United States or Armenia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Meantime; while Guise was making his promenade through the city, exchanging embraces with the rabble; and listening to the coarse congratulations and obscene jests of the porters and fishwomen, the poor King sat crying all day long in the Louvre. The Queen-Mother was with him, reproaching him bitterly with his irresolution and want of confidences in her, and scolding him for his tears.
Over the door of every third house, generally swings a sign-board, villainously painted, and exhibiting, in emblematical form to the stranger's eye, the proprietor's name, and the nature of the goods which may be bought of him. The streets are very long and confined; and herds of fishwomen, dogs, and children, get in your way and under your feet.
But, my lord, in the midst of a parcel of Billingsgate fishwomen, in the midst of a circle of butchers with marrow-bones and cleavers, I am afraid these accomplishments would be of little avail. It is he, most noble patron, who can swallow the greatest quantity of porter, who can roar the best catch, and who is the compleatest bruiser, that will finally carry the day.
The Baron makes a speech to the National Assembly, and drives out all the members Routs the fishwomen and the National Guards Pursues the whole rout into a Church, where he defeats the National Assembly, &c., with Rousseau, Voltaire, and Beelzebub at their head, and liberates Marie Antoinette and the Royal Family.
First came a delay of three days off the squalid shores of Wapping and Rotherhithe, whereby opportunity was afforded of "tasting a delicious mixture of the air of both these sweet places," and of enjoying such a concord of the voices of seamen, watermen, fishwomen, oyster women and their like as Hogarth indicated "in that print of his which is enough to make a man deaf to look at."
The fishwomen of the markets, always a peculiar and privileged class, were frantically excited, and were sure to be foremost in all the demonstrations stirred up by Jacobins. There was a great scarcity of provisions in Paris, and this, together with the continual dread that reforms would be checked by violence, maddened the people.
He received subsidies and alms with both hands from those who distrusted and despised him, but who could not eject him from his advantageous position. He wished to arrive at the throne of France. As son of Francis of Guise, as brother of the great Balafre, he considered himself entitled to the homage of the fishwomen and the butchers' halls.
Passing through the Rue des Arcis, which is a mean narrow street, at one of the lowest descriptions of wine-houses where dancing was going forward, perhaps amongst fishwomen and scavengers, I noticed a large lantern hanging out over the door, upon which was inscribed, "Bal séduisant, le Paradis des Dames," which may be translated, "Seductive Ball, the Paradise of Ladies."
Although one of the most turbulent and restless plotters of that plotting age, he was yet thought more slow and heavy in character than subtle, Teutonic rather than Italian. He was the idol of the Parisian burghers. The grocers, the market-men, the members of the arquebus and crossbow clubs, all doated on him. The fishwomen worshipped him as a god.
Word was sent across the ring, and in a moment three or four of the women performers, with long streaming ulsters buttoned over their tights, ran out from behind the scenes and threw themselves into the crowd, forcing back the wild hill-side people, fishwomen and drunken sailors, in an extraordinary tumult of swearing, wrestling and laughter.
Word Of The Day