"Cabalistical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... composed. If the magical artist be expert, and endowed with an exceedingly potent will, his charm may become very powerful, when worn by the person for whom it was prepared. But, if this one grand essential be lacking, no amount of cabalistical figures and sacred names will have any effect, because, there can be no potency in symbols apart from the ideas and mental force they are capable of arousing in the mind of the maker. Solomon's Seal is no more powerful, when drawn upon virgin parchment, with a weak will, or in a mechanical ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... successful essays in psychological analysis ever attempted by an author; and in his wonderful portrait, which must be closely studied, and not epitomized or reproduced in extracts, we see glowing enthusiasm united to cabalistic profundity, and the most morbid tension of the intellectual powers united to clear and well-defined hopes. How has the author succeeded in making Mordecai so human and so true to nature? By mixing the gold with an alloy of commoner metal, ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... Professor of Eloquence at the College of Modena, and Member of the Arcadian Academy, under the pastoral name of Evander Lilybaean, Venice, 1785, with the approbation of the Superiors. I tell them all how this singer, this Balthasar Cesari, was nick-named Zaffirino because of a sapphire engraved with cabalistic signs presented to him one evening by a masked stranger, in whom wise folk recognized that great cultivator of the human voice, the devil; how much more wonderful had been this Zaffirino's vocal gifts than those of any singer of ancient or modern times; how his brief life had ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... followed so quickly upon Stamfordham's steps that he was still standing looking round him at his strange surroundings, Lady Adela facing him with a smile of welcome. The apparatus of the fortune-teller apparently consisted in certain cabalistic properties—wands, dials with signs upon them, and the like—arranged round a table. Stamfordham spoke first. He was absolutely convinced that Rachel had come to appeal to him for mercy, and was as absolutely clear that it was an appeal to which ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... the room opposite the telegraphic machine, from which the "tape" was issuing with a monotonous click. On this "tape"—a narrow strip of paper seemingly endless, which fell on the floor in serpentine coils—were inscribed at regular intervals some cabalistic characters unintelligible to the general public, but full ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... light admitted into the gloomy chamber proceeded from a square opening, about a foot in diameter, at a height of about seven feet from the floor. Yet what will the energy of true genius not effect? I resolved to clamber up to this hole. A vast quantity of wheels, pinions, and other cabalistic—looking machinery stood opposite the hole, close to it; and through the hole there passed an iron rod from the machinery. Between the wheels and the wall where the hole lay there was barely room for my body—yet I was desperate, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... after a week's bustle with teams and workmen transporting, unpacking, and arranging, displayed his name, one fine morning, in large gilt letters to the wondering inhabitants of Hampton, and under it the cabalistic words: 'CHEAP CASH STORE.' A large number of handbills were posted about the village, informing the good people of the opening of the aforesaid 'cash store,' and that the proprietor was prepared to sell ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... said, that, if she pleased, he would cause her nightingale to revive every morning, and entertain her with his tunes as long as she thought proper. The dervise accordingly laid himself on a sopha, and by means of certain cabalistic words, transported his soul into the body of the nightingale, and began to sing. Fadlallah watched his time; he lay in a corner of the room unobserved; but no sooner had the dervise deserted his body, than the king proceeded to take possession of it. The first thing ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... shores of China, and sucked in whole flowery harvests of tea. The Brazilian sun flashed through the strong wicker prisons, bursting with bananas and nectarean fruits that eschew the temperate zone. Steams of camphor, of sandal wood, arose from the hold. Sailors chanting cabalistic strains, that had to my ear a shrill and monotonous pathos, like the uniform rising and falling of an autumn wind, turned cranks that lifted the bales, and boxes, and ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... himself, the signals, winked across from one to the other, of human companionship. Always he had found a difficulty in talking to a girl, because he had, in his self-consciousness, thought about what he should say. There had been the cabalistic question of sex ever in front of him, a thing that troubled and deterred him. But Sylvia, with her hand on his shoulder, absorbed in her singing, and directing him only as she would have pressed the pedal ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... should doubt his heroic nature, inasmuch as the cabalistic letters "U. S." are distinctly ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... knowledge of public life and of scholastic theories, together with the love of occult and cabalistic science, and the craft of Provencal poetry, Dante received from his Florence of the thirteenth century the knowledge of this new, this exotic and esoteric intellectual love. And, as it is the mission of genius to gather into an undying whole, to model into a perfect ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... clerk, gave me a fresh twinge, for I imagined that every clerk added more charges, and that every charge was a tighter turn to the vise which held my fingers. Finally, the last clerk defiantly thrust in my face the terrible official document, on which were scrawled certain cabalistic characters, signifying the amount of money I should be forced to pay to the German government before I could have my property. I would not touch it but resolved I would really leave my packages until I could communicate with ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... said Kelly, not raising his head as he spoke, but intently poring over a grim volume of cabalistic symbols. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... the table, writing out some cabalistic wiggles that stood for bromide of potassium, when I remarked casually that it was strange how well I could always ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... London, and in other kindred societies, is that the member's fee cannot be paid in work; that the keepers and numerous employes of this large institution are not recognized as members of the Society, while many have no other incentive to joining the society than to put the cabalistic letters F.Z.S (Fellow of the Zoological Society) on their cards. In a word, what is needed is a ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... Michel," replied the captain. "All these signs, which seem cabalistic to you, form the plainest, the clearest, and the most logical language to those who know how ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... old man on whose silvery head was set a curious golden mitre ending in the shape of a wondrously bejewelled trident. The curious Americans noted that the arch-priest's robes were as black as his evilly glittering eyes, and were embroidered with curious cabalistic symbols done in silver thread. In his withered hand Herakles carried a ceremonial trident—the mark of the Head Priest ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... the regent and the Duke de Bourbon, little to the credit of either, both having been deeply implicated in the cabalistic operations of the system. In fact, the several members of the council had been among the most venal "beneficiaries" of the scheme, and had interests at stake which they were anxious to secure. From all the circumstances of the case, I am inclined to think that others were more to ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... much more than I had ventured to hope. For I promptly found my conceived arrangement of my material open the door wide to ingenuity. I remember that in sketching my project for the conductors of the periodical I have named I drew on a sheet of paper—and possibly with an effect of the cabalistic, it now comes over me, that even anxious amplification may have but vainly attenuated—the neat figure of a circle consisting of a number of small rounds disposed at equal distance about a central object. The central object was my situation, my subject in itself, to which ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... him kindly. We believe the Hukeem was aided in his researches by a big book supposed to contain medical receipts, but which was in reality a box of surveying instruments, its outside covered with cabalistic signs bearing a family resemblance to a plane-table! The Hukeem was much given to solitary meditation, and generally sought mountain peaks for that purpose. On such occasions the plane-table ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard
... wolf that scratched and sniffed at his door as long as he lived. I do not know why the wolf sniffed, for Mozart really never had anything worth carrying away. He was so generous that his purse was always open, and so full of unmixed pity that the beggars passed his name along and made cabalistic marks on his gateposts. Every seedy, needy, thirsty and ill-appreciated musician in Germany regarded him as lawful prey. They used to say to Mozart, "I can not beg and to dig I am ashamed—so grant me a small ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... bought otherwise than by fortuitous adventure. I have buried myself in libraries to extract from the nonsense of ancient days new nonsense of my own. I have turned over volumes, which, from the pot-hooks I was obliged to decipher, might have been the cabalistic manuscripts of Cornelius Agrippa, although I never saw "the door open and the devil come in." [Footnote: See Southey's Ballad on the Young Man who read in a Conjuror's Books.] But all the domestic inhabitants ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... of the conjuring tricks the conjurer would purposely make a partial failure in the first attempt; an assistant would then impart the necessary power by muttering cabalistic words ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... "bina," a second an ordinary school-slate covered with crude cabalistic signs and a third a rude book, something like a Vani's "chopda," filled with Marathi characters, which doubtless plays a part in the fortune-telling and spirit-scaring that form the stock-in-trade of these wandering hierophants. Hardly had they disappeared than four Sadhus ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... thing that represented my first attempt at a journal. It looked like a sibyl's conjuring book, or an Assyrian manuscript; a seeming endless strip of paper was rolled upon a reed; at the head of this there were two varieties of the Egyptian sphinx and a cabalistic star drawn in red ink,—and under these mysterious signs I wrote down, upon the full length of the paper and in a cipher of my own invention, daily events and reflections. A year later, however, because of the labor involved in transcribing the cryptographic characters I had ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... old Mombi pronounce the magic words, and having also succeeded in bringing the Saw-Horse to life, Tip did not hesitate an instant in speaking the three cabalistic words, each accompanied by the peculiar gesture ...
— The Marvelous Land of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... enabled to die there—which was the aim of a good Jew's life. As for the Messiah, he would come assuredly—in God's good time. Thus Karlkammer at enormous length with frequent intervals of unintelligibility and huge chunks of irrelevant quotation and much play of Cabalistic conceptions. Pinchas, who had been fuming throughout this speech, for to him Karlkammer stood for the archetype of all donkeys, jumped up impatiently when Karlkammer paused for breath and denounced as an interruption ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... scheme of telegraphing across the street. And Rex, his arts exhausted in vain, watched hopelessly while, one after another, five telegrams were sent to The Montana, a hundred feet away. The first being short two of the regulation ten words. Strong finished with a cabalistic ...
— A Good Samaritan • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... of what had been cream-colored satin embroidered with small bunches of heartsease, and which was aromatic with otto of roses. Awkwardly, and somewhat slowly he drew out of this a small locket, in the center of which was some unreadable legend in cabalistic looking character, and which blazed with the finest diamonds. Heaven alone knows the secret of that gem, or the struggle with which the Priest yielded it. He put it into Antoine's hand, talking as he did so, partly to himself ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... and ask what course does the focus of this curve follow. The answer comes: The focus of the parabola describes a 'catenary,' a line very simple in shape, but endowed with an algebraic symbol that has to resort to a kind of cabalistic number at variance with any sort of numeration, so much so that the unit refuses to express it, however much we subdivide the unit. It is called the number e. Its value is represented by the following ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... well as hearing his story, would go softly with it to Peter's room; and there think and ask herself how her father, whose system she had long quietly observed, would have treated the case. Then she would write an illegible scrawl with a cabalistic letter, and bring it down reverently, and show it the patient, and "Could he read that?" Then it would be either, "I am no reader," or, with admiration, "Nay, mistress, nought ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... Everywhere along the route he was greeted with jeers or pitying words, as his appearance excited the mirth or commiseration of the passers-by. When he reached the entrance to the Daily News office he was followed by a motley crowd of noisy urchins whom he dismissed with a grimace and the cabalistic gesture with which Nicholas Koorn perplexed and repulsed Antony Van Corlear from the battlement of the fortress of Rensellaerstein. Then closing the door in their astonished faces, he mounted the two flights of stairs to the ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... arrange a duel for him under the most dangerous conditions. Ah, but I became inopportunely angry!... But why the deuce did Gorka select such a second? It is incomprehensible!... Did you see what the cabalistic word gentleman means to those rascals: Steal, cheat, assassinate, but have carriages perfectly appointed, a magnificent mansion, well-served dinners, and fine clothes!... No, I have suffered too much! Ah, it is not right; and on what a day, too? ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... retraced, with more or less of variety, arguments already employed. In referring to the indictment, he said that it was the history of the last nine months; and that he defied the most brilliant imagination to grasp the monstrous accumulation of matter. Its entire strength rested on the meaning of that cabalistic word, "conspiracy." He continued:—"If, my lords, I look into the dictionary for the meaning of that word, I find that it is 'a secret agreement between several to commit a crime;' and that is the rational, common-sense ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... to nearly ten Mr. Vandeford spent in slowly munching the refreshment retrieved from the automat by Mr. Adolph Meyers and thinking out loud to that dignitary who took down his thoughts on paper in cabalistic signs of shorthand. They were all notes of what could and must be done in the next few days in the fight for the good fate of ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... closed and mysterious box-cars, important with big numbers and initials in cabalistic sequence, indicating a wide and exciting range of travels. Then came stock cars, from between the slats of which strange and envied cattle looked out on their way to a wondrous city; and there was a car of squealing pigs, who seemed ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... almost one upon the other, on hard dirty benches, closely packed together. This was not the only school in Szybow but none of the others was so eagerly sought after by parents as the one conducted by Reb Moshe, known by his piety and cabalistic knowledge, the favourite of the Rabbi. It must not be thought that Reb Moshe initiated his scholars into the first steps of learning; this would have been sheer waste of his capabilities—which ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... old. He wears a wig of long, white, coarse hair. His costume is of cotton khaki, decorated with beads, bits of looking-glass, and feathers. He wears no feathers on his head. A piece of fur is fastened to his shoulders. His blanket is black, with white cabalistic signs. It can be ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... way, their superior knowledge, were probably the mixed causes which led such distinguished scholars as Paracelsus, Cornelius Agrippa, Cardan, and Campanella to oppress themselves and their readers with a mass of unintelligible rubbish and cabalistic mysticism.[112] Slow and gradual as are the successive advances in the knowledge and improvement of mankind, it would not be reasonable to be surprised that preceding generations could not at once attain to the knowledge of a maturer age; and the teachers ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... were to stand before the table-counter. The wholesome smell of plaster and whitewash pervaded the apartment. A very small "Matilda Jenkyns, licensed to sell tea," was hidden under the lintel of the new door, and two boxes of tea, with cabalistic inscriptions all over them, stood ready to disgorge ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... for some indication concerning the future. After bumping about in dim religious gloom among stuffed crocodiles and such-like accessories to science of those days, you discovered your astronomer deeply engaged in describing cabalistic figures on parchment; he would raise his eyes with a far-away look, as if no henchman had hurried round a few minutes earlier to say that "the old man was carrying on something awful," your astronomer would descend to earth for a space and then at his master's command reascend to get ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... in festoons before his door. Over the way is the Government depot, where the coarsest of salt and the rankest of tobacco are sold at monopoly prices. Those gay, parti-coloured stripes of paper, inscribed with the cabalistic figures, flaunting at the street corner, proclaim the "Prenditoria di Lotti," or office of the Papal lottery, where gambling receives the sanction of the Church, and prospers under clerical auspices to such an extent that in the city of Rome alone, with a ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... and flat, square and oblong, each bearing weird and cryptic pencillings on one end; cryptic, that is, to any one except Mrs. Brewster and you who have owned an attic. Thus "H's Fshg Tckl" jabberwocked one long, slim box. Another stunned you with "Cur Ted Slpg Pch." A cabalistic third hid its contents under "Sip Cov Pinky Rm." To say nothing of such curt yet intriguing fragments as "Blk Nt Drs" and "Sun Par Val." Once you had the code key they translated themselves simply enough into such homely items as Hosey's fishing tackle, canvas curtains for Ted's sleeping ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... Inquisition but succeeded in escaping to England and again embraced the Protestant faith. He received a prebend in St Paul's cathedral, London, and the living of Therlield, Hertfordshire. He died in 1640. Alabaster's other cabalistic writings are Commenitarius de Beslia Apocalyptica (1621) and Spiraculum tubarum . . . . (1633), a mystical interpretation of the Pentateuch. It was by these theological writings that he won the praise of Robert Herrick, who calls him "the triumph of the day'' and the "one only glory ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... leave of his family. He cut off a lock of his hair, and divided it into three parts. One of these he fastened to the top of his wife's head, and blew on it three times with the utmost violence, at the same time uttering certain cabalistic words. The other two portions he fastened with the same formalities to the ...
— The Pioneers • R.M. Ballantyne
... cell beyond. This was the spirit, of a surety. She cowered against her fair-haired protector and shuddered. But the maiden answered the voice in a strange tongue. Masanath would have known it to be Hebrew, had she been composed. But now it was mystic, cabalistic. ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... would have leaped up in a wild joy had he known how carefully Randall Clayton had already entered the accidentally found address in the little silver-clasped address book, in which he had recorded, with judicious cabalistic cloudiness, the combinations of his safes and certain ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... in the autumn of 1849 that I went into residence at the little college and was assigned a very unprepossessing room in a very ugly barrack. Entering my new quarters I soon discovered about me various cabalistic signs, some of them evidently made by heating large iron keys, and pressing them against the woodwork. On inquiring I found that the room had been occupied some years before by no less a personage than Philip Spencer, a member of the famous Spencer family of Albany, who, having passed some years ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... pastime he pleased. Not a few opened their shops. Others gathered round an astrologer,—a personage no longer to be seen in the cities of the west,—who had taken his stand on the Riva degli Schiavoni, and there, begirt with zone inscribed with cabalistic characters, and holding in his hand his wizard's staff, was setting forth, with stentorian voice, his marvellous power of healing by the combined help of the stars and his drugs. By the way, why should the profession of astrology and the cognate arts be permitted ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... at present," he said. "I take it that the line across the island signifies this gap or canyon, and the small intersecting line the cave. But 32 divided by 1, and an 'X' surmounted by a dot are cabalistic. They would cause even Sherlock Holmes to smoke at least two pipes. ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... over an indefinitely wide area was perfectly well known to the Spanish priests and civil authorities. The ceremonies, formulas and methods of procedure were everywhere identical or alike. This itself was justly regarded as a proof of the secret intelligence which existed among the members of this cabalistic guild.[29-[]] ...
— Nagualism - A Study in Native American Folk-lore and History • Daniel G. Brinton
... Bragadin said that it was Solomon's key, vulgarly called cabalistic science, and he asked me ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... copper instrument (it had come from Germany and dated from the seventeenth century) of a second-hand Paris dealer, after a visit to the Cluny Museum, where he had stood for a long while in ecstatic admiration before a marvelous astrolabe made of chiseled ivory, whose cabalistic ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... visible only to his waist. He has half risen from his immense arm-chair, his clenched fists rest on the table, and he is gazing with curiosity and terror at a large luminous circle, formed of magic letters, which gleams from the wall beyond, like the solar spectrum in a dark chamber. This cabalistic sun seems to tremble before the eye, and fills the wan cell with its mysterious radiance. It is horrible and ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... those that came through Bagdad. The theory is that the Hindu system, without the zero, early reached Alexandria (say 450 A.D.), and that the Neo-Pythagorean love for the mysterious and especially for the Oriental led to its use as something bizarre and cabalistic; that it was then passed along the Mediterranean, reaching Boethius in Athens or in Rome, and to the schools of Spain, being discovered in Africa and Spain by the Arabs even before they themselves knew the improved ...
— The Hindu-Arabic Numerals • David Eugene Smith
... enlighten his prejudiced and ignorant neighbors; the knowledge of his character and the benefits arising from his presence were confined to the lady of the house and her faithful tenantry. Even after his death the secret was still kept, and only the cabalistic characters "R. I. P." remain to tell an intelligent reader that he was neither Quaker nor Protestant; and, probably, tradition alone, preserved doubtless in the neighborhood, could assure us that he was ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... of the council of state was called, and at it M. Lontane revealed the meaning of those cabalistic letters and the leadership of Kelly. He had tracked down the fishermen and found their headquarters at the ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... figure in the seal of California is the presiding goddess of that State, her spear in one hand, the other resting on her shield, the cabalistic word "Eureka" over her head and a bear crouching quietly at her feet. She seems to be calmly contemplating the magnificent harbor within the Golden Gate. The shadows on the distant mountains, the richly-laden vessels ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... render the tracing of their derivation an Herculean task, unless Trenches multiply in proportion to the necessities of the times. If I ever wished the old lion to put forth all the majesty of his indignation, I had only to whisper the cabalistic words, "Phonetic spelling!" Yet Landor was not very exacting. In the "Last Fruit off an Old Tree," he says, through his medium, Pericles, who is giving advice to Alcibiades: "Every time we pronounce a word different from another, we show our disapprobation of his manner, and accuse him ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... seclude oneself &c. 893; lurk, sneak, skulk, slink, prowl; steal into, steal out of, steal by, steal along; play at bopeep[obs3], play at hide and seek; hide in holes and corners; still hunt. Adj. concealed &c. v.; hidden; secret, recondite, mystic, cabalistic, occult, dark; cryptic, cryptical[obs3]; private, privy, in petto, auricular, clandestine, close, inviolate; tortuous. behind a screen &c. 530; undercover, under an eclipse; in ambush, in hiding, in disguise; in a cloud, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... black velvet divided it into two almost equal parts, one of which was filled with seats for the spectators and the other occupied by a platform covered with a checkered carpet. In the center of this platform was placed a table, over which was spread a piece of black cloth adorned with skulls and cabalistic signs. The mise en scene was therefore lugubrious and had its effect upon the merry visitors. The jokes died away, they spoke in whispers, and however much some tried to appear indifferent, their lips framed no smiles. All felt as if they had ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... she grew away somewhat from her old crowd. And if, at times, her gallant fight seemed futile—if at times she could not still the cry of her heart, it was because she was a woman, made to be loved, fitted for finer things and truer things than writing cabalistic signs on a tablet and transcribing them, later, ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... find the means of proving what the document affirms, and my case will then stand just as well. As a kind of assurance for the witnesses my brother affixed a character,—a kind of cabalistic design,—upon the will, assuring them it was placed on the will alone. You have a copy of ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... last meeting took place in 1760 and you recall that shortly afterward the movement of Judaism started. It is now 1787 years since the destruction of Jerusalem and this year is designated for a meeting of the Cabalistic Sanhedrin. This is the day of the meeting; the place is this city. I want to be present at this meeting in spite of the danger and am ready to ...
— The History of a Lie - 'The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion' • Herman Bernstein
... connexion with Holy Writ. But the general opinion is, that it is Dr. John Faustus, a German physician, in his study. This Dr. Faustus was supposed to have dealings with familiar spirits, one of which has raised this cabalistic vision, that enters the window with overwhelming splendour, like the bursting of a shell, communicating its radiance to the head and breast of the figure, and, descending by his variegated garment, is extended in a spread of light over the whole lower part of the ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet
... University, and we probably distorted the method, and I was busy trying to find the least common multiple of Hamlet and the greatest common divisor of Macbeth, and I began asking him whether stories were constructed by cabalistic formulae. At length he sighed wearily and shook his drooping ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... this youth the sacred formula of the iron grate, which, dividing the infinite into squares, thereby subjects it to itself. K. listened to my words with emotion, looking with the horror of an ignorant man at the figures which must have seemed to him to be cabalistic, but which were nothing else than the ordinary figures used ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... of the edifice, it glittered and sparkled as if diamonds had been flung against it by the double handful. The brilliancy might have be fitted Aladdin's palace rather than the mansion of a grave old Puritan ruler. It was further decorated with strange and seemingly cabalistic figures and diagrams, suitable to the quaint taste of the age which had been drawn in the stucco, when newly laid on, and had now grown hard and durable, for the admiration of ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... clothes, and manner proclaimed him "from the East," whither, in all probability, he would shortly return if he did not mend his ways, disclaimed all knowledge of the place as if it were an undesirable acquaintance. But before he could deny it thrice, a man who had heard the cabalistic name was making his way towards the desk, the pride of the traveller radiating from ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... by the hand, and said unto her, "Talitha cumi, which is, being interpreted," the Evangelist explains, "Damsel, I say unto thee, Arise." Doubtless most readers get the impression that our Lord used here some cabalistic words in a foreign tongue; the fact is that these are the words of the common speech of the people; only the Evangelist seems to have thought them especially memorable, and he has given us not merely, ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... square before the old courthouse, which now served as regimental headquarters and bore the magic letters A.O.K. as a sort of cabalistic sign on its front, a military band played every afternoon from three to four at command of His Excellency. This little diversion was meant to compensate the civilian population for the many inconveniences that the quartering of several hundreds of staff officers ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... true, and thanks to this freak of fate he obtained more fame from his horoscopes than from his canvasses. He "prognosticated," says Burton, "that I was to become a great astrologer." Straightway Burton buried himself in astrological and cabalistic books [56], studied the uncanny arts, and became learned in "dark spells and devilish enginery," but his own prophecies generally proved to be of the Moseilima type; that is to say, the opposite invariably happened—a fatality that pursued him ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... away without leaving a trace. And where was the man with the black mustache? Was he John Bray? Impossible. It was all very perplexing. But here in his hand he held the tangible evidence of McGuire's fears. "You know what I've got and I know what you've got." The sentence seemed to have a cabalistic significance—a pact—a threat which each man held over the other. Perhaps it wasn't money only that "Hawk" wanted. Whatever it was, he meant to have it, and soon. The answer the man expected was ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... the backs of beasts—when they settled questions of right and expediency by counting noses—when cows were enslaved and women free—when science had not dawned to chase away the shadows of imagination and the fear of immortality—and when the cabalistic letters "A.D.," which from habit we still affix to numerals designating the date, had perhaps a known signification. It is indeed well to live in this golden age, under the benign sway of that supreme and culminating product of Smithocracy, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... tribes living on the North Pacific Coast. The disks, always of an uneven number, are made of wood and ornamented with designs composed of segments of circles with groupings of dots. Some of the markings are regarded as cabalistic, and there are men who claim to have a knowledge of spells that will bring luck to the disks they ornament and treat; such disks are considered valuable and often command a high price. All of the disks in a set that is used in this game are ornamented ...
— Indian Games and Dances with Native Songs • Alice C. Fletcher
... a singular collection of the ancient idols of Mexico, which bear a surprising resemblance to those used by the followers of the Buddhist superstition. In return for a translation of an Arabic inscription which I made for him, he presented me with a copy of the Cabalistic book Zohar, in the Rabbinical language and character, which on the destruction of the Inquisition at Seville (1820) he obtained from the ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... example, the Young Men's C. A. of Iowa City, after having regularly engaged Miss OLIVE LOGAN in their lecture course, concluded to back out, the cabalistic ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various
... dropped a bulky volume heavily on the counter. "The Chicago Sartorial Company," he asserted, "have got some swell checks." He ran hastily over the pages, each with a sample rectangle of cloth pasted within a printed gold border, and a cabalistic sign beneath. Finally, "How's that?" he demanded, indicating a bold, mathematical design in pale ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... contracted into a singularly soothing and almost voiceless whistle—Richelieu's own peculiar accomplishment. But no stone appeared. Like most of his genus he was superstitious, and repeated to himself the cabalistic formula: "Losin's seekin's, findin's keepin's"—presumed to be of great efficacy in such cases—with religious fervor. He had laboriously reached the end of the veranda when he noticed the open window of Louise's ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... daughter of John Arden, of Sibsey, co. Lincoln (Visitation, 1592). In the neighbourhood there was a noted Robert de Arderne, of co. Norfolk, 1315, whose seal bears two shields side by side in fesse; Dext. ermine a fesse chequy Arden; Sinist. on a fesse three garbs with cabalistic letters, explained in Journ. Brit. Arch. Ass., ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... panorama Of her shiftings and adventures, Are peculiar memoranda, Dotting, here and there, the margin. Now the "Red Stars" have a meeting, With their weird, uncanny customs; Now the "Knights of Pythias" cluster 'Round a shrine of secret magic; Now the "Eastern Star" is dawning, With its cabalistic mottoes; Now the "Julipeans" revel 'Neath the awnings on the greensward, With their mighty dignitaries, With Sockdologers, Sapsuckers, With their Knockemstiffs, Lawgivers, With their Orators and Wise-Men, With their visitors and laymen— All their corps of jolly members 'Neath the cooling, ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... Then, clasping in his nerveless hand the baton, ornamented with its fleurs-de-lis, he cast on it his eyes, which had no longer the power of looking upwards towards Heaven, and fell back, murmuring strange words, which appeared to the soldiers cabalistic—words which had formerly represented so many things on earth, and which none but the dying man ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... all over with cabalistic triangles, and hypogrifs; by study of which a reputed prophet, was said to have obtained his inspiration. (Slightly redolent ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... bearing in his hand a metallic circlet which glittered in the light of the lambent flame that arose from the altar; as he approached me I saw that it was a rudely fashioned collar of silver, its surface covered with engraved lines and strange cabalistic characters; this he speedily fastened around my neck in such a way that I could not displace it, and again motioned me to follow him; leaving me entirely in the dark, as to the object or meaning of this singular proceeding. Reaching the first terrace of the temple, we descended ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... me who of this necessity took that honourable post. In the narrowest part of the valley, on the south side, was a great cliff of rock, rising sheer, of smooth and even surface. Hereon were graven certain cabalistic signs, and many figures of men and animals, fishes, reptiles and birds; suns and stars; and many quaint symbols. Some of these latter were disjointed limbs and features, such as arms and legs, fingers, eyes, noses, ears, and lips. Mysterious symbols which ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... squire for company, were like an idyl. The rainy days in the large, low drawing-room, singing with Sophia, or dreaming and speculating with her on all sorts of mysteries, were, in their way, equally charmful. He liked to walk slowly up and down, and to talk to her softly of things obscure, cryptic, cabalistic. The plashing rain, the moaning wind, made just the monotonous accompaniment that seemed fitting; and the lovely girl, listening, with needle half-drawn, and sensitive, sensuous face lifted to his own, made a situation in which he knew he did ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... a day! All he can say Is but just so much trouble and time thrown away; Not a man can be tempted to join the melee: E'en those words cabalistic, "I promise to pay Fifty pounds on demand," have for once lost their sway, And there the Knight stands Wringing his hands In his agony—when on a sudden, one ray Of hope darts through his midriff!—His Saint!— Oh, it's funny And almost absurd, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... "Seventy-eight," passing your hand through your sable locks as you spoke—"Only that? I thought you looked older," the accommodating individual would answer, at the same time putting into your hand a paper on which was written some cabalistic sign. One day I had taken it into my head to go and spend two hours at Bougival, and my pass bore the strange word "Carnivolus" written on it. Provided with this mysterious document, I was enabled to procure a first-class ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... replied the ambassador, "and, thanks to the enchantments of a powerful magician, have so arranged, that if you would not go to the mountain, the mountain should come to you. Hola, genii!" continued the chief, describing some cabalistic circles in the air with his wand, "display the palace of your ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... leisure hours, something like one who, as Dryden says, 'is for raking in Chaucer for antiquated words.' By and by he heard a wish here and a wish there, whether real or otherwise he does not know, which said something about 'type,' 'press,' and used other cabalistic words, such as 'copy,' 'devil,' etc. Then there was a gathering of papers, a transcribing of passages from letters, an arranging in alphabetical order, a correcting of proofs, and the work was done,—poorly it may be, but with ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... to one who had not breakfasted. On the shady side stood half a dozen two-wheeled carts, loaded with lightwood and drawn by diminutive steers, or superannuated army mules branded on the flank with the cabalistic letters "C. S. A.," which represented a vanished dream, or "U. S. A.," which, as any negro about the market-house would have borne witness, signified a very concrete fact. Now and then a lady or gentleman passed with leisurely step—no one ever ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... "By this you will remember your thankful friend." On the following day she also sent me a small purse of gold thread netted, in which were a few Siamese coins, and a scrap of paper inscribed with cabalistic characters,—an infallible charm to preserve the ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... of this varied. Some looked in amazement; one ventured to say, "Well, that's the beater!" and another dropped into the cabalistic remark which cannot be defined, but which has its due significance, "Well, you must be sent for!" The result of all this running commentary was such that, when the visitor reached the top of the ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... described on the door as "a private, confidential, inquiry office," sat, on the morning following John Steele's ride in the park, a little man with ferret-like eyes at a dusty desk near a dusty window. He did not seem to be very busy, was engaged at the moment in drawing meaningless cabalistic signs on a piece of paper, when a step in the hallway and a low tapping at the door caused him to throw down his pen and straighten expectantly. A client, perhaps!—a woman?—no, a man! With momentary surprise, he gazed on the delicately chiseled features of his caller; ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... a wizard; let us go in here!" Robin had spied a dim, mysterious booth, outside of which were triangles and cones and fiery serpents coming forth from a golden pot, with cabalistic signs and figures about the sides of it. Standing there was a tall, aged man, clad in a long red robe and ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... inviolable sanctity, he stood long motionless, realizing, his followers felt, the Cabalistic teaching as to the Messiah, incarnating the Godhead through the primal Adam, pure, sinless, at one with himself and elemental Nature. At last he raised his luminous eyes heavenwards, and said in ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... of your supposition is true, sweet sister mine,' replied Rupert: 'not knowing what spells it might contain, seeing that Miss Merton's caligraphy is more like the cabalistic characters of a sorceress than the Italian-hand of a gentle demoiselle, I exorcised it—I committed ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to bear the knowledge," he said smiling—"if you will promise to speak the cabalistic two words that were to have such effect upon Reuben. So you want to put nonsense into my ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... The Moor at once gave Brandon a soothing drink, which soon put him into a sweet sleep. He then bathed him as he slept, with some strengthening lotion, made certain learned signs, and spoke a few cabalistic words, and, sure enough, so strong were the healing remedies and incantations that the next morning Brandon was another man, though very far from well and strong. The Moor recommended nutritious food, such as roast beef and generous ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... employ the time in writing to his elder brother respecting the fee. Materials were supplied to him, and he used them so as to do credit to the monks of Beaulieu, in spite of little Dennet spending every spare moment in watching his pen as if he were performing some cabalistic operation. ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... doubly mystic, Resumed his juggling cabalistic. The aspects here again were various; But seemed to indicate Aquarius. Thereat portentously he frowned; Then frowned again, then smiled:—'twas found! But 'twas too simple to be tried. "What is it, ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... Altorache, Merle, and Granier de Cassagnac, all of whom swore the oath of fidelity and enthusiastically named Balzac Grand Master of the new order. The place of meeting was changed each week, in order not to attract the attention of the waiters who served the "Horses,"—cabalistic name of the conspirators,—and their secret had to be carefully guarded, for it was nothing less than a project for distributing among the members of the Red Horse the chief offices of State, the ministries and ambassadorships, the highest positions in arts and letters, ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... representative species; and then by simply eliminating from consideration the whole array of representative species, i.e., all cases in which the Japanese and the American plant are not exactly alike. As if, by pronouncing the cabalistic word species, the question were settled, or rather the greater part of it remanded out of the domain of science; as if, while complete identity of forms implied community of origin, anything short of it carried no presumption of the kind; so leaving all these singular ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... finds the bars, and there stopping, speaks some words in undertone, but loud enough to be heard by the animals inside. As if it were a cabalistic speech, one separates from the rest, and comes towards him. It is the steed of Clancy. Protruding its soft muzzle over the rail, it is stroked by the mulatto's hand, which soon after has hold of the forelock. Fortunately the saddles are close ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... the first person to be sent into the hall. There were so many of us that "Aina-maina-mona-mike" would not go quite around; but with that promptness of expedient which belongs to genius, Billy instantly added on "Intery-mintery-cutery-corn," and the last word of the cabalistic formula fell upon me, Edward Balbus. I disappeared into the entry amid peals of happy laughter from both old and young, calling, when the door opened again to ask me who I wanted, for the pretty, lisping ...
— A Brace Of Boys - 1867, From "Little Brother" • Fitz Hugh Ludlow
... an historical and noteworthy phrase, much in vogue in 1835, "Young France," and describes it as one of those cabalistic formulae which assume to give expression to a grand, terrible, sublime, and volcanic idea. What shall we say now-a-days of these two brief monosyllabic words, in which the strong generation of the Revolution ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... all, an astrologer,—nay, a cabalist—is not so monstrous a prodigy in the nineteenth century! In the year 1801, Lackingtou published a quarto, entitled Magus: a Complete System of Occult Philosophy; treating of Alchemy, the Cabalistic Art, Natural and Celestial Magic, &c.—and a very impudent publication it is too. That Raphael should put forth astrological manuals is not a proof of his belief in the science he professes; but that it should answer to Raphael to ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... joined the teachings of the Cabala with his Neo-Platonized Christianity and so produced a new blend. Johann Reuchlin (1455-1522), great German classical and Hebrew scholar, brave opponent of obscurantism, forerunner of the Reformation, introduced the Neo-Platonic and Cabalistic blend of ideas ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... under his breath and led the way to an inner courtyard where stood four immense black boxes painted with death-heads, splintered bones, fountains of blood and cabalistic symbols all of ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... morning of our attendance, a piece of paper containing the movements prescribed for our individual cases, was stuck in our bosoms. On inspecting the lists, we found we had ten movements apiece, and no two of them alike. What they were we could only dimly guess from such cabalistic terms as "Stodgangst," "Krhalfligg," "Simhang," or "Hogstrgrsitt." The hall, about eighty feet in length by thirty in height, was furnished with the usual appliances for gymnastic exercises. Some fifty or sixty patients were present, ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... marginal note of cabalistic import before he swung round in his chair and looked ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... with gray horsehair hanging about her face, a red and black robe, a staff, and cabalistic signs upon her cloak. Hugo demanded a potion to make Zara adore him, and one to destroy Roderigo. Hagar, in a fine dramatic melody, promised both, and proceeded to call up the spirit who would bring ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... scene. How gay it is! Around the fountain, which is spilling in the centre of the court, a constantly varying group is gathered, washing, drinking, and filling their flasks and vases. Near by, a charlatan, mounted on a table, with a huge canvas behind him painted all over with odd cabalistic figures, is screaming, in loud and voluble tones, the virtues of his medicines and unguents, and his skill in extracting teeth. One need never have a pang in tooth, ear, head, or stomach, if one will but trust his wonderful promises. In one little bottle he has the famous water ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... distilled, regardless of expense, or trouble, or hard work. Truly they deserved to be cured. They did not measure the drugs with precision in preparing their medicines, as do our chemists nowadays, nor were their prescriptions written in Latin nor with cabalistic marks—the asbestos stomachs and colossal minds of our forefathers were much above such petty minuteness; nor did they administer the doses with exactness. "The bigth of a walnut," "enough to lie on a pen knifes point," ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... his eyes) "but in these degenerate days I am become the slave of quack doctors and newspapers. I am driven from pillar to post and hurried up and down, sometimes with stencil-plate and paste-brush to defile the fences with cabalistic legends, and sometimes in grotesque and extravagant character at the behest of some driving journal. I attended to that Ocean Bank robbery some weeks ago, when I was hardly rested from finishing up the pow-wow ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... draw upon his slate, his utter ignorance of Algebra prevented him from being much edified by the cabalistic signs on the blackboard, which Mr. Tinkler seemed to chalk up dubiously, and rub out again as soon as possible, with an air of being ashamed of them. So he tried to nerve himself for the coming ordeal by furtively watching ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... still prevails in Europe. On many of the French and German soldiers, killed during the last German war, were found talismans composed of strips of paper, parchment or cloth, on which were written supposed cabalistic words or the name of some saint, that the wearer firmly believed to be possessed of the power ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon
... I carved certain cabalistic signs on the big beech-tree you would presently appear to me in a pink ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... flashed across his mind in his studies of that almost abstract, nay, almost cabalistic thing, the science of bodily proportions. It was plain that the mystery of antique beauty—the ancient symmetry, symmetria prisca as a humanist designs it in his epitaph for Leonardo da Vinci—was but a matter of numbers. For a man's length, if he stand with outstretched arms, is ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... marvelling at the treasures, and when weary of admiration he gathered together bags of Ashrafis, a sufficient load for his ten mules, and placed them by the entrance in readiness to be carried outside and set upon the beasts. But by the will of Allah Almighty he had clean forgotten the cabalistic words and cried out, "Open, O Barley!" whereat the door refused to move. Astonished and confused beyond measure he named the names of all manner of grains save sesame, which had slipped from his memory as though he had never heard the word; whereat in ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... Frank, in which the same letter is three times repeated, drove the ingenuity of the artist to a still more curious combination—the three letters being kept perfectly independent, yet interlaced, or rather overlapped, so that their lines exhibit a figure which has the curious property, like the cabalistic Abracadabra, of presenting the same appearance from whatever point it ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... break the monastic rules by wandering forth at night upon the hills. When he was absent thus one night, accompanied by others of the brethren, I visited his chamber, and examined his papers, some of which were covered with mystical figures and cabalistic characters. These papers I seized, and a watch was set to make prisoner of Alvetham on his return. Before dawn he appeared, and was instantly secured, and placed in close confinement. On the next day he was brought before the assembled conclave in the chapter-house, and ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... sights and sounds, saw a dance of peasant girls, and was charmed with lutes and gondolas,—or wandered into Germany and lost himself in the labyrinths of the Hartz Forest and of the Kantean philosophy, and amongst the cabalistic names of Fichte and Schelling and Lessing, and God knows who—this was long after, but all the former while he had nerved his heart and filled his eyes with tears, as he hailed the rising orb of liberty, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... the gossips, was a cabalistic formula of his; and whenever he had been heard to pronounce it, some misfortune had happened to the individual who had offended him. Sylvain crossed himself to ward off the evil spirit. The terrible words resounded through the tower into which Patience had just withdrawn, ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... at the sign of the Golden Horn. Its very door-way is blocked up for the moment by an enormous bale of goods, puffy, and covered with cabalistic characters. When we at length enter the outer gate of the house, we find ourselves in a small court-yard paved with stone and open to the sky, but now choked with boxes and packages, piled one upon the other in such confusion, that they appear to have been rained from above, rather than brought ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... more: Z Marcas! The man's whole life lies in this fantastic juxtaposition of seven letters; seven! the most significant of all the cabalistic numbers. And he died at five-and-thirty, so his life ...
— Z. Marcas • Honore de Balzac
... recent invitation card bid its members to attend a "Rip-Snorter at the Club House," stating that "provisions and provisos would be provided and Frou Frous be on tap." The exact significance of this cabalistic description is known only to the members and their guests. The same card announced that the new Constitution and By-Laws would be finally voted upon at the same meeting, and further announced the conditions of a forthcoming ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Vol. 1, 1895 • Various
... after another of the various volumes, he began to fancy that a feast of Tantalus had been provided for him: one book was English, another German, a third Russian; there was even one in cabalistic letters that seemed Turkish. Was this a polyglottic joke the countess had arranged ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac |
