"Donjon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stone tower of Stormount claims our attention. It was of considerable circumference, three stories in height, the walls massive and substantial, the strongest gales could not shake it, nor any blasts find entrance. The tower had been the donjon-keep of the ancient castle, part of the wall of which attached to the tower, had of late years been roofed over, and formed a portion of a dwelling-house and offices, the main portion being in the keep itself. The appearance ...
— Washed Ashore - The Tower of Stormount Bay • W.H.G. Kingston
... course, never signified his pleasure, and the illustrious soldier remained for five years in a loathsome dungeon more befitting a condemned malefactor than a prisoner of war. It was in the donjon keep of the castle, lighted only by an aperture in the roof, and was therefore exposed to the rain and all inclemencies of the sky, while rats, toads, and other vermin housed in the miry floor. Here this distinguished personage, Francis with the Iron Arm, whom all Frenchmen, Catholic or Huguenot, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Mirabeau, marched between the troops and the populace. On a litter was displayed the proces-verbal of the electors of '89, that Hegyra of the insurrection. On another stand, the citizens of the Faubourg Saint Antoine exhibited a plan in relief of the Bastille, the flag of the donjon, and a young girl, in the costume of an Amazon, who had fought at the siege of this fortress. Here and there, pikes surmounted with the Phrygian cap of liberty arose above the crowd, and on one of them was a scroll bearing the inscription, ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... damp, and entirely without means of admission for light; lying, at great depth, immediately beneath that portion of the building in which was my own sleeping apartment. It had been used, apparently, in remote feudal times, for the worst purposes of a donjon-keep, and, in later days, as a place of deposit for powder, or some other highly combustible substance, as a portion of its floor, and the whole interior of a long archway through which we reached it, were carefully sheathed with copper. The door, of massive iron, had been, also, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... jester's weakness, his passion for his mistress, Francis, as Villot told Jacqueline, had immediately ordered the fool into strictest confinement, the donjon of the ancient structure. In that darkened cell he had rested over night and there he would no doubt remain indefinitely. The king's guest had not been greatly concerned with the jester's quixotic love for the princess, being little ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... barricade beams, and hooks for chains. The bridge of St. Angelo was covered with the shops of armourers, as the old bridge of more peaceful Florence with those of silversmiths. Walls and towers encircled the Leonine City where the Pope sat unquietly in the big battlemented donjon by the Sixtine Chapel; and in its midst was still old St. Peter's, half Lombard, half Byzantine. In Rome there was no industry, no order, no safety. Through its gates rushed raids of Colonnas and Orsinis, sold to or betrayed by the Popes, from their castles of Umbria ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... Ratafia's hand; I carry it on my heart. At the hour of twelve to-night, Prince Featherhead is to be taken in his bed, and, like the bambino, whipped into a chariot; and by next morning he will command a most romantic prospect from the donjon of the Felsenburg. Farewell, Featherhead! The war goes on, the girl is in my hand; I have long been indispensable, but now I shall be sole. I have long," he added exultingly, "long carried this intrigue upon my shoulders, like Samson with the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Ancient Florence, the city of the twelfth and beginning of the thirteenth centuries, the Florence of the nobles, the Florence of the Ghibellines, the Florence in which nearly every house was a castle, with frowning towers hundreds of feet high, machicolated battlements, donjon keeps, oubliettes, and all other appurtenances of a feudal stronghold, exists no longer. With the expulsion of the imperial faction, and the advent of the municipal Guelphs,—that proudest, boldest, most successful, and most unreasonable bourgeoisie which ever assumed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... castled steep, On Tweed's fair river, broad and deep, And Cheviot's mountains lone The battled towers, the donjon keep, The loophole grates, where captives weep, The flanking walls that round it ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... was just rising, gilding the crown of the donjon-keep with a flame of ruddy light. Below, among the lesser buildings, the day was still gray and misty. Only an occasional noise broke the silence of the early morning: a cough from one of the rooms; the rattle of a pot or a pan, stirred by some ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... pass; and the result of my liberality surpasses my expectations. Possessing more windfalls than they know what to do with, all picked up in their immediate neighbourhood, my Lycosae have built themselves donjon-keeps the like of which their race has not yet known. Around the orifice, on a slightly sloping bank, small, flat, smooth stones have been laid to form a broken, flagged pavement. The larger stones, which are Cyclopean blocks compared with the size of the animal ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... not having as yet applied with all its consequences the axiom that that which defends should itself be defended, they wanted to see and command their external defenses from within the body of the place, as, a century before, the baron could see from the top of his donjon whatever was going on round the walls of his castle, and send up his support to any point of attack. The great round towers of Nuremberg are more properly, in fact, detached keeps than portions of a combined system, rather observatories ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... so blind in rage that unawares He burst his lance against a forest bough, Dishorsed himself, and rose again, and fled Far, till the castle of a King, the hall Of Pellam, lichen-bearded, grayly draped With streaming grass, appeared, low-built but strong; The ruinous donjon as a knoll of moss, The battlement overtopt with ivytods, A home of bats, in every tower an owl. Then spake the men of Pellam crying 'Lord, Why wear ye this crown-royal upon shield?' Said Balin 'For the fairest and the best Of ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... old forest grew along the summit, like a mane waving back from the curved neck of a steed, and white villages lay coiled in the valleys between. A line of blue mountains always closed the vista, on looking down one of these long valleys; occasionally a ruined castle with donjon tower, was seen on a mountain at the side, making the picture complete. As we lay sometimes on the hillside and looked on one of those sweet vales, we were astonished at its Arcadian beauty. The meadows were as smooth as a ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... ground sloped gently down towards the bog, which was here skirted by an abundant growth of copse-wood and a few evergreen oaks. I passed through the gateway, and found myself within a square inclosure of about two acres. On one side rose a round and lofty keep, or donjon, with a conical roof, part of which had fallen down, strewing the square with its ruins. Close to the keep, on the other side, stood the remains of an oblong house, built something in the modern style, with various window-holes; nothing remained but ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... (support) 215. breastwork, banquette, curtain, mantlet^, bastion, redan^, ravelin^; vauntmure^; advance work, horn work, outwork; barbacan^, barbican; redoubt; fort-elage [Fr.], fort-alice; lines. loophole, machicolation^; sally port. hold, stronghold, fastness; asylum &c (refuge) 666; keep, donjon, dungeon, fortress, citadel, capitol, castle; tower of strength, tower of strength; fort, barracoon^, pah^, sconce, martello tower^, peelhouse^, blockhouse, rath^; wooden walls. [body armor] bulletproof ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... square chateau. The town indeed looks a mere appendage of this chateau, so conspicuous is the ancient stronghold of the Vivarais. Livron, perched on a hill, looks very pretty. Soon we come to perhaps the grandest ruin cresting the bank of the Rhone, the donjon and chateau fort of Rochemaure, standing out formidably from the dark, jagged peaks, running sheer down to the ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... father would nowise suffer, thinking that his nobility would receive a stain if it came to be known that his son had conversed with a reputed witch by night on the Streckelberg. He had caused him therefore, as prayers and threats were of no avail, to be bound hand and foot, and confined in the donjon-keep, where till datum an old servant had watched him, who refused to let him escape, notwithstanding he offered him any sum of money; whereupon he fell into the greatest anguish and despair at the thought that innocent blood would be shed on his account; but that the all-righteous God had graciously ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... swung suddenly open, and a captain of the palace guard clanked into the donjon. The flare of a spluttering flambeau, which he held in his hand, caused them to blink and shrink away, beyond its yellow circle. But he thrust it close to their faces with a cross oath. "Silence," he growled, "cease thy shrill chatterings. What ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... of a castle were, in disturbed times, the only recreation-ground of the ladies and play-place of the young people. Dunbar Castle, standing on steep rocks above the North Sea, was not only inaccessible on that side, but from its donjon tower commanded a magnificent view, both of the expanse of waves, taking purple tints from the shadows of the clouds, with here and there a sail fleeting before the wind, and of the rugged headlands of the coast, point beyond point, the nearer distinct, and showing the green summits, and ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... de St. Vallier, et il a descendu jusqu'a Mons. de St. Vallier l'actuel proprietaire." Nothing could be more acceptable to idle wanderers than this information, and off we set at a round pace up a most filthy street, according to our directions; our heads full of crenelles, pont-levis, donjon, fosse, and the proper etceteras. I am not sure that we did not half expect to meet M. de St. Vallier himself, (a good baronial name) cap-a-pie at the barbacan gate, his lance in rest, and his visor down, like Sir Boucicault, ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... all the master said to his dogs as he crept in through an old window into the donjon keep. It was a foolhardy thing to do, for the stones were loose around it, but he had many times got in there before, and why, he thought, should he not do so now. Besides, this was Reynard's favourite den, and he hoped to ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... within two generations of the Norman conquest, while the old wooden abbey, destroyed by fire, was being replaced by that noble pile of stone whose ruins are still standing, the French abbot of Crowland (so runs the legend) sent French monks to open a school under the new French donjon, in the little Roman town of Grante-brigge; whereby—so does all earnest work, however mistaken, grow and spread in this world, infinitely and for ever— St. Guthlac, by his canoe-voyage into Crowland Island, became the spiritual father of the University ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... Palais des Tournelles, beyond the Porte Saint Antoine, was the ink-black, frowning donjon of the Bastille, its severity in strong contrast with the more luxurious palaces of the princes which surrounded it ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... of the Castle by the great gateway, which extended betwixt the principal Keep, or Donjon, called Caesar's Tower, and a stately building which passed by the name of King Henry's Lodging, and were thus placed in the centre of the noble pile, which presented on its different fronts magnificent specimens of every ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... Giles's Pound: Whitford and Mitford joined the train, Huggins and Muggins from Chick Lane, And Clutterbuck, who got a sprain Before the plug was found. Hobson and Jobson did not sleep, But ah! no trophy could they reap For both were in the Donjon Keep Of Bridewell's gloomy mound! E'en Higginbottom now was posed, For sadder scene was ne'er disclosed, Without, within, in hideous show, Devouring flames resistless glow, And blazing rafters downward go, And never halloo "Heads ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... from Avignon across the Rhone. I spent a couple of hours in visiting these objects, and there was a kind of pictorial sweetness in the episode; but I have not many details to relate. The isolated tower I just mentioned has much in common with the detached donjon of Montmajour, which I had looked at in going to Les Baux and to which I paid my respects in speaking of that excursion. Also the work of Philippe le Bel (built in 1307), it is amazingly big and stubborn, ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... fair hair gave him so gentle an appearance that none save those who had seen him in his berserk mood, raging, an iron giant, in the forefront of the battle, could ever guess how terrible a warrior he might be. Little knight and huge squire stood together under the arch of the donjon and gave welcome to the newcomers, whilst a swarm of soldiers crowded round to embrace their comrades and to lead them off where they might feed and make ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the city is obtained. The High Street, crowded with gables of the sixteenth century and later timbered houses, slightly bends and rises as well, until the perspective seems to lose itself in a distant grove of trees, locally called the "Dane John," a corruption of "Donjon." This view, especially when seen on a summer afternoon, is most picturesque. The present appearance of the quiet street is decidedly unlike that which it presented on that busy market-day when Miss Betsey Trotwood drove ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... the same depth of sorrow, the same burst of joy, levelled, for a moment at least, those artificial barriers by which men are divided. But it is well as it is. Live within the limits of your rank, as heretofore within your donjon tower and your fosses, my lord, undisturbed by the sympathy of any mean man like me. I, too, have my duties ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... vicinity of the town. It stands on a rocky eminence, forty feet in perpendicular height, and overhanging the river, which laves its base. The first fortified building on this spot was erected by the before-mentioned lady Ethelfleda, who built the donjon upon an artificial mound of earth. No part of that edifice, however, is now supposed to remain, except the mound, which is still to be traced in the western part of the grounds surrounding the castle. The present structure ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 357 - Vol. XIII, No. 357., Saturday, February 21, 1829 • Various
... had time to return from the donjon, than D'Artagnan placed himself in ambuscade close to the Rue de Petit-Musc, so as to see every one who might leave the gates of the Bastile. After he had spent an hour on the look-out from the "Golden Portcullis," under the pent-house of which he could ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... pleasant woman. The house wasn't furnished very fine, but we didn't care for that, an' they gave us a big room that had rafters instid of a ceilin', an' a big fire-place, an' that, I said, was jus' exac'ly what we wanted. The room was almos' like a donjon itself, which he said he reckoned had once been a kitchin, but I told him that a earl hadn't nothin' to do with kitchins, an' that this was a tapestry chamber, an' I'd tell him all about the strange figgers ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton
... lay about her shoulders as one hand idly pulled them out, while the other rested on the red shawl, as if she loved its glowing color and soft texture. She was humming to herself the little song of the dove and the donjon, and something in the plaintive voice, the solitary figure, went straight to ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... steep, Ruined stands the old Chateau; Nothing but the donjon-keep Left for shelter or for show. Its vacant eyes Stare at the skies, Stare at the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... Altars are gaudily decorated and statues bejeweled and be (artificial) flowered in Hispano-Italian fashion. The mairie, reconstructed from an ancient palace or castle, was more interesting. Beside the mairie a medieval square tower, which may have been a donjon, was occupied on the ground floor by the gendarmerie. Bars on the upper windows indicated that ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... weakly upon her knees, her shoulders sinking together. The horror was that it had not come from without, but from within. The dream was no blind chance; it was the expression of something she had kept so close a prisoner that she had never seen it herself, it was the wail from the donjon deeps when the watch slept. Only as the outcome of such a night of sorcery could the thing have been loosed to straighten its limbs and measure itself with her; so heavy were the chains upon it, so many ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... the ancient donjon-keep, With its iron-banded portals—there, the moat in sullen sleep!— Galloping onward, lo! he halted, for they kept strict watch and ward, And his courser's clanking hoofs had roused ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... castle that had been actually a fortress in the days of knighthood. She had studied long ago the adventures of high-born dames and stately nobles, till she was nearly as far gone in romance as Don Quixote; and many questions she had asked about Belfront, and donjon-towers, and keeps, and tiltyards, and laboured very hard to acquire a correct idea of the mode of life and manners of the days of chivalry. Her imagination, we have seen, was too lively to be restrained ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... cliff in front; and, at one of the ends of this patrol-path, there were the remains of a formidable donjon-keep razed almost ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... the smell of that jasmine-flower! And O, the music! and O, the way That voice rang out from the donjon tower, "Non ti scordar di me, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... instituted. One of the hardest battles that reform has to fight is this battle in the air—so to speak: this contest with taste and imagination that cling to the myriad-hued moss and the delicate vine fringe upon the ogre's castle, and that find the donjon so much ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... fairer opportunity for that awakening to take place than when the proud step of Artavan de Hautlieu was placed upon those enchanted courts. On the left, lay the palace and donjon-keep; but the right, more attractive, seemed to invite to the apartment of the women. At a side door, reclined on a couch, two guards of the haram, with their naked swords grasped in their hands, and features fiendishly contorted between ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... tax," and no political Buzfuz bankrupted his patience trying to explain the silver problem. He didn't have to anchor his smokehouse to the center of gravity with a log chain, set a double-barreled bear trap in the donjon-keep of his hennery nor tie a brace of pessimistic bull-dogs in his melon patch, for the nigger preacher had not yet arrived with his adjustable morals and omnivorous mouth. No female committees of uncertain age invaded his place of business and buncoed him out of a double saw-buck ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... the Big House by way of a massive, hewn- timber, iron-studded door that let in at the foot of what seemed a donjon keep. The floor was cement, and doors let off in various directions. One, opening to a Chinese in the white apron and starched cap of a chef, emitted at the same time the low hum of a dynamo. It was this that deflected Forrest ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... refinements and pitiful uncharities, and fear of all catholicity. She was gentility itself, without the spark of nature, and believing that she inhabited the castle towers of exclusiveness and social righteousness, she had made his home the donjon-keep of his knighthood, at once the loftiest domestic ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... complex structures, buildings of gradation and transition, which may be Roman at the base, Gothic in the middle, and Greco-Roman at the top. This is caused by the fact that it took six hundred years to build such a fabric. This variety is rare. The donjon- keep at tampes is a specimen. But monuments of two formations are more frequent. Such is Notre-Dame at Paris, a structure of the pointed arch, its earliest columns leading directly to that Roman ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... transition, which may be Roman at the base, Gothic in the middle, and Greco-Roman at the top. This is caused by the fact that it took six hundred years to build such a fabric. This variety is rare. The donjon- keep at Etampes is a specimen. But monuments of two formations are more frequent. Such is Notre-Dame at Paris, a structure of the pointed arch, its earliest columns leading directly to that Roman zone, of which ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... faithful; so bent upon ameliorating the condition of those under their rule. For, be it said, Donjalolo was a charitable prince; in his serious intervals, ever seeking the welfare of his subjects, though after an imperial view of his own. But alas, in that sunny donjon among the mountains, where he dwelt, how could Donjalolo be sure, that the things he decreed were executed in regions forever remote from his view. Ah! very bland, very innocent, very pious, the faces his viceroys presented during ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... Bareacres are fair upon the lea, Where the cliffs of bonny Diddlesex rise up from out the sea: I stood upon the donjon keep and view'd the country o'er, I saw the lands of Bareacres for fifty miles or more. I stood upon the donjon keep—it is a sacred place,—Where floated for eight hundred years the banner of my race; Argent, a dexter sinople, and gules ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... facilities for cruelty in the command over those skilful artificers in metal— some ingenious rack or bull "to pinch and peel"—the tradition of which, not unlike the modern Jacques Bonhomme's shudder at the old ruined French donjon or bastille, haunts, generations afterwards, the ruins of those "labyrinths" of stone, where the old tyrants had their pleasures. For it is a mistake to suppose that that wistful sense of eeriness in ruined ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... 1424, however, Otto Berka was there no more. The castle was besieged by the terrible one-eyed Hussite commander, Ziska with the Flail, and he succeeded in capturing the lower tower after great loss of life, but entirely failed to take the upper donjon. After the departure of Ziska the castle was taken as a residence by Margaret, widow of Otto Berka, who secured the lower tower, and her granddaughter Barbara occupied the higher. These women hated each other as poison, and to personal hate was added ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... outline is complete; in the southern one it is somewhat modified by the gigantic Scuir, which rises direct on the apex of the height, i.e., the thick part of the wedge; and which, seen bows-on from this point of view, resembles some vast donjon keep, taller, from base to summit, by about a hundred feet, than the dome of St. Paul's. The upper slopes of the island are brown and moory, and present little on which the eye may rest, save a few trap terraces, with rudely columnar fronts; its middle space ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... upper chamber of the donjon tower the Conqueror had erected at Oxford, hard by the mound thrown up by Ethelfleda, lady of the Mercians and daughter of Alfred. For thither the king had caused him to be removed, unwilling to stain the holy precincts of Abingdon with a deed of blood, and ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... asylum for himself, and for his grain and cattle, in the circle of palisades at the base of the fortress. By degrees necessity establishes a tacit contract between the military chieftain of the donjon and the early settlers of the open country, and this becomes a recognized custom. They work for him, cultivate his ground, do his carting, pay him quittances, so much for house, so much per head for cattle, so much to inherit or to ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... smell of that Jasmine flower! And O that music! and O the way That voice rang out from the donjon tower, Non ti scordar di me, ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... the ladies of Luxembourg, while the captive consumed her heart with vain indignation. At last Jeanne would seem to have wrought herself up to the most desperate of expedients. Whether her room was in the donjon, or whether she was allowed sufficient freedom in the house to mount to the battlements there, we are not informed—probably the latter was the case: for it was from the top of the tower that the rash girl at last flung herself down, carried away by what sudden frenzy ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... concluded with these lines: "We wanted to know what Daddy Jacques meant by the cry of the Bete Du Bon Dieu." The landlord of the Donjon Inn explained to us that it is the particularly sinister cry which is uttered sometimes at night by the cat of an old woman,—Mother Angenoux, as she is called in the country. Mother Angenoux is a sort of saint, ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... bar and true verdict give according to the evidence so help them God and kiss the book. And they rose in their seats, those twelve of Iar, and they swore by the name of Him Who is from everlasting that they would do His rightwiseness. And straightway the minions of the law led forth from their donjon keep one whom the sleuthhounds of justice had apprehended in consequence of information received. And they shackled him hand and foot and would take of him ne bail ne mainprise but preferred a charge against him for he was ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... these:—maugre, 'sdeath, eke, erst, deft, romaunt, pleasaunce, certes, whilom, distraught, quotha, good lack, well-a-day, vermeil, perchance, hight, wight, lea, wist, list, sheen, anon, gliff, astrolt, what boots it? malfortunes, ween, God wot, I trow, emprise, duress, donjon, puissant, sooth, rock, bruit, ken, eld, o'ersprent, etc. Of course, such a word as "lady" is made to do good service, and "ye" asserts its well-known superiority to "you." All this the author evidently considers ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... Moorish alchemist who had taught Fenice to make the fire balloons, and I was at first encouraged by his assurance that the fortress was well munitioned, and that he had manufactured great quantities of gunpowder which was stored in its donjon. But I reflected that this circumstance was but an added danger as the assailants were endeavouring ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... was plain that it was built with Old-World notions of strength and durability, and, so far as might be, with Old-World materials. The hinges of the doors stretched out like arms, instead of like hands, as we make them. The bolts were massive enough for a donjon-keep. The small window-panes were actually inclosed in the wood of the sashes, instead of being stuck to them with putty, as in our modern windows. The broad staircase was of easy ascent, and was guarded by quaintly turned and twisted balusters. The ceilings of the two rooms of state were ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... in the Holy Wars. The Count Luigi raised money, like the rest, and one mild September morning, armed with battle-ax, portcullis and thundering culverin, he rode through the greaves and bucklers of his donjon-keep with as gallant a troop of Christian bandits as ever stepped in Italy. He had his sword, Excalibur, with him. His beautiful countess and her young daughter waved him a tearful adieu from the battering-rams and buttresses ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... without means of admission for light; lying, at great depth, immediately beneath that portion of the building in which was my own sleeping apartment. It had been used, apparently, in remote feudal times, for the worst purposes of a donjon-keep, and in later days, as a place of deposit for powder, or some other highly combustible substance, as a portion of its floor, and the whole interior of a long archway through which we reached it, were carefully ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... au grand chene, Sur la branche des cieux prochaine, Qui plie et tremble comme un jonc. Cigogne, aux vieilles tours fidele, Oh! vole et monte a tire-d'aile De l'eglise a la citadelle, Du haut clocher au grand donjon. ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... irregular amphitheatre—woods rising above each other to the very summit of the hills by which they were surrounded. A swollen waterfall was visible, below which a bare and flattened trunk, whose boughs had apparently been but just lopped, was thrown across the torrent. A ruined keep or donjon was seen above a line of dark firs, crowning the summit of a steep crag that rose abruptly ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... III. is the chief one. Here he revived the round table of King Arthur, and established the Order of the Garter. From the battlements of this strong fortress you gaze upon no less than twelve counties. Prince Albert is constable of this tower. This was the old prison, or donjon of the castle. Here James I. of Scotland was a prisoner, and here he wrote his sweet verses and celebrated Nature's beauties and the praises of his lady-love, Jane Beaufort. Here, too, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, long suffered, and sung the ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... tangles of bushes and rocks that looked quite wild—it might have been in the middle of the forest but everything had been done to assist nature. There were a "piece d'eau," cascades, little bridges thrown over the river in picturesque spots, and on the highest point a tower (donjon), which was most effective, looked quite the old feudal towers of which so few remain now. They were used as watch towers, as a sentinel posted on the top could see a great distance over the plains and give warning of the approach of ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... fortress, out of the midst of which (so long since had time begun to crumble the supplemental structure, and cover it with soil, by means of wayside dust) grew trees, bushes, and thick festoons of ivy. This tomb of a woman had become the citadel and donjon-keep of a castle; and all the care that Cecilia Metella's husband could bestow, to secure endless peace for her beloved relics, had only sufficed to make that handful of precious ashes the nucleus of battles, long ages ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... compliance with this insidious hint, than, one folding-door of the ancient gate being already closed by the wind, as has been already intimated, honest Caleb lost no time in shutting the other with a clang, which resounded from donjon-vault to battlement. Having thus secured the pass, he forthwith indulged the excluded huntsmen in brief parley, from a small projecting window, or shot-hole, through which, in former days, the warders were wont to reconnoitre those who presented themselves before ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... But the devil entered into the heart of Jaques le Grys, and he rode, one morning, from the earl's house to the castle of his friend, where he was hospitably received by the unsuspicious lady. He requested her to show him the donjon, or keep of the castle, and in that remote and inaccessible tower forcibly violated her chastity. He then mounted his horse, and returned to the earl of Alencon within so short a space, that his absence had not been perceived. The lady abode within the donjon, weeping ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... possible for Davenant's heart to leap and sink in the same instant, it did it then. It leaped at the sight of this white and rose castle, with its towers and donjon and keep; it sank at the thought that he, poor old unpretentious Peter Davenant, with no social or personal passports of any kind, must force his way over drawbridge and beneath portcullis—or whatever else might be the method of entering a feudal ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... another object in our evening's excursion; so, lowering the lateen sail, my companion took one of the oars, and the boatman, reinforced by a strong and steady stroke, pulling with a will, we soon landed at the foot of the black and frowning rock, crowned on the summit by the square massive donjon of the Château d'If. ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... But apropos of your knights-errant, yonder are two of them, if I mistake not, making this way. Now, fancy yourself on the donjon of an ancient Moorish castle, salute, and receive them accordingly. ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... small, damp, and entirely without means of admission for light; lying, at great depth, immediately beneath that portion of the building in which was my own sleeping apartment. It had been used, apparently, in remote feudal times, for the worst purpose of a donjon-keep, and, in later days, as a place of deposit for powder, or some other highly combustible substance, as a portion of its floor, and the whole interior of a long archway through which we reached it, were carefully sheathed with copper. The door, of massive iron, had been, also, similarly ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... door of the House under the Wall less than five minutes before I saw the duke pass through the Postern. Marcus Grote had told me there were but two openings to the castle, the Postern and the great gate on the other side of the castle by the donjon keep. To reach the great gate one must pass out by Cambrai or the Somme Gate and go around ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... arose the Castle itself, containing buildings of all periods, crowded around, and united with the ancient and grim looking donjon keep, which was older than any of them, and which rose, like a black Ethiopian giant, high into the air, while the absence of any windows larger than shot holes, irregularly disposed for defence, gave the spectator the same unpleasant feeling ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... away to his home till she was thirty years old but would live with her in the castle, where the windows looked out only to the north. The prince agreed, so married they were. The bride was only fifteen, and fifteen more long weary years must pass before she might step out of the gloomy donjon, breathe the fresh air, and see the sun. But she and her gallant young bridegroom loved each other and they were happy. Often they sat hand in hand at the window looking out to the north and talked of what they would do when they were free. Still it was a little dull to look out always at the ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... her name thrilled him. He thought he remembered the latter in Froissart: it conjured up "baronial halls" and "donjon keeps," rang resonantly in his mind like "Let the portcullis fall!" At home he had been wont to speak of the "oldest families in Cranston," complaining of the invasions of "new people" into the social territory of the McCords and Mellins and Kramers—a pleasant conception which the presence of a ...
— His Own People • Booth Tarkington
... entrance on the crackling snow of the highway. Seen through the gaps of the trees the front looked new, but the back part seemed to be of some age, for I could see high walls, broken by few windows, hanging over the water. The place was no more a chalet than a donjon, but I suppose the name was given in honour of a wooden gallery above the front door. The whole thing was washed in an ugly pink. There were outhouses—garage or stables among the trees—and at the entrance there were fairly recent tracks ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... l'appartement dit de la Donzelle toute desespere (pour le visiter, s'addresser au gardien, pourboire), qui a conserve une grande partie de sa decoration originale et de sa peinture (mon. hist. xie). Le donjon renfermait une oubliette profonde nommee DU RAT DEVORANT, qui autrefois servait de grenier au malt (V. mon. hist.). Ascension des Obelisques sur la terrasse (splendide panorama) et belles promenades autour de la petite chapelle dite DU PRETRE CHAUVE. (V. vi. L'ITINERAIRE DU PAYS-DE-BONNES, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 24, 1887 • Various
... French chateau; in the center is the habitation of the seigneur and his family, flanked by four angle towers; on three sides is a court closed by buildings, also with towers at each angle, and like most feudal dwellings the central donjon has one of its sides on the exterior ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... whom tabards deck, With silver scutcheon round their neck, Stood on the steps of stone, By which you reach the Donjon gate, And there, with herald pomp and state, They hailed Lord Marmion. And he, their courtesy to requite, Gave them a chain of twelve marks weight, All as he lighted down.' ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... of Arc was imprisoned, or the rooms where Louis Napoleon lived through his six years of captivity, or the little garden he used to cultivate, or the way he passed to escape over the drawbridge, dressed as a mason, with a plank on his shoulder. But the glorious old tower or donjon still stands, one hundred feet high and one hundred feet wide. German gunpowder was too weak to bring it down, and so perhaps the prophecy of the Comte de St. Pol, builder of the fortress, may be fulfilled—that while France stands, the tower of Ham's citadel will stand. Thousands more pilgrims ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... a whole convent had been assaulted, sacked, burnt,—all the monks had been killed, and all the nuns had been kissed! Murder! fire! sacrilege! Never was city in such an uproar. From St. George's gate to St. Dunstan's suburb, from the Donjon to the borough of Staplegate, it was noise and hubbub. "Where was it?"—"When was it?"—"How was it?" The Mayor caught up his chain, the Aldermen donned their furred gowns, the Town Clerk put on his ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... sweet wind fanned peach-tints to her cheeks and drew out unravelled braids of gold in lingering caress. She could have come to me, had she pleased, then: this old chief who rules the place was her father's friend and hers.—But look I but see! Who is it comes now,—sweeps round the donjon flank? Lean over the embrasure, and learn! Ah, man, are my eyes so old, my memories so treacherous, that I do not know day from night? They have gone on,—or did they enter, think you? Or yet, there is to be carousal, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... qualities and a charm of its own, blending the somewhat attenuated grace of Italian ornament with the general outlines of Northern design. It created the Chateau de Gaillon, as you may still see it in the delicate engravings of Israel Silvestre—a Gothic donjon veiled faintly by a surface of dainty Italian traceries— Chenonceaux, Blois, Chambord, and the church of Brou. In painting, there came from Italy workmen like Maitre Roux and the masters of the school of Fontainebleau, to have their later Italian ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... interest as they are now, only they did not trouble themselves so much about Corn bills. Their bills were of good steel, and their protective measures were arrows a cloth-yard long. Protection meant a good suit of mail; and a castle with its duly prescribed moats, bastions, portcullises, and donjon keep. Free Trade was a lively inroad into the neighboring baron's lands, and the iportation thence of goodly herds and flocks. Foreign cattle for home consumption was as sticking an article in their markets as in ours, only the blows ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... pious legend over the doorway might need but slight revision. Morrin College occupies one wing, and the other contains the well-stocked library of the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec. Valuable manuscripts have taken the place of useless malefactors in the donjon keep, and the vaults are full of the ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... and was glad to learn that even one man kept guard, for at first he feared that all within the Castle were asleep, the round tower, until Roland had shifted his position to the north, being blotted out by the nearer square donjon keep. Now satisfied, he signaled his men to sit down, which they did. He himself took up a position behind a tree, where, unseen, he could watch the man with ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... it is confined to a bald hearsay, albeit of the Deeds that were done within its walls I can affirm the certitude with Truth. From such shadowy accounts as I have collected, the edifice would seem to have consisted but of a single tower or donjon-keep very strong and thick, and defying the lashings of the waves, almost as though it were some Pharos or other guide to mariners. It was surrounded by a low stone wall of prodigious weight of masonry, and was approached from the mainland by a drawbridge ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... forbidding all persons to spin, and even to have spinning-wheels in their houses, on pain of instant death. But it was in vain. One day, when she was just fifteen years of age, the king and queen left their daughter alone in one of their castles, when, wandering about at her will, she came to an ancient donjon tower, climbed to the top of it, and there found a very old woman—so old and deaf that she had never heard of the king's ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... sea-level. Pommel and cantle are connected by a low seat, a few yards of isthmus; and the three divisions, all strongly marked, bear buildings. The profile from east and west shows four groups: to the extreme north a tower, backed by the castle donjon, on the knob of granite here and there scarped; the works upon the thread of isthmus; and the walls and bastions crowning the southern knob, which, being lower, is even more elaborately cut to ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... campanile, minaret, spire, belfry, turret, cupola, dome; tourelle, barbican, pylon, martello tower; castle, citadel, donjon, keep, fortress. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... recall the citadel of later dukes. Within her earliest walls was the site of the first Cathedral; outside them was built St. Ouen to the north-east, and the monastery of St. Gervais to the north-west where the Conqueror died. Above the town still rises the Tour Jeanne d'Arc, the donjon of the Castle of Bouvreuil, which showed that Normandy was no more an independent Duchy, but a part of the domains of Philip Augustus. This memory of bondage still remains; but of the home of her own dukes Rouen has not preserved one stone; nor of the English palace of King Henry the ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... the royal captive stood—a window in the Norman Tower of Windsor Castle, now fitly garnished and guarded by sympathetic hands, from which the spectator looking out upon the deep moat-garden underneath in the circle about the old donjon will scarcely be able to withstand the thrill of feeling which attends a poetic scene and incident fully realised. Nothing could be more green, more fresh, more full of romance and association, than this garden where all is youthful as the May, yet ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... Christian Era, and there is evidence for believing that there was a British settlement of considerable importance on the site of Canterbury. Of this there remains a lofty artificial mound, now known as the Dane John—another form of the familiar donjon. The Romans called it Durovernum, a name perhaps derived from the British Derwhern, and although their historians are curiously silent in regard to the place there cannot be any doubt that the town rose to great importance ...
— Beautiful Britain • Gordon Home
... for his wrath or his protests. They continued to hurry him along, traveling at a very rapid rate, until, at the end of an avenue of huge trees, arose Torquilstone, the hoary and ancient castle of Reginald Front-de-Boeuf. It was a fortress of no great size, consisting of a donjon, or large and high square tower, surrounded by buildings of inferior height. Around the exterior wall was a deep moat, supplied with water from a neighboring rivulet. Front-de-Boeuf, whose character placed him often at feud with his neighbors, had made considerable additions to the strength ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... donjon keep, And steel-clad knight and peer, Whose forts are girt with a moat cut deep— But none excel in soldiership My ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... the lovely silent appeal in her eyes. That letter has no doubt distressed her. She will be happier when she has talked it over with him—they two alone. "As for you, Thomas," says his father, "I'm quite aware that you ought to be consigned to the Donjon keep after your late behavior, but as we don't keep one on the premises, I let you off this time. Meanwhile I haste to my study to pen, with the assistance of your enraged mother, a letter to our landlord ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... lady. Philip shook his hand violently again, patted him on the back, so as almost to take away his breath, and bade him never fear, they would be sworn brothers to him for ever; and then threw up his hat into the air, and was so near astonishing the donjon walls with a British hurrah, that Berenger had to put his hand over his mouth and strangle the shout ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... castles, but he abideth not therein, lest they crumble about his ears and crush him. Castles built of air often fall of stone. Therefore, only the foolish man keeps revel in the great hall or slumbers in the donjon-keep. ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... Knott to dwell in: The architect worked hard for weeks In venting all his private peaks Upon the roof, whose crop of leaks Had satisfied Fluellen; Whatever anybody had Out of the common, good or bad, Knott had it all worked well in; A donjon-keep, where clothes might dry, 50 A porter's lodge that was a sty, A campanile slim and high, Too small to hang a bell in; All up and down and here and there, With Lord-knows-whats of round and square Stuck on at random everywhere,— It was a house to ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... shore to the south of the town is the Cours d'Ajot, one of the finest promenades of its kind in France, named after the engineer who constructed it. It is planted with trees and adorned with marble statues of Neptune and Abundance by Antoine Coysevox. The castle with its donjon and seven towers (12th to the 16th centuries), commanding the entrance to the river, is the only interesting building in the town. Brest is the capital of one of the five naval arrondissements of France. The naval port, which is in great part excavated in the rock, extends along both ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... the like had not been seen in Ireland since the Conquest." The garrison consisted of a hundred men, of which sixty were gunners. On the third day of the siege the English batteries opened on the north-west side of the donjon, and destroying the battlements, buried the cannon on that part of the wall under the ruins. The siege lines were then moved "to the north side of the base court of the castle, at the north-east end whereof there was a new-made, very ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... of terrestrial Strife, For him who quits this Donjon Keep of Life, To read the World's expectant Epitaph: "He left a handsome Widow ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr. (The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym Jr.) • Wallace Irwin
... the omnibus for Bricquebec, which lies nearly five miles from the station. Its ruined castle, dating from the end of the fourteenth century, with its lofty octagonal donjon, nearly a hundred feet high, standing on a high "motte" or artificial mound, has a most imposing appearance. Bricquebec, the most considerable demesne of the Cotentins, was taken by King Henry V. from the Sire d'Estouteville, who had so gallantly defended Mont St. Michel against ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser |
