"Piquet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... TRAVELLING PIQUET. A mode of amusing themselves, practised by two persons riding in a carriage, each reckoning towards his game the persons or animals that pass by on the side next them, according to the ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... on her seat by the invalid's couch. A whole hour and a half still remained before the gong would sound the summons to luncheon; an hour and a half of solitude beneath the shadow of the trees! Last night there had been another tete-a-tete while Madame and Captain Guest played piquet at the end of the room; this morning there had been yet another, when Elma was first installed in the garden, and Madame was interviewing her staff. Astonishing how intimate two people can become in two long conversations! Marvellous in what unison two separate ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... December, Ney, who had again voluntarily taken upon himself the command of the rear-guard, left that city, which was immediately after inundated by the Cossacks of Platof, who massacred all the poor wretches whom the Jews threw in their way. In the midst of this butchery, there suddenly appeared a piquet of thirty French, coming from the bridge of the Vilia, where they had been left and forgotten. At sight of this fresh prey, thousands of Russian horsemen came hurrying up, besetting them with loud cries, and assailing them ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... Tiverton playing piquet with Brocton. A heap of guineas was by his side, and he was flushed and excited with success. The bout had attracted some attention, for the stakes were running high, and eight or nine men were gathered round the players, among them Sir Patrick Gee. I waited while the hand ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... made of the opportunity, and only the more distant patrolling service be left to the Cavalry. Outpost service makes far less demands on the Infantry soldier than on the Cavalry horse, for the former is allowed to sleep when on piquet, ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... masterpiece I was about to execute, and though I found much joy in renewed intercourse with my beloved lady and my master, I took no particular note of their relations. We met at meals, sometimes in the afternoons, and always of evenings, when I played dutiful piquet with Mrs. Rushworth, while Joanna made music on the piano, and Paragot read Jane Austen in an arm-chair by the fire. To me the quietude of the secluded English home had an undefinable charm like the smell of lavender, for which I have always had a ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... Pont ci-devant Royal, rank round the sanctuary of the Tuilleries, a ring of steel discipline; let every gunner have his match burning, and all men stand to their arms. Lepelletier has seized the Church of Saint Roche; has seized the Pont Neuf, our piquet there retreating thence without fire. Stray shots fall from Lepelletier, rattle down on the very Tuilleries' stair-case. On the other hand, women advance dishevelled, shrieking peace; Lepelletier ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... envied the quiet existence of this old bachelor, spent on whist, boston, backgammon, reversi, and piquet, all well played, on dinners well digested, snuff gracefully inhaled, and tranquil walks about the town. Nearly all Alencon believed this life to be exempt from ambitions and serious interests; but no man has ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... I went back with Selincourt to his rooms and we sat up the rest of the night smoking and playing auction piquet. He won about five pounds off me. Ask him: ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... says is true, I know not," replied I; "but, that it was not Donna Teresa who met you, I can certify, for I was in her room with her that night till she went to bed, playing at piquet ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... continues. After I had written to you yesterday, the brain being wholly extinct, I played piquet all morning with Graham. After lunch down to call on the U.S. Consul, hurt in a steeple-chase; thence back to the new girls' school which Lady J. was to open, and where my ladies met me. Lady J. is really an orator, with a voice of gold; ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... bien tente de te bailler une quinte major. Quinte major is a term of piquet. It is here employed figuratively. Compare its use in 'Les ...
— The Jealousy of le Barbouille - (La Jalousie du Barbouille) • Jean Baptiste Poquelin de Moliere
... he good humouredly, 'the children sing, we all work, Francois and I play at draughts or piquet; the worst of it is, we are sometimes interrupted; a knock comes, we must go down, get a stone ready, undress the new comer and register him: that spoils the game; we forget ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 549 (Supplementary issue) • Various
... deep in a game of piquet at the other end of the room, whispered to Martin Burney to ask if Junius would not be a fit person to invoke from the dead. 'Yes,' said Lamb, 'provided he would agree to lay ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... threw a brilliant yellow light upon this singular apartment, and upon the two men who sat in their shirt-sleeves with the wine between them, and the cards in their hands, deep in a game of piquet. Both were smoking long pipes, and the thin blue reek filled the cabin and floated through the skylight above them, which, half opened, disclosed a slip of deep violet sky ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... inn. Gay, animated, conscious of his attractions, the fop hovered over the young girl, an all-pervading Hyperion, with faultless ruffles, white hands, and voice softly modulated. That evening the soldier played piquet with the wiry old lady, losing four shillings to that antiquated gamester, and, when he had paid the stakes, the young girl was gone and the buoyant beau had sought ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... this lowest gravel that M. H.T. Gosse, of Geneva, found, in April 1860, in the suburbs of Paris, at La Motte Piquet, on the left bank of the Seine, one or two well-formed flint implements of the Amiens type, accompanied by a great number of ruder tools or attempts at tools. I visited the spot in 1861 with M. Hebert, and saw the stratum from which ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... no scruples of staying as late as Mrs. Weston, but on your account. I am only afraid of your sitting up for me. I am not afraid of your not being exceedingly comfortable with Mrs. Goddard. She loves piquet, you know; but when she is gone home, I am afraid you will be sitting up by yourself, instead of going to bed at your usual time—and the idea of that would entirely destroy my comfort. You must promise me not ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... home." Mrs. Mountain is constantly on the whimper when George's name is mentioned, and Harry's face wears a look of the most ghastly alarm; but his mother's is invariably grave and sedate. She makes more blunders at piquet and backgammon than you would expect from her; and the servants find her awake and dressed, however early they may rise. She has prayed Mr. Dempster to come back into residence at Castlewood. She is not severe or haughty (as her ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... hills, through quagmires, delighting in nature. As they went, they talked of history, or politics, or chemistry, of literature, or physics, or morality. At sundown they returned, to find lights and cards on the tables, and they made parties of piquet, interrupted by supper. At half-past ten the game ends, they chat until eleven, and in half an hour more they are all fast asleep.[202] Each day was like the next; industry, gaiety, bodily comfort, mental activity, diversifying the hours. Grimm was often there, "the most French of all the Germans," ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... half a dozen times—he may have overslept himself. He sits up late—he and old Cardlestone often sit up half the night, talking stamps or playing piquet," said Breton. "Come ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... from a neighbouring tavern, after which, and a gay glass or two, the maid put me to bed. Mr. H.... soon followed, and notwithstanding the fatigues of the preceding night, I found no quarter nor remission from him: he piquet himself, as he told me, on doing the honours ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... fellowship was the motto inscribed over the door. When a stranger came in, it was not asked, "Has he written anything?"—we were above that pedantry; but we waited to see what he could do. If he could take a hand at piquet, he was welcome to sit down. If a person liked any thing, if he took snuff heartily, it was sufficient. He would understand, by analogy, the pungency of other things, besides Irish blackguard or Scotch rappee. A character was good any where, in a room or ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... chanced to hear a word or two and, thinking it was some game of which they spoke, said: "Piquet or ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the evening of his fourth day in Mrs Gabbon's rooms. He had finished a modest dinner and was dealing himself hands at piquet with an old pack of cards, when he heard the rattle of a cab coming up the street. The usual faint flicker of hope rose: the cab stopped below him, the flicker burned brighter, and in an instant he was at the window. He opened ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... open a bottle of the governor's old port. Then we can play billiards, or piquet, or cat's-cradle, or any ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... alarm began about two o'clock, when the enemy hoped to have come silently and unexpectedly upon the miners, but they had left work about a quarter of an hour before. At the report of the first piece which they fired, the piquet of the third battalion of Prussian guards, to the number of an hundred men, who marched out of the camp to sustain the body which covered the works, was thrown into some confusion, from the darkness ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... passed without any explanation being sent, or any secret message bidding me be patient. She used to come down to the drawing-room for an hour in the morning; in the evening she was present at dinner, and then would play piquet or chess with her father. During all this time she was so well watched that I could not exchange a glance with her. For the rest of the day she remained in her own room—inaccessible. Noticing that I was chafing at the species of captivity ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... Progress, and Laws: With Observations to make any one a Whist-Player. Containing also the Laws of Piquet, Cassino, Ecarte, Cribbage, Backgammon. By Major A. New Edition; with Precepts for Tyros, by Mrs. B. Fcp. ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... particularly susceptible of visionary ideas. On the lone bivouac, or remote piquet, duty must frequently chase sleep from his eyelids. At such times, I have, I confess, indulged in wild speculations, on their possible influence on our wayward destinies. I was then a youth, and should not now, I much fear me, pursue with such unchecked ardour, the ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... head of a ravine opening into Clemmens Creek, about 4 miles south of Dixon, near the Piquet orchards, is a cavern with an entrance 55 feet wide and 40 feet high. The depth is 110 feet to loose rocks and clay, partly from the sides and roof, partly washed in through side caves and crevices. There ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... up at me with such bewitching grace that perforce I smiled back at her, and if she had but asked me this evening, as she had on many others, to linger in her cozy cabin for a game of piquet, I would not have had the courage to say no. But she did not ask me, and, much as I longed to stay, there was nothing for me to do but to pick up my hat and say, with ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... the shaded gleams falling decorously on dark-wood tables, on the backs of chairs, on cards and tumblers, the little gilded coffee-cups, the polished nails of fingers holding cigars. A crony challenged him to piquet. He sat down listless. That three-legged whist—bridge—had always offended his fastidiousness—a mangled short cut of a game! Poker had something blatant in it. Piquet, though out of fashion, remained for him the only game worth ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... or attempt to gallop back to look for them, we shall have another volley," said Roy. "I will ride forward slowly. That must be a piquet of the Indian regiment stationed outside the town. They mistake us for the enemy, and they may aim better the next time they fire." Without waiting for his companions' reply, Roy rode forward, shouting, "Friends, friends! English, English!" At length he came in sight of a party of ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... have a father in business, it's a good thing when you go out not to be exposed to meet eyes which seem to say to you, 'My dear fellow, your father has swindled me.' Papa has but one passion: from five to seven every day he plays piquet at his club, at ten sous a point, and as he is an excellent player, he wins seven times out of ten. He keeps an account of his games with the same scrupulous exactitude he has in all things, and he was telling the day before yesterday that piquet this year ...
— Parisian Points of View • Ludovic Halevy
... are!" Harietta cried delightedly, rising from her sofa and throwing herself into his arms. "I've packed Stanislass off to the St. James' to play piquet. I have been all alone waiting for you for the last hour—I began to fear you would ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... encyclopedia for the description of an intellectual game of cards, arranged as a duet, and found one. It is piquet! Now I can wait developments peacefully, for are there not also in ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... over his elbow, she spied a pack of cards, and then he was forced to pick them out to please her, then draw them from their case. At last, trying first one thing, then another, he found that what she was after was to play piquet with him. They had some difficulty at first in contriving for her to hold her cards and then to play them, but this was at last overcome by his stacking them for her on a sloping board, after which she could flip them out very neatly with ...
— Lady Into Fox • David Garnett
... of these two men, it was mechanically and at random that M. de Tregars and Maxence threw their cards on the table, and uttered the common terms of the game of piquet, ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... D'Estaing, who had with him on the Languedoc, his flagship, a regularly appointed envoy, Girard de Rayneville, who had full power to recognize the independence of the States, Silas Deane, one of the American commissioners, and such well-known officers as the comte de la Motte-Piquet, the Bailli de Suffren, De Guichen, D'Orvilliers, De Grasse and others. The history of this first expedition is a short and disastrous one. The voyage was long, owing to the ships being unequally ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... if he had been the most insignificant of men; and when his body was taken to be interred, I suppose, to his duchy of Luynes, instead of priests to pray for him, I saw some of his valets playing piquet on his bier whilst they were having their ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... behind his colleague in the antechamber. The king could be heard distinctly, speaking aloud to Colbert, in the same cabinet where Colbert might have heard, a few days before, the king speaking aloud with M. d'Artagnan. The guards remained as a mounted piquet before the principal gate; and the report was quickly spread through the city that monsieur le capitaine of the musketeers had just been arrested by order of the king. Then, these men were seen to be in motion, as, in the good old times of Louis XIII., ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... ended at midnight, on our arrival at the handsome little town of Arruda, which was destined to be the piquet post of our division, in front of the fortified lines. The quartering of our division, whether by night or by day, was an affair of about five minutes. The quarter-master-general preceded the troops, accompanied by the ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... an end," said the elder man, declaring a point of six, "that's not the tragedy; it's the little bits coming to an end meanwhile, before the whole comes to an end: that's the tragedy...." But he added with another of his jolly laughs: "We must play. Piquet takes up all one's ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... and queen played piquet or backgammon; not because they could enjoy at present any amusement of the kind, but because they found means, while bending their heads together over the board, to say a few words unheard by the guard. At four o'clock, the ladies and children left the king, ...
— The Peasant and the Prince • Harriet Martineau
... them in for more reasons than one. Ah! you begin to believe me. Let me see now, can I give you a little corroborative evidence? You don't want it, but I will. Did the admiral ever tell you what an excellent player I was at piquet?" ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... cards, composed of the characteristic elements of whist, bouillotte and piquet. A whist pack with the court cards deleted is used, and from two to six persons may play. Each player is given an equal number of counters, and a limit of betting is agreed upon. Two cards are dealt, one at ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the drawing-room Guy sat down to piquet with his uncle. Raymond liked to utilize his evenings, and never played for nominal stakes. He was the beau ideal of a card-player, certainly; no revolution or persistence of luck could ruffle the dead ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... Quartered in the high-perched keep of Dover where "the winds rattle pretty loud" and cut off from the world without, as he says, by the absence of newspapers or coffee houses, he employs the tedious hours in reading while his officers waste them in piquet. The ladies in the town below complain through Miss Brett to Mrs. Wolfe of the unsociality of the garrison. "Tell Nannie Brett's ladies," Wolfe replies, "that if they lived as loftily and as much in the clouds as we do, their ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... through and startled the entire nation. We gamble in the funds. We gamble in endless companies (limited)—all resulting from the same passion of our nature, which led to the gambling of former times with cards, with dice, at Piquet, Basset, Faro, Hazard, E O, Roulette, and Rouge et Noir. At a recent memorable trial, the Lord Chief Justice of England exclaimed—'There can be no doubt—any one who looks around him cannot fail to perceive—that a spirit of speculation and gambling has taken hold of the minds of large ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... letter, though shattered by the sharp shot of Dr. Horne of Oxford's wit, in the character of One of the People called Christians, is still prefixed to Mr. Hume's excellent History of England, like a poor invalid on the piquet guard, or like a list of quack medicines sold by the same bookseller, by whom a work of whatever nature is published; for it has no connection with his History, let it have what it may with what are called his Philosophical Works. A worthy friend of mine ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... my mind; it is a matter of absorbing interest, hence I do not forget myself. Heaven knows the excitement of nursing an innocent deceit and of seeing it grow and flower under my care will be most welcome, for the monotony of this abominable confinement—But I must inquire, do you play piquet?" ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... invite me also. If you'll let me escort you, I'll let you into a mystery as we go, in which you must play a part when we arrive. Aman. But we have two hours yet to spare; the carriages are not ordered till eight, and it is not a five minutes' drive. So, cousin, let us keep the colonel to play at piquet with us, till Mr. Loveless comes home. Ber. As you please, madam; but you know I have a letter to write. Col. Town. Madam, you know you may command me, though I am a very wretched gamester. Aman. ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan
... their left, exposing the men to the fire of their artillery. At sun set, and during the greatest part of the night, this diversion was seconded by a feigned attack of the Corsicans: which so effectually deceived the enemy, that they withdrew a considerable piquet from the spot where the principal battery was to be constructed, in order to support the Mollinochesco; and, directing the whole of their fire to that point, enabled the troops to complete ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... That evening, however, Rose was no doubt loath to enter into conversation with the old maid, for the latter at last turned round, apparently with the intention of approaching Monsieur Lebigre, who was playing piquet with a customer at one of the bronzed tables. Creeping quietly along, Mademoiselle Saget had at last managed to install herself beside the partition of the cabinet, when she was observed by Gavard, who ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... fourth centuries. She had planned the new flower-garden,—though Lady Fawn thought that she had done that herself. She had been invaluable during Clara Fawn's long illness. She knew every rule at croquet, and could play piquet. When the girls got up charades they had to acknowledge that everything depended on Miss Morris. They were good-natured, plain, unattractive girls, who spoke of her to her face as one who could easily do anything ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... at piquet with my husband. At such times I was even more interiorly attracted than if I had been at church. I was scarce able to contain the fire which burned in my soul, which had all the fervor of what men call love, but nothing of its impetuosity. The more ardent, the more ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... French farmer-general, of immense fortune, but stupid to a proverb, being one day present, when two noblemen were engaged, in a party, at piquet, one of them happening to play a wrong card, exclaimed, "Oh, what a Bouret I am!" Offended at this liberty, Bouret said instantly, "Sir, you are an ass." "The very thing I meant," replied ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... sir, I have never seen her do otherwise than she does every day, that is to say, walk in the valley, play piquet with her aunt, and visit the poor. The peasants call her Brigitte la Rose; I have never heard a word against her except that she goes through the woods alone at all hours of the day and night; but that is when engaged in charitable work. She is the ministering angel in the valley. As for ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... respectable. Didn't they like it here? It was as comfortable as being at home. You could even take a nap here without being embarrassed. He called for the newspaper, spread it out open before him, and looked through it, frowning the while. Coupeau and My-Boots had commenced a game of piquet. Two bottles of wine and five glasses were ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... has been issued to lighten the military chest, the officers, upon halting, would spread their ponchos on the ground, and play until it was time to resume the march; and this was frequently done even on the eve of a battle. Soldiers on piquet often gambled within sight ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 363, Saturday, March 28, 1829 • Various
... shrink from, if not allied to a higher nature? The profligate French women, who ruled the councils of Europe in the middle of the last century, were clever women; and that philosopheress Madame du Chatelet, who managed, at one and the same moment, the thread of an intrigue, her cards at piquet, and a calculation in algebra, was a very clever woman! If Portia had been created as a mere instrument to bring about a dramatic catastrophe—if she had merely detected the flaw in Antonio's bond, and used it as a means to baffle ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... his music, by playing waltzes and polkas in the Avenue de la Motte Piquet. His earnings are five francs a day, and for thirty-five francs a month he has a room where many of the disinherited ones of art, many of those you see here, sleep. His room is furnished—ah, you should see it! If Cabaner wants a chest of drawers he buys a fountain, and ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... Chabrillane—who in reality occupied towards the Marquis a position akin to that of gentleman-in-waiting—sat opposite to him in the enormous travelling berline. A small folding table had been erected between them, and the Chevalier suggested piquet. But M. le Marquis was in no humour for cards. His thoughts absorbed him. As they were rattling over the cobbles of Nantes' streets, he remembered a promise to La Binet to witness her performance that night in "The Faithless Lover." ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... No letters as yet come from Ireland. Lord Egremont tells me that Digby is sent after La Motte Piquet.(159) I went to Miss Gunning's to carry her a parcel of francs, but I did not find her at home. I expect to see Mitchel back in a few days; the wind, as I am told, ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... the first drop of sentiment. If you pay court to a young girl whose existence is a compound of loneliness, despair, and poverty, and who has no suspicion that she will come into a fortune, good Lord! it is quint and quatorze at piquet; it is knowing the numbers of the lottery before-hand; it is speculating in the funds when you have news from a sure source; it is building up a marriage on an indestructible foundation. The girl may come in for millions, and she will fling them, as if they were so many pebbles, at your feet. 'Take ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... January, was particularly inclement, and it would have been too much to expect of Diva to come all the way up the hill in the wet, while it was but a step from the Major's door to her own. So there was little or nothing in the way of winter-bridge as far as Miss Mapp and the Major were concerned. Piquet with a single sympathetic companion who did not mind being rubiconned at threepence a hundred was as much as he ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... party halted them, and Sergius showed the seal and spoke in Gallic to its Numidian leader. A little farther on was stationed another band, and here the delay was longer ere his halting Punic convinced the Spanish piquet, and they again rode forward unsuspected. All had bowed low to the horse and the palm tree, and no one dared question what weighty mission urged on the man in the torn and blood-stained tunic and the slender ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... make sure of their presence and to inspect their rooms; and Clery remarked that the queen never broke her disdainful silence to him, though Louis often spoke to him, generally to receive some answer of brutal insult. After dinner, Louis and Marie Antoinette would play piquet or backgammon; as, while they were thus engaged, the vigilance of their keepers relaxed, and the noise of shuffling the cards or rattling the dice afforded them opportunities of saying a few words in whispers to one another, which at other times would have been overheard. ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... give and take, the guest rendering real service to an ambitious hostess. The feminine aspirant need not be handsome. On the contrary, an agreeable plainness is much more acceptable, serving as a foil. But she must be excellent in all games, from golf to piquet, and willing to play as often and as long as required. She must also cheerfully go in to dinner with the blue ribbon bore of the evening, only asked on account of his pretty wife (by the bye, why is it that Beauty is so often flanked by the Beast?), and sit between him and the ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... east of Quiberon, on the Bay of Biscay, a small town and peninsula about twenty-two miles south-east of Lorient, convoying some American vessels, and placing them under the protection of the French fleet commanded by Admiral La Motte Piquet. The story represented in this picture he tells in his own language in a letter to the Naval Committee, dated February 22, 1778: "I am happy to have it in my power to congratulate on my having seen the American ...
— Thirteen Chapters of American History - represented by the Edward Moran series of Thirteen - Historical Marine Paintings • Theodore Sutro
... the cure, sitting at piquet with Madame de Sevenie, after dinner, would cough distressingly and, reminded that he had a bed to reach somehow through all this welter, anathematise the elements, help himself to a pinch of snuff, ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... piquet of mounted gendarmerie and infantry took their station upon the place before the prison, where a great concourse of people had already assembled. An open car was at the door. Before he went out Peytel asked the gaoler for a looking-glass; and having examined his ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... having elapsed in consequence of a deadly quarrel between the marquis and the general as to who should take the thing up first. Grape firmly believes they decided the matter with small swords; another version is, that they played piquet for eight-and-forty hours to settle it—the best out of so many games. Be this how it may, the general appeared as the ostensible champion, and the marquis officiated as his temoin. Grape, as my uncle's second, chose pistols ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... hadn't got piquet, but they're the plain shape you like. You may thank us they didn't send you things with ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... render Mr. Daille pensive and melancholick so soon wt as to fall in discourse of Mr. Douglas. He hes told me his mind of him severall tymes, that he ever had a evill opinion of him; that he never heard him pray in his tyme; all 16 month he was wt him, he was not 3 or 4 tymes at Quatre Piquet [the church],[141] and when he went it was to mock; that he was a violent, passionate man; that he spak disdainefully of all persones; that he took the place of all the other Scotsmen, that he had no religion, ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... Patricio's high desert, His hand unstained, his uncorrupted heart, His comprehensive head! all interests weigh'd, All Europe sav'd, yet Britain not betray'd? He thanks you not,—his pride is in piquet, Newmarket fame, ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... of imagination and decision which characterized Mike, and Mike felt that if he had the money on, and with Longley for a partner, he could play as he had never played before; and ignoring a young man whom he might have rooked at ecarte, and avoiding a rich old gentleman who loved his game of piquet, and on whom Mike was used to rely in the old days for his Sunday dinner (he used to say the old gentleman gave the best dinners in London; they always ran into a tenner), he sat down at the whist-table. His partner played ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... Choudey;—with wonder, frank queries, and wild surmises, by the little group around her; for the aged Marquise and her son Alain—dead a year since—had been picturesque figures in their own circle where politics and art, literature and religion, met and crossed swords, or played piquet! And now she was coming back, not only to Paris, but to society; had in fact, arrived, and the card Madame Choudey held in her white dimpled hand announced the first reception ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... would not praise Patritio's high desert, His hand unstained, his uncorrupted heart, His comprehensive head! all interests weighed, All Europe saved, yet Britain not betrayed. He thanks you not, his pride is in piquet, Newmarket-fame, and judgment at a bet. What made (say Montagne, or more sage Charron) Otho a warrior, Cromwell a buffoon? A perjured prince a leaden saint revere, A godless regent tremble at a star? The throne a bigot keep, a genius ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... age than this. Count Victor took all in at a glance and found revealed to him in a flash the colossal mendacity of all the Camerons, Macgregors, and Macdonalds who had implied, if they had not deliberately stated, over many games of piquet or lansquenet at Cammercy, the magnificence ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... priest, who, in a low but earnest voice, was uttering his last exhortation to them; in another, some young and fashionably-dressed men were exhibiting to a party of ladies the very airs and graces by which they would have adorned a saloon; here, was a party at piquet; there, a little group arranging, for the last time, their household cares, and settling, with a few small coins, the account of mutual expenditure. Of the ladies, several were engaged at needlework, some little preparation for the morrow—the last demand that ever vanity ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... M. Batbeda, to play a game at piquet with him as usual. He thought of all the circumstances connected with the frightful morrow with such coolness, that he even said with a smile to M. Batbeda during the game: "Let us rest awhile, my friend, and take a pinch of snuff; to-morrow ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... partridge-shooting the ordeal was a trying one. Sir Patrick got through the day with the help of his business and his books. In the evening the rector of a neighboring parish drove over to dinner, and engaged his host at the noble but obsolete game of Piquet. They arranged to meet at each other's houses on alternate days. The rector was an admirable player; and Sir Patrick, though a born Presbyterian, blessed the Church of England from the bottom ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... case, Nor is complexion honour's place. But, lest we should for honour take The drunken quarrels of a rake: Or think it seated in a scar, Or on a proud triumphal car; Or in the payment of a debt We lose with sharpers at piquet; Or when a whore, in her vocation, Keeps punctual to an assignation; Or that on which his lordship swears, When vulgar knaves would lose their ears; Let Stella's fair example preach A lesson she alone can teach. In points of honour to be tried, All passions must ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... was to be married till she had killed her Man. The Ladies of Fashion used to play with young Lions instead of Lap-dogs, and when they made any Parties of Diversion, instead of entertaining themselves at Ombre or Piquet, they would wrestle and pitch the Bar for a whole Afternoon together. There was never any such thing as a Blush seen, or a Sigh heard, in the Commonwealth. The Women never dressed but to look terrible, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... the king feasted on delicacies which were a triumph of art; Louis was satisfied; Vatel triumphed; so far the fete was a success. In the evening the king played at piquet, the cavaliers and ladies promenaded through the splendidly-furnished and richly-lighted saloons, some cracked jokes on sofas, some made love in ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... arm, rode in his carriage, and accompanied him in all his drives; she even persuaded him that she liked the smell of tobacco, and read him his favorite paper La Quotidienne in the midst of clouds of smoke, which the malicious old sailor intentionally blew over her; she learned piquet to be a match for the old count; and this fantastic damsel even listened without impatience to his periodical narratives of the battles of the Belle-Poule, the manoeuvres of the Ville de Paris, M. de Suffren's first expedition, or the ...
— The Ball at Sceaux • Honore de Balzac
... drives us, in certain excited conditions of the mind, to take refuge in movement and change. The remedy had failed; my mind was as strangely disturbed as ever. My wisest course would be to go home, and keep my good mother company over her favorite game of piquet. ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... young woman, resuming her seat and her reading; "he is in the back room, playing piquet with Peppino, Beppo ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... up to make certain of my death, but were interrupted by a piquet of my men, who unexpectedly emerged from a copse where I had posted them, and they were obliged to return to Tepelen, which they entered, riotous with joy, crying 'Ali Bey is dead, now we are free!' This news reached my harem, and I heard the cries of my mother and my wife mingled with the ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... 1778: First foreign salute to the Stars and Stripes. John Paul Jones entered Quiberon Bay, near Brest, France, and received a salute of nine guns from the French fleet, under Admiral La Motte Piquet. Jones had previously saluted the French fleet ...
— The Little Book of the Flag • Eva March Tappan |
