a cry of "murder" resounded through the hall! The administrator of justice rushed out of the door ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... showed him a kind of hidden poniard, a keen, triangular stiletto of genuine steel, capped by a large glass pearl that ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... me sufficient proof that the assassin was of foreign origin, and that the affair was the outcome of a vendetta, and not the act of an ordinary bloodthirsty crime. The wound, so the doctors informed me, was an extremely deep and narrow one, such as might very well have been made by a stiletto. Assuming my supposition to be correct, I returned to the house, and once more overhauled the dead man's effects. There was little or nothing there, however, to help me. If he had laid himself out to conceal the identity of his enemy he could scarcely have done it more effectually. ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... will as in the two brothers preceding him; and, like them, his reign was spent in alternating conflict with the Protestants and the Duke of Guise. At last, wearied and exasperated, this half-Italian and altogether conscienceless king quite naturally thought of the stiletto. The old duke, as he entered the king's apartment by invitation, was stricken down by assassins hidden ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... confined at the waist by a crimson silk sash, and a pair of canvas slippers on his otherwise naked feet. He wore a pair of gold rings in his small well-shaped ears, and the gold- mounted horn handle of what was doubtless a stiletto peeped unobtrusively from among the folds of his sash. A crimson cap of knitted silk with a tassel of the same depending from its pointed crown lay on a chair near him, and completed a costume which, whilst it undoubtedly set off his very fine figure to advantage, ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... had insisted on a rupture—a thing which had been effected long since, according to Frederick's account; and when he had ceased to protest, she replied, half closing her eyes, in which shone a look like the point of a stiletto under ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... very glad to suffer for one she loves! I, however, in my inmost soul, was doleful and cross in the midst of all my joy. I shall make a bad wife, I am afraid, I am too fond of spending. I had bought two sashes and a nice little stiletto for piercing eyelet-holes in my stays, trifles that I really did not want, so that I have less than that slow-coach Agathe, who is so economical, and hoards her money like a magpie. She had two hundred francs! And ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... Jennings. "No woman would have such a weapon in her possession; and if she bought one to accomplish a crime, she would purchase a stiletto or a pistol. It would take a considerable exercise of muscle to drive this ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... observed her to take something bright from her girdle, which apprehension converted into a stiletto or dirk, and such is the force of self-preservation, that I was on the point of tripping her up and throwing her on her back. But thrusting the supposed dirk against the wall—presto—open sesame—the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... resources of Spanish science, Escovedo persisted in living, and Perez determined that he must be shot or stabbed. Enriquez went off to his own country to find a friend who was an assassin, and to get 'a stiletto with a very fine blade, much better than a pistol to kill a man with.' Enriquez, keeping a good thing in the family, enlisted his brother: and Martinez, from Aragon, brought 'two proper kind of men,' Juan de Nera and ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... Bang!! Bang!!!" The timbers of the hut shivered, the guests made a rush to the back door. I was there first and found Franz, the missing guest, his arms smeared with blood, his ragged jacket covered with hair of some sort and in his hand a bloody stiletto. ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... there they stabbed her in the left breast, turning the poignard in the wound, and asking her with savage insults if her heart was pierced. Her last words were, 'Jesus, I pardon you.' Then they turned to Flaminio, and left him pierced with seventy-four stiletto wounds. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... alliance with the Medici—those ennobled pawnbrokers of the middle ages, whose parvenu taste engendered the fantastic gilding of the renaissance, which they naturalized in the Tuileries and at Fontainbleau, in common with the stiletto and acqua tofana of their poisoners, and the fatalism of their ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... at you, if you come any nearer me," she threatened. "Do you think I ride all over the desert where I've a mind to without protection? I guess not." She lifted her skirt with a quick movement and drew a long knife, keen as a stiletto, from her boot. ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... stiletto," explained Entrefort, "all the weapons you mention have one or two edges, so that in penetrating they cut their way. A stiletto is round, is ordinarily about half an inch or less in diameter at the ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... muffetees, 1 pair of gaiters, 1 pair of boots, 8 copper pens, 1 pair of slippers, 1 black leather bag, 1 pair of new boots, 1 coat, 1 waistcoat, 5 pairs of gloves, 1 pair of braces, a necktie, a dressing box, 2 brushes, 3 razors, a stiletto, a pair of spectacles, and 2 pieces of teeth set in gold.—12 book covers, 7 small ditto, 1 small box, 4 ditto in one.—A large box of toys.—A collar.—A large tea chest, containing 160 articles of ladies' dress, etc.—A dress, 3 bodies, 3 berthas, a waistband, a pair of cuffs, ...
— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller
... the firebrands of the French Revolution; "rose into furor almost Pythic; highest where many were high," but veered round to royalism, which he at length intrigued on behalf of—to death by the stiletto (1765-1812). ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... waters all the stables as well as dwelling quarters. It is the home of the famous Cyllene, whose offspring we expect to see winning races in the near future; Polar Star, scarcely less known, and Ituzaingo, a native of this country, are his present companions; while the remains of Gay Hermit, Stiletto, Pietermaritzburg, and Kendal, all of whom are well known among turf circles at home, rest beneath its soil. There are several other equally famous stud farms, such as the "San Jacinto," the present home of Val d'Or, who won the Eclipse Stakes from Cicero, ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... The Nabob was afraid that his breakfasts would end tragically, and tried to calm all those violent natures with his kindly, conciliatory smile. But Paganetti reassured him. According to him, the vendetta, although still kept alive in Corsica, very rarely employs the stiletto and the firearm in these days. The anonymous letter has taken their place. Indeed, unsigned letters were received every day at Place Vendome, after ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... under his little linger, there shot out as if released by a magic spring a thin keen little blade of the brightest and toughest steel. He was holding, instead of a meaningless contrivance of four rings, a most dangerous kind of stiletto or dagger upraised. He lifted his thumb and the blade sprang back into its sheath like an extinguished spark ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... things that two such frames, animated by such spirits, could prolong so exhausting a struggle. It was not doubtful now which of the two would come off victorious. During the whole course of the fight Gascoyne had acted entirely on the defensive. A small knife or stiletto hung at his left side, but he never attempted to use it, and he never once tried to throw his adversary. In fact, it now became evident, even to the widow's perceptions, that the captain was actually ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... sustained by corresponding courage. Ben Jonson had many quarrels with him, both literary and personal, and mentions one occasion on which he beat him, and took away his pistol. His temper was Italian rather than English, and one would conceive of him as quicker with the stiletto than the fist. His connection with the stage ceased in 1613, after he had produced a number of dramas, of which nine have been preserved. He died about twenty years afterwards, in 1634, seemingly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... kill himself. I don't defend my conduct in this case, but surely this drunken scoundrel was better dead than alive. In choosing a weapon, I wished to select one that would implicate Ferruci rather than myself, in case there was any trouble over the matter; so I chose for my purpose a stiletto which hung by a parti-coloured ribbon on the walls of the library at Berwin Manor. I fancied that the stiletto, having been bought in Florence, and Ferruci coming from Florence, he, if anyone—should any of these facts come to light—would ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... Their commissions were signed by Philip on the 19th of April, 1578. Such were the wages of murder at that day in Spain; gold chains, silver cups, doubloons, annuities, and commissions in the army! The reward of fidelity, as in poor Escovedo's case, was oftener the stiletto. Was it astonishing that murder was more common ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... their quarter of the camp was prone to be a scene of loud revel and sudden brawl. They were, withal, of great pride, yet it was not like our inflammable Spanish pride: they stood not much upon the 'pundonor,' the high punctilio, and rarely drew the stiletto in their disputes; but their pride was silent and contumelious. Though from a remote and somewhat barbarous island, they believed themselves the most perfect men upon earth, and magnified their chieftain, the Lord Scales, beyond the greatest of their ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Munich produces work of a richness and precision which has, perhaps, never been excelled. The raised parts of the design are first cast in soft hollow "carton," and the gold is worked on it and into the recesses with the help of a fine stiletto, which pioneers the needle for each stitch. This is embroidery "on the stamp," but ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... these I propose to enlarge presently. Next come the legal effects, always supposing that the wronged party can summon heart enough to carry on a suit, with bruised affections—" "hang it," thought Tom, "why did I not think of that word 'bruised' while on my knees; it would tell like a stiletto—" "Yes, Miss Julia, if 'bruised affections' would permit the soul to descend to such preliminaries. The last consequence is, ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... woman who once lived. But the peculiar mark of depravity is the eye: this woman looks at you with a cold, calm, calculating, brazen leer. Hidden in the folds of her dress or in the coil of her hair is a stiletto—she can find it in an instant—and as she looks at you out of those impudent eyes, she is mentally searching out your most vulnerable spot. In this woman's face there is an entire absence of wonder, curiosity, modesty or passion. All that ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... delicious afternoon is blowing without there, wasting for ever; and never a glimpse of it. Delicate work this! Here's a needle might serve for a genuine stiletto! No matter,—it is the cause,—it is the cause that makes, as my mother says, each stitch in this clumsy fabric a grander thing than the flashing of the bravest lance that brave ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon
... different way of doing things in New Orleans, where the Legislature met. Gentlemen were not willing to wear a black eye, or bruised face, from the hands or cudgels of ruffians. They had a short way of terminating difficulties with them. A stiletto or Derringer returned the blow, and the Charity Hospital or potter's field had a new patient or victim. These were places for which Larry had no special penchant, and in the city he was careful to avoid rows or personal conflicts. He knew he was protected by the ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... prey, blind and deaf to everything but their own passions; but the great crowd that had made the threat of disaster so ominous had disappeared. One of the mad group about them, teeth bared, was creeping closer to Torrance, a long stiletto held aloft. But as it jerked back to strike, the hand that held it opened nervelessly, and a spurt of blood covered ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... "Tony he'sa don't care if thisa bigga stiffa he's a champion for the world. Tony he's a gotta knifa, gun, dynamite, carbolic acida, everything for fighta. I talka to heem sweeta and he'sa knocka me down wit' a hook! While I sleepa on the dirt, somebody she'sa taka my gooda carbolic acida and stiletto ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... passages of Ovid. My dress could but add to such resemblance—did I tell you, my boy, that I wore only a shirt? Seeing me, Mosaide's eyes vomited fire. Out of his dirty yellow greatcoat he drew a neat little stiletto and shook it through the window with an arm in no way weighed down by age. He roared bilingual curses on me. Yes, Tournebroche, my grammatical knowledge authorises me to say that his curses were bilingual, that Spanish, or rather Portuguese, was mixed in them with Hebrew. I went into ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... perforator, piercer, borer, auger, chisel, gimlet, stylet[obs3], drill, wimble[obs3], awl, bradawl, scoop, terrier, corkscrew, dibble, trocar[Med], trepan, probe, bodkin, needle, stiletto, rimer, warder, lancet; punch, puncheon; spikebit[obs3], gouge; spear &c. (weapon) 727; puncher; punching machine, punching ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... arrested by the Guards of the cardinal, are they?" continued M. de Treville, as furious at heart as his soldiers, but emphasizing his words and plunging them, one by one, so to say, like so many blows of a stiletto, into the bosoms of his auditors. "What! Six of his Eminence's Guards arrest six of his Majesty's Musketeers! MORBLEU! My part is taken! I will go straight to the louvre; I will give in my resignation as captain of the king's Musketeers to take a lieutenancy in the cardinal's Guards, ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... herself. Fouquet in vain addressed her, with the most agreeable, most pacific salutation; she only replied by a terrible glance darted at the marquise and Fouquet. This keen glance of a jealous woman is a stiletto which pierces every cuirass; Marguerite Vanel plunged it straight into the hearts of the two confidants. She made a courtesy to her friend, a more profound one to Fouquet, and took leave, under pretense of having a number of visits to make, without the marquise ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... hearth. It was the fragments of the toy stiletto, broken by an uncontrollable twitch of the small ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... threatenin' suicide. I wish to Gog and Magog that he would take to the reef or find a stick of dynamite. Monsieur Lontane, that busy French gendarme, found him tryin' to borrow a revolver or a stiletto, and thought he was going to kill a Frenchman. He put him in the calaboose and brought his effects to me. They consisted of a book of poems and a ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien |
