"Intriguer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... plotter and a scheming intriguer in his own interests, Chatellerault, as I have said before, was not by nature a quick man. His wits worked slowly, and he needed leisure to consider a situation and his actions therein ere he was in a position to ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... King entered Gowrie House early, and scantly attended, he might have been conveyed across Fife, disguised, in the train of Gowrie as he went to Dirleton. Thence he might be conveyed by sea to Fastcastle, the impregnable eyrie of Gowrie's and Bothwell's old ally, the reckless intriguer, Logan of Restalrig. The famous letters which Scott, Tytler, and Hill Burton regarded as proof of that plot, I have shown, by comparison of handwritings, to be all forged; but one of them, claimed by the forger as his model for the rest, is, I think, ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... thankful that the message had not fallen into the hands of the zemindar, else had the intriguer's identity been quickly determined and ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... We cannot but surmise that he has met sometime and somewhere a living man with some of the characteristic traits of Father Terence. Father Ignatius, the conventional type of the dark, wily, and dangerous ecclesiastical intriguer, is an easier subject, but not so well done. He is a little too melodramatic; and we apply with peculiar force to him a criticism to which all the characters are more or less obnoxious, that he is too constantly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... surprise and horror; his sentiments had been shocked to the last degree; the hopeful tenderness with which he had taken his place upon the bench was transformed into repulsion and despair; old Mr. Scrymgeour, he reflected, was a far more kindly and creditable parent than this dangerous and violent intriguer; but he retained his presence of mind, and suffered not a moment to elapse before he was on ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Polly, who had heretofore met him with venomous looks and stinging words, were balm to his soul. He felt well-satisfied with himself and kindly toward the whole world. The fiendish torturer of helpless men and harmless beasts, the cold-blooded murderer, the devilish intriguer to incriminate an innocent man, thought that he was a very good fellow, after all; much better than, say, such a man as Jack Payson. He had at least always treated women white, and had never gone back on a friend. When he thought how Payson ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... step-mother to the greater number of her children. He whom fortune has placed in an obscure station is ignorant of that ambition which devours the courtier; knows nothing of the inquietude which deprives the intriguer of his rest; is a stranger to the remorse, an alien to the disgust, is unconscious of the weariness of the man, who, enriched with the spoils of a nation, does not know how to turn them to his profit. The more the body labours, the more the imagination reposes itself; it is the diversity ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... Gondremark completely; she had still held it possible to find him false to friendship; but from that to finding him devoid of all those public virtues for which she had honoured him, a mere commonplace intriguer, using her for his own ends, the step was wide and the descent giddy. Light and darkness succeeded each other in her brain; now she believed, and now she could not. She turned, blindly groping for the note. But von Rosen, who had not forgotten to take the warrant from the Prince, had ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... stage in her brilliant career that the Duchesse came under the spell of the Comte de Vaudreuil—handsome, courtly, an intriguer to his finger-tips, a man of many accomplishments, of a supple tongue, and with great wealth to lend a glamour to his gifts. A man of rare fascination, and as dangerous as he ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... well-artilleried", to revenge the honour of the English navy, and after a severe fight Bull and his vessels were captured by the Scots. There was thus considerable irritation on both sides, and while the veteran intriguer, the Duchess of Burgundy, attempted to obtain James's assistance for the pretender, Perkin Warbeck, the pseudo-Duke of York, Henry entered into a compact with Archibald, Earl of Angus, well-known to readers of Marmion. The treachery of Angus led, however, to no immediate ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait
... in the satisfaction of his appetites, whether for food or wine. He is no debauchee, no voluptuary, no gambler. He is faithful to old friends and comrades. He has high ideals, and is not ashamed of them. He is neither indolent nor fussy; neither a cynic, nor an intriguer, nor a fool; he is neither wrong-headed nor stubborn; he is honest and sincere to a degree that does him honour as a man, if it has sometimes proved perilous and blameworthy in him as a monarch. He is optimistic, and on good grounds. He is no physical ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... compound of incongruous qualities—at once enthusiast and philosopher, statesman and intriguer, a model of chivalrous courage, and a profound dissembler. We cannot compass his character by adopting the wayward estimate given of him by Anthony a Wood, who tells us that his common nickname was Sir Humorous Vanity, and who dismisses him as "a ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... to Chloe of the proposed trip to Snare Lake, and bitterly he regretted the enforced delay incident to outfitting the trappers. And always, with the skill and finesse of the born intriguer, by a smile, a suggestion, or an adroitly worded question, he managed to foster and to intensify her hatred for ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... came in for the most cock. She was small-boned, skinny, and her face had the expression that people have when they have just taken medicine. Under other circumstances I should never have noticed her, but the extreme smallness of her cunt was a novelty. I thought at first she was a regular intriguer, but came to the conclusion that I had had the first of her; and that until then she had been a masturbatrix, and frigged her flesh off her bones. Rub her clitoris for a second, her eyes would open wide and roll with such intense voluptuousness that for a moment her ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... first been abandoned by the French under Lauzan, as utterly indefensible. That gay intriguer desired nothing so much as to follow the King to Prance, while Tyrconnell, broken down with physical suffering and mental anxiety, feebly concurred in his opinion. They accordingly departed for Galway, leaving the city to its fate, and, happily ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... brains out. The humor lies in Estifania's having ordered the Old Woman to tell these tales of her; for though an intriguer, she is not represented as other than chaste; and as to the metre, ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... there is the Sundal Malam, or Polianthes Tuberosa. This flower, being the same with our own tuberose, can have no place among those that are unknown in Europe; but I mention it for its Malay name, which signifies "Intriguer of the night," and is not inelegantly conceived. The heat of this climate is so great, that few flowers exhale their sweets in the day; and this in particular, from its total want of scent at that time, and the modesty of its colour, which is white, seems negligent ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... still engaged in the bustle of politics & in turbulence & intrigue against the government. I never believed for a moment that this could make any impression on you, or that your knowledge of me would not overweigh the slander of an intriguer dirtily employed in sifting the conversations of my ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... The third intriguer was General Charles Lee, who, like Gates, was an Englishman, and had served under General Braddock, being in the disaster of Fort Duquesne. When the Revolution broke out, he took sides with the Americans, and being a glib and forth-putting ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... old intriguer with a nervous cough, "yes, I—you see, it had been reported to me that Mr. Maginnis had threatened to horsewhip me in the public square, after my attempt to buy the paper and save us all from scandal. So naturally, on the afternoon ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... political impostor and intriguer. You want to lead me on into philosophy and enthusiasm and to bring about a reconciliation so as to disperse my anger, and then, when I am reconciled with you, beg from me a note to say I ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Italians, we know that Paesiello, who was a famous intriguer against his musical rivals, was a devoted husband whose wife was an invalid and who died soon after her death. Cherubini married Mademoiselle Cecile Turette, when he was thirty-five, and the marriage was not a success. ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... resignation thus became more necessary than ever, and Mr. Lansing, hitherto head of the State Department of Justice, replaced him. American opinion, however, laid the chief blame for what had occurred on Dr. Dumba, who was henceforward regarded as a dangerous intriguer. ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... if a hand were crushing the heart in her bosom. This man whom she had trusted, this peerless champion of her cause, to be nothing but a self-seeker, an intriguer, who, to advance his own ends, had made a pawn of her. She thought of how for a moment he had held her in his arms and kissed her, and at that her whole soul revolted against the notion that here ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... are to be tolerated by us in others just in the measure that, within the limits set by discretion, they are frank and truthful and animated by spontaneous passion and pervaded by the quality of beauty. I hate the vulgar sexual intriguer, man or woman, and the smart and shallow atmosphere of unloving lust and vanity about the type as I hate few kinds of human life; I would as lief have a polecat in my home as this sort of person; and every sort ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... impudence won his admiration. Such a woman, he thought, was worthy of a better fate than that which put her in the position of a bought intriguer. But Cynthia was near, waving her hands gleefully, and executing a nymph-like thanksgiving dance on a strip of turf by the roadside, so Medenham's views of Mrs. Devar's previous actions were tempered by conditions extraordinarily favorable to ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... plain speaking. It argued no ordinary confidence on the part of the intriguer to speak in such a fashion of the Autocrat of All ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... the Master Intriguer, "since if Your Majesty were, you would realize the inadvisability of an effort to land the game fish too abruptly when he takes the hook. Your Majesty, however, realizes that it is wiser to eat ripe ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... that ugly entanglement before the Renaissance, from which, alas, most memories of the Middle Ages are derived. Louis XI was a very patient and practical man of the world; but (like many good business men) he was mad. The morbidity of the intriguer and the torturer clung about everything he did, even when it was right. And just as the great Empire of Antoninus and Aurelius never wiped out Nero, so even the silver splendour of the latter saints, such as Vincent de Paul, has never painted out ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... likely to be in love, for he is a mere boy. But he won't write anonymous letters to the old lady; that would be too audacious a thing for him to attempt; but I dare swear the very first thing he did was to show me up to Aglaya as a base deceiver and intriguer. I confess I was fool enough to attempt something through him at first. I thought he would throw himself into my service out of revengeful feelings towards the prince, the sly little beast! But I know him better now. As for the theft, he may have heard of it from the widow in Petersburg, ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... enough for me to tell you," replied Bridgenorth, "and perhaps it is a word too much—that you are a discovered intriguer—a spied spy—who carries tokens and messages betwixt the Popish Countess of Derby and the Catholic party in London. You have not conducted your matters with such discretion, but that this is well known, and can be sufficiently proved. ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... case: on the contrary, it seems to show either a subtle delight in falsehood for falsehood's sake, or else the wary artifices of a man who, having a deadly secret to conceal, employs many turnings and windings to throw the world off the scent. What intriguer, having a crime to cover, could devise a more artful course than to send half a dozen absurd stories to the press, which should, after a while, be traced back to himself, till the public should gradually look on all it heard from him as the result ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... had played the part of supers. But slight as was the episode, it had all the attraction of the unknown for me. Of Tournebut and its owners I knew nothing. Who, in reality, was this Mme. de Combray, sanctified by Balzac? A fanatic, or an intriguer?—And her daughter Mme. Acquet? A heroine or a lunatic?—and the lover? A hero or an adventurer?—And the husband, the lawyer and the friends of the house? Mme. Acquet more than all piqued my curiosity. The daughter of a good house disguised as a ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... too well that the man walking at his side was as clever an intriguer and as bold an adventurer as had ever moved up and down Europe "working the game" in search of pigeons to pluck. His shabbiness was assumed. He had alighted at Bordighera station from the rapide from Paris, spent the night at a third-rate hotel in order not to be recognised ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... hate a slimy but harmless toad or a stinging fly? It seemed ridiculous, contemptible and pitiable to think of hate in connection with the melancholy figure of this discomfited intriguer, this fallen leader of ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... the veteran grasps the sword wherewith he shore "the stalwart Englisher," strive with him in that strong yearning to whirl it aloft, sink with him in the instant, nerveless reaction, and sorrow that "a child could slay Richelieu now!" He is not the intriguer of dark tradition, wily and cruel for low ambitious ends, but entirely great, in his protection of innocence and longing for affection, and most of all in that supreme love of France to which his other motives are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... veteran intriguer Hardin, as he selects a regalia, "my lady is wary, cautious, and blameless. Danger signals these. I must watch this Villa Rocca. Is he a 'cavalier servente'? Can he mean mischief? She would not marry ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... styles this work "a novel without a hero." The whole action of the story, which is without plot or development, revolves about two women,—Amelia, a meek creature of the milk-and-water type, and Becky Sharp, a keen, unprincipled intriguer, who lets nothing stand in the way of her selfish desire to get the most out of the fools who largely constitute society. On the whole, it is the most powerful but not the most ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... poison, which led him to his death amidst long-drawn agonies eight days later. This ought to have been the death of Mahdism as well, but superstitions die hard in that land of fanatics. The Mahdi's factotum, an able intriguer named Abdullah Taashi, had previously gained from his master a written declaration that he was to be Khalifa after him; he now produced this document, and fortified its influence by describing in great detail a vision in which the ghost of the Mahdi handed him a sacred ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... public life who would not remain an official of the Government and bring about a break with America. Zimmermann, however, was a different type of official. Zimmermann, like the Chancellor, is ambitious, bigoted, cold-blooded and an intriguer of the first calibre. As long as he was Under Secretary of State he fought von Jagow and tried repeatedly to oust him. So it was not surprising to Americans when they heard that Zimmermann had succeeded ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... outrage upon himself, Dan was too loyal and generous of nature to be pleased with this description of his native place. But Carne, too quick of temper for a really fine intriguer, cut short ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... namely, that the latter seems very like a device to throw the British Ministry off its guard. The terms of the two notes are widely divergent; and, in such a case, Pitt naturally accepted that of Lebrun and scouted that of Maret, as of a busybody or an intriguer. Grenville objected to this double-dealing;[174] and probably the presence of Burke at the Cabinet meeting sharpened ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... was Mr. Patch, Towle's secretary and factotum, his exact opposite in every way. Where Towle was brutally straight to the point, Mr. Patch was as smooth an intriguer as ever connected himself with secrets by way of keyholes and transoms. It is a Beacon Hill tradition that for years Towle on final-payment day would have the members of the Massachusetts Legislature march through his private offices one at a time, and, handing each of them their ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... yield a clue to his identity. Louis XV. is said to have told Madame de Pompadour that the Mask was 'the minister of an Italian prince.' Louis XVI. told Marie Antoinette (according to Madame de Campan) that the Mask was a Mantuan intriguer, the same person as Louis XV. indicated. Perhaps he was, it is one of two possible alternatives. Voltaire, in the first edition of his 'Siecle de Louis XIV.,' merely spoke of a young, handsome, masked prisoner, treated with the highest respect by Louvois, the Minister ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... Begam Sahib, was the elder daughter of Shahjahan, a very able intriguer, the partisan of Dara Shikoh and the opponent of Aurangzeb during the struggle for the throne. She was closely confined in Agra till her father's death in 1666. After that event she was removed to Delhi, where she died in 1682. (Tavernier, Travels, transl. Ball, vol. i, p. 345.) She built the ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... was a mere intriguer, without talent or ability, living but in the moment, often caught in her own snares; according to others, by her intelligence, ability, and strength of character she advanced a cause truly national—that of French unity; thus, she worked either the ruin or the ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... in so far as I have met him in fiction, has usually been a highly successful intriguer on behalf of anyone prepared to make the necessary bargain. Sir RONALD ROSS, however, to judge from the rather confused mediaeval happenings in the Alps which are faithfully described in The Revels of Orsera (MURRAY), has rather a low opinion of the intelligence of Mephistopheles. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 8th, 1920 • Various
... Chevaliergarde; the young captain of the Cadets a Cheval. Among the Wirtemberg courtiers were seated various members of the Prussian suite: Grumbkow, the powerful favourite; General Doenhoff; and the Austrian Ambassador at Berlin, Count Seckendorff, who always followed Friedrich Wilhelm I., a spy and intriguer in ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... General Warren his chief-of-staff. For the first time in this war, in-doors and out-doors, a man for the place. I never saw Warren, but have heard much in his favor. Then he is young. Then he is not conceited. Then he is no intriguer. Then he is fighting always and everywhere. Then he speaks not of strategy. A brighter promise. Genuine science and intelligence dawn on our muddy, dark, ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... most enduring fame from Galileo's deduction of a great natural law from the swinging lamp before its altar, was not an archbishop after the noble mould of Borromeo and Fenelon and Cheverus. Sadly enough for the Church and humanity, he was simply a zealot and intriguer: he perfected the plan for entrapping the ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... women and a few men who call you a cynic; who speak of "the withered world of Thackerayan satire;" who think your eyes were ever turned to the sordid aspects of life—to the mother-in-law who threatens to "take away her silver bread-basket;" to the intriguer, the sneak, the termagant; to the Beckys, and Barnes Newcomes, and Mrs. Mackenzies of this world. The quarrel of these sentimentalists is really with life, not with you; they might as wisely blame Monsieur Buffon because there are snakes in his Natural History. Had you not impaled certain ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... of intrigue is certainly well calculated to effect the all-desired short duration of an important action. For the intriguer is ever expeditious, and loses no time in attaining to his object. But the mighty course of human destinies proceeds, like the change of seasons, with measured pace: great designs ripen slowly; stealthily ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... the Balhaldie faction of Jacobites, who were more in touch with the French Court than his own associates. Mr. Trant, of whom James Mohr speaks, was really with the Prince, as Pickle also asserts, and as the Stuart Papers prove. Probably he was akin to Olive Trant, a pretty intriguer of 1715, mentioned by Bolingbroke in his famous letter to Wyndham. As to Ireland, James Mohr really did take it on his way to France, though his promises in the name of 'the People of Fingal' are Irish moonshine. Were arms, as James Mohr says, lodged in Clanranald's country, Moidart? Pickle ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... Princess Helen of Serbia, his grand-daughter, happened to be staying. The bombs were carried in an ordinary portmanteau to Kotor, where they were discovered. Those who believed that Nikita, the arch-intriguer, was using this method for discrediting the Karageorgevi['c] dynasty, can point to the fact that he never wanted a public trial, and it seems probable that Nikita—who was aware that a group of his young, discontented subjects was ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... had doubted before; she feared it might be the scheme of some base intriguer; but now her doubts vanished, and ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... from this point the combinations of the states were constantly changing, while Athens and Sparta remained generally on terms of friendliness, the two prominent figures at Athens being the conservative Nicias and the restless and ambitious young intriguer Alcibiades. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... exceptions, the army leaders, from the commander in chief down to the regimental commanders, stood arrayed on the side of the Duma. So clever an intriguer as ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... despoilers, the men of the Quirinal, of being the sole cause of all the frightful misery of Rome. Were not people even talking of the approaching nomination of Deputy Sacco as Minister of Finances—Sacco, that intriguer who had engaged in all sorts of underhand practices? His appointment would be the climax of impudence; bankruptcy would speedily and ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Nothing could be more inopportune, nothing more contrary to the welfare of the distracted country! From the time that the notorious "Spanish marriages" had become facts, the Duke of Montpensier had been an intriguer. The birth of heirs to the throne of Spain (it is useless to go back to those long-past scandals) had completely upset the machinations of Louis Philippe and his Ministers. So long as Don Francisco de Assis and the Spanish nation ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... commencement, this man had been the chief intriguer who had endeavoured to ruin the expedition. He had fraternized with the Baris when they were at open war with the government. He had incited the tribes to attack me, and at length his own companies had fired ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... the politician was really very open and candid in all the affairs of life, in his own estimation he was a very dexterous and dangerous intriguer: he often deceived himself into the belief, that the success, which was in fact the result of his manly candor, was attributable only to his cunning management. He was always forming, and attempting to execute, schemes for circumventing his political opponents; but, if he ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... In the absence of penetrating criticism, any impudent industrious person may set up as an "expert," organise and direct the confused good intentions at large, and muddle disastrously with the problem in hand. The "expert" quack and the bureaucratic intriguer increase and multiply in a dull-minded, uncritical, strenuous period as disease germs ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... in Egypt at this time was not without cause for anxiety. Some months earlier the Khedive Abbas Hilmi, an intriguer against Great Britain, had been replaced by Prince Kamil Hussein, who was proclaimed Sultan under a British protectorate. Sir Arthur Henry McMahon was High Commissioner, but the country was virtually under martial law administered by the G.O.C. in Egypt—Lieut.-General ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... matter in hand. An unwise measure will not become a beneficial law because its author is a saint or a patriot; a statesmanlike law will not turn out a curse to the country because its defender is an intriguer or a traitor. We all see that this is so if we carry our view back to the controversies of the last generation; the personalities of fifty or sixty years ago are reduced before our eyes into their real pettiness. The first Reform Bill still retains its importance for as a measure which for ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... Stael," Swedish Ambassador, with his court, copied from the archives at Stockholm by M. Leouzon-le-Duc. Letter from M. Stael of April 21, 1791: "M. Laclos, secret agent of this wretched prince, (is a) clever and subtle intriguer." April 24: "His agents are more to be feared than himself. Through his bad conduct, he is more of a nuisance than a benefit to ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... agent sent to Moreau was soon arrested; he has said in his "Memoires," "Moreau would have nothing to do with conspiracy, and said, 'he must cease to waste men and things.'" Other emissaries had no better success. An active intriguer, General Lajolais, an old friend of Pichegru, meanwhile left Paris for London; he repeated the bitter words of Moreau respecting the First Consul—words which created illusions and hopes. On the 21st August, 1803, Georges landed at the cliff of Biville, crossing the rocks by the footpaths ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... be regretted that a word, used in the days of Charles II. and still intelligible in our times, should have become obsolete; viz. the feminine for intriguer—an intriguess. See the Life of Lord Keeper North, whose biographer, in speaking of Lord Keeper Bridgeman, says, "And what was worst of all, his family was no way fit for that place (of Chancellor), his lady being a ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... with this veteran intriguer (assuming that John was that 'other disciple') we do not know. Probably it was some family bond that united two such antipathetic natures. At all events, the Apostle's acquaintance with the judge ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... in luminous conjectures. Even with her present mind, Alma could not conceive of Mary Abbott as a wanton, of Harvey Rolfe as a shameless intriguer; but it stung her keenly to think that for years there had been this secret between them. Probably the matter was known to Mrs. Abbott's husband, and so, at his death, it had somehow become possible for Harvey to suggest this arrangement, whereby ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... interest. She was human enough to feel a certain sense of satisfaction on hearing that this woman who treated her with such contempt was herself something of an intriguer. ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... many irons in the fire, great doings, busy hum of men, battle of life, thick of the action. housewife, busy bee; new brooms; sharp fellow, sharp blade; devotee, enthusiast, zealot, meddler, intermeddler, intriguer, busybody, pickthank[obs3]; hummer, hustler, live man [U.S.], rustler * [U. S.]. V. be active &c. adj.; busy oneself in; stir, stir about, stir one's stumps; bestir oneself, rouse oneself; speed, hasten, peg away, lay about one, bustle, fuss; raise up, kick up a dust; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... when they are enumerating the defeats which the party of Hebert was able to inflict upon him in the very bosom of the Mother Club itself. They make him the sanguinary dictator in one sentence, and the humiliated intriguer in the next. The latter is much the more correct account of the two, if we choose to call a man an intriguer who was honestly anxious to suppress what he considered a wicked faction, and yet had need of some dexterity to keep his own ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... foreign policy consequent upon it. He was, in fact, sinking more and more into an apathetic voluptuary; but he could rouse himself, and exhibit some proofs of ability, under the impulse of his brothers, the honest Duke of York and the arch-intriguer, the ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... certainly no friend! and yet, if Clemenceau would only help her a little, she might cope with the arch-intriguer. If, indeed, Felix did not save her, she would be lost. It was a dreadful game, but glorious to win it, and she would be another and worthy woman if she came out unwounded. In her distress, she would have had recourse to the Jew and have utilized Rebecca though ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... life was written, not in her literary studies or her social triumphs, but in various recurrent outbreaks of unbridled impulse—the secret, and in one or two cases the shameful landmarks of her past. And, as persons of experience, they could also have warned you that the cold intriguer, always mistress of herself, only exists in fiction, and that a certain poisoned and fevered interest in the religious leader, the young and pious priest, as such, is common enough among the ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... life of Confucius. His enemies claim that he was a political intriguer, inciting the feudal lords against each other in the course of his wanderings from one state to another, with the intention of somewhere coming into power himself. There may, indeed, ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... played a part. The premier was one of the leading chiefs or "khans" of the Bakhtiyaris, and another chief was the self-styled Minister of War. These chieftains have always been a strange and changing mixture of mountain patriot and city intriguer—of loyal soldier and mercenary looter. The mercenary instincts, possibly aided by a sense of their own comparative helplessness against Russian Cossacks and artillery, led them to accept the stranger's gold and fair promises, and they ended their checkered but theretofore ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... a very busy, and not very honest, Roman Catholic intriguer, had been among the persons accused. Search was made for his papers. It was found that he had just destroyed the greater part of them. But a few which had escaped contained some passages such as, to minds strongly prepossessed, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... part of his "Memoires" down to 1649. In the second part he begins again with 1642, being very anxious to show, to his own advantage of course, what the conditions were at court after the deaths of Richelieu and Louis XIII., and in particular to define the position of Mme de Chevreuse, the great intriguer and seductress of the French politics of the age. The charm of this lady, who was no longer young, faded before that of the Duchess of Longueville, one of the most ambitious and most unscrupulous women who ever lived. She was the sister of the Prince de Conti, and from the time ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... he should be taking himself or life too seriously. His intelligence charmed me, held me, and, later, as we travelled up to Quebec, I found my journey one long feast of interest. He was never dull, and his cynicism had an admirable grace and cordiality. A born intriguer, he still was above intrigue, justifying it on the basis that life was all sport. In logic a leveller, praising the moles, as he called them, the champion of the peasant, the apologist for the bourgeois—who always, he said, had civic virtues—he nevertheless held ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... small body known by the denomination of "trimmers." This conduct, which is more natural to men of integrity than of ambition, could not, however, procure him the former character; and he was always, with reason, regarded as an intriguer rather than a patriot. Sunderland, who had promoted the exclusion bill, and who had been displaced on that account, was again, with the duke's consent, brought into the administration. The extreme duplicity, at least variableness, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... to command. Do as you will!" Monsieur, the uncle, does as he will. It is what he always does. The auspicious nuptials take place; the newly married come home to this charming mansion; the lady is received, let us suppose, by Flintwinch. Hey, old intriguer?' ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... of Commerce at Seville was consulted to learn what number of Africans, Cuba, Santo Domingo, San Juan [Puerto Rico], and Jamaica would require. It was replied that it would be sufficient to send four thousand. This answer being almost immediately made known by some intriguer to the Flemish governor of Bressa, this courtier obtained the monopoly of the trade from the sovereign and sold it to some Genoese for twenty-five thousand ducats on condition that during eight years no other license should ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... no idea of the nature of the affair to which he had been alluding, and I felt no curiosity about it; but it annoyed me that a Jesuit should interfere and try to make my friends do anything otherwise than through my instrumentality, and I wanted that intriguer to know that my influence was greater than ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... mouth of the river Lebo, and fled, with the intention of joining a division of the enemy's army, which he supposed to be at some one of the ports on the south coast of Peru. It was indeed absurd to expect any good faith from such an intriguer; for in his letters at this time, he offered his services to Chili and promised fidelity, while his real intention was still to follow the enemy. He finally left the unhappy province of Conception, the theatre ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... which is the genius of Jesuitism, while it signally advanced the interests of the body, and of the pope, to whom they were devoted, still led to the most detestable and resistless spiritual despotism ever exercised by man. The Jesuit, especially when obscure and humble, was a tool, rather than an intriguer. He was bound hand and foot by the orders of his superiors, and they alone were responsible for ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... the rapacious and tyrannical daughter of Will Murray—of old the whipping-boy of Charles I., later a disreputable intriguer. Lauderdale's own ferocity of temper and his greed had created so much dislike that in the Parliament of 1673 he was met by a constitutional opposition headed by the Duke of Hamilton, and with Sir George Mackenzie as its orator. Lauderdale consented to withdraw monopolies on ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... one step in the lieutenant's direction. This incited him to such fury that he ran, accompanied by soldiers and carabinieri, to the priest, and publicly, in a loud voice, insulted him, calling him an intriguer, a rebel, an agitator. On the following day the lieutenant had him conducted to the village of Cres by two soldiers and a carabiniere, who were all armed.... At Cres the priest was brought before the commanding ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... by the conspirators, this fact was not even suspected by any who were not in the secret of the whole proceeding. Understanding that his relation was an inefficient old man, Sir Reginald, himself an active and sagacious intriguer, had approached thus near to the old paternal residence of his family, in order to ascertain if his own name and descent might not aid him in obtaining levies among the ancient tenantry of the estate. That day he had actually intended to appear at Wychecombe, disguised, and under ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... young man involuntarily surveyed his person. The pains of an impostor seized him. The deplorable image of the Don making confession became present to his mind. It was a clever stroke of this female intriguer. She saw him redden grievously, and blink his eyes; and not wishing to probe him so that he would feel intolerable disgust at his imprisonment in ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the real settling of the Jewish disposition of Jesus. Still the forms had to be gone through. So Jesus is sent with the decision of Annas in the thongs on His hands to Caiaphas, high priest that year by the grace of the old intriguer Annas, and by Roman appointment. The thing must be done up in proper shape. These folks are ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... thou left'st me free, to live with love, And faith, that through the love of love doth find My Lord's dear presence in the stars above, The clods below, the flesh without, the mind Within, the bread, the tear, the smile. Opinion, damned Intriguer, gray with guile, Let ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... was a diplomatist, and he writes of other diplomatists, and one in particular, with most significant detail. It need not be supposed that he intends the "arch intriguer" Aerssens to stand for himself, or that he would have endured being thought to identify himself with the man of whose "almost devilish acts" he speaks so freely. But the sagacious reader—and he need not be very sharp-sighted—will very certainly see something more than a mere historical ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... declaring that "he knew too well the usages of the court to have believed that Madame La Mothe had really been admitted to the queen's presence and intrusted with such a commission.[11]" And Marie Antoinette gave open expression to her indignation at the acquittal "of an intriguer who had sought to ruin her, or to procure money for himself, by abusing her name and forging her signature," adding, with undeniable truth, that still more to be pitied than herself was a "nation which had for its supreme tribunal ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... conduct in making the confederation a party to the disputes of the Indians among themselves. The time finally came when Uncas, "the friend of the white man," was regarded by his former admirers as a hopeless marplot and intriguer. ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... these troublous times was one Pierre du Calvet, an unscrupulous and able intriguer, whom he imprisoned on the strong suspicion of treasonable practices; but the evidence against Calvet at that time appears to have been inadequate, as he succeeded in obtaining damages against the governor-general ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... the rich wines co-operating, beat quite off their guard, and not thought enough remaining for so much as suspicion—Miss, detached from her mother by Sally, soon fell a sacrifice to the successful intriguer. ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... because he does not know you. For instance, if some one were to tell him that you are a straightforward, courageous young man, a gentleman with an unquenchable taste for danger, that you are not a low-born adventurer and intriguer, that you have nothing in particular against his government, he might not be quite so angry. Pardon me if I say that he is not disposed to take your expedition any more seriously than is your own Federal government. The little Baron is irascible, choleric, stern, or ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... parties of the country. Here, in our view, is the danger that the nation has most to apprehend. The result is as plain as it is lamentable. In effect, it throws the political power of the entire Republic into the hands of the intriguer, the demagogue, and the knave. Honest men are not practised on by such combinations; but, with a fatality that would seem to be the very sport of demons, there they stand, drawn up in formidable array, in nearly equal lines of open and deriding hostility, ...
— New York • James Fenimore Cooper
... assumed the title Graf or Count Maximilian de Leon, and had gathered a following of visionary Germans, whom he imposed, with himself, upon the Harmonists, on the pretense that he was a believer with them in religious matters. He proved to be a wretched intriguer, who brought ruin on all who connected themselves with him; and who began at once to make trouble in Economy. Having secured a lodgment, he began to announce strange doctrines, marriage, a livelier life, and other temptations to worldliness; ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... taught her to judge of men and to dread the world, watched the course of this flirtation, and saw that it could only end in one way, if her daughter should fall into the hands of an utterly unscrupulous intriguer. How could it be other than a terrible thought for her that her daughter listened willingly to this roue? Her darling stood on the brink of a precipice, she felt horribly sure of it, yet dared not hold her back. She was afraid of the Countess. She knew ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... to Godfrey and the Count of Toulouse, with the stipulation that, if the city were won, he, as the soul of the enterprise, should enjoy the dignity of Prince of Antioch. The other leaders hesitated: ambition and jealousy prompted them to refuse their aid in furthering the views of the intriguer. More mature consideration decided them to acquiesce, and seven hundred of the bravest knights were chosen for the expedition, the real object of which, for fear of spies, was kept a profound secret from ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... business until the festival at Anagnia brought him and his band through Praeneste, and this festival had been postponed. Consequently, the projected murder had been postponed a few days also. Agias had tried to penetrate into the secrets of Pratinas, but found that judicious intriguer had, as a rule, carefully covered his tracks. He spent a good deal of time and money, which Cornelia gave him, trying to corrupt some of the gladiators of Dumnorix's band and get at the intentions of their ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... no intriguer against my lass, that I am bound to say. 'T was only this morning, the moment he had news of Hennion's death, he came to me like a man, to ask ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... See vol. v. 93: 152. He was of pure Abbaside blood on the father's side and his mother Zubaydah's. But he was unhappy in his Wazir Al-Fazl bin Rabi, the intriguer against the Barmecides, who estranged him from his brothers Al-Kasim and Al-Maamun. At last he was slain by a party of Persians, "who struck him with their swords and cut him through the nape of his neck and went with his head ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... on steamboats. I urged a serious examination of the subject. "Bah!" said he, "these projectors are all either intriguers or visionaries. Don't trouble me about the business." I observed that the man whom he called an intriguer was only reviving an invention already known, and that it was wrong to reject the scheme without examination. He would not listen to me; and thus was adjourned, for some time, the practical application of a discovery ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... had been maligned almost as unscrupulously as Pope. A total abstainer from intoxicating drinks, he was persistently described as a drunkard, drunken upon the field of battle. One of the most loyal and self-forgetting of subordinates, he was treated as if a persistent intriguer for command. A brave and competent soldier, he was believed to be worthless and untrustworthy. As between Halleck, McClellan, and Pope, the only one who had fought like a soldier and manoeuvred like a general was sent to the northwestern frontier to watch the petty Indian tribes, carrying ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... liberality to the nobles and the clergy." She was "pious, merciful, pure, and ever to be praised, if we overlook her erroneous opinions in religion," says Godwin. She had been grievously wronged from her youth upwards. In Elizabeth she had a sister and a rival, a constant intriguer against her, and a kinswoman far from amiable. Despite "the kindness and attention of Philip" (Lingard), affairs of State demanded his absence from England. The disappointment as to her expected child was cruel. She knew that she had become unpopular, and she could not look for the success of her ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... Knight's complexity was a puzzle to her. She could not understand, despite his explanations, why these fireworks of dexterity were worth while. Knight was a brave figure of romance. She did not want her hero turned into an intriguer, no matter how ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... that, his father would not have let him go), dressed him like a doll, gave him teachers of every kind, and placed him under the care of a French tutor—an ex-abbe, a pupil of Jean Jacques Rousseau—a certain M. Courtin de Vaucelles an adroit and subtle intriguer—"the very fine fleur of the emigration," as she expressed herself; and she ended by marrying this fine fleur when she was almost seventy years old. She transferred all her property to his name, and soon afterwards, rouged, perfumed with amber a la Richelieu, ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... machinations of the intriguing great families of Lu, the six Tsin statesmen (who were themselves at that moment, as heads of great private clans, gradually undermining their own prince's rights) sent for the arch-intriguer, and called upon him to explain his conduct. At that time Lu was coquetting between its two powerful neighbours, Tsin and Ts'i. The conspirator duly presented himself before the Areopagus of Tsin grandees, barefoot ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... politics, and in turbulence and intrigue against the government. I never believed for a moment that this could make any impression on you, or that your knowledge of me would not overweigh the slander of an intriguer, dirtily employed in sifting the conversations of my table, where alone he could hear of me; and seeking to atone for his sins against you by sins against another, who had never done him any other injury than that of declining ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... a comedian; and the part that he had played then was, when you came to think of it, akin to the part he was to play this evening. For what had he been at Rennes but a sort of Scaramouche—the little skirmisher, the astute intriguer, spattering the seed of trouble with a sly hand? The only difference lay in the fact that to-day he went forth under the name that properly described his type, whereas last week he had been disguised as a respectable ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... an able intriguer, had consulted his ambition rather than his talents when he assumed the command of such an enterprise. He sunk beneath the far superior genius of the Duke of Argyle; and after the undecisive battle of Sheriffmuir, the confederacy ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... incapable of any sustained vigour in action. The party as a whole were probably as corrupt as their rivals, and less astute—"an evil and foolish company," as Dante afterwards called them by the mouth of Cacciaguida. Corso Donati, on the other hand, was a bold and reckless intriguer. He followed up the conspiracy of the Santa Trinita by hastening to the Papal Court, and inducing Boniface to send at once for Charles of Valois, brother of the French king, Philip the Fair. Charles obeyed the summons readily, in the hope, ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... utter and complete that it is difficult even to be sorry for her, especially as Ravenswood would have made a detestable husband. The mother is meant to be and is a repulsive virago, and the father a time-serving and almost vulgar intriguer. Moreover—and all this is not in the least surprising, since he was in agonies during most of the composition, and nearly died before its close[20]—the author has, contrary to his wont, provided very few subsidiary characters to support or carry off the principals. ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... Washington repaired thither, and inquired of three French officers whom he saw there where the commandant resided. One of them promptly replied that he "had the command of the Ohio." It was, in fact, the redoubtable Captain Joncaire, the veteran intriguer of the frontier. On being apprised, however, of the nature of Washington's errand, he informed him that there was a general officer at the next fort, where he advised him to apply for an answer to the letter of ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... Moliere's next work of importance. It is a comedy of the highest order. An old gentleman, who had been an intriguer in his youth and knew (as he flattered himself) all the wiles of womankind, endeavors to avoid what he considers as the usual fate of husbands, by marrying his ward, a beautiful girl, simple almost to silliness, but to whom nature has given as much of old mother Eve's ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... war commenced, the young King was in a most deplorable situation. On his arrival at Madrid, he found Porto Carrero at the head of affairs, and he did not think fit to displace the man to whom he owed his crown. The Cardinal was a mere intriguer, and in no sense a statesman. He had acquired, in the Court and in the confessional, a rare degree of skill in all the tricks by which. weak minds are managed. But of the noble science of government, of the sources of national prosperity, of the causes of national decay, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the service of the public. Many men who have been least scrupulous in the acquisition of power have been most beneficent in the use of it, whether the power they aimed at and won was that of wealth, political authority, or what not. In the field of politics the wily intriguer, the ruthless victor, may end by being a wise and magnanimous ruler, blessed in his lifetime, lamented at his death, admired and applauded by posterity. Such men, to take two of the most conspicuous instances, were Julius ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... piece of acting which she enjoyed for its effect upon the others. She most mischievously enjoyed her privilege. And she had a new cause for triumph, a double success. She felt herself a schemer, an intriguer, which she was not. She was merely an opportunist, seizing the main chance. Not only had she a secret understanding with Gaga; she had also a secret understanding with Gaga's mother. She was most marvellously Sally Minto. The world was open ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... been so sudden and overpowering that he showed none of the lesser symptoms of agitation or embarrassment. In this revelation of a secret, that he now instinctively felt was bound up with his own future happiness, he exhibited none of the signs of a discovered intriguer or unmasked Lothario. He said quietly and coldly: "I am afraid I have not the pleasure of knowing the young lady, and certainly have never before addressed her." Yet he scarcely heard his companion's voice, and answered mechanically, seeing only before him the vision of the girl's bewitching ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... family, and even the Queen, much less for the person of the said Countess as because of the increase of credit which her death will bring to Dame Rietz, the old habitual mistress, who is said to be very avaricious and a great intriguer." ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... otherwise did good to my cause by creating an impression amongst the natives of my power and influence with the Governor of the Straits Settlements. Now, then, was my time for pushing measures to extremity against my subtle enemy the arch-intriguer MAKOTA." This Chief was a Malay hostile to English interest. "I had previously made several strong remonstrances, and urged for an answer to a letter I had addressed to MUDA HASSIM, in which I had recapitulated in detail the whole particulars of our agreement, ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... other jealous prove, And both strive which shall gain the Lady's Love, So we for your Affections daily vie: Not an Intriguer in the Gallery (Who squeezes hand of Phillis mask'd, that stood Ogling for Sale, in Velvet Scarf and Hood) Can with more Passion his dear Nymph pursue, Than we to make Diversion fit for you. Grant we may please, and we've ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... the hints you kindly gave me, that I behaved as you wished I should behave. Indeed, Madam, I could not help it, for I pitied most sincerely the unhappy lady; and though I could not but rejoice, that I had had the grace to escape the dangerous attempts of the dear intriguer, yet never did the story of any unfortunate lady make such an impression upon me as hers did: she loved him, and believed, no doubt, he loved her too well to take ungenerous advantages of her soft passion for him: and so, by degrees, put herself into his power; and too seldom, ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... maharajah, Gungadhura, isn't the saving kind; he's a spender. He'd give his eyes to get hold of that treasure. And if he had it, we'd need an army to suppress him. We made a mistake when Bubru Singh died; there were two nephews with about equal claims, and we picked the wrong one—a born intriguer. I'd call him a rascal if he weren't a reigning prince. It's too late now to unseat him—unless, of course, we should happen to catch him ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... Customs were less polite and morals more primitive. Important people desiring important information were given to the spying and eavesdropping which now has passed out of polite fashion. And those ancient rooms favoured the intriguer, for the hangings were suspended a foot or two away from the wall, and a man or a woman, for that matter, might easily slip behind and witness conversations to which the listener had not been invited. So it was customary on occasions of intimate and secret converse lightly to thrust a ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... this vulgar intriguer with such a fixed stare of terror, that he thought she had gone ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... equally good with that of Oubacha, whilst his personal 30 qualities, even in those aspects which seemed to a philosophical observer most odious and repulsive, promised the most effectual aid to the dark purposes of an intriguer or a conspirator, and were generally fitted to win a popular support precisely in those points where Oubacha was most defective. He was much superior in external appearance to his rival on the throne, and so far better qualified to win the good opinion of a semi-barbarous ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... nations are bitterly opposed to France; the whole German people, both north and south, is unanimous in its intense hatred against Napoleon. The nations do not allow him to deceive them; they see through the Caesarean mask, and perceive the face of the tyrant, despot, and intriguer, lurking behind it. They do not believe a word of his pacific protestations and promises of freedom and liberal reforms; for they see that he always means war when he prates about peace, that he means tyranny when he promises liberty, and that he gives ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... exception of Townshend, the colleagues whom his jealousy dismissed plunged into an opposition more factious and unprincipled than has ever disgraced English politics. The "Patriots," as they called themselves, owned Pulteney, a brilliant speaker and unscrupulous intriguer, as their head; they were reinforced by a band of younger Whigs—the "Boys," as Walpole named them—whose temper revolted alike against the inaction and cynicism of his policy, and whose fiery spokesman was a young cornet of ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... of the most extraordinary instances of disguise was that of the Chevalier d'Eon, who was born in the year 1728, and was an excellent scholar, soldier, and political intriguer. In the service of Louis XV., he went to Russia in female attire, obtained employment as the female reader to the Czarina Elizabeth, under which disguise he carried on political and semi-political negotiations ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... disgraceful affair. The queen was greatly cast down by the result. "Condole with me," she said, in a broken voice, to Madame Campan; "the intriguer who wanted to ruin me, or procure money by using my name and forging my signature, has just been fully acquitted." But it was due, she declared, to bribery on the part of some and to political passion on that of others, with an audacity towards ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... revolutionist transformed into a grandee; and desirous of being consecrated in this double character by the ancient royalty of France, he employed, to accomplish his end, all the cleverness and audacity of a reckless intriguer more clear-sighted and sensible than his associates. Perhaps also—for justice ought to retain its scruples even towards those who have none themselves—perhaps a desire to save his country from violence and useless ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Friedrich Wilhelm so loves, is by no means a beautiful man; far the reverse. Bodily,—and the spirit corresponds,—a stiff-backed, petrified, stony, inscrutable-looking, and most unbeautiful old Intriguer. Portraits of him, which are frequent, tell all one story. The brow puckered together, in a wide web of wrinkles from each temple, as if it meant to hide the bad pair of eyes, which look suspicion; ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... beside the point. He lives for me because he gives a picture of the French ruling classes of his time which is shamelessly true. No living man to-day in political office, although he might be as great an intriguer as the Cardinal, would dare to be so interestingly shameless. That is a great charm in itself. And, then, if you read him in French, you discover that he ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... advocate, "and very cruelly. Not only do I fear that the injustice is irreparable; but here am I totally without defence delivered over to the shafts of calumny. I may be accused of inventing falsehood, of being an ambitious intriguer, having no regard for truth, no scruples ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... suggested by another man to his wife, who is often very unhappy about it, she may then be restored to her husband and pardoned, for in this case affection only can cure her, never jealousy. If, however, love for her husband is entirely extinguished in her, or if she is only a false intriguer without character, jealousy is even more absurd, for the game is not worth the candle, ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... more specific reasons for his hostility— the most specific of all being that he had designed his daughter for one Bouverot, a disreputable court intriguer, his leaning towards Bouverot being based on financial liabilities, and stimulated by financial expectations. The minister's lady detested Bouverot, but in desiring separation between Liana and Albano, she was her husband's ally. Behold, then, Liana torn ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... eminent as a writer of review articles and as a hater of everything Teutonic, I was presented to a crowd of literary men who, though at that moment striking the stars with their lofty heads, have since dropped into oblivion. Among these I especially remember mile de Girardin, editor, spouter, intriguer—the "Grand mile,'' who boasted that he invented and presented to the French people a new idea every day. This futile activity of his always seemed to me best expressed in the American simile: "Busy as a bee ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... of crafty diplomacy, in every garb but that of truth, to aid the enemy of both and the arch-disturber of the old world. The jailer of Ireland seeks Irish-American support to keep Ireland in prison; the intriguer against Germany would win German-American good-will against its parent stock. There can be no peace for mankind, no limit to the intrigues set on foot to assure Great Britain "the mastery ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... crafty intriguer like Crispi, therefore, easily inflamed Italian indignation, so recently excited by the seizure of Tunis and by Clerical intrigues, and he counted it a gay feather in his cap when, in 1889, he declared a tariff war on France. Hard times for Italy followed; the commerce ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... that childish travesty with which you are trying to impose on justice. We know all about you. Your name is Devereux Bayne. You are a German agent and intriguer; you have smuggled papers; you have murdered a man and concealed his body. Unless you can give a satisfactory explanation of all your actions since leaving New York, your ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... Chinese history it is recounted that a certain artful intriguer made a fool of his Sovereign by bringing a deer to the Court and presenting it before the Emperor, declaring it to be a horse. All the courtiers, induced by his great influence, agreed with him in calling it a horse, to the Emperor's great ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... intrigued about the person of Lewis's widow. Charles Brandon, [Footnote: Edmund de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk in the last reign, and Yorkist intriguer, was executed, apparently without further trial, in 1513. The Dukedom of Suffolk was bestowed on Brandon whom Mr. Froude's imagination has somehow developed into "the ablest soldier of the age," but he never did ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... hasty kiss on my burning lips, giving and prolonging it with the violent voluptuousness of fear, as the spurred boots of her sweetheart made the wooden steps of the stairs creak, and the intriguer was in fear of losing her Dutch linen trousseau and ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... face of the colleague, thin-lipped and narrow-eyed; he wondered in troubled fashion how far it was possible that Mr. Strathmore was of the same nature as his assistant. Ashe was confident that Thurston was a born intriguer, and he instinctively watched for signs of understanding between Mr. Strathmore and the other. He could detect nothing of the sort. The Rev. Rutherford Strathmore bore a countenance as beneficent, as kindly, as guileless ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... opponent. Holding such views, I think I am guilty of no absurdity in calling myself an advanced Conservative-Liberal. A man who entertains in his mind any political doctrine, except as a means of improving the condition of his fellows, I regard as a political intriguer, a charlatan, and a conjurer—as one who thinks that, by a certain amount of wary wire-pulling, he may raise himself in the estimation ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... longer play the master of kingdoms, he was content to quarrel about valets; and having lost the world, to make a little occupation for himself in complaining of the want of etiquette in his dungeon. But the spirit of the intriguer survived every other spirit within him, and it is by no means certain that the return of O'Meara and Gourgaud to Europe was not a part of that intrigue in which Napoleon played the Italian to the last hour of his life. It is true that the general returned under a certificate ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... return to the policy of Clarendon. Their anger and disappointment were revealed in the letters from English Jesuits which were afterwards to play so fatal a part in begetting a belief in the plot, and in the correspondence of Coleman. Coleman was secretary of the Duchess of York and a busy intriguer, who had gained sufficient knowledge of the real plans of the king and of his brother to warrant him in begging money from Lewis for the work of saving Catholic interests from Danby's hostility by intrigues in the Parliament. A passage from ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... certain days, took it upon himself to place me under surveillance. People said M. Emanuel had been brought up amongst Jesuits. I should more readily have accredited this report had his manoeuvres been better masked. As it was, I doubted it. Never was a more undisguised schemer, a franker, looser intriguer. He would analyze his own machinations: elaborately contrive plots, and forthwith indulge in explanatory boasts of their skill. I know not whether I was more amused or provoked, by his stepping up to me one morning and whispering solemnly that he "had his eye on me: he at least would discharge ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte |
