Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
They traversed the lower room, slowly, and with caution; for Monks started at every shadow; and Mr. Bumble, holding his lantern a foot above the ground, walked not only with remarkable care, but with a marvellously light step for a gentleman of his figure: looking nervously about him for hidden trap-doors.
"Yes, he can't open and shut the trap-doors and work at the same time." She shivered. "What is he working at?" "Oh, something terrible! ... But it's all the better for us... When he's working at that, he sees nothing; he does not eat, drink, or breathe for days and nights at a time ... he becomes a living dead man and has no time to amuse himself with the trap-doors." She shivered again.
We could also see the trap-doors from whence buffoons were hoisted on to the stage. To trace all this was interesting, though it saddened one to reflect on all the horrors that had been enacted here.
But this will appear a luxurious habitation, when compared with the inventions of Louis XI. of France, with his iron cages, in which persons of rank lay for whole years; or his oubliettes, dungeons made in the form of reversed cones, with concealed trap-doors, down which dropped the unhappy victims of the tyrant, brought there by Tristam L'Hermite, his companion and executioner in ordinary; sometimes their sides were plain, sometimes set with knives, or sharp-edged wheels; but in either cases they were complete oubliettes; the devoted were certain to fall into the land where all things are forgotten.
They are covered with trap-doors, and any person whom the rack has mutilated, or not obliged to speak out; whose return to society is thought dangerous, or whose discretion is suspected; who has been imprisoned by mistake, or discovered to be innocent; who is disagreeable to the Bonapartes, their favourites, or the mistresses of their favourites; who has displeased Fouche, or offended some other placeman; any who have refused to part with their property for the recovery of their liberty, are all precipitated into these artificial abysses there to be forgotten; or worse, to be starved to death, if they have not been fortunate enough to break their necks and be killed by the fall.
The mosaic pavement is well preserved nearly all over the surface; and the sacristan opens numerous trap-doors, and puts down tapers, to show the most interesting portions. The cills of two of the doors still remain 9 in. higher and much worn by traffic; the third was destroyed to place a sarcophagus against the wall of the church.
COMEDY. The comic drama, which occupied the French stage till the middle of the seventeenth century, was the comedy of intrigue, borrowed from Spain, and turning on disguises, dark lanterns, and trap-doors to help or hinder the design of personages who were types, not of individual character, but of classes, as doctors, lawyers, lovers, and confidants.
He said he would show me how to wiggle into the refrigerator box of an orange car ... on either end of the orange car is a refrigerator box, if I remember correctly ... access to which is gained through the criss-cross bars that hold up a sort of trap-door at the top. It was in the cold season, so there was now no ice inside. These trap-doors are always officially sealed, when the car is loaded.
It was entered by a square hole in the ceiling, at present closed by a clap-door in no way dissimilar to the trap-doors on a theatre stage. I climbed into this garret, which is at present used as a store-room for agricultural odds and ends. At harvest-time, however, it is inhabited full to overflowing.
It was clear to him that death by his own hand was futile, and that if there were trap-doors set for him alone, it were well to wait until he trod upon them and fell through in his appointed hour in the movement of the Great Machine. What to do where to live how to live? He got slowly to his feet and took a step forward half blindly. The man on the bench stirred.
Word Of The Day