United States or British Indian Ocean Territory ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


It was in this half-solemn and half-tragic conclave that the pater-familias was at last put in possession of the mysterious occurrences that had been disturbing the peace of his domestic hearth. A ghost had been repeatedly seen in his best drawing-room! a genuine, undeniable, unmitigated ghost!

"Come, landlord," he added, as he strode across to the bar, speaking in a changed, reckless sort of a way, "fix me up a good hot whisky-punch, and do it right; and here's another sixpence toward the fortune you are bound to make. It's the last one left not a copper more in my pockets," and he turned them inside-out, with a half-solemn, half-ludicrous air.

But the latter, who saw at a glance the intention of the prince, drew his kandjiar abruptly from his girdle, and holding it still in its sheath, said to the prince in a half-solemn, half-savage tone: "This dagger, in a strong hand, is terrible; and in this phial is one of the most subtle poisons of our country."

For the conduct of this verbal warfare, Veuillot had made himself master of a special style, partly borrowed from La Bruyere and Du Gros-Caillou. This half-solemn, half-slang style, had the force of a tomahawk in the hands of this vehement personality.

As a forerunner of a disastrous revolution, the appearance of this fantastic personage in the capital of civilisation was at once dismal and prophetic. Unconsciously, he was the prophet of disaster. Unconsciously, he was the prelude half-solemn, half-grotesque of a bloody and diabolical saturnalia.

We had recently a half-solemn, half-comic desire to see the very latest development of Preston Mormonism in its Lune-street home; but having an idea that strangers might be objected to whilst the "holding forth" was going on, that, in fact, the members had resolved themselves, through diminished numbers, into a species of secret conclave, we were rather puzzled to know how the business of seeing and hearing could be accomplished.

But the latter, who saw at a glance the intention of the prince, drew his kandjiar abruptly from his girdle, and holding it still in its sheath, said to the prince in a half-solemn, half-savage tone: "This dagger, in a strong hand, is terrible; and in this phial is one of the most subtle poisons of our country."

At each separate affair which Rabourdin carefully explained, Baudoyer's little eyes grew big as saucers. "Farewell, monsieur," said Rabourdin at last, with a manner that was half-solemn, half-satirical. Sebastien meanwhile had made up a package of papers and letters belonging to his chief and had carried them away in a hackney coach.