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More "Piquant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nettled me had a partisan look; but it was impossible not to remember that Miss Woolmer had always said that, however she might censure the scandal of the Stympsons, they only required to dish it up with sauce piquant to ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... lady “who was the Sappho of the country,” and greatly beloved by all the beaux esprits of the time. Amongst others, “M. Pascal, who had then acquired so much reputation, and another savant, were continually with this belle savante.” It is difficult to know what to make of this vague if piquant anecdote. Some of Pascal’s more religious admirers have even been scandalised by it, and have tried to show that it could not refer to the author of the ‘Pensées.’ M. Cousin and other parties have emphasised ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... reflections—posturing her arms and her expressions, clasping her hands behind her neck, and tilting back her head to foreshorten the face in a tableau conceived to represent sauciness, then one of smiling weariness, then one of scornful toleration, and all very piquant; but as the door opened she hurriedly resumed the practical, and occupied her hands in the arrangement of her plentiful ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... regretting you for him, and regretting him for you. Last Monday he was good enough to play, in his usual and admirable manner, at the concert for the Orchestral Pension Fund. The pieces he had selected were his new "Concerto pathetique" (in F minor) and an extremely piquant and brilliant "Caprice on Hungarian Melodies." (This latter piece is dedicated to me.) The public was in a good humor, even really warm, which is usually one ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... nerve in her was satisfied by it. By leaning sideways, he could see that her eyes were fixed on the grey-white stretch to be travelled: her warm breath came back to him; and the coil of her hair, with its piquant odour, was so close that, by bending, he could have touched it with his lips. But he was still in too detached a mood to be happy; he felt, throughout, as if all this were happening to some one else, not ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... the most important of forthcoming books. It is a capital study of girl-students from Boston, New York, and Chicago, exemplifying the most piquant characteristics of the respective phases of civilization and social criteria of the three cities. It is suited alike to old and young, being rich in beautiful passages of tender pathos, strong, simple and vivid, and full of ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 1: Curiosities of the Old Lottery • Henry M. Brooks
... consideration in the enthralling confrontations and denunciations of the Caillaux murder trial, the trial of the wife of her ex-prime Minister for the murder of a blackmailing journalist. It was a case full of the vulgarest sexual violence. Before so piquant a spectacle France it seemed could have no time nor attention for the revelation of M. Humbert, the Reporter of the Army Committee, proclaiming that the artillery was short of ammunition, that her infantry had boots "thirty years old" and ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... is to us of import. Khalid, in the winter of the first year of the Dastur (Constitution) writes to him many letters from Beirut, of which he gives us not less than fifty! And of these, the following, if not the most piquant and interesting, are the most indispensable to ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... advised the King. "Your remarks are piquant and highly-seasoned, but you need a scattering of commonsense. It is only necessary to kill a person once to make him dead; but I do not see that it is necessary to kill this ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... too, but I know the man, and I know that all this madman's whims are ruthless and irresistible. Living, Duke Alessandro's appetites are merely whetted by opposition, so much so that he finds no pleasures sufficiently piquant unless they have God's interdiction as a sauce. Living, he will make of you his plaything, and a little later his broken, soiled and castby plaything. It is therefore necessary that ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... went on, "I played the fool and I pay willingly. I was engaged to marry a very charming girl who believed in me and whom I cared for as much as it was possible for me to care for anything outside my career. I flirted with you because it was a piquant thing to do. You were a woman whom other men found difficult, you were the wife of a man whom I despised and who was trying all the time to undermine my position. I sacrificed my self-respect every time I ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... brown velvet gown and an ostrich-feather boa in delicate shades of cream and brown, and a cavalier hat with sweeping white plumes. Her hair was the colour of autumn leaves, or a squirrel's back in the sunshine, and she had grey eyes and piquant, irregular features, ears like shells, and a delicate, softly-tinted skin undefiled by cosmetics. She thought it wicked to doubt that one waked up again after dying, Somewhere—a vague Somewhere, with all the nice people of one's set about one. He said ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... freely to each other now, and playfully said a great many things to Mona, who, though she did not understand them, laughed with us and gave us much pleasure with her easy, unembarrassed manner and piquant ways. And she not only jabbered away with hands and face in the manner we had taught her, but she did not cease also to make life bright for us by repaying us in our own coin and talking to us in her natural, delicious way. With ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... produced her vanity case, peered into the mirror, and used her powder puff with the somewhat piquant assurance of the foreigner. Then she closed her dressing case with a snap, pulled down her veil, ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... ignorant of the hostility which existed between Lucien Bonaparte and the Empress Josephine; and to make their court to the latter the former habitues of Malmaison, now become the courtiers of the Tuileries; were in the habit of relating to her the most piquant anecdotes they could collect relative to the younger brother of the Emperor. Thus it happened that by chance one day I heard a dignified person and a senator of the Empire give the Empress, in the gayest manner imaginable, very minute details as to one of the temporary ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... Opera—which certainly plays a role in our politics—had been sufficiently well portrayed by the author of Monsieur le Ministre. And upon this, the first chapter of my book, Monsieur Ludovic Halevy adds, moreover, some special and piquant details which ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... striven for. 'A metaphor may be used with advantage' by any young lady, but only 'if it occur naturally.' And 'allusions are elegant,' but only 'when introduced with ease, and when they are well understood by those to whom they are addressed.' 'An antithesis renders a passage piquant'; but the dire results of a too-frequent indulgence in it are relentlessly set forth. Pages and pages are devoted to a minute survey of the pit-falls of punctuation. But when the young lady of that period had skirted all these, and had observed ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... of figures, white nightgowns, white wings, and the same straight yellow hair parted in the middle. They were serious, even melancholy; and we had no desire to have any traffic with them. These bright bejewelled little persons, however, piquant of face and radiant of feather, were evidently hatched from quite a different egg, and we felt we might have interests in common with them. Short-nosed, shock headed, with mouths that went up at the corners and with an evident disregard for all their ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... bloomer is piquant. It was launched and worn. It became the subject of platform oratory and had its organ. Why is it not worn to-day? No woman who has ever masqueraded in man's dress or donned it for climbing will ever forget the freedom of it. Yet the only woman ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... train started Hillocks received the compliments of the third with much modesty, and added piquant details regarding the utter confusion of our ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... skin, hair, she was all copper-browns and crimson-bronzes, all the high gloss of satiny surfaces. Every shape and contour was a variant from the regular. Her eyes took a bewildering slant. Her face showed a little piquant stress on the cheekbones. Her hair banded in a long, solid, club-like braid. In repose she bore a look a little sullen, a little heavy. When she smiled, it seemed as if her whole face waked up; but it was only the glitter of white teeth in the ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... as a loan, which I have long since repaid, and the property in the journal is now exclusively mine. I have to thank you not only for your own brilliant contributions, but for those of the colleagues you secured. Monsieur Savarin's piquant criticisms were most valuable to us at starting. I regret to have lost his aid. But as he has set up a new journal of his own, even he has not wit enough to spare for another. A propos of our contributors, I shall ask you to present me to the fair ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... worked for Rhodes.... Hullo! Here's Simpson at it again; since when did they buy him?..." And so forth. I lead my pastoral life, happy in the general world about me, and I serve, as sauce to such healthy meat, the piquant wickedness of the town; nor do I ever note a cowardice, a lie, a bribery, or a breach of trust, a surrender in the field, or a new Peerage, but I remember that my newspaper could not add these refining ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... fifteen Wilbur Cowan, suddenly alive to this quick way of time, was looking back to the days of his heedless youth. That long aisle of years seemed unending, but it narrowed in perspective until earlier experiences were but queerly dissolving shapes, wavering of outline, dimly discerned, piquant or sad in the mind, but elusive when he would ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... savours of the garlic and the leeks of Egypt, loathed the light bread. And so Jesus Christ comes into the world in lowly form, like the barley loaf or the light bread from which men whose tastes have been vitiated by the piquant savours of more earthly nourishment turn away as insipid. And yet He in His lowliness, He in His savourlessness, is that which meets the deepest wants of humanity, and is every man's fare because He will ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... ascending to tiny naked shoulders, presented a piquant contrast with the huge, black Assyrian, bull-like policemen, who guarded the passage, and reduced, by contrast, to almost doll-like proportions the white creatures who went up the great stairway. Overhead an artificial plant, some twenty ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... case he was unaware of it. But he never gave them the opportunity. Honestly, he had forgotten the speaker's name at first, and only recognized him when he was introduced by young Copperhead; and then the situation was piquant and amused him, especially the evident confusion and consternation of the culprit when ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... the driver stopped the car beside a little stream in which two extremely pretty girls were bathing. With the evening sun glinting on their brown bodies and their piquant, oval faces framed by the dusky torrents of their loosened hair, they looked like those bronze maidens which disport themselves in the fountain of the Piazza delle Terme in Rome, come to life. I felt certain that they would take to flight ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... controlled her English appearances, and made her John Drew's leading woman. She met his confidence by adapting herself to the role with great brilliancy and effect. Indeed, with Miss Burke, Frohman introduced a distinct and piquant reddish-blond type of beauty to the American stage. It became known as the "Billie Burke type." Realizing this, Frohman was very careful to adapt her personal appearance, humor, and temperament to her plays. He literally had plays written ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... the good Bonzig ran away—all but "piquant sa tete" down the narrow staircase, and whistling "Mon Aldegonde" at the very top of his whistle; and ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... rare in men as women would have us believe. For Elmore, Miss Mayhew merely pervaded the place in her finer way, as the flowers on the table did, as the sweet butter, the new eggs, and the morning's French bread did; he looked at her with a perfectly serene ignorance of her piquant face, her beautiful eyes and abundant hair, and her trim, straight figure. But his wife exulted in every particular of her charm, and was as generously glad of it as if it were her own; as women are when they are sure that the charm of others has no designs. ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... of a homeward-bound steamer, twenty-four hours from port, and that port Southampton, a lady sat writing letters. Her age was about thirty; her face was rather piquant than pretty; she had the air of a person far too intelligent and spirited to be involved in any life of mere routine, on whatever plane. Two letters she had written in French, one in German, and that upon which she was now engaged was in English, her native tongue; ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... common use in the British Army, while among the others were scimitars, tulwars, cuchurries, and a score of other specimens of Oriental workmanship. Many of these were richly mounted, with inlaid sheaths and hilts sparkling with precious stones, so that there was a piquant contrast between the simplicity of the apartment and the wealth which ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... maple's gorgeous variations and the sweet-gums blood red mingled in a bewildering confusion of color. Stripping the leaves from the twigs she proceeded to sew them upon a plain linen gown, and the result was exquisite, for not a vestige of the fabric remained visible, and Peggy's piquant, rich coloring peeped from a garment of living, burning color. She herself was the only one who did not fully appreciate ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... Worcester's Dictionary? I read it continually. Did you feast on 'The Marble Faun'? I have a charming letter from Una Hawthorne, herself a poet by nature, all about 'papa's book.' Ought not Mr. Hawthorne to be the happiest man alive? He isn't, though! Do save all the anecdotes you possibly can, piquant or not; ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... skull-charm that depended from Milo's columnar neck, a jade skull with pearls for teeth like the altar brooch of Dolores. And Tomlin, for all his expressed scorn, was tingling with ardent desire for such piquant beauty and vivacity as Pascherette's. If such a creature were the slave, then what could the mistress be? He assumed a more complaisant attitude, and added his vote: "A good way of passing away this odious calm spell, ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... more but, at that moment, from up the aisle sounded a sibilant "S-s-s-s!" They turned to see a somewhat untidy fluff of red hair above a laughing, piquant face. ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
... shown by the leading anti-suffrage houses this spring is the statement that woman suffrage is the same thing as free love. The effect is extremely piquant and surprising. ...
— Are Women People? • Alice Duer Miller
... piquant effect, in the final phrase, produced by the elision of a measure; there being in the whole song 31 measures instead of the normal 32 ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... the piquant fragrance that filled the air, the pleasure-loving women—these people, so free and unconstrained, all strangers to one another, hidden in the elegant, half-dark salon, each following his most secret thoughts—thoughts born of the mysterious, muffled music; ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... incarnate one's own being in misery; to familiarize one's self with homes like that; to act out constantly in life those dramas which move us so in fiction! I never imagined that good could be more interesting, more piquant than vice." ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... was treasured even in the time of the grand monarque, when old French literature was so much despised, is certainly a curiosity. The Rabelais of Madame de Pompadour (in morocco) seems comparatively cheap at 60 pounds. There is something piquant in the idea of inheriting from that famous beauty the work of the ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... there preceded by another, from The Westminster Review, written fourteen years earlier, on The Genius of Cruikshank. This contains a descriptive catalogue of Cruikshank's works up to that period, and is interesting from the piquant style in which it is written. I fancy that these two are the only efforts of the kind which he made,—and in both he dealt with the two great caricaturists of his time, he himself being, in the imaginative ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... the fact is that under the title of boiled beef there exist two things, one of which, without any great impropriety, might be called junk; but this was the powdered beef of our ancestors, a huge piece just slightly salted in the house itself, so that the generous juice remained in it, but the piquant slices, with the mealy potatoes, made a delightful combination. The glasses were filled with home-brewed ale, sparkling and clear and golden as the finest Madeira. They all ate manfully, stimulated by the genial hostess. Even Mary outshone all ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... There was something piquant in this notion. Was not life short? and precious hours were too often wasted carelessly and dawdled away. It might even be worth while to see how much could be seen in these few hours. In a few moments the resolution was taken, ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... Grandcourt had heard what was rather piquant, and not a word about Miss Harleth had been missed by him. After a moment's pause he ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... hair that ever ought to go to the seashore," remarked Edna, looking with open admiration at the piquant face under the jeweled diadem. "You can take a chair, Sylvia, but I shall have to turn my ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... little man. "But say, then! It has been an experience, hein? Piquant, picturesque, moving, too. For I am not like you; I do not see these ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... leather, thus pressed into the service of the beautiful, had a most singular and exciting effect upon the beholder. I have often thought of this girl in my maturer years, and confess that no dress that I ever beheld gave a more piquant interest to the wearer, than those straps and irons. The jade never wore them at home: perhaps the fancy was her father's, he being an old soldier, and his motto "Eyes right! dress!" Whosever fancy it was, his daughter rejoiced in it. "Eyes right! dress!" is as good a motto for the ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... that she could not pique him to a more ardent manner, but gave no sign by so much as the quiver of an eyelid. She only turned her profile toward him indifferently. He noticed the piquant line of her lips and chin and throat, and the golden tones of her ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... the usual philanthropic resolutions were passed. Victor Hugo, of France, excused himself from attendance on the score of ill-health; but the country was represented by Emile de Girardin. The congress is to meet next year simultaneously with the great World's Exposition at London. The most piquant incidents of the session were the speech of George Copway, a veritable American Indian Chief, and the presence, in one of the visitors' tribunes, of the famous General Haynau, whose victories and cruelties last year, in prosecuting the ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... matter of fact McLean could see that she was considerably more. Rather disconcertingly more! It was not often that such white-clad apparitions, piquant of face and coppery of hair, teased the eyes in ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... stiffly encased in the most uncomfortable garments that ever the wit of mortal devised, holding their heads erect, lest the marvellous pyramids, built up with such expenditure of time and money, should topple over, and, in spite of all disadvantages, looking pretty and piquant. It was a crowd not so far removed from us by time, so that we can attribute to the men and women who composed it the same feelings and sensibilities as our own. And yet they were very far removed from us in their ...
— The Kensington District - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... Faces wearing the blandest smiles, grave matrons, and cheerful planters,—all dressed in rustic style and neatness-gathered around to partake of the feast, while servants were running hither and thither to serve mas'r and missus with the choicest bits. Toasts, compliments, and piquant squibs, follow the wine-cup. Then came that picture of southern life which would be more worthy of praise if it were carried out in the purity of motive:—as soon as the party had finished, the older members, in their turn, set about preparing a repast for the servants. This seemed to elate the ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... chronicle the merry doings of the famous people of this sweet and productive land, more fertile in cuckolds, dandies and witty wags than any other, and which has furnished a good share of men of renown in France, as witness the departed Courier of piquant memory; Verville, author of Moyen de Parvenir, and others equally well known, among whom we will specially mention the Sieur Descartes, because he was a melancholy genius, and devoted himself more to brown studies than to drinks and dainties, a man of whom all ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... our health's sake. Now, the doctors of the Diamond City were hard worked during the Siege; so much so that they were still allowed (by special arrangement) the half-pound ration. This was right and proper. But there was none the less a piquant irony in the principles of a propagandist who was eating twice as much beef as anyone else and could stand up to utter precepts so strikingly at variance with his practice! The good doctor no doubt knew that new-laid missiles were too costly, and too fresh, ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... her father's gift to her mother during their days of courtship. The small looking-glass was curiously wreathed with corals and foreign shells, so disposed as to indicate an artistic eye and skilful hand; and some curious Chinese paintings of birds and flowers gave rather a piquant and foreign air to the otherwise homely ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... thoughts and vague homage perplexed Burt as he assisted Amy with attentions that were assiduous and almost garrulous. The brightness of the morning was in his handsome face, and the gladness of his buoyant temperament in his heart. Amy was just to his taste—pretty, piquant, rose-hued, and a trifle thorny too, at times, he thought. He believed that he loved her with a boundless devotion—at least it seemed so that morning. It was delightful to be near her, to touch her ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... is now stupid, dull, and monotonous. As you say, every one has become most honorable and virtuous. No scandals or piquant adventures occur; baptisms, marriages, and burials are the only events. This is really a miserable existence; for as I do not wish to be baptized or to marry, and as I am not yet ready for burial, I really do not ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... the occasional flights of a pious imagination in the biographer or his subject, we arrive at the following historical basis: Rahere was a man of humble origin, who had found his way to the Court of Henry I, where he won favour by his agreeable manners and witty conversation, rendered piquant, as it appears, by a certain flavouring of licentiousness, and took a prominent part in arranging the music, plays, and other entertainments in which the King and his courtiers delighted during the first part of ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield • George Worley
... a fact that now I wish they were not coming," acknowledged the host; "but they are young men of the loftiest genius, and some day it may provide a piquant anecdote to relate how you met them all in the period ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... villages, les vergers, les jardins, montrent a la fois, les fleurs du printemps et les fruits de l'automne, que l'abondance des pluies ou les secheresses retardent ou avancent quelquefois mais dont l'eternelle duree bien loin d'inspirer le plaisir, et d'offrir l'attrait piquant de la nouveaute qui fait le charme de ces saisons dans nos climats, amene bientot l'indifference pour une beaute toujours le meme, pour des agremens qui ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... fashion of Brighton; you will see costumes a ravir, dresses that are artistic and elegant; you will see faces beautiful and well-known; you will hear a charming ripple of conversation; you will witness many pleasant and piquant adventures; but if you want to dream; if you want to give up your whole heart and soul to the poetry of the sea; if you want to listen to its voice and hear no other; if you want to shut yourself away from the world; if you want to hear the music ...
— The Tragedy of the Chain Pier - Everyday Life Library No. 3 • Charlotte M. Braeme
... subterranean breakfast-room sat an elderly lady with a singularly high colour and almost startling silver hair. She had, as if designedly to relieve these effects, a pair of Mephistophelian black eyebrows and a very neat black dress. The glare of the gas lit up her piquant hair and face perfectly against the brown background of the shutters. The background was blue and not brown in one place; at the place where Rupert's knife had torn a great opening in the wood about an ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... Grey One tossed up the covering from the easel. He saw a girl in red, natty figure, piquant face. It was not finished. She was to stand at the head of a saddle-horse, as yet embryonic. She stepped hastily to a little desk and poked at a formidable pile of ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... always in her quiet and intelligent fashion; he returned the compliment by praising her flowers in his eager, hearty, enthusiastic way. Her coolness made her seem to him very superior; his enthusiasm made him very piquant and delightful to her. And when he got upon his hobby and told her how grand a vocation the teacher's profession was, and recited stories of the self-denial of Pestalozzi and Froebel, and the great schemes of Basedow, and ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... reading this poem, and perhaps one or two other narrative poems of Wordsworth, such as *Michael*, will be different from the sensations produced in you by reading an ordinary, or even a very extraordinary, short story in prose. They may not be so sharp, so clear and piquant, but they will probably be, in their mysteriousness and their vagueness, more impressive. I do not say that they will be diverting. I do not go so far as to say that they will strike you as pleasing sensations. (Be it remembered that I am addressing myself to an imaginary tyro in poetry.) I would ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... the beauty of the young girl appeared in most striking contrast. Her curls peeped out from under the white Dutch cap she wore. Her eyes sparkled with indignant protest, her face was piquant and was just then flushed, and her nose had the least bit of a natural uptilt, giving her the air of a young woman who had a will of her ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... Sauce is simply bechamel and aspic treated in the same way. It differs, of course, from plain bechamel in having the piquant flavor of the aspic; in appearance ...
— Choice Cookery • Catherine Owen
... and maple syrup soon put the contending forces at their ease. Bazelhurst so far forgot himself as to laugh amiably at his host's jokes. The count responded in his most piquant dialect, and the duke swore by an ever-useful Lord Harry that he had never tasted such ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... thee, for my sake, To read a book which well may make Its way by native force of wit Without my manual sign to it. Its piquant writer needs from me No gravely masculine guaranty, And well might laugh her merriest laugh At broken spears in her behalf; Yet, spite of all the critics tell, I frankly own I like her well. It may ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... gold hair, framing a charming little face. A long velvet coat with ermine stole suggested the youthful contours of her slender figure. Mademoiselle Berthe wore rough blue cloth, and a large hat trimmed with wings, which set off her piquant face with its irregular features ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... vantage-point Miss Comstock next proceeded to give a piquant account of Mr. Ashly Crane's dealings with the girl, who in a way ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... Parker's, and there found all those whom Bertram had named, and many others. Mr. Parker was, it is believed, a pastrycook by trade; but he very commonly dabbled in more piquant luxuries than jam tarts or Bath buns. Men who knew what was what, and who were willing to pay—or to promise to pay—for their knowledge, were in the habit of breakfasting there, and lunching. Now a breakfast or a lunch at Parker's generally ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... the staircase, and, being a suitor for a ticket for the principal seats, was received with a most gracious smile by a pretty woman, fair-faced and arch, with a piquant nose and a laughing blue eye, who sat at the door of the room. It was a long and rather narrow apartment; at the end, a stage of rough planks, before a kind of curtain, the whole rudely but not niggardly lighted. Unfortunately for the Baroni family, ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... recreation of the youth of quality to disfigure or mutilate the images of the gods in the streets by night.(15) Ordinary love affairs had for long been common, and intrigues with married women began to become so; but an amour with a Vestal virgin was as piquant as the intrigues with nuns and the cloister-adventures in the world of the Decamerone. The scandalous affair of 640 seq. is well known, in which three Vestals, daughters of the noblest families, and their paramours, young men likewise of ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... the curtain once more came down; the great wedding-party in the squire's hall grew suddenly quite business-like and went their several ways as if they had no longer any concern with one another; and then it was that the squire's daughter herself—a piquant little person she was, in a magnificent costume of richly flowered white satin, and with a portentous head-gear of powdered hair and brilliants and strings of pearls—was brought forward by a handsome young gentleman who wore a tied wig, a laced coat and ruffles, satin knee-breeches, shining ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... nature, and you will at once fancy that you are gazing on one of Vernet's pictures which has been taken from off his easel and placed in the sky. His nights, too, are as touching as his days are fine; while his ports are as fine as his imaginative pieces are piquant. He is equally wonderful, whether he employs his pencil to depict a subject of everyday life, or he abandons himself completely to his imagination; and he is equally incomprehensible, whether he employs the orb of day or the ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... kitchen. She seemed tall, but her short skirt counteracted that effect. Her bobbed hair, curly and rebellious, of a rich brown-red color, framed a pretty face Lane surely remembered. But yet not the same! He had carried away memory of a child's face and this was a woman's. It was bright, piquant, with darkly glancing eyes, and vivid ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... between them lessened, he saw that she was ravishingly pretty; far, far prettier, indeed, than any girl he knew. At least it seemed so, for it is, unfortunately, much easier for strangers to be beautiful. Aside from this advantage of mystery, the approaching vision was piquant and graceful enough to have reminded a much older boy of a spotless white kitten, for, in spite of a charmingly managed demureness, there was precisely that kind of playfulness somewhere expressed ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... conspiracies might have been hatched there without any one hearing of it; and Jesuits and seminary priests skulked in and out all the year round, unquestioned though unblest; and found a sort of piquant pleasure, like naughty boys who have crept into the store-closet, in living in mysterious little dens in a lonely turret, and going up through a trap-door to celebrate mass in a secret chamber in the roof, where they were allowed by the powers that were to play as much as they chose at persecuted ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... not altogether escape the blight of that artificiality which was everywhere characteristic of his times, and nowhere more conspicuous than in France. "Soyez piquant, si vous ne pouvez pas etre vrai," was his advice to a fellow artist, Ducreux; and his own work too often shows evidence of the sacrifice of truth to piquancy. His single figures and heads are not, as a class, so true to nature as his compositions, although they ...
— Child-life in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... occupants of the room to leave open. The sound of laughter and merriment issued from it; but this was presently hushed, and two voices, accompanied by guitars, began to sing a lively seguidilla, of which, at the end of each piquant couplet, the listeners testified their approbation by a hum of mirthful applause. Before the song was over, Luis had sought and found a means of observing what was passing within doors. Grasping the lower branch of a tree which grew within a few ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... a short connecting road enables it to appropriate the beauties of the neighbouring vale of the Exe. Both torrents descend from the highlands of Exmoor, and it is difficult to say which is the more beautiful. The valleys are similar, but have characteristic differences. The Barle has all the piquant charm of the mountain torrent, whilst the beauties of the Exe are of a sedater though not less pleasing character. Everywhere about Dulverton delightful landscapes may be caught, but the "show sight" is Mount Sydenham, just above the church (ascend lane at E. end of church ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... was a tall tree that stood in solitary splendor on a mountain top. The fame of the pine lured a young engineer through Kentucky to catch the trail, and when he finally climbed to its shelter he found not only the pine but the foot-prints of a girl. And the girl proved to be lovely, piquant, and the trail of these girlish foot-prints led the young engineer a madder chase than "the trail ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... Uriah Heep to "Always be obliging." Certainly, no pleasanter company could be found, whether for man or woman; whatever the hour, however mixed the company, Jasper Vermont had always a smile, a jest, or a new and piquant scandal. In the smoking-room he would rival Mortimer Shelton in apparently good-natured cynicism. In a duchess's boudoir he would enliven the afternoon tea hour with the neatest of epigrams and the spiciest ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... thickened, add a small teaspoonful of potato-flour mixed smooth in cold water. For cutlets or other dishes requiring sharp sauce, make exactly as above, and just before serving add a little of any good piquant ...
— Nelson's Home Comforts - Thirteenth Edition • Mary Hooper
... while nurse's duty was performed by one of her entertainers, and she smiled in proof that her faith was grounded on their righteousness. She was indeed a mere girl. Her short scarlet upper lip showed her teeth with piquant innocence. As much a creature of the woods as a doe, her lot had been that primitive struggle which knows nothing about the amenities and proprieties of civilization. This Brown could clearly see, and he addressed her ...
— The Cursed Patois - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... remarkably suggestive, alluring forth one's own ideas and fantasies from the shy places where they usually haunt. She was indeed an admirable talker, considering how long she had held her tongue for lack of a listener,—pleasant, sunny and shadowy, often piquant, and giving glimpses of all a woman's various and readily changeable moods and humors; and beneath them all there ran a deep and powerful under-current of earnestness, which did not fail to produce in the listener's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... bowed in response to her graceful curtsey, and her few words of welcome, spoken in the most piquant and charming of broken English, and then, I believe, went in to dinner. I say, I believe we went in to dinner on that eventful evening, because I know it was intended that we should; but I have no recollection whatever of having ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... knowledge of the world and of women, he was a man difficult to contend with, and he thought that this country girl, full of pretension, but who, in spite of her pride, could not conceal her greediness, would be an easy conquest, worth undertaking on account of her beauty, and of a something piquant about her, very pleasing to a man "blase" like him. He therefore never took pains to be much on his guard with her; and she, more cunning than he thought, saw through his opinion of her, and tried to strengthen it by playing the provincial coquette, ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... delicate touches. It, has, moreover, a clear though somewhat exaggerated coloring. The Frenchwoman understands the art of adornment—the headdress, the hair, the folds of lace on the bosom, all are arranged with care and, as one might say, con amore. The piquant, handsome face, with its lively expression, its parted lips disclosing a row of pearly teeth, presents itself to the beholder's gaze as if coquettishly challenging his admiration, while the hand holds the pencil as in the ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... Mr. Hope's books, "A Man of Mark" is the one which best compares with "The Prisoner of Zenda." The two romances are unmistakably the work of the same writer, and he possesses a style of narrative peculiarly seductive, piquant, comprehensive, ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... emptied the glass. "A balsamic taste, slightly piquant but agreeable," he observed. "A dangerous wine, Scroggs! It carries no warning; your older kind is like a world-worn coquette whose glances at once place you on the defensive. This maiden vintage, just springing into glorious ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... so he cares very little about them, and in no way guides himself according to them or their fashions. So far as the outer world comes to him, it is by the channel of the newspapers. He has all the boundless curiosity, the thirst for knowledge miscellaneous, pulpy, and piquant, which characterise those that dwell remote. When he gets hold of you he flies at you, hugs you, gets every blessed thing he can out of you. "Favourable specimen," you will say. That is true; but, as ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... of the harem, who, behind heavy curtains of silk and gold that hang from the ceiling to the floor, whisper and giggle and peep and chew betel, and have the wonted little raptures of their sex over furtive, piquant glimpses of the world; for, despite the strict confinement and jealous surveillance to which they are subject, the outer life, with all its bustle, passion, and romance, will now and then steal, ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... St. Simon marriage, and its curious termination, have long ceased to be a subject of interest in those exalted circles in which the unfortunate bridegroom moves. Fresh scandals have eclipsed it, and their more piquant details have drawn the gossips away from this four-year-old drama. As I have reason to believe, however, that the full facts have never been revealed to the general public, and as my friend Sherlock Holmes had a considerable share in clearing the matter up, I feel that ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... small family of aggressive brown goats which he had marked out as the vandals that had wrought ruin amongst his well-kept beds, Devoy bearded the stranger and spoke of damages and broken heads, and his small son, Danny, a young Australian with a piquant brogue and a born love of ructions, moved round and incited him ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... ever drew the lazy Johnson from his bed an hour sooner than he wished to rise. The subject, like the flesh of that 'melancholy' creature the hare, may be dry, but, as with that, an astute cookery prevails to make it exceedingly piquant; the sauce is better than the substance. Burton's melancholy is not, like Johnson's, a deep, hopeless, 'inspissated gloom,' thickened by memories of remorse, and lighted up by the lurid fires of feared perdition; it ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... on a level with her half-closed eyes a glass of Chateau-Yquem, come from the cellar of the neighbouring Moulin-Rouge; and her dainty little rosy face, her flowing garments, like those you might see in some pastel, reflected in the golden wine, which lent to them its own piquant fervour, recalled to mind the quondam heroine of gay little suppers after the theatre, the Crenmitz of the brave old days—not an audacious creature after the manner of the stars of our modern opera, but unconscious, ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... him nothing. There had been a modest shyness about her in their relations that had kept him at an exasperating and piquant distance. ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... Lady Jocelyn, whom he found reading a book of French memoirs, in her usual attitude, with her feet stretched out and her head thrown back, as in a distant survey of the lively people screening her from a troubled world. Her ladyship read him a piquant story, and Sir Franks capped it with another from memory; whereupon her ladyship held him wrong in one turn of the story, and Sir Franks rose to get the volume to verify, and while he was turning over the leaves, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... books put on a different aspect. He hardly knows the "Poems and Ballads" he used to declaim, and cannot recover the enigmatic charm of "Sordello." Books change like friends, like ourselves, like everything; but they are most piquant in the contrasts they provoke, when the friend who gave them and wrote them is a success, though we laughed at him; a failure, though we believed in him; altered in any case, and estranged from his old self and old days. The vanished past returns when we look at the pages. The vicissitudes of ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... servants' hall. Here the fact that she made a very comely boy—a boy agile, dark-eyed, and grave, who looked to have something in reserve— worked her turn where Prosper's prowess might have failed her. The women found her frugality of speech piquant; it laid down for her the lines of a reputation for experienced gallantry—the sort which asks a little wearily, Is this worth my while? It seemed to them that in matters of love Roy might be hard to please. This caused a stir in one or two bosoms. A certain Melot, ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... things were said in the convents, but we will spare our reader other comments of a political, metaphysical, or piquant nature and conduct him to a private house. As we have few acquaintances in Manila, let us enter the home of Capitan Tinong, the polite individual whom we saw so profusely inviting Ibarra to honor him ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... abroad) in a spirit of most charming abandon, revealing such a familiarity with the scenes and subjects that she writes about that no one can doubt she has been among them taking notes, while her style indicates her femininity, though there are many who doubt it. There has nothing more piquant, spicy, and unconventional ever been published in Boston, and Peppermint 'takes ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... elevation of a mind noble by nature, but rendered still loftier and more intellectual by being thrown on its own resources. Yet all this was for society. Her courtly air, inherited from an ancestry of princes; her manners, which retained the piquant animation of her own country, combined with the graver elegance of high life in ours; that incomparable taste in dress, which seems the inheritance of French beauty; and the sparkling happiness of language, scarcely less the gift of her native soil, made her conspicuous from the first moment ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... town like Boston, New York, Baltimore, or Chicago." M. Tonnelat gives a masterly and succinct account of the relations between Germans and native races in Africa (particularly the Hereros). It is farcical, disastrous, piquant, and grotesque. The documentation is admirably done. What can you do but smile when you gather from a table that for the murder of seven Germans by natives fifteen capital punishments and one life-imprisonment were awarded; whereas, for the murder of five natives (including a woman) ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... succeeded in getting work, at first giving sixpenny lessons and afterwards getting paragraphs on street incidents into the newspapers under the signature of "Eye-Witness." These paragraphs, it was said, were so interesting and piquant that they were soon taken. This alone showed the young man's practical and intellectual superiority over the masses of needy and unfortunate students of both sexes who hang about the offices of the newspapers and journals, unable to ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... down again here below, where we shall find nothing happy, nay, nothing tolerable, without my presence and assistance. And in the first place consider how providently nature has took care that in all her works there should be some piquant smack and relish of Folly: for since the Stoics define wisdom to be conducted by reason, and folly nothing else but the being hurried by passion, lest our life should otherwise have been too dull ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... a date with Nadine, but it turned out that the piquant Upper was not alone. In fact, it was obvious that she had not as yet got around to dressing for her appointment with Joe. He had promised to take her soaring in his sailplane. She was attired, as always, as those dress who have never considered the cost of clothing. And, as ever, when Joe ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... and apart on the hearth, scattering the ashes and coals, and calling for Jennie and the hearth-brush. Your wood-fire had this foible, that it needs something to be done to it every five minutes; but, after all, these little interruptions of our bright-faced genius are like the piquant sallies of a clever friend,—they do not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... affording you repose from one impression by means of another, by sharpening the tragic upon the comic, the merry upon the terrible, and at need calling in the charms of the opera, these performances, while presenting but one play, would be worth a multitude of others? The romantic stage would make a piquant, savoury, diversified dish of that which, on the classic stage, is a ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... to see his patient, and she had both gentlemen to luncheon. Mr. Heinert proved himself a very genial and somewhat original companion. If he had ever been disheartened on account of his illness, that was all past now; and the simplicity, vivacity, and general love of play in his nature made a piquant contrast with Dr. Arthur's staid humour and grave manliness. He talked of Rollo too, whom he loved well, it was plain; he talked of Gttingen; he talked in short till Arthur ordered him back to his rooms and forbade him to come out of them again ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... girl, with beautiful teeth and neatly-braided hair and such a brilliant smile, attracting a crowd round her as she sang piquant songs in a sweet, deep-toned voice that ought to have made her fortune on the stage if it had been properly cultivated—sang them, too, with a look and manner that I have seen seldom rivalled by the cleverest actresses; ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... than to be a good Touranian, and joyfully to chronicle the merry doings of the famous people of this sweet and productive land, more fertile in cuckolds, dandies and witty wags than any other, and which has furnished a good share of men of renown in France, as witness the departed Courier of piquant memory; Verville, author of Moyen de Parvenir, and others equally well known, among whom we will specially mention the Sieur Descartes, because he was a melancholy genius, and devoted himself more to brown studies than to drinks ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... before him. What her thoughts were on this fantastic journey, he never knew, nor just what secret nerve in her was satisfied by it. By leaning sideways, he could see that her eyes were fixed on the grey-white stretch to be travelled: her warm breath came back to him; and the coil of her hair, with its piquant odour, was so close that, by bending, he could have touched it with his lips. But he was still in too detached a mood to be happy; he felt, throughout, as if all this were happening to some one else, ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... sky and water blended in a peaceful, azure expanse, little heeding or caring whether storms came, or sunshine rested on the deep. Bertha Levy, the little darked-eyed Jewess who stood by her side under the stone archway, was nothing more or less than a piquant little maiden, just turned seventeen, of amiable disposition and affectionate heart, but by no means partial to study, and always ready to glean surreptitiously from her books, any scraps of the lesson that might be useful, either to herself or her friends, ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... delighted at this unexpected addition to their dinner, and the spotted beauties were soon ready for the frying pan. Hunger made a piquant sauce, and the crackers, meat and ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... differ very little from their sisters of the Eastern Gold Coast. You never see beauty beyond the beaute du diable and the naive and piquant plainness which one admires in a pug-pup. The forms are unsupported, and the figure falls away at the hips. They retain the savage fashion of coiffure shown in Cameron's 'Across Africa,' training their wool to bunches, tufts, and ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... portfolio, and showed two or three water-coloured drawings of the graceful little head and piquant features. Edgar criticised, and promised a lesson; and the sitter, nothing loth, though rather coy, was caught. She blushed and smiled, and took exception at little personalities, and laughed her forgiveness, going ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... tone heterogeneous, it is merely a judicious mixture, in equal proportions, of all the other tones in the world, and is consequently made up of every thing deep, great, odd, piquant, pertinent, and pretty. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... find they produce shocks and tremors; we think it braces us to shudder, and we think that Art is a kind of emotional pill; we measure it quantitatively, and say that we "know what we like." And doubtless there is something piquant in the quivering produced, for example, by the sight of white innocence fluttering helpless in a grey shadow of lust. So long as the Bible remained a god that piquancy was found in a Massacre of the Innocents; ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... telling him that if he found the odour of the moonflowers which grew near the verandah too strong, he had better shut the right-hand window and open that on the other side of the room. Then at length, with a piquant little nod of her golden head, she went off, looking, John thought as he watched her retreating figure, about as healthy, graceful, and generally satisfactory a young woman as a man ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... the Opera—which certainly plays a role in our politics—had been sufficiently well portrayed by the author of Monsieur le Ministre. And upon this, the first chapter of my book, Monsieur Ludovic Halevy adds, moreover, some special and piquant details ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... came lowing into the yard, and my piquant young friend who had met me at the gate stood in the doorway talking with us both, while their brother Charley, an awkward, self-conscious lad of ten, took my pail and milked into it the required two quarts. It is a large, square ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... the letter from which he had read these piquant extracts, and lay back on the pillows with the tired air of the veritable invalid which he seemed able to assume at will. But for once he did look as though bed was the best place for him; and I used the fact as an argument ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... crossed the room during this reflection. Marian turned and stood before us, smiling at Edna, but evincing no recognition whatever of myself. It is a piquant experience to find yourself awaiting an introduction to a girl to whom you are ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... these womanly characteristics were brought into conversational contact with the materials furnished by such minds as those of Richelieu, Corneille, the Great Conde, Balzac, and Bossuet, it is no wonder that the result was something piquant and charming. Those famous habitues of the Hotel de Rambouillet did not, apparently, first lay themselves out to entertain the ladies with grimacing "small-talk," and then take each other by the sword-knot to discuss matters of real interest in a corner; ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... are in heavy type. One by one they drop out, and their places are never filled. The new man, the new style of humour, comes along, and attracts its own votaries, who sniff, even as I sniff, at the performers of past times. Who is there to replace that perilously piquant diseur Harry Fragson? None. But Frank Tinney comes along with something fresh, and we forget the art of Fragson, and pay many golden sovereigns to Frank to amuse us in ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... went to Fontainebleau to visit Mademoiselle de Montpensier. The piquant pen of Mademoiselle has described this interview. Some allowance must perhaps be made for the vein of satire which pervaded nearly all the utterances of this haughty princess. The dress of Christina consisted of a skirt of gray silk, trimmed with gold and silver lace, with a ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... longer attempt to make the worse appear the better cause. I dare say you thought me in earnest," she added, with slight sarcasm, "but a philosophical disquisition between two lovers on the eve of parting for ever, was too novel and piquant a ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... were still talking English. He liked to hear her piquant pronunciation of it, and he surmised too that the bravest of hearts beat in the bosom of this young girl whom war had suddenly made a woman. How could the sister of such a man as Lannes be otherwise than brave? The sober brown dress, and the hood equally sober, ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... seduce you. You have very strong passions, and of the best kind, for they do not return often. Nature, in endowing you with an ordinary state, gave you something with which to rise above it. You are distinguished, and, without being beautiful, you attract attention. There is something piquant in you; one might obstinately endeavor to turn your head, but it would be at one's own expense. Your will must be awaited, because you cannot be made to come. Your cheerfulness embellishes you, and relaxes your nerves, which are too highly ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... have been more piquant, papa, if he had made his message say, "I propose for Nina. Reply ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... is a favourite of hers; she is pretty, and she is piquant in manner and conversation; two very good things, which she thinks highly of in any young woman. Besides that, she knows that Helen loves her younger son; and, although she hardly understands how things are between them, nor how far Maurice himself is implicated, ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... Patty clearly as a future fine lady, in velvets and satins and furs, bewitching every-body by her gay spirits, her piquant vivacity, and the loving heart that lay underneath all the nonsense and ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... not without danger to poor Mary's comfort. It came soon to be the case that she looked rather for this sort of sympathy from Beatrice, than for Miss Oriel's pleasant but less piquant gaiety. ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... equable and pleasant disposition and under the most trying circumstances was composed and charming in manner. For this reason she was an agreeable companion, and men usually admired her graceful figure and her piquant, pretty face with its crown of fluffy blonde hair and winning expression. There was a rumor that she was engaged to be married to Arthur Weldon, a young man of position in the city; but Uncle John ignored the possibility of losing ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... reviled without stint those utterly thoughtless and heedless colored people, who, once in the midst of their crazy religious exercises, totally forgot that they owed any duty whatever to those who employed them. Lawrence and Annie did not say much, but there was something peculiarly piquant in the way in which Annie brought and poured out the tea she had made, and which, with the exception of the old lady's remarks, was the only warm part of the repast; and there was an element of buoyancy in the manner of Mr Croft, as he took his cup to drink the tea. Although ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... article was piercing as a Damascus blade. To buy one paper meant to become afterwards one of its customers. It was indeed astonishing what a variety of reading was contained in one of those penny sheets; every thing was fresh and piquant, so different from the old party papers. As originally intended, the Herald has always been independent in politics, although inclined to be Democratic. It supported Fremont and the Republican party, and was one of ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... opinion was of more importance than his, thought it an excellent play, well constructed, and composed with equal skill and temperance. One of these other judges commended it because it contained neither piquant indecencies nor affectations of phrase, but showed 'an honest method, as wholesome as sweet, and by very much more handsome than fine.'[260] In this play Hamlet 'chiefly loved' one speech; and he asks for a part ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... banjo from the wall and, striking a few chords, began to sing. His songs seemed to be original, even improvisations, and he sang them with a certain quaintness and point that made them very piquant. I remember one of the choruses. It went ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... counties, and others besides, were there to see and hear. There were bets that the trial would not be over in seven days, and odds were taken against its lasting seven weeks. Society forgot its ennui and settled itself complacently to listen to a piquant story of scandal, intrigue, imposition, and robbery ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... be remembered that Casanova quarrelled with Voltaire, because Voltaire had told him frankly that his translation of L'Ecossaise was a bad translation. It is piquant to read another note written in this ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... little girls, who had most of them pretty and spiritual or pretty and piquant faces, ate a great many bon bons and chattered a great deal in high unmodulated voices about the parties their sisters and other relatives went to and the dresses they wore. Some of them were nice little souls, who in the future would emerge from their chrysalis state enchanting women, ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... sense. Above all, the Italian mind, like the Greek, had an ethical twist—twist in more senses than one, some would say, but that does not matter. Manners, morals, motives—these three could not but displace, to some extent, mere incident: though there was generally incident of a poignant or piquant kind as well. In other words the novella was actually (though still in miniature) a novel in nature as well as in name. And these novelle became, as is generally known, common in English translations after the middle of the sixteenth century. Painter's huge Palace of Pleasure (1566) ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... tacit vow of incontinency, enters Mr. H... The consciousness of what I had been doing deepened yet the glowing of my cheeks, flushed with the warmth of the late action, which, joined to the piquant air of my dishabile, drew from Mr. H.... a compliment on my looks, which he was proceeding to bask the sincerity of with proofs, and that with so brisk an action, as made me tremble for fear of a discovery from the condition those parts were left in from their late severe handling: ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... upon her mother's drooping figure, wrapped her in loving arms, and swung her gently to and fro. She was a tall, strikingly graceful girl, with a face less regularly beautiful than her mother's, but infinitely more piquant and attractive. She was more plump and rounded than the modern English girl, and her complexion less pink and white, but she was very neat and dainty and smart, possessed deep-set, heavily-lashed grey eyes, red lips which curled mischievously upward at the corner, and a pair of dimples on her ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the old heading to this letter. It is piquant to contemplate Catherine writing to that picturesque gentleman, Sir John Hawkwood. Her attitude of friendly and almost sisterly sympathy with the audacious free- lance appears in her unwonted addition ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... was carefully and tastefully dressed. A tiny Valenciennes cap, with flaps and flap-band, of half peasant fashion, decked with rose-colored ribbons, and stuck a little backward upon bands of beautiful fair hair, surrounded her fresh and piquant face; a robe of gray levantine, and a cambric neck-kerchief, fastened to her bosom by a large tuft of rose-colored ribbons, displayed her figure elegantly rounded; a hollands apron, white as snow, trimmed below by three large hems, surmounted by a Vandyke-row, encircled her waist, which was as round ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... afterward Lord Llandaff, among the guests. The trial was over, the verdict given, and the two murderers were under sentence of death. But there was a strong agitation going on in favor of a reprieve; and what made the discussion of it, in this country-house party, particularly piquant was that the case, at that very moment, was a matter of close consultation between the judge and the Home Secretary. It was not easy, therefore, to talk of it in Mr. Matthews's presence. Voices dropped and groups dissolved when he appeared. Mr. Asquith, ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the poor could not see how their betters ordained one thing for the vulgar, and another for themselves; or in an easy-chair, in the study, whither my lord retires every Sunday for his devotions. It dealt in private scandal and ribaldry, only the more piquant for its pretty flimsy veil of double-entendre. It was a fortune to the publisher, and it became a necessary to the reader, which he could not do without, any more than without his snuff-box, his opera-box, or his chasse after ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... origin. The millionaire's seamed and yellow face looked like nothing so much as a magnified section of a walnut. Whilst the girl, with her cloud of copper-dusted brown hair trapped within an Oriental head-dress, her piquant beauty enhanced, if that were possible, by the softly shaded lights, and the bewitching curves revealed by her evening gown borrowing a more subtle witchery from their sombre environment of black-coated plutocrats, justified ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... azure skies, bubbling fountains, Mosaic pavements, and fragrant narghiles, I begin to feel symptoms of ennui, and a thirst for European life, sharp air, and a good appetite, a blazing fire, well-lighted rooms, female society, good music, and the piquant vaudevilles of my ancient friends, Scribe, ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... Gazette and its sole rival ceased to appear, I do believe that my existence and many similar existences would wear a different colour. Could one dine alone in Jermyn Street or Panton Street without this fine piquant evening commentary on the gross newspapers of the morning? (Now you perceive what sort of a man I am, and you guess, rightly, that my age is between thirty and forty.) But the train had stopped at Rugby and started again, and more than half of my journey was accomplished, ere at length ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... enjoy it?" Isabel still looked into the brown, piquant face as though loth to turn her ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... murder, Booth breakfasted with Miss Carrie Bean, the daughter of a merchant, and a very respectable young lady, at the National Hall. He arose from the table at, say eleven o'clock. During the breakfast, those who watched him say that he was lively, piquant and self-possessed as ever ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... devoted wife. So although Lady Tancred had only been married a week he hoped to render her not quite indifferent to himself in some way. He had seen at once that she and Tristram were not on terms of passionate love, and there was something so piquant about flirting with a bride! He divided women as a band into about four divisions. The quite impossible, the recalcitrant, the timid, and the bold. For the impossible he did not waste powder and shot. For the recalcitrant he used insidious methods of tickling ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... depiction of a simple country life giving several piquant studies of quaint and attractive character, and not wanting in the flavor of that romance which all good novels must possess—the romance of love.... The book is written with knowledge and power, and has the ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... believed in none of those things, and, in short, was quite as bad or worse than she herself was. She walked her horse on slowly, thinking. Somehow it seemed to her that life in his cabin would be far more piquant and amusing than in Stephen's. Yet he neither drank nor gambled, and as for the dance halls and theatre,—well, he had told her he liked dancing; and what a waltz that had been they had had together! But life ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... books are happily described as "strong and pure from cover to cover,... bright and piquant as the mountain breezes, or a dash on pony back of a June morning." The same writer speaks of her as "An American authoress who will hold her own in the competitive good work executed by the many bright ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... minutes in Ralph's house he began to see that she would probably be able to hold her own; and if only Margaret would take to her, the elder girl might be of great service in establishing the younger. It was an odd and rather piquant idea, and gradually took hold of his imagination. It was a very extreme step to take, considering that she had broken off her betrothal to the eldest son of the house; but against that was set the fact that she would not meet him there; and that her presence would be really valued ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... it forth in his own piquant patois, as nearly as I can transcribe it from the tablets of my memory. I was indebted for the tale to a chance circumstance, for old Zeb seldom volunteered a story, unless something suggested it. We had killed a fine buck, that had run several hundred times his length with ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... half her body and two gesticulating arms out of the coach window. She was plainly neither a drab nor in liquor. Harry halted out of range of the splashes to examine and enjoy her. She had been comely, and still could hold a man's eye with her curves of neck and bosom. The piquant features must have been adorable before they sharpened and her cheeks faded and the lines came. Her abundant hair must once have been gold, and was ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... Pierre pensively trifled with the fringe on Shon's buckskin jacket, which was whisked from his fingers with smothered anger. For a few moments he was silent; but the eager looks of the Chief Factor and Lazenby encouraged him to continue. Besides, it was only Pierre's way—provoking Shon was the piquant ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... being a suitor for a ticket for the principal seats, was received with a most gracious smile by a pretty woman, fair-faced and arch, with a piquant nose and a laughing blue eye, who sat at the door of the room. It was a long and rather narrow apartment; at the end, a stage of rough planks, before a kind of curtain, the whole rudely but not niggardly lighted. Unfortunately for the Baroni family, Sidonia found himself the ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... scandal you were safe in applying to Felix Rolleston. He knew all that was going on, both at home and abroad. And his knowledge, if not very accurate, was at least extensive, while his conversation was piquant, and at times witty. Calton, one of the leading lawyers of the city, remarked that "Rolleston put him in mind of what Beaconsfield said of one of the personages in Lothair, 'He wasn't an intellectual Croesus, but his pockets were always full of sixpences.'" ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... but my fun with Kitty took place within a few years after I began to write, and describe the amatory episodes as leisure inclined me, and as they seemed to me unusually amusing or illustrative. I arranged them in order afterwards. Nothing at that time had been so piquant in my acquaintance with harlots as Kitty's had been. I had not then had much to do with lasses as young as she was, the novelty therefore I suppose made me write out her narrative intermixed with my own, at the length ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... He had talked down everybody, unhorsed every cavalier. Nobody had a chance against him: he answered all your questions before you asked them; contradicted everybody with the intrepidity of a Rigby; annihilated your anecdotes by historiettes infinitely more piquant; and if anybody chanced to make a joke which he could not excel, declared immediately that it was a Joe Miller. He was absurd, extravagant, grotesque, noisy; but he was young, rattling, and interesting, from his health and spirits. Edith was extremely amused by him, and was encouraging ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... his deficiencies, and even on some of his favorite pursuits, which she looked upon as contributing to strengthen his shyness with ladies. She was not unacquainted with English literature, in which the rusticity and coarseness of the fox-hunting squires formed a piquant subject for the mirth of dramatists and novelists; and if Squire Western had been the type of sportsmen in all countries, she could not have inveighed more vigorously than she did against her husband's addiction to hunting. One evening, when he did not return from the field ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... passing visits, and the famous school of Fontainebleau was founded by Rosso and Primaticcio, two decadent followers of Michel Angelo. The adventures of that second-rate artist and first-rate bully, Benvenuto Cellini, at Paris, form one of the most piquant episodes in artistic autobiography. After a gracious welcome from the king he was offered an annual retaining fee of three hundred crowns. He at once dismissed his two apprentices and left in a towering rage, only returning on being offered the ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... one by one from her lips like a sentence of doom—and there was life in the thing, life and death! When she had finished, the whole court was in a state of tension. Everyone was leaning forward. It would be the most piquant, the most wonderful cross examination every heard—the woman lying to save her honor and to achieve her vengeance; the man on trial for his life. Wingrave stood up. Lady Ruth raised her veil, and looked ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... I have carried the day, Mr. Howard. Lady Holberton is not a little proud of her Vidocq; but I have obtained one far superior to hers, one addressed to myself so piquant and gallant too. I called on the dear old burglar on purpose to coax him into writing me ...
— The Lumley Autograph • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... girls are reared on the choicest varieties of food, served with piquant sauces to tempt their appetites; they are permitted to pick and choose, and to refuse what they think they do not like; they are carried to and from their schools, music and dancing lessons in motors, and are taught to regard public conveyances ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... enthusiasms of Coleridge which nobody was able to bear. Lamb would parade his admiration for some favourite author, Donne, for example, whom the rest of the company probably abhorred. He would select the most crabbed passages to quote and defend; he would stammer out his piquant and masterful half sentences, his scalding jests, his controvertible assertions; he would skilfully hint at the defects which no one else was permitted to see; and if he made no converts (wanting none), ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... extramedical literature which might be cited. Bussy Rabutin in his Memoires in 1639 speaks of an instance. The celebrated Madame Recamier was called by the younger Dumas an involuntary virgin; and in this connection could be cited the malicious and piquant sonnet— ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... conventional but graceful in dress; animated in movement; full of good-natured laughter, but quite un-American in the beautiful modulation of their speaking tones; chiefly noticeable, however, to a stranger, in the vast variety of color in skin, which imparted to the throng a piquant and unusual interest. Every color was here; from the dark brown of Alwyn, who was customarily accounted black, to the pale pink-white of Miss Jones, who could "pass for white" when she would, and found her greatest difficulties when she was trying to "pass" ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... diversion, has ever given me such enjoyment as lecturing. Only at lectures have I been able to abandon myself entirely to passion, and have understood that inspiration is not an invention of the poets, but exists in real life, and I imagine Hercules after the most piquant of his exploits felt just such voluptuous exhaustion as I experience ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... us quote one or two piquant personal observations of a more specific nature as to the odd characters Edison drew around him in his experimenting. "Down at Menlo Park a man came in one day and wanted a job. He was a sailor. I hadn't any particular work to give him, but I had a number of small induction ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... A few ladies dash around in open carriages and sell tickets, and somebody's daughters make ample capital for future investments, as Charity Angels, by riding, dancing, singing, and eating in becoming piquant costumes, for the 'benefit of ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... more things were said in the convents, but we will spare our reader other comments of a political, metaphysical, or piquant nature and conduct him to a private house. As we have few acquaintances in Manila, let us enter the home of Capitan Tinong, the polite individual whom we saw so profusely inviting Ibarra to honor him with ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... grain of contempt for women compelled by their delicacy to spoil that kind of story which demands the piquant accompaniment to flavour it racily and make it passable. For to see insipid mildness complacently swallowed as an excellent thing, knowing the rich smack of savour proper to the story, is your anecdotal gentleman's annoyance. But if the anecdote had supported him, Sullivan Smith would ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... bursting out with a kind of savagery that he could not explain. "Yes. She's young, and she finds even my age spicy. There'd be something quite amusingly piquant for her in marrying a man nearly thirty years ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... the sudden vengeance of the Three. There is a brooding sense of peril over all the blithe and flitting fancies said or sung to one another by the lovers in their gondola; a sense, however, of future rather than of present peril, something of a zest and a piquant pleasure to them. The sudden tragic ending, anticipated yet unexpected, rounds the whole with a dramatic touch of infallible instinct. I know nothing with which the poem may be compared: its method and its magic are alike its own. We might hear it or fancy it perhaps in one of the Ballades ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... the end of September, had induced the occupants of the room to leave open. The sound of laughter and merriment issued from it; but this was presently hushed, and two voices, accompanied by guitars, began to sing a lively seguidilla, of which, at the end of each piquant couplet, the listeners testified their approbation by a hum of mirthful applause. Before the song was over, Luis had sought and found a means of observing what was passing within doors. Grasping the lower branch of a tree which grew within a few ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... in very quietly, but she seemed to take possession of the room as she entered it. She had a bright, piquant face, a tall, graceful form, and that air of high fashion which is perhaps quite ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... devotion which makes men sacrifice themselves for the women they love. He was not very demonstrative. He never wore his heart upon his sleeve, but deep within him was that true affection which caused him to worship her as his idol. To him she was peerless among women, and her beauty was unequalled. Her piquant mischievousness amused him. As a girl, she had always been fond of tantalising him, and did so now. Yet he knew her fine character; how deeply devoted she was to her afflicted father, and how full of discomfort was her dull life, now that she had ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... for them; they are themselves to blame for their misery. It gives a spice to the feast to some of them, others dull their uneasy conscience with it. And yet all they eat and drink has been made by the poor man; even the choicest dainties have passed through his dirty hands and have a piquant flavor of sweat and hunger. They look upon it as a matter of course that it should be so; they are not even surprised that nothing is ever done in gratitude for kind treatment— something to disagree with them, a little poison, for instance. Just think! ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... intimidated and bleeding, shrank back into itself. Josephine became taciturn, embarrassed, and mute, in her husband's presence; she preferred being silent, rather than by her conversation, which might not appear intellectual and piquant enough for the viscount, ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... wedding-breakfast, a flower-show or an Exhibition, for the utterance of grave thoughts which had perhaps been long fermenting in his mind; and then his intensity, his absorption in his theme, and his terrible gravity, disconcerted hearers who had expected a lighter touch. An illustration of this piquant maladroitness recurs to my memory as I write. In 1882 I was concerned with a few Radical friends in founding the National Liberal Club.[44] We certainly never foresaw the palatial pile of terra-cotta and glazed tiles which now bears that name.[45] ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... so much like one, too," laughed Genevieve, affectionately, patting the soft, fluffy red hair above the piquant, freckled little face. ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
... news which was in the papers a week ago; or speculations upon it, which professional journalists have already surfeited me with; or short treatises, after the fashion of Cicero's epistolary productions. He talks about the weather, past, present, and to come. He serves up, with piquant sauce, occurrences which he would not have thought worthy of mention at his own breakfast-table. He spins out his two or three facts or ideas into the finest and flimsiest gossamer; or tucks them into a postscript, which alone, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... "A balsamic taste, slightly piquant but agreeable," he observed. "A dangerous wine, Scroggs! It carries no warning; your older kind is like a world-worn coquette whose glances at once place you on the defensive. This maiden vintage, just springing ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... read them, and say nothing. In Browning's case they are spared the hypocrisy. No one need pretend to have read 'A Soul's Tragedy;' and it seems, therefore, inexcusable for anyone to assert that one of the plainest, most pointed, and piquant bits of writing in the language is unintelligible. But surely something more may be truthfully said of these plays than that they are comprehensible. First of all, they are plays, and not works—like ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... Rachel, the quick gestures of her full-grown hands that moved always as in sudden afterthoughts. Virginal was the word that came most often to his thought. Not the virginity that spells a piquant preface to sensualism. She would always be virginal, even after they were married. In his arms she would remain virginal, because there was something in her, something beyond flesh. His heart choked at the memory ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... place—not a word of New York, and less of Boston. There everything looks and goes south-west, while we all tend eastward." In reply to questions, Bart told them of Columbus and Cincinnati, giving fresh and graphic descriptions, for he observed closely, and described with a racy, piquant exaggeration what he saw. Breaking off rather abruptly, he seemed vexed at the length of his monologue, and ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... table into the middle of the kitchen, but contented themselves with sitting side by side, with their noses turned towards the wall. A glorious prospect of stewpans was before them. A bunch of laurel and thyme hung near, and a spice-box exhaled a piquant perfume. Around them—the kitchen was not yet tidied—was all the litter of the things cleared away from the dining-room; however, the spot seemed a charming one to these hungry sweethearts, and especially to Zephyrin, who here feasted on ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... portrayed by the pens of Bernard Shaw and Anatole France. The first is deplorable; the second is dangerous. I should deeply regret the day when a simple story of honest American manhood winning a million and a sparkling, piquant sweetheart lost all power to lull my critical faculty and warm my heart. I doubt whether any literature has ever had ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... other hand, the appearance of the person whom Rose found waiting for her out there, afforded the piquant effect of contrast. Or would have done so, had the spectacle of him in that very occupation not ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... great hospitality. The Baptists, Episcopalians, and Methodists hold services on alternate Sundays in the court-house. All the planters and many others near the lake shore keep a boat at their landing, and a raft for crossing vehicles and horses. It seemed very piquant at first, this taking our boat to go visiting, and on moonlight nights it was charming. The woods around are lovelier than those in Louisiana, though one misses the moaning of the pines. There is fine fishing and hunting, but these cotton estates ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... by lover storming girl's heart, by lover making long and noble self-sacrifice, and so on, endlessly. It was very fetching to make the girl propose in the course of being reunited, and Martin discovered, bit by bit, other decidedly piquant and fetching ruses. But marriage bells at the end was the one thing he could take no liberties with; though the heavens rolled up as a scroll and the stars fell, the wedding bells must go on ringing just the same. In quantity, the formula ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... drain. Place in 1 quart of fresh cold water and cook until very tender. Add other ingredients and bring to boiling point. Slice thin, hard cooked egg and lemon from which seeds have been removed and serve with each portion. Do not remove lemon rind as this gives a piquant flavor. ...
— Foods That Will Win The War And How To Cook Them (1918) • C. Houston Goudiss and Alberta M. Goudiss
... on promptly, "I'll confess that I didn't see so much in the thing. But the more I've thought of it the more its unique charm has appealed to me. It is nothing more nor less than a novel, piquant little adventure. Exactly the sort of thing to attract a man who likes to take a sporting chance. Look at the difficulties of it. Go to a strange town where there are thousands and millions of strange children, locate Mary, isolate her, make friends with her, coax her to the yacht—captivate ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... loath—for he was good-natured as he was clever, and a great enthusiast withal in the study of plants—he allowed the merry, talkative girls to lead him where they would. He delighted them in turn by his agreeable, instructive conversation, which was rendered still more piquant by the odd medley of French, Latin, and Swedish ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... night, except when the full moon shone, was sombre, with nothing doing. The street lamps burnt but indifferent gas; people stayed indoors, and read the piquant paragraphs of The Pioneer Bushman, Timber Town's evening journal, or fashioned those gay dresses which by day helped to make the town so bright, and went to bed early and slept with a soundness and tranquillity, well-earned by the labour of playing so quaintly at the ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... there was a long, free conference between Samson and Patty Cannon, in her kitchen, next to the bar, where Hulda heard laughing and invitations to drink, and all the sounds of perfect equality, the negro's piquant sayings and bonhommie seeming to disarm and please the designing woman, whose familiarity was at once her influence and her weakness, and she lavished her sociable nature on blacks and whites. Samson ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... amazement, the spirit of undying youth. Small as a child, and fragile, with soft hair and flaming eyes, and always the pathetic, appealing plainness of a plain child, with her child's audacity and shyness, her sudden, absurd sallies and retreats, she had a charm made the more piquant by her assumption of austerity. George Henry Lewes was gross and flippant, and he could not see it; Branwell's friend, Mr. Grundy, was Branwell's friend, and he missed it. Mrs. Oliphant ranges herself with Mr. Grundy and ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... of her face, the fringe of jet-black curls that almost met the thick sweep of eyebrows, and left her only a white strip of forehead, her short upper lip and small chin, rounded but resolute, completed a piquant and striking figure. The rich brown shadows on the smoke-stained walls and ceiling, the occasional starting into relief of the scutcheons of brilliant plumage, and the momentary glitter of the steel ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... a frame to the graceful picture, on one side rose the Buttes, that group of hills so piquant and saucy; and on the other tossing to Heaven the everlasting whiteness of their snow wreathed foreheads, stood, sublime in their very monotony, ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... general in a tone of hearty congratulation, "of course I know Miss Lou. She is a most excellent young lady. And so the wind sits in that quarter? Your blushes, Goolsby, are a happy confirmation of many sweet and piquant rumors." ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... montrent a la fois, les fleurs du printemps et les fruits de l'automne, que l'abondance des pluies ou les secheresses retardent ou avancent quelquefois mais dont l'eternelle duree bien loin d'inspirer le plaisir, et d'offrir l'attrait piquant de la nouveaute qui fait le charme de ces saisons dans nos climats, amene bientot l'indifference pour une beaute toujours le meme, pour des ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... his rights reached her, she was terrified and undone by Colonel Ormonde's fury against Katherine, herself, her boys, every one. In short, that gallant officer thought he had done a generous and manly thing, when he married the piquant little widow who had attracted him, although she could only meet her personal expenses and those of her two sons, without contributing to the general house-keeping. This sense of his own magnanimity, backed by the consciousness that it did not cost him too dear, had kept Colonel Ormonde ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... going to the nearest door, I opened it and called out for the master of the house. But only an echo came back, and returning to the fire, I sat down before the cheering blaze, in quiet acceptance of a situation too lonely for comfort, yet not without a certain piquant interest for a man of free mind and adventurous disposition ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... selling friend and foe, tend to produce in him that goblin, elfin, boyish-mischievous, out-of-the-age state of mind which is utterly indescribable to a prosaic modern-souled man, but which is delightfully piquant to others. Many a time among Gipsies I have felt, I confess with pleasure, all the subtlest spirit of fun combined with picture-memories of Hayraddin Maugrabin—witch-legends and the "Egyptians;" for in ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... of heaven, and come down again here below, where we shall find nothing happy, nay, nothing tolerable, without my presence and assistance. And in the first place consider how providently nature has took care that in all her works there should be some piquant smack and relish of Folly: for since the Stoics define wisdom to be conducted by reason, and folly nothing else but the being hurried by passion, lest our life should otherwise have been too dull and inactive, that creator, who out of clay first tempered and made ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... old houses, just as twinkling harebells grow in old castles; and then the gracious mamma, who speaks French, or English, like a stream of silver—is she not, after all, the fairest of any of them? And there is Caroline, piquant, racy, full of conversation—sharp as a quartz crystal: how I like to hear her talk! These people know Paris, as we say in America, "like a book." They have studied it aesthetically, historically, socially. They have studied French people and French literature,—and ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... sharp, cutting, sarcastic, caustic, scathing, bitter, satirical, pungent, piquant; nipping, blasting; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... her car coming far down the road. When either of them saw it the other was summoned, and they waited tremblingly. But the landaulet always passed, with Mrs. Carter staring straight ahead, gray-haired and hook-nosed; sometimes with Miss Margaret Carter, whose softly piquant little nose would in time be hooked like her mother's. Father's treacherous ally the chauffeur never even looked at "The T Room." Sometimes Father wondered if the chauffeur knew just where the house was; perhaps he had never noticed it. He planned ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... a brown velvet gown and an ostrich-feather boa in delicate shades of cream and brown, and a cavalier hat with sweeping white plumes. Her hair was the colour of autumn leaves, or a squirrel's back in the sunshine, and she had grey eyes and piquant, irregular features, ears like shells, and a delicate, softly-tinted skin undefiled by cosmetics. She thought it wicked to doubt that one waked up again after dying, Somewhere—a vague Somewhere, with all the nice people of one's set about one. He said that Agnosticism and all that kind of thing ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... his subject, we arrive at the following historical basis: Rahere was a man of humble origin, who had found his way to the Court of Henry I, where he won favour by his agreeable manners and witty conversation, rendered piquant, as it appears, by a certain flavouring of licentiousness, and took a prominent part in arranging the music, plays, and other entertainments in which the King and his courtiers delighted during the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield • George Worley
... pungent &c. adj.; bite the tongue. render -pungent &c. adj.; season, spice, salt, pepper, pickle, brine, devil. smoke, chew, take snuff. Adj. pungent, strong; high-, full-flavored; high-tasted, high- seasoned; gamy, sharp, stinging, rough, piquant, racy; biting, mordant; spicy; seasoned &c. v.; hot, hot as pepper; peppery, vellicating[obs3], escharotic[obs3], meracious|; acrid, acrimonious, bitter; rough &c. (sour) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... legally binding but morally, and he was prepared, with gentlemanly tack, to keep faith without further discussion of the subject. The arrangement did not trouble him at all. It was original, and therefore somewhat piquant, and so was Evadne. ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... I talked freely to each other now, and playfully said a great many things to Mona, who, though she did not understand them, laughed with us and gave us much pleasure with her easy, unembarrassed manner and piquant ways. And she not only jabbered away with hands and face in the manner we had taught her, but she did not cease also to make life bright for us by repaying us in our own coin and talking to us in her natural, delicious way. With such music in the ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... was of medium height, slight, graceful figure, abounding in delicate curves, with small hands and feet, an exquisite complexion, a face, the sweet piquant loveliness of which set all the youth of Alverstoke—and Gosport too, for that matter—by the ears, a wealth of long silky golden hair, which persisted in twisting itself into a most distracting conglomeration of wavy curls, and a temper which nothing—not ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... The glowing piquant beauty of Pauline enthralled Baskinelli. He had never before seen a woman like her—innocent but astute, daring but demure, brilliant but opalescent. When at last they strolled away together into the conservatory his drawing room obeisances became ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... Florentines. Pius II gives in his 'Commentaries' valuable portraits of famous contemporaries; and not long ago a separate work of his earlier years, which seems preparatory to these portraits, but which has colors and features that are very singular, was reprinted. To Jacopo of Volterra we owe piquant sketches of members of the Curia in the time of Sixtus IV. Vespasiano Fiorentino has often been referred to already, and as a historical authority a high place must be assigned to him; but his gift as a painter of character is not to be compared with that of Machiavelli, Niccolo Valori, Guicciardini, ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... Noel's house was Charles Evson; and with this fifth new boy the devil's agents knew instinctively that they would have a great deal of trouble. But they meant to bait their hook very carefully, and they did not at all despair. Their task was made peculiarly piquant by its very difficulty, and by the fact that Charlie was one in whom their declared enemy, Walter Evson, was so nearly concerned. They were determined by fair means or foul to win him over, and make him their proselyte, until he became as much a child of sin ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... an incurable philanderer, was nevertheless insufficiently commonplace to contemplate marriage, in the Pauline sense, as a necessity. He was much more disposed, at least for the present, to regard it merely as a piquant possibility, towards which his very attitude of indecision lent him an extra weapon of power in his relations ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... need this). Drain dry, and put in the frying-pan with enough beef or pork drippings to prevent its sticking, and cook very slowly for eight minutes, turning constantly. Take up on a hot dish and pour a piquant sauce over it. ...
— Miss Parloa's New Cook Book • Maria Parloa
... that it pulled her eyebrows out of place. On this occasion, however, she crimped it, she curled it, she brought it forward about her face in soft riotous puffs and strands, patting it into becoming shape with dexterous fingers until it formed a golden frame for her piquant features. ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... her piquant head, black, unconsciously outlined against the lamp, as she sat working by the table. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... frankness was the most piquant form of joke to the company at the Rainbow, and Ben Winthrop's insult was felt by everybody to ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... morning, she had pawned her earrings and her mantilla for him, but she could not stand seeing him going into the house of a bad woman who lived in the Calle de Cerrajerias. On saying this the Pensioner's daughter burst into a torrent of tears. The sight of her trouble was the more distressing, as a piquant sort of cheerfulness had always been her peculiar characteristic. Fernanda caressed her tenderly and wept with her. After some minutes silence ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... thick curls to her waist; her complexion was dark, cheeks round and red as apples, her forehead low, her nose perfection, her teeth like pearls, her eyes small, bright and hazel. Very pretty, very sparkling, very piquant, and a flirt ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... history with extraordinary life. All the incidents of the French Revolution were present before him; he spoke with natural eloquence, and wove in piquant anecdotes very apropos. His manner of expression smacked once in a while of the soldier, but there was no lack of the elegance that disclosed his ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... this pistol practice had the charm of novelty for Ratty, it was all very well; but when, day by day, the strange mistakes and nervousness of his grandmamma became less piquant from repetition, it was not such good fun; and when the rantipole boy, after as much time as he wished to devote to the old woman's caprice, endeavoured to emancipate himself and was countermanded, an outburst of "Oh, ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... even when we were all little boys together we knew that his mother's brother was Lord Holdhurst, the great conservative politician. This gaudy relationship did him little good at school. On the contrary, it seemed rather a piquant thing to us to chevy him about the playground and hit him over the shins with a wicket. But it was another thing when he came out into the world. I heard vaguely that his abilities and the influences which ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... charming abandon, revealing such a familiarity with the scenes and subjects that she writes about that no one can doubt she has been among them taking notes, while her style indicates her femininity, though there are many who doubt it. There has nothing more piquant, spicy, and unconventional ever been published in Boston, and Peppermint 'takes the ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... married about seven years when Lady Mary Wortley Montagu re-appeared at the court of Queen Caroline, after her long residence in Turkey. Lord Hervey was thirty-three years of age; Lady Mary was verging on forty. She was still a pretty woman, with a piquant, neat-featured face; which does not seem to have done any justice to a mind at once masculine and sensitive, nor to a heart capable of benevolence—capable of strong attachments, and ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... the fact that Herbert, thus seriously disporting himself on his father's back fence, attracted only an audience of one (and she hostile at a rather distant window) his behaviour might well have been thought piquant by anybody. After climbing to the top of the fence he would produce from interior pockets a small memorandum-book and a pencil. His expression was gravely alert, his manner more than businesslike; yet nobody could have failed to comprehend ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... and strength of his wives, and would frequently say, few women could carry or haul heavier loads. If, some years ago, you had asked a Frenchman what he meant by beauty, he would have talked to you of l'air piquant, l'air spirituel, l'air noble, l'air comme il faut, and he would have referred ultimately to that je ne scais quoi, for which Parisian belles were formerly celebrated.—French women mixed much in company, the charms ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... maliciously. Her pride in the girl's beauty was touching to see. She seemed to have forgotten that she was ever a beauty herself; and she had no need to do this, for Jeanne was not yet forty, and many men found her piquant and pleasing still. But all her vanity seemed now to be transferred to Victorine. It was Victorine who was to have all the fine gowns and ornaments; Victorine who must go to the dances and fetes in costumes which were the wonder and the envy of all the girls in the region; Victorine ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... had heard what was rather piquant, and not a word about Miss Harleth had been missed by him. After a moment's pause he ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... great perfection, particularly in figure; though in the crowd of beauty that has been so profusely lavished on the youthful in this country, she would not have been at all remarked in a large assembly of young American girls. Her face was pleasing nevertheless; and there was a piquant contrast between the raven blackness of her hair the deep blue of her eyes, and the dazzling whiteness of her skin. Her colour, too, was high, and changeful with her emotions. As for teeth, she had a set that one might have travelled weeks to meet with their equals; ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... meal a small bit of bacon and cabbage, with two or three mouthfuls of undiluted wine, and yet ordered to be served up, from three o'clock in the afternoon, all kinds of fruit and vegetables, the most exquisite too, rendered piquant by spices, the Manichees holding that spices were very full of fiery and luminous principles. Then, their palates titillating from pepper, they swallowed large draughts of mulled wine or wine and honey, and the juice ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... passed. They went on downtown and Shelley stepped into the Owl cigar store to get a Lord Byron. When he come out little Keats was just finishing up a remark to another boy. It had the familiar ring to Shelley and was piquant and engaging even after three years in the trenches, where talk is some free. Keats still had the angel face, but had learned surprisingly of ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... connecting road enables it to appropriate the beauties of the neighbouring vale of the Exe. Both torrents descend from the highlands of Exmoor, and it is difficult to say which is the more beautiful. The valleys are similar, but have characteristic differences. The Barle has all the piquant charm of the mountain torrent, whilst the beauties of the Exe are of a sedater though not less pleasing character. Everywhere about Dulverton delightful landscapes may be caught, but the "show sight" is Mount Sydenham, ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... exaggerated coloring. The Frenchwoman understands the art of adornment—the headdress, the hair, the folds of lace on the bosom, all are arranged with care and, as one might say, con amore. The piquant, handsome face, with its lively expression, its parted lips disclosing a row of pearly teeth, presents itself to the beholder's gaze as if coquettishly challenging his admiration, while the hand holds the pencil as in the ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... himself according to them or their fashions. So far as the outer world comes to him, it is by the channel of the newspapers. He has all the boundless curiosity, the thirst for knowledge miscellaneous, pulpy, and piquant, which characterise those that dwell remote. When he gets hold of you he flies at you, hugs you, gets every blessed thing he can out of you. "Favourable specimen," you will say. That is true; but, as regards the independence and primitive state of mind, ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... cheeks aflame and eyes sparkling, yet speaking with a voice revealing no falter, she pressed his arm and declared herself prepared for the ordeal. The face under the shadow of the mantilla was so arch and piquant, Keith ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... confusion of color. Stripping the leaves from the twigs she proceeded to sew them upon a plain linen gown, and the result was exquisite, for not a vestige of the fabric remained visible, and Peggy's piquant, rich coloring peeped from a garment of living, burning color. She herself was the only one who did not fully ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... a very brief missive—piquant, amusing, innocently audacious in closing—a mere reminder that he had promised to write to her; and she ended it by asking him very plainly whether he had not missed her, in terms so frank, so sweet, so confident of his inevitable ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... Anita—perceived their position toward each other, and that it would require only a single word to bridge the chasm between them. A hard look came into his eyes as they gazed through the holes in the mask, then he gazed at Alice—sweet piquant Alice—and the hardness melted like snow before ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... like laughter; they were capricious as the merriment of a coquette. Then they merged into a sweet and warbling cadence—a cadence of inimitable tenderness, the very suavity of which was rendered more piquant by its lavish variations. The measure changed, with an abrupt fling of the treble-hand: it gushed into an air quaint and sprightly as the dance of Puck—comic—odd—sparkling on the ear like zig-zags: it threw out a shower of notes; it was the voice of agility and merriment; it was grotesque ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... afford them solid comfort and happiness to find out, or to think they find out, that a great man was really not so great after all, and that they can look down on him. It is certainly a more piquant sensation to look down on a great man than on an ordinary mortal, and makes one feel happier. There is a melancholy, sweet satisfaction—I have noticed it myself—in pointing out exactly where this or that great man erred, ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... regarding which the reader is kept in the dark until he comes to this postscript: "In great haste, owing to business affairs, I add a sort of lexicon of indistinctly written words, which I have placed within brackets. This will probably make the letter appear very picturesque and piquant. The idea is not so bad. Adio, clarissima Cara, cara Clarissima." Then follows the "lexicon" of twenty words, including his ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... astonishment and anger. She had been represented at the Swedish court as a model of gentleness, amiability, and grace; he found her rude and contradictory, fitful and childish. The Princess Ulrica soon led the thoughts of the count in another direction, and managed to retain him at her side by her piquant and intellectual conversation; she brought every power of her mind into action; she was gracious in the extreme; she overcame her proud nature, and assumed a winning gentleness; in short, she flattered the ambassador with ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... Pattison's life would be generally regarded as pale, negative, and ineffectual. Nevertheless, it is undeniable that he had a certain singular quality about him that made his society more interesting, more piquant, and more sapid than that of many men of a far wider importance and more ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 5: On Pattison's Memoirs • John Morley
... not quite so piquant and dashing as she used to be, perhaps; but if she has been fretting for Launce—as Honor thinks—she has certainly lost none of her ...
— Only an Irish Girl • Mrs. Hungerford
... flashed through Bansemer's brain was the realisation that she was far more beautiful than he had expected her to be. There was a truly aristocratic loveliness in the rather piquant face, and she undeniably possessed "manner." Maturity had improved her vastly, he confessed with strange exultation; age had been kinder than youth. He forgot the play, seldom taking his eyes from the back which again had been turned to him. Calculating, he reached the conclusion ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... restrain itself from any practical satisfaction of the as yet illicit kind. He avails himself of the then pretty new facilities for divorce (the famous "Loi Naquet," which used to "deave" all of us who minded such things many years ago), and the situation is (at least intentionally) made more piquant by the fact that Teissier, who is a prominent statesman and gives up not merely his wife but his political position for this new love of his, starts as an actual supporter of the repeal of the divorce laws. To an English reader, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... habits of his country, as well of manner as of phraseology, about him; and it was not to be expected that a Connemara gentleman, no matter how high his birth and connection, could at once, or at all, divest himself of these piquant ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... worse, in rhymed prose, until he reaches the point which is to us of import. Khalid, in the winter of the first year of the Dastur (Constitution) writes to him many letters from Beirut, of which he gives us not less than fifty! And of these, the following, if not the most piquant and interesting, are the most indispensable ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
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