Free translatorFree translator
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'



Intrigue   Listen
noun
Intrigue  n.  
1.
Intricacy; complication. (Obs.)
2.
A complicated plot or scheme intended to effect some purpose by secret artifice; conspiracy; stratagem. "Busy meddlers with intrigues of state."
3.
The plot of a play or romance; a complicated scheme of designs, actions, and events.
4.
A secret and illicit love affair between two persons of different sexes; an amour; a liaison. "The hero of a comedy is represented victorious in all his intrigues."
Synonyms: Plot; scheme; conspiracy; machination.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Intrigue" Quotes from Famous Books



... beautiful present, the gallant, on leaving the friar, hied him straight to a spot whence he stealthily gave the lady to see that he had both her gifts: whereat the lady was well content, the more so as her intrigue seemed ever to prosper more and more. She waited now only for her husband's departure from home to crown her enterprise with success. Nor was it long before occasion required that her husband should go to Genoa. The very morning ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio

... now has lost his art, Or blunts the point of every dart;— His altar now no longer smokes, His mother's aid no youth invokes: This tempts freethinkers to refine, And bring in doubt their powers divine; Now love is dwindled to intrigue, And marriage grown a money league; Which crimes aforesaid (with her leave) Were (as he humbly did conceive) Against our sovereign lady's peace, Against the statute in that case, Against her dignity and ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... Dymchurch had perceived no special significance in Mrs. Toplady's social advances to him. The sense of poverty was so persistent in his mind that he had never seen himself as a possible object of matrimonial intrigue; nor had he ever come in contact with a social rank where such designs must have been forced on his notice. Well, his "season" was over; he laughed as he looked back upon it. When Lashmar and Miss Tomalin were married, he ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing

... authority from the selfish interest of the borough-mongers but from the great outside current of patriotic sentiment and aspiration. But public opinion was not yet powerful enough to support the great minister without an alliance with the master of the small arts of intrigue. The general sentiments of discontent which had been raised by Walpole was therefore beginning to widen and deepen and to take a different form. The root of the evil, as people began to feel, was not in the individual Walpole but in the system which he represented. Brown's Estimate is often ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen

... rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of old society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue. ...
— The Communist Manifesto • Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

... to be Dhurma Rajah, he is himself very evidently low-born and low-bred, and compared with the former one, so poor a specimen, that the greater popularity of the former is not to be wondered at. From all we have heard, they are contemptible rulers, as they appear to do nothing but intrigue for power among themselves. Changes are hence excessively frequent, and were they attended with much bloodshed, the country would ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith

... A fighting brother is a cursed appendage to a fine girl. Egad! I just stopped in time; had he not discovered himself, in two minutes more I should have told him how well I was with his sister. Indeed, I cannot see the satisfaction of an intrigue, if one can't have the pleasure of communicating ...
— The Contrast • Royall Tyler

... "so effectually as to make me doubt having ever heard it. No, Marcia, no more excuses, no more lies: you need not explain. Be satisfied that whatever plans you formed to prevent my bidding your cousin welcome to my house were highly successful. At intrigue you are a proficient. I admire proficiency in all things,—but—for the future—be so good as to remember that I ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton

... and intrigue from without further hastened the fall of the Administration. Godolphin, a moderate, had, after the General Election of 1708, found himself allied with the "Junto" of five powerful Whig Lords—Wharton, Sommers, Halifax, Orford, and Sunderland—but it ...
— Atalantis Major • Daniel Defoe

... invariably admitted to state ceremonials. There is very little secrecy about the Stockholm court, and intrigue is entirely unknown in Swedish politics. There are no mysteries in the council chamber and no skeletons in the royal closet. Hence the doors are open, and the reporters can come and go as they please. As ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough

... STOUGHTON) is a story whose sentimental title does it considerably less than justice. It gives no indication of what is really an admirably vivacious comedy of courtship and intrigue, with a colonial setting that is engagingly novel. Miss C. FOX SMITH seems to know Victoria and the island of Vancouver with the intimacy of long affection; her pen-pictures and her idiom are both of them convincingly genuine. The result for the reader is a twofold interest, half in seeing what ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 29th, 1920 • Various

... given birth to her daughter Andree, the novelist had again become a constant frequenter of the house in the Avenue d'Antin. He was intent on resuming the little intrigue that he had begun there and felt confident of victory. Valentine, on her side, after a period of terror followed by great relief, had set about making up for lost time, throwing herself more wildly than ever into the vortex of fashionable ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola

... walls of the huge castle Nuovo, which combined the strength of a fortress with the elegance of a palace, it must not be supposed that there was naught but gross sensuality. Court intrigue and scandal there were in plenty, and there were many fair ladies in the royal household who were somewhat free in the bestowal of their favors, sumptuous banquets were spread, tournaments for trials of knightly ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger

... political conspiracy is but short. Pythagoras appears to have taken it. The disciples who were admitted to his scientific secrets after a period of probation and process of examination constituted a ready instrument of intrigue against the state, the issue of which, after a time, appeared in the supplanting of the ancient senate and the exaltation of Pythagoras and his club to the administration of government. The actions of men in all times are determined by similar principles; and as it would be now with ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper

... of Lithuanian and Ruthenian speech were never conquered by Poland. These peoples were not compelled by a series of exhausting wars to seek safety in annexation. It was not the will of a prince or a political intrigue that brought about the union. Neither was it fear. The slowly-matured view of the economical and social necessities and, before all, the ripening moral sense of the masses were the motives that induced ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad

... Gregory X, and decreed that in future, on the death of a pope, the cardinals should be shut up in conclave until they elected a successor; a wise regulation, which has since continued, enforcing a prompt decision, and preventing intrigue. ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving

... for though it is so excellent, it is impossible to remember any thing so disjointed, except you consider it as a collection of short enchanting poems,—as the Circe at her tremendous devilries in a church; the intrigue of the dear nightingale and rose; and the description of Medea; the episode of Mr. Howard, which ends with the most sublime of lines—in short, all, all; all is the most lovely poetry. And then one sighs, that such profusion of poetry, magnificent and tender, should be thrown ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... said, angrily, sinking into a chair at a small table, and pointing Calvert to the one opposite him, "'tis an infernal shame that this pleasure palace should be made the hotbed of political intrigue; that these brawling, demented demagogues should be allowed to rant and rave here to an excited mob; that these disloyal, seditious pamphlets should be distributed and read and discussed beneath the windows of ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe

... upon him, in consequence of which apprehending the severity of the military law, the latter had set off to the capital to appeal to the electoral prince, but was no more heard of. The colonel, who is a finished master of intrigue, enters Storm's house in disguise, and attempts with the help of a band of his soldiers to carry off Ella by force. In this he is opposed by the good and gallant old officer, who, sword in hand, beats ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter

... She was ready for anything, she was capable of anything, she wished to surprise him with her beauty, to remind him that it belonged, after all, at the bottom of everything, to him. She was ready to bribe him, if bribing should be necessary. She had carried on an intrigue before she was twenty; it would be more, rather than less, easy for her, now that she was thirty. All this and more was in her cold, living eyes, as in the prolonged silence they engaged themselves with his; but I must not dwell upon it, for reasons ...
— Georgina's Reasons • Henry James

... out; it was added to satisfy the craving for some kind of a settlement and is more in the nature of comedy perhaps than we imagine. Hippolytus is a somewhat chilly man of honour, the Nurse a brilliant study of unscrupulous intrigue. Racine's Phedre is as disagreeable as Euripides' is noble. Like Hamlet, the play is full ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb

... from envy and dislike to their predecessors in office. As little could it be owing to personal cowardice, and dread of consequences to themselves. Ministers, timorous from their attachment to place and power, will fear more from the consequences of one court intrigue, than from a thousand difficulties to the commerce and credit of their country by disturbances at three thousand miles distance. From which of these the ministers had most to apprehend at that time, is known, I presume, universally. Nor ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... Miss Sandus had improved the occasion to remark, "that you are not English; but the Italian in you comes out in your unconquerable passion for intrigue." ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland

... Empire;" with a varnish of parliamentary rhetoric; and, I suppose, this other great gift, toughness of character,—proof that they have persevered in their Master's service. Poor wretches, their industry is mob-worship, place-worship, parliamentary intrigue, and the multiplex art of tongue-fence: flung into that bad element, there they swim for decades long, throttling and wrestling one another according to their strength,—and the toughest or luckiest gets to land, and becomes Premier. ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle

... his most impossible designs, and therefore is a person quite apart from real life. In Shakespeare, the motive of his villainy is, first, that Othello did not give him the post he desired; secondly, that he suspects Othello of an intrigue with his wife and, thirdly, that, as he says, he feels a strange kind of love for Desdemona. There are many motives, but they are all vague. Whereas in the romance there is but one simple and clear motive, Iago's passionate ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy

... that before Jean loved you, before he conceived the idea of marrying you, he had—an intrigue. You accepted the fact as one which had nothing exceptional ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant

... was hopeless for them, and tacitly left him to the more attractive conquerors, who hardly prized the Seraph so much as they did Bertie, to sit in their barouches and opera boxes, ride and drive and yacht with them, conduct a Boccaccio intrigue through the height of the season, and make them really believe themselves actually in love while they were at the moors or down the Nile, and would have given their diamonds ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... with such relief, such satisfaction, that she expected to end it in the tranquillity of Teackle Hall, like some young eagle returned to her nest with abundant prey for the old birds there, worn out with storm and time. In place of love and healing nature, Vesta had found worldliness, resentment, intrigue, and aspersion, concluding with a reference to the one object she feared and shrank from—the hat of dark entail, the shadow upon her future life. Her eyes filled up, ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... moment. Should she tell him she knew, or should she keep up the pretence a little longer? Her insatiable love of intrigue won. ...
— Jerry • Jean Webster

... fancied that he had some intrigue on foot, and I wasn't sorry to help him deceive a woman whom I detested, ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau

... proposed to the people was, to which would they belong? Our language and our religion were against us; our unaccommodating manners, it is to be feared, still more so. The French were better politicians. In intrigue they have ever been unrivalled; and it now became apparent that, in spite of old wrongs, which ought never to have been forgotten nor forgiven, their partisans were daily acquiring strength. It is part of ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey

... year 1710 the Queen was prevailed upon to change her Parliament and her Ministry. The intrigue of the Earl of Oxford might facilitate the means, the violent prosecution of Sacheverel, and other unpopular measures, might create the occasion and encourage her in the resolution; but the true original ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke

... Yes, I angled for you as the fisherman plays with the trout. Nor did I overlook the danger of deception. You were faithful on the whole; though I protest against your ever again acting so much against my interests as to intrigue to keep the game from ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper

... present age, will by degrees languish into obscurity in the next. For though naked and bare-faced vanity; though an active exertion of little arts, and the most unremitting perseverance in them; though party, cabal, and intrigue; though accidental advantages, and even whimsical circumstances; may conspire to make a very moderate genius the idol of the implicit multitude: works that lean upon such fickle props, that stand upon such a false foundation, will not be long able to ...
— Essays on Taste • John Gilbert Cooper, John Armstrong, Ralph Cohen

... the heartiness of his laugh, and to whom Wogan had been drawn because of his simplicity. There was no simplicity in Henry Whittington's face now. It remained above the edge of the step staring at them with a look of crafty triumph, a very image of intrigue. Then ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason

... Raillery, is to speak of a Man's Faults as if you loved him. Of this Nature is what was said by Caesar: When one was railing with an uncourtly Vehemence, and broke out, What must we call him who was taken in an Intrigue with another Man's Wife? Caesar answered very gravely, A careless Fellow. This was at once a Reprimand for speaking of a Crime which in those Days had not the Abhorrence attending it as it ought, as well as an Intimation that all intemperate Behaviour before Superiors ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... quality which in its peculiar variation must be called his personal quality. It is the sense of this in each of his successive books which deepens his hold upon the reader, and not the style, or the characters, or the intrigue. As long as this personal quality delights, he is new whether he breaks new ground or not, or he is newly welcome. With his own generation, with the readers who began young with him and have grown old with him, he is always safe. But there is danger for him with ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells

... the scandal relating to Julia, daughter of the emperor. It is probable that the proximity of these two events tended to intensify the imperial displeasure, and when some time later there was made public the intrigue of the emperor's granddaughter, the indignation of Augustus gave itself vent in ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... has well enough preserved the unity of action. He has not, indeed, an intrigue regularly perplexed and regularly unravelled; he does not endeavour to hide his design only to discover it, for this is seldom the order of real events, and Shakespeare is the poet of nature: But his plan ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson

... gave him the advice recorded. She was French, from the neighbourhood of Arles, and of course a Catholic. She had come to London originally as lady's-maid to a Russian family settled at Nice. Shortly after their arrival, her master shot his young wife for a supposed intrigue, and then put an end to himself. Naturally the whole establishment was scattered, and the pretty Louise Suveret found herself alone, with a few pounds, in London. Thanks to the kind offices of the book-keeper in the hotel where they had been staying, she had been introduced to a milliner of repute ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... might now be secured by the restoration of Hanover to England. Suddenly, however, on the thirteenth of September, 1806, Fox died, and by the incoming of Lauderdale the whole complexion was changed. Toryism again ran rampant. The Anglo-Russo-Prussian intrigue was renewed, and the rash Frederick William sent a peremptory challenge to Napoleon to get himself ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various

... she wrought out what was, to her apprehension, the most powerful book she ever composed,—a story of the Civil War. She was a Unionist in every thought and sentiment, and this she proclaimed; she had had unusual opportunities of seeing behind the scenes of political intrigue, and she had improved them. When the last chapter was written she carried the MS. into her husband's study at dusk one evening, and began to read it aloud to him. She finished it at two o'clock a.m. Her auditor would not let her pause until then. Hoarse, but with a heart beating high with ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland

... in her early years, at an age when Mr. Slope was thinking of the second book of Euclid and his unpaid bill at the buttery hatch. In age the lady was younger than the gentleman, but in feelings, in knowledge of the affairs of love, in intrigue, he was immeasurably her junior. It was necessary to her to have some man at her feet. It was the one customary excitement of her life. She delighted in the exercise of power which this gave her; it was now nearly the only food for her ambition; she would ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... a second edition of the "Times" as they approached London, and favoured his fellow-travellers with the news of the change of ministry. There was much excitement, and the purchaser of the paper gave it as his opinion, "that it was an intrigue of the Court and the Tories, and would never do." Another modestly intimated that he thought there was a decided reaction. A third announced that England would never submit to be ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli

... Constantine, the danger of multiplying the number of sovereigns, and the impending mischiefs which threatened the republic, from the discord of so many rival princes, who were not connected by the tender sympathy of fraternal affection. The intrigue was conducted with zeal and secrecy, till a loud and unanimous declaration was procured from the troops, that they would suffer none except the sons of their lamented monarch to reign over the Roman empire. The younger Dalmatius, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... the Court (WARD, LOCK) Mr. FRED M. WHITE contrives effectively to entangle our interest in one of those webs of facile intrigue from which the reader escapes only at the last line of the last page, muttering at he lays the volume down and observes with concern that it is 2.30 A.M., "What rot!" The title of the story is misleading. There is no Court, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 3, 1917 • Various

... slice of Roman life, without any preoccupation, whatever one may say of it, with reform and satire, without the need of any studied end, or of morality; this story without intrigue or action, portraying the adventures of evil persons, analyzing with a calm finesse the joys and sorrows of these lovers and couples, depicting life in a splendidly wrought language without surrendering himself to any commentary, without approving or cursing ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... confidence, and you married his alleged daughter. John Minute discovered this fact, not that he was aware that it was his own daughter, or that he thought that your association with my sister was any more than an intrigue beneath the dignity of his nephew. You did not think the time was ripe to spring a son-in-law upon him, and so you waited until you had seen his will. In that will he made no mention of a daughter, because the child had been born after his ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace

... Not through low intrigue, through cunning skill, through laborious effort, have I attained the fulfilment of my wishes; but suddenly and unlocked for, as I have ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... and your concern for the proprieties are creditable to your up-bringing. But how ungenerous of you to suspect me of wishing to mix you up with anything even remotely bordering upon an intrigue, a vulgar liaison! One thing I am not, my boy; one thing I may, with a degree of assurance, say for myself, and that is that with all my ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson

... before Christ, and a contemporary, according to Galen, of Herophilus and Erasistratus. He gave great attention to the anatomy and physiology of the nervous system. There was, however, another Eudemus, a physician of Rome, who became entangled in an intrigue with the wife of the son of the Emperor Tiberius. He aided her in an attempt to poison her husband in A.D. 23. He was put to torture, and finally executed ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott

... VIII. made no haste to lend him countenance until it seemed almost certain that there was to be a war with England on a great scale; and he had no hesitation in dismissing the pretender when peace was concluded; while the Spanish sovereigns, though quite ready to intrigue against their Tudor ally, had no intention of committing themselves to an open breach with him. The peace, however, which dismissed Perkin from France, gave him a zealous adherent in the person of Maximilian, who was now ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... George, his nerves quivering with excitement at the news so long looked for, so sudden when it came. What were love and intrigue now? He thought about a thousand things but these in his rapid walk to his quarters: his past life and future chances—the fate which might be before him—the wife, the child perhaps, from whom unseen he ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various

... would avoid entering into any discussion—he felt sure that he should be regarded with extreme jealousy, not so much by Peel as by the party. He would be looked upon as Lord Bute had been in his relation to George III.,—always suspected of secret intercourse and intrigue. He would make me the medium of any ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria

... retired to Shikarpoor, which the Ameers of Sinde ceded to him; where, in place of conducting himself with prudence, he was so addicted to low intrigue with those about him, that his enemies availed themselves of this propensity to effect his ruin, and drove him from Shikarpoor, when, crossing the Indus, he fled through the desert by Juydalmeer, and returned to Loodiana. "The ...
— Campaign of the Indus • T.W.E. Holdsworth

... Kingdom of Italy, and the Cardinal set out for Milan. He was, however, artful enough to convince his Sovereign of the propriety of having his grand almoner by his side; and he is, therefore, obliged to this intrigue of his enemies that he now disposes of the benefices in the Kingdom of Italy, as well as ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... that county—Miss (or, as she was called by the fashion of the day Mistress) Elizabeth Culling, of Hertingfordbury Park. But little is known of this woman. Her age is an affair of uncertainty, and all the minor circumstances of her intrigue with young William Cowper are open to doubt and conjecture; but the few known facts justify the inference that she neither merited nor found much pity in her disgrace, and that William erred through boyish indiscretion ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... rank. The arms were those of the Ostermann family, and this dirty old man in the ragged cloak was Count Ostermann, the famous Russian statesman, the son of a German preacher, who had managed by wisdom, cunning, and intrigue to continue in place under five successive Russian emperors or regents, most of whom had usually been thrust from power by some bloody means. Czar Peter, who first appointed him as a minister of state, and confided to him the department of foreign affairs, on his death-bed said to his successor, ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... First in 1382 one Lopez, a captain of Seville sailing to Gallicia, was driven by a tempest to Grand Canary, and lived among the natives seven years till he and his men were denounced for writing home and inviting rescue. To stop this intrigue they, the "thirteen Christian brothers" whose testament reached Bethencourt twelve years later, were all massacred. News of this and of the voyage of a Spaniard named Becarra to the same islands at the same time, reached Rochelle about 1400, and found several French adventurers ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley

... noble a chief, as true a counsellor as ever spoke truth to a Queen. But truth is not all at Court, and Sussex was no flatterer. Leicester bowed under the storm for a moment when Sussex showed him in his true colours; but Sussex had no gift of intrigue, the tide turned, and so he broke his heart, and died. But he left a message which I sometimes remember with my collects. 'I am now passing to another world,' said he, 'and must leave you to your fortunes and to the Queen's grace and goodness; but beware the Gipsy, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... capital, besides increasing the taxes paid to the Government to L5,000. The peasantry likewise benefited, being assured of protection and prompt return for their labours. This state of prosperity produced local intrigue and jealousies. Actions of ejectment were brought to which the government title-deeds proved no bar. Journeys to Constantinople, and endless special commissions were the result, and it was only after a liberal expenditure of money, time, and labour, that the ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various

... foreigner, and almost friendless—unlucky, indeed, in the choice of the few friends I possessed. Chief of them was the Marquis de Beauvais, concerning whom I soon made two discoveries—that he was in the thick of an intrigue against the republic I served, and its First Consul, and that he was in love with Marie de Meudon, my dead ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various

... 1897 till 1900. This state of repression caused unrest throughout the country. All its energies were absorbed in fruitless political party strife, and no material or moral progress was possible. King Alexander, distracted, solitary, and helpless in the midst of this unending welter of political intrigue, committed an extremely imprudent act in the summer of 1900. Having gone for much-needed relaxation to see his mother at Biarritz, he fell violently in love with her lady in waiting, Madame Draga Ma[)s]in, the divorced wife of a Serbian officer. Her somewhat equivocal ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth

... of his pieces, except, perhaps, Voltaire alone. I do not speak of Alfleri so much as a poet as a dramaturgus. I may be mistaken, and it is, perhaps, presumptuous in me to attempt to judge, but it has always appeared to me that Voltaire and Alfieri have managed dramatic effect and the intrigue and catastrophe of their tragedies better than any other authors. Shakespeare, God as he is in genius, is in this particular very deficient. Schiller, too, the greatest modern poetic genius perhaps and the Shakespeare ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye

... assure you, can with less truth be denominated popular movements, than many of these scenes, which have, notwithstanding, powerfully influenced the fate of our country. A revolt, or insurrection, is often only an affair of intrigue and arrangement; and the desultory violences of the suburbs of St. Antoine, or of the market women, are regulated by the same Committee and cabals that direct our campaigns and treaties. The common distresses of the people are continually ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... precious now, both as supplying the key by which we can understand the fragment that has been worked out, and as in itself giving us a glimpse, wonderfully fascinating, of its evolution. The Ivory Tower (called so characteristically after an object whose bearing upon the intrigue is of the slightest) is a study of wealth in its effect upon the mutual relations of a small group of persons belonging to the plutocracy of pre-war America. Its special motive was to be a development of situation as between a young ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov 21, 1917 • Various

... dreaded political change, all who hated religious liberty, rallied round him then, as they rally round him now. Their cry was then, as now, that a government unfriendly to the civil and ecclesiastical constitution of the realm was kept in power by intrigue and court favour, and that the right honourable Baronet was the man to whom the nation must look to defend its laws against revolutionists, and its religion against idolaters. At length that cry became irresistible. Tory animosity had pursued the most accomplished of Tory statesmen ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... a trial for high treason, a trial of which no one could doubt the purpose and end. The examination of accomplices revealed speeches, proposals, projects, not very intelligible to us in the still imperfectly understood game of intrigue that was going on among all parties at the end of Elizabeth's reign, but quite enough to place Essex at the mercy of the Government and the offended Queen. "The new information," says Mr. Spedding, "had been immediately communicated to Coke and Bacon." Coke, as Attorney-General, of course ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church

... could decide upon just what theory his wife had acted; he had to rest upon the fact, already known to him, of her perfect truth and conscientiousness, and his perception that even in a good woman the passion for manoeuvring and intrigue may approach the point at which men commit forgery. He now saw her quelled and submissive; but he was by no means sure that she looked at the affair as he did, or that she ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells

... apparently ignoring his continued existence, and yet apparently knowing enough of his movements to avoid him when he came to London by suddenly removing "into the country" without leaving his address. What was the meaning of so much mystery? Crime? debt? political intrigue? or, what? ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban

... her also there came a change, and it grew as she saw and appreciated the man in him. Her caprices fell from her, and she was the shrewd woman of the world, a deft creature of courts, a cunning weaver of the delicate skeins of intrigue and politics. A glint of craft and purpose struck from the gray eyes, as in preparation for battle. Her mischievous bantering had really been fraught with design, and by it she had revealed to herself this man. But the change in her ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... of the succeeding Parliament were so short and so busy that little was said about India in either House. But, out of Parliament, all the arts both of controversy and of intrigue were employed on both sides. Almost as many pamphlets were published about the India trade as about the oaths. The despot of Leadenhall Street was libelled in prose and verse. Wretched puns were made on his name. He was compared to ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... the accident, and the Radway family returned to England with their son's body, satisfied that he had gone to Roscarna for the grouse shooting on the invitation of people who, in spite of their questionable appearance, were actually connected with the Halbertons, and thankful that no element of intrigue or passion had ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young

... afternoon of my arrival we drove out, as formerly, and he discussed some of the old subjects in quite the old way. He had been rereading Macaulay, he said, and spoke at considerable length of the hypocrisy and intrigue of the English court under James II. He spoke, too, of the Redding Library. I had sold for him that portion of the land where Jean's farm-house had stood, and it was in his mind to use the money for some sort of a memorial to Jean. I had written, suggesting ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... characterizes as perhaps of all his plays "the most purely poetical, in spite of the excess of esprit, and the one in which fancy is the freest."[62] It was greeted by the public with enthusiasm, and even such severe critics of Marivaux as La Harpe could find little to say against it,—that it "lacked intrigue" and had a "weak denouement " possibly, but after all that he had made of Harlequin, "of that ideal personage, who up to that time had only known how to provoke laughter," an "interesting" character ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux

... race is peculiar in Egypt and famed for trickery and intrigue. Opportunity here as elsewhere makes ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... statutes with a new vigor, and those statutes were greatly strengthened in restricting the exportation of arms and munitions by the joint resolution of last March. It is still a regrettable fact that certain American ports are made the rendezvous of professional revolutionists and others engaged in intrigue against the peace of those Republics. It must be admitted that occasionally a revolution in this region is justified as a real popular movement to throw off the shackles of a vicious and tyrannical government. Such was the Nicaraguan revolution against the Zelaya regime. A nation enjoying our ...
— State of the Union Addresses of William H. Taft • William H. Taft

... the currents of intrigue that made up a campaign in the great city; not to mention the hidden forces whose current no human could discern. Arthur went about exercising his talent for oratory in behalf of Birmingham, and found consolation ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith

... that a complete imbroglio, worthy of a romance, seems ever threatening to appear upon my monotonous horizon; a regular intrigue seems ever ready to explode in the midst of this little world of mousmes and grasshoppers: Chrysantheme in love with Yves; Yves with Chrysantheme; Oyouki with me; I with no one. We might even find here, ready to hand, the elements of a fratricidal ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti

... a silly, romantic, headstrong girl,—my parents were compelled to go abroad, and I was left in the charge of one of my mother's society friends—a thoroughly worldly, unprincipled woman whose life was made up of intrigue and gambling. And I ran away with a ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli

... the Duke of Rothsay, incensed at the sacrifice of his hand and his inclinations to this state intrigue, took his own mode of venting his displeasure, by neglecting his wife, contemning his formidable and dangerous father in law, and showing little respect to the authority of the King himself, and none whatever to the remonstrances of Albany, ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... tells us) "danced nobly." Pride swells us To think our young guest is a true ATTA TROLL; No Bugbear, though shaggy, a trifle breech-baggy, And not altogether a dandyish doll; No Afghan intrigue, dear, or shy Native league, dear, Has brought Bruin's foot o'er our frontier to dance: He comes freely, boldly—don't look on him coldly, Or make him suspect there is fear in ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., February 7, 1891 • Various

... been chased away with mockery. And he had no sooner admitted it now than he drove it out again. He was simply afraid of it—in terror lest any suspicion of it should reach Elizabeth. Her loyalty, her single-mindedness, her freedom from the smallest taint of intrigue—he would have answered for them with all he possessed. If, for a moment, she chose to think that he had misinterpreted her kindness, her services in any vile and vulgar way, why, he might lose her on the instant! Let him walk warily—do nothing at least to destroy the friend ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Sally. She was determined that Sally should not be Lady Mount Rorke, and she thrilled a little when she saw he would not give her up easily, and her heart sank when she thought of the difficulty of continuing her intrigue without prejudicing her future. If Frank would only leave Southwick for ...
— Spring Days • George Moore

... every institution he combated and to use every weapon that he execrated when employed by others. The most fertile of law-givers himself, he could not tolerate another. Pope of Popes in his little inner circle, he could brook no rival. Machiavelli's Prince was no richer in intrigue than Bakounin; yet he always fancied himself, with the greatest self-compassion, as the naive victim of the endless and malicious intrigues of others. However affectionate, generous, and open he seemed to be with ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter

... the right kind of a mind, Dan, to sabe women of her sort. It takes a Latin to do that. There's natural craft and intrigue enough of the feminine in the southern races to follow their illogical reasoning and to understand their moods and caprices as an Anglo-Saxon never can. You are like a big, blundering, honest watch-dog, Dan, trying to do field work that requires a trained hunting dog with ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart

... tolerantly austere in the practice of its duty and charity, living in the world to console and edify it, without mingling in its joys and passions—but a clergy such as intrigue, cupidity, and ambition had made it; that is to say, the court abbes, rivalling the Roman priests, indolent, libertine, elegant, impudent, kings of fashion, autocrats of the salon, kissing the hands of those ladies of whom they ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas

... together, arising from the French revolution, from the approaching harmony of the two nations, the abolition of court intrigue on both sides, and the progress of knowledge in the science of governing, the annual expenditure might be put back to one million and a half—half a million each for Navy, Army, and expenses ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various

... red men is their continence. We have every year fourteen or fifteen of their chiefs in this city, to form treaties, and other public business. They are often attended with well-made young men in the prime of life, and yet I never heard but of one instance of their engaging in a love-intrigue of any kind. They frequently tomahawk and scalp the most beautiful women, who are so unfortunate as to fall into their hands in time of war.—Each warrior cuts the number of scalps he has taken on ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest

... States, whose land claims stretched to the Mississippi, and he could secure, in 1787, a vote of only seven States to five in Congress. Since all treaties required the consent of nine States, this vote killed the negotiations. Spain remained unfriendly, and continued to intrigue with the Indian tribes in the south-western United States with a view ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith

... clustering and centering. He seemed, at the moment, oddly beyond either pity or blame. I thought of him as a victim of his own weakness, as the prey of a predaceous and unscrupulous woman who had intrigued and would continue to intrigue against his happiness, a woman away from her own world, a self-complacent and sensual privateer who for a passing whim, for a momentary appeasement of her exile, stood ready to sacrifice the last of his self-respect. She was self-complacent, ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer

... legislative inquiries; but the case will remain as a beacon to all people, who should be taught by it to consider ministers of the Crown, though as amiable in private life as an Addington, as fallible men, liable to be misled by intrigue or passion, and therefore, in a public sense, not to be credited without other evidence than their own assertions. Let an exemplary INSCRIPTION on the tomb of the minister of that day serve therefore to teach all ministers, never wilfully to depart in the most ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips

... got to have her hand in it too. Them Balkans, now," he continued with the splendid deliberation of one who was an authority on international affairs, "them Balkans," he lit his pipe and gave a couple of puffs, "they're nothing but a hot-bed of dissension and intrigue." And having settled Eastern Europe to every one's satisfaction, he threw away his match and ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith

... Rio Negro did not always hold the goods the labels stated, and that Adam's money sometimes helped to float an unpopular government over a crisis and sometimes to turn another out. It was a risky business, carried on with people who had a talent for dark revolutionary intrigue. ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss

... no toys in them and nothing to do. Also, in some mystic fashion, he realized that Andrews would not let Robin play with him if she saw them together, and that, therefore, they must make the most of their time. Full of their joy in each other, they actually embarked upon an ingenious infant intrigue, which involved their trying to meet behind the shrubs if they were brought to the Gardens the next day. Donal was sure he could come because his nurse always did what he asked of her. He was so big now that she was not a real nurse, but ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... movement in the south, while O'Donel was prepared to join the English army on its advance into Ulster; and the Scots, notwithstanding their predilection for Mary Stuart, were expected to act as Argyle and his sister should direct. But Shane had a genius for intrigue as well as Elizabeth, and he was far more rapid than her generals in the execution of his plans. By a master-stroke of policy he disconcerted their arrangements. He had previously asked the Earl of Argyle to give him his daughter in marriage, in order that he might ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin

... is ready to shed his blood for the land of the palmetto. But he will not degrade himself by low intrigue ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage

... incumbent would be always busy keeping his influence in repair to secure reappointment, and the applicant would be equally busy in seeking such influence to procure the place, and as the fixed terms would be constantly expiring, the eager and angry intrigue and contest of influence would be as endless as it is now. This certainly ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various

... in the history of national genius to discover a people with such a native fund of comic humour, combined with such passionate gesticulation, that they could deeply interest in acting a Comedy, carried on by dialogue, intrigue, and character, all' improvista, or impromptu; the actors undergoing no rehearsal, and, in fact, composing while they were acting. The plot, called Scenario, consisting merely of the scenes enumerated, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... American army officers look out expectantly for the arrival of the transport that is to bring them their promotions, or to take them home, Geronimo de Silva was confined for not pursuing the Dutch vessels after the sea fight off Corregidor. The crumbling walls still whisper of intrigue and secrecy. The fort was built in 1587, and became the base of operations, not only against the pirate fleets of the Chinese, the Moros, and the Dutch, but also in the riots of the Chinese and the Japanese that broke out frequently ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert



Words linked to "Intrigue" :   secret plan, matter to, game, interest, plot, seize, machination, scheme, fascinate, romance, love affair, grab, priestcraft, connive



Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org