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Their daily lives were surrounded by much shabbiness and many meannesses. But, after all, no temptation and no menace, no pains or penalties for thinking about certain subjects, and no rewards for turning to think about something else, could divert such men as Voltaire and Diderot from their alert and strenuous search after such truth as could be vouchsafed to their imperfect lights.

Only a month before I had seen him regaling himself upon cherries in the garden and orchard; but as the dog-days approached he set out for the streams and lakes, to divert himself with the more exciting pursuits of the chase.

Now we see coming the man who has been directed in a letter from his wife to get a certain book, about which he knows nothing, and the title of which he can not decipher. Here is a person asking for "comfort books" for the sick. Here is Mrs. So-and-So, who tells us her husband is very ill, unconscious; she has to sit up by him all night, and must have something "very amusing" to divert her mind.

"The letter is dated yesterday morning; and apparently, if it had not been for the providential arrival of that Englishman, the poor fellow would have taken advantage of Monsieur de Sallenauve's absence last night to kill himself." "The Englishman must have suspected his intention, and carried him off to divert him from it. If that is so, he won't let him out of his sight."

If they were deemed worthy of her favors, she bestowed them freely, and out of one animal desire gratified, there were created a thousand intellectual aspirations. She understood clearly that man can not be all animal or all spiritual, and that the attempt to divert nature from its duality of being was to wreck humanity and make of man neither fish, flesh nor fowl.

You have made this lady believe you have a slave, though you have none; I will personate that slave, and that this may not make you uneasy, and to prevent your excuses, I repeat again, that I will positively have it to be so; you will soon know my reason. Go to your place, and continue to divert yourself.

All the time he was talking he was stuffing the paper into the stove; then he ran into the woodshed, bringing out some kindlings. "We've got to fill the wood box, Dave," he said, to make talk and divert David's mind; and he crammed the wood in after the paper, till there wasn't much room left. "You ought not to do it, Joe. O dear me, do stop," implored David, clasping his hands.

He had no friends or relatives to visit and console him or divert him. In his sleepless hours Fandor's thoughts would revert to his past, to the frightful drama of his boyhood, to the assassination of the Marquise de Langrune, when he, a youth of eighteen, had been suspected, had even been accused of committing this murder, the accuser being his own father!

His manner was that of one unused to the society of women. He was conscious she was studying him, and spoke to divert her.

In the first place, had he fired the shot, Luckstone would have worked furiously to divert suspicion from him. Every bit of damaging evidence would have been destroyed. It was because Luckstone knew that Collins was innocent that he was willing we should accuse him of the crime. "Equally convincing is the attitude of the others in the case. You must remember none of them had any use for Collins.