United States or Austria ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
He was interrupted by the entrance of Noel, who carried under his arm a black shagreen portfolio, ornamented with his monogram. The advocate bowed to the old gentleman, who in his turn rose and retired politely to the end of the room. "Sir," said Noel, in an undertone to the magistrate, "you will find all the letters in this portfolio.
I unclasped the shagreen case; the sergent-de-ville and the gendarme stole up and looked over my shoulder; the garçon drew near with round eyes; the little woman peeped across; the merchant, with tears streaming over his face, gazed as if it had been a loadstone; finally, I looked myself.
Moses comes home from market with his stock of shagreen spectacles. Lovers, warriors, and villains, as dead to the present generation of readers as Cambyses, are weeping, fighting, and intriguing. These books, tattered and torn as they are, are read with delight to-day. The viands are celestial if set forth on a dingy table-cloth.
Rain makes a granulated crust over all, in which white shagreen the trees are faintly reflected. Heavy mists go up and down, and create a sort of mirage, till they settle and pack round the iron-tipped hills, and then you know how the moon must look to an inhabitant of it.
As soon as I sat down, he took his spectacles off, and putting them into a shagreen case, return'd them and the book into his pocket together. I half rose up, and made him a bow.
Monsieur Bayou pulled from his pocket, on his way to the window, a shagreen jewel-case; and, by the time he was in front of Madame he had taken from it a rich gold chain, which he hung on her neck, saying, with a voice and air strangely made up of jocoseness, awkwardness, and deference "I have not forgotten, you see, though I suppose you have, what you gave me, one day long ago.
The young man thought that the older was in his dotage, and waited in bewilderment without venturing to reply. "Turn round," said the merchant, suddenly catching up the lamp in order to light up the opposite wall; "look at that leathern skin," he went on. The young man rose abruptly, and showed some surprise at the sight of a piece of shagreen which hung on the wall behind his chair.
About to retire, his glance fell upon the table in the center of the room. At once a sudden trembling seized him. A burning fever surged through his veins; an irresistible impulse overwhelmed; for there, in inconceivable negligence, lay the shagreen case which he had so reluctantly returned to its owner only the night before.
Rosa sobbed afresh, and handed to him a book, bound in shagreen, which bore the initials C. W. "What is this?" asked the prisoner. "Alas!" replied Rosa, "it is the Bible of your poor godfather, Cornelius de Witt. From it he derived strength to endure the torture, and to bear his sentence without flinching. I found it in this cell, after the death of the martyr, and have preserved it as a relic.
The furniture, indeed, was of the heavy, graceless taste of George the First, cumbrous chairs in walnut-tree, with a worm-eaten mosaic of the heron on their homely backs, and a faded blue worsted on their seats; a marvellously ugly sideboard to match, and on it a couple of black shagreen cases, the lids of which were flung open, and discovered the pistol-shaped handles of silver knives.
Word Of The Day