"Stiletto" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... room, she was possibly the only one completely cheerful. She was used to these situations and enjoyed them. Her mind, roaming into the past, recalled the night when her cousin Warminster had been pinked by a stiletto in his own drawing-room by a lady from South America. ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... Bedros to her home, with a pledge to her father that she shall have a dowry of ten thousand lire when she marries. The father is pleased, the daughter is not. She sits and cries. She talks of herself getting at him with a stiletto." ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... side of the bed, in curious contrast to the crucifix and holy-water pot on the other,—succour close at hand against both spiritual and mortal foes. We had walked through the country without any alarm, and concluded that the reign of the rifle and stiletto was ended in Corsica. But how came the gun to be loaded? was it from inveterate habit even now that fire-arms were proscribed, or was Louis ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... was too late. The herald had raised his arm, turned round his head, and plunged the sharp stiletto into his mother's breast.' ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... a brook Darragh lighted his pipe and sat him down to examine the booty in detail. Two pistols, a stiletto, and a blackjack composed the arsenal of Mr. Sard. A large wallet disclosed more than four thousand dollars in Treasury notes — something to reimburse Ricca when she ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... while she conversed with the porter at the gates of the cemetery; Micio's anxiety to ascertain whether the interview was preliminary or subsequent to the corpse's kiss was not acute enough to induce him to buy the book. There was another about a kiss, Bacio Infame, on which a lady with a stiletto was defending herself from a bad man. All these were enticing, but we hoped to do better, and I began to blush for the somewhat thin plot of Tristram Shandy and to be thankful that my copy was not in Italian. Finally he took La Mano del Defunto: at the back of a sepulchral chamber in a violated ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... stepping back to put on her own hat, fastening it with a dangerous-looking weapon of war shaped like a stiletto, thrust most ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... raised it, One impulse seemed to shoot forth the jealous Greek and his watcher, and before Demetri Agryopoulo could form the faintest notion as to how the thing had happened, a sudden thunderbolt seemed launched against him, and he was lying all abroad with a sprained wrist. The stiletto flew clean over the wall, so swift and dexterous was the twist which Barndale gave the murderous hand ...
— An Old Meerschaum - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... odious instincts have been the bane of humanity. They have given us the stiletto, the Morgue, the bowie-knife. Our race must inevitably in the end outlive them. The test of man's plane in the scale of being is how far he has outlived them. They are surviving relics of the ape and tiger. But ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... the last and lowest group of insects, the stiletto-sheath is reduced to the size of a kind of little tube-shaped beak, which, when not in use, folds down like the ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... very high-spirited, very impulsive, very patriotic, and singularly truthful. The letter of Mr. Seward to such a man was like a buffet on the cheek of an unarmed officer. It stung like the thrust of a stiletto. It roused a resentment that could not find any words to give it expression. He could not wait to turn the insult over in his mind, to weigh the exact amount of affront in each question, to take counsel, to sleep over it, and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... wept, he implored pity, he openly spoke of suicide, and he hinted at murder. But Maggie passed him, pushing him out of the way with the watering-pot, threatening to water him too, until one day he drew a revolver. She screamed, and the revolver was put away, but on the next occasion a stiletto that he had brought from Italy was produced, and with a great deal of earnestness life was declared to be a miserable thing. It was absurd, no doubt, but at the same time it was not a little pathetic; he was so good-looking, and so sincere. Maggie put down the watering-pot, and she would probably ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... with which this girl snatched the mask from the face of the Judge, (he stood as if appalled,) that, ere he had gained his self-possession, she drew from her girdle a pearl-hilted stiletto, and in attempting to ward off the dreadful lunge, he struck it from her hand, and into her own bosom. The weapon fell gory to the floor-the blood trickled down her bodice-a cry of "murder" resounded through the hall! The administrator of justice rushed out of the door ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... going to be in just a little while," she put in, following the confident assertion with a query that came as suddenly as a stiletto stab: "Who is the ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... habit of those satyrs of which we have spoken of late when conferring on the finest passages of Ovid. My dress could but add to such resemblance—did I tell you, my boy, that I wore only a shirt? Seeing me, Mosaide's eyes vomited fire. Out of his dirty yellow greatcoat he drew a neat little stiletto and shook it through the window with an arm in no way weighed down by age. He roared bilingual curses on me. Yes, Tournebroche, my grammatical knowledge authorises me to say that his curses were bilingual, that Spanish, or rather Portuguese, ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... pairs of boots, 2 muffetees, 1 pair of gaiters, 1 pair of boots, 8 copper pens, 1 pair of slippers, 1 black leather bag, 1 pair of new boots, 1 coat, 1 waistcoat, 5 pairs of gloves, 1 pair of braces, a necktie, a dressing box, 2 brushes, 3 razors, a stiletto, a pair of spectacles, and 2 pieces of teeth set in gold.—12 book covers, 7 small ditto, 1 small box, 4 ditto in one.—A large box of toys.—A collar.—A large tea chest, containing 160 articles of ladies' dress, etc.—A ...
— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller
... It is the home of the famous Cyllene, whose offspring we expect to see winning races in the near future; Polar Star, scarcely less known, and Ituzaingo, a native of this country, are his present companions; while the remains of Gay Hermit, Stiletto, Pietermaritzburg, and Kendal, all of whom are well known among turf circles at home, rest beneath its soil. There are several other equally famous stud farms, such as the "San Jacinto," the present home of Val d'Or, who ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... and, under the Prefect Thuillier, they hunted the bandits from the macchi, killing between 200 and 300 of them. At the same time an edict was promulgated against bearing arms. It is forbidden to sell the old Corsican stiletto in the shops, and no one may carry a gun, even for sporting purposes, unless he obtains a special licence. These licences, moreover, are only granted for short ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... matter with Fava, anyway?" put in a third. "She was quite delighted with the American's arrival at first. Now she might draw a stiletto ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... mention of stiletto; and I am convinced that Vrain—as I suppose we must call him now—was killed with one. And again, Link, this woman admitted that she had married her elderly husband in Florence. Now, Florence, as you know, is an Italian town; a stiletto is an Italian weapon. Putting ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... children. Unless the sharks devoured them, their bones are yet about three feet under the floor of that iron foundry. Under the lee of the Northernmost promontory, near a rock marked with peculiar crosses made by the point of the stiletto which I constantly carried in my red silk sash, I buried tons of plate, and doubloons, pieces of eight, pistoles, Louis d'ors, and galleons by the chest. At that time galleons somehow meant to me money pieces in use, though since ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... his hands in his trousers' pockets and drew out one of those large iron compasses such as carpenters use, and opened it with a rapid movement. He then seized it in the centre and was thus armed with a sort of double-pointed stiletto, which he brandished with ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... like Mr. Jeffrey, less formidable than his unprincipled Friends. When Greek and Trojan meet on the plain, there is an interest in the combat; but it is hateful and painful to think, that a hero should be wounded behind his back, and by a poisoned stiletto in the hand of a ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... always supposing that the wronged party can summon heart enough to carry on a suit, with bruised affections—" "hang it," thought Tom, "why did I not think of that word 'bruised' while on my knees; it would tell like a stiletto—" "Yes, Miss Julia, if 'bruised affections' would permit the soul to descend to such preliminaries. The last consequence is, the ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... intimate friend, could tell many things if he chose. Sebastiano had brilliant triumphs. Once he had even been in great danger because the woman who loved and sought him was of such rank that her relatives would have resorted to the stiletto rather than ...
— The Pretty Sister Of Jose - 1889 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... poignard in the wound, and asking her with savage insults if her heart was pierced. Her last words were, 'Jesus, I pardon you.' Then they turned to Flaminio, and left him pierced with seventy-four stiletto wounds. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... The giant husky's eyes burned a deeper glow; for an instant his upper lip drew back, baring his stiletto-like fangs, and the hair along his neck and back stood up like a brush. Then, inch by inch, his muzzle drew nearer to Philip's steady hands, and a low whine rose in his throat. His crest drooped, his ears shot forward a little, and Philip's ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... wassail; and their quarter of the camp was prone to be a scene of loud revel and sudden brawl. They were, withal, of great pride, yet it was not like our inflammable Spanish pride: they stood not much upon the 'pundonor,' the high punctilio, and rarely drew the stiletto in their disputes; but their pride was silent and contumelious. Though from a remote and somewhat barbarous island, they believed themselves the most perfect men upon earth, and magnified their chieftain, the Lord Scales, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... position. He had been stabbed twice through the back and once through the spinal column at the base of the neck. His Excellency and the two assistants were seated in chairs, but had been stabbed through the heart. The instrument used must have been a long thin dagger or stiletto. There was no sign of it anywhere in the room, and most certainly none of the men who came out the previous night had such ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... classes lounge and read empty journals; in its center the Austrian bands play during the time of vespers their martial music jarring with the organ notes—the march drowning the miserere and the sullen crowd thickening round them—a crowd which if it had its will would stiletto every soldier that pipes to it. And in the recesses of the porches, all day long, knots of men of the lowest classes, unemployed and listless, lie basking in the sun like lizards; and unregarded children—every heavy glance of their young eyes full of desperation and stony depravity ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... not another word—I snatched forth a stiletto, put by the sword which trembled in his hand, and buried my poniard in his bosom. He fell with the blow, but my rage was unsated. I sprang upon him with the blood-thirsty feeling of a tiger; redoubled my blows; mangled him in my frenzy, grasped him by the throat, until with reiterated wounds ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... the ocean instructed a crocodile to carry Hohodemi to his home. This was accomplished, and in token of his safe arrival, Hohodemi placed his stiletto on the crocodile's neck for conveyance to ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... their adultery. But, as her passion became stronger, she had insisted on a rupture—a thing which had been effected long since, according to Frederick's account; and when he had ceased to protest, she replied, half closing her eyes, in which shone a look like the point of a stiletto ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... the metal contrivance. From the other end, just concealed under his little linger, there shot out as if released by a magic spring a thin keen little blade of the brightest and toughest steel. He was holding, instead of a meaningless contrivance of four rings, a most dangerous kind of stiletto or dagger upraised. He lifted his thumb and the blade sprang back into its sheath like an ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... Austrian bands[47] play during the time of vespers, their martial music jarring with the organ notes—the march drowning the miserere, and the sullen crowd thickening round them—a crowd, which, if it had its will, would stiletto every soldier that pipes to it. And in the recesses of the porches, all day long, knots of men of the lowest classes, unemployed and listless, lie basking in the sun like lizards; and unregarded children—every heavy glance of their young ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... ornaments, and few persons ever allowed the gloss to wear off them so quickly. In all probability she would rave over Tom's gift for a week, and by that time, if she did not lose it, would break the wings, by way of amusement, or tear the bill off to make the point of a stiletto, or ruin it in some other way, just to gratify her caprice, and an odd love of destruction which ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... The guard who brought in his food was a Sicilian, and was evidently of a talkative disposition, for he had several times entered into conversation with the captives. In addition to a long knife, he carried a small stiletto in his girdle, and Francis thought that, if he could obtain this, he might possibly free himself. Accordingly, at the hour when he expected his guard to enter, Francis placed himself at his window, with his face against the bars. When he ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... danced singing down to breakfast, she found by her plate another present—a pretty scarlet housewife from Cousin Charlotte, containing a little pair of scissors, a silver thimble, a case of needles, a stiletto, a bodkin, and two of the tiniest reels of silk she had ever seen. When the case was closed it looked like a dear ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... ought to be very glad to suffer for one she loves! I, however, in my inmost soul, was doleful and cross in the midst of all my joy. I shall make a bad wife, I am afraid, I am too fond of spending. I had bought two sashes and a nice little stiletto for piercing eyelet-holes in my stays, trifles that I really did not want, so that I have less than that slow-coach Agathe, who is so economical, and hoards her money like a magpie. She had two hundred francs! ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... are arrested by the Guards of the cardinal, are they?" continued M. de Treville, as furious at heart as his soldiers, but emphasizing his words and plunging them, one by one, so to say, like so many blows of a stiletto, into the bosoms of his auditors. "What! Six of his Eminence's Guards arrest six of his Majesty's Musketeers! MORBLEU! My part is taken! I will go straight to the louvre; I will give in my resignation as captain of the king's Musketeers to take a lieutenancy in the cardinal's Guards, and if he refuses ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... who obstinately stayed, persisting in keeping me company. This was the first time I had suffered from these cannibals, and such were my torments, I almost wished some blood-thirsty Italian would come and put an end to them with his stiletto. ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... seemed to be swarming with glittering pink-winged thoughts all singing. He walked on air, holding tightly to the hand of his goddess, seeing nothing but a blur of green and sunshine. Then a clean-cut idea stabbed him like a stiletto: was this Vanessa or Iole? And, to his own astonishment, he asked ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers
... strove to calm all this violence and conciliate them with his large good-natured smile. But Paganetti reassured him. According to him, the vendetta, though still existing in Corsica, no longer employs the stiletto or the rifle except very rarely, and among the lowest classes. The anonymous letter had taken their place. Indeed, every day unsigned letters were received at the Place Vendome ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... sustained by corresponding courage. Ben Jonson had many quarrels with him, both literary and personal, and mentions one occasion on which he beat him, and took away his pistol. His temper was Italian rather than English, and one would conceive of him as quicker with the stiletto than the fist. His connection with the stage ceased in 1613, after he had produced a number of dramas, of which nine have been preserved. He died about twenty years afterwards, in 1634, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... much given to sensual indulgence; and his body conformed to his timorous organization. His shrunken shanks scarcely sufficed to support him; his back was bent; his eyes blear; his head bald; and his chin, which was continually wagging, clothed with a scanty yellow beard, shaped like a stiletto, while his sandy moustachios were curled upward. He was dressed in the extremity of the fashion, and affected the air of a young court gallant. His doublet, hose, and mantle were ever of the gayest and most fanciful hues, and of the richest stuffs; he wore a ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... "A long blade. A stiletto—perhaps a kitchen knife. A long narrow blade. It gleamed. And his eyes gleamed. His white teeth, too. I could see them. He was very ferocious. I thought to myself: 'If I hit him he will kill me.' How could I fight with him? He had the knife and I had nothing. I am nearly ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... of terror that echoed through the cavernous woods, Pedro sprang to his feet, while his hand reached for the stiletto that he always carried. But quick as he was, he was not as quick as the bear, for, with a motion like lightning and a grip like steel, Black Bruin pinioned his arms to his sides and held him as though in ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... Catholics to earnestly desire her conversion. I have stated already that the grade of Templar-Mistress is concerned partly with profanations of the Eucharist. For example, the aspirant to this initiation is required to drive a stiletto into the consecrated Host with a becoming expression of fury. When Miss Vaughan visited Paris in the year 1885, where Miss Walder had sometime previously established herself, she was invited to enter this grade, and accepted the offer. A seance for initiation was held accordingly, but Miss ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... had a little piece of fine work in her hand, and after she had spoken to all the little girls and asked them how their mothers were, she went and sat down in one of the front windows, and made little scollops and eyelets. I remember her long ivory stiletto, with a loop of green ribbon through the head of it, and the sharp, tiny, big-bowed scissors that lay in her lap, and the bright, tapering ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... business, and we excuse them heartily from blame. But show us a miserable, unbreeched, human entity, whose whole profession it is to take a tub for a fortified town and a shaving-brush for the deadly stiletto, and who passes three-fourths of his time in a dream and the rest in open self-deception, and we expect him to be as nice upon a matter of fact as a scientific expert bearing evidence. Upon my heart, I think it less than decent. You do not consider how little ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... about Machiavelli is enough.[3] Loyalty was a virtue but little esteemed in Italy: engagements seemed made to be broken; even the crime of violence was aggravated by the crime of perfidy, a bravo's stiletto or a slow poison being reckoned among the legitimate means for ridding men of rivals or for revenging a slight. Yet it must not be forgotten that the commercial integrity of the Italians ranked high. In all countries of Europe they carried on the banking business of monarchs, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... JANET) identifies sandwiches with biscuits. She then tries two assumptions (s 1, b 2/3, and s 1/2 b 5/6), and (naturally) ends in contradictions. Then she returns to the first assumption, and finds the 3 unknowns separately: quod est absurdum. STILETTO identifies sandwiches and biscuits, as "articles." Is the word ever used by confectioners? I fancied "What is the next article, Ma'am?" was limited to linendrapers. TWO SISTERS first assume that biscuits ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... as lightning did the anger of his very soul break forth like a tempest: he rushed from his place of labour, vaulted as it were to the guard gate, seized the woman as she stepped on the threshold in her exit, drew her back with great force, and in a defiant attitude, drawing a long stiletto from his belt, placed himself between her and her destroyer. "Foes of the innocent, your chains were not made for this woman; never shall you bear her from this; not, at least, while I have arm to defend her, and a soul that cares not for your vengeance!" ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... claws were five and a half inches long; in the mud his feet had left tracks that were fifteen inches from tip to tip. He was fat, and sleek, and powerful. His eyes, no larger than hickory nuts, were eight inches apart. His two upper fangs, sharp as stiletto points, were as long as a man's thumb, and between his great jaws he could crush the neck of ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... Eyelets).—This kind of embroidery is used only in round or long patterns. Trace first the outline of the hole, cut away a small round piece of material, not too close to the outlines (when the button-hole is very small merely insert the point of the scissors or a stiletto into the material), fold the edge of the material back with the needle, and work the hole in overcast stitch, inserting the needle into the empty place in the centre and drawing it out under the outline. Some button-holes are worked separately; sometimes ...
— Beeton's Book of Needlework • Isabella Beeton
... a meaning whisper. "In Venice," said he, "this upstart might be mastered without an army. Think you in Rome no man wears a stiletto?" ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... peace for them. Prithee, Fairfax, tell me how the Contessa behaved, when she found I had escaped from her amorous pursuit. She began to make me uneasy; and I almost thought it was as necessary for me to have a taster as any tyrant in Christendom. Poison and the stiletto disturbed my dreams; for there were not only she, but two or three more, who seemed determined to take no denial. I congratulated myself, as I was rolling down mount Cenis, to think that I was at length actually safe, and that the damned black-looking, hook-nosed, scowling fellow from Bergamo, ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... golden, delicious afternoon is blowing without there, wasting for ever; and never a glimpse of it. Delicate work this! Here's a needle might serve for a genuine stiletto! No matter,—it is the cause,—it is the cause that makes, as my mother says, each stitch in this clumsy fabric a grander thing than the flashing of the bravest lance that brave knight ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon
... loved a joke more than they feared a hit, would run the risk of an occasional thrust of the doctor's stiletto, for the sake of enjoying the mangling he gave other people; and such rollicking fellows as Murphy, and Durfy, and Dawson, and Squire Egan petted ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... exercise of prayer, wherein two clerics led our devotion, one Master Mungo Law, a Lowlander, and the other his lordship's chaplain—Master Alexander Gordon, who had come on this expedition with some fire of war in his face, and never so much as a stiletto at ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... as nothing compared with those he experienced mentally. He had hoped to be in fair fighting condition within a week at the latest. Wrapped in paper and tucked away in the back of the ship's safe he had a silver-hilted stiletto he had taken away from a cutthroat who had tried to rob him once in Valparaiso—and with this weapon he had planned to cut away the lock on the state-room ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... curiously. A score of men still fought to reach their prey, blind and deaf to everything but their own passions; but the great crowd that had made the threat of disaster so ominous had disappeared. One of the mad group about them, teeth bared, was creeping closer to Torrance, a long stiletto held aloft. But as it jerked back to strike, the hand that held it opened nervelessly, and a spurt of blood ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... Sanda's arms, and running to one of the carved cedarwood doors in the white wall of the bedroom, opened a little cupboard. There, fumbling among perfumed parcels, rolled as Arab women roll their garments, she snatched from a bundle of silk a small stiletto with a jewelled handle. Sanda had seen it before, and had been bidden to admire its rough, square emeralds and queerly shaped pearls. The thing had belonged to Ourieda's mother, and had been given to the daughter by the Agha on her sixteenth ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... lord, allow me to touch upon a more delicate subject; allow me to enquire the cause why our men display so little military ardour. They expose their lives freely when impelled by love and hatred; and a stab from a stiletto given or received in such a cause, excites neither astonishment nor dread. They fear not death when natural passions bid them brave its terrors; but often, it must be owned, they prefer life to political interests, which seldom affect them because they possess no national independence. Often ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... exultantly, "Martin Dobree pledges himself to cure me.—Carry, you are the witness of it. If I die, he has been my assassin as surely as if he had plunged a stiletto ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... the Count and Countess had descended the stairs, when the servant, rushing from the parlour, fired a pistol at the Count; the ball of which struck, but did not injure him. It, however, so much surprised him as to throw him off his guard, when the wretch struck him with a stiletto between the shoulders. The Count at first reeled on the step of the door, but instantly rushed up stairs, as is supposed, to get arms from his bed-chamber, which he reached, but only to fall dead on the floor. In the mean time, ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... the pawn-shops licensed by the city authorities, and cast your eye over the motley collection of unredeemed articles. There are pistols of every pattern and almost of every age, the majority of them loaded. There are daggers in infinite variety, including the ingenious fan stiletto, which, when sheathed, may be carried in the hand without arousing suspicion; for the sheath and handle bear; an exact resemblance to a closed fan. There are entire suits of clothes, beds and bedding, tea, sugar, clocks—multitudes of them, a clock being one of the Chinese hobbies, ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... The ruddy face of old Lenz paled at this threat, for the Swiss are a peace-loving people, and he told his daughter sadly that she was going to bring her father's grey hairs in sorrow to the grave through the medium of her lover's stiletto. This feat, however, would have been difficult to perform, as the girl flippantly pointed out to him, for the old man was as bald as the smooth round top of the Ortler; nevertheless, she spoke to her lover about it, and told him frankly that if there was any knife ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... teeth are not like yours when you are fasting—even cooked food must not be too tough for them to chew it, now-a-days. If you soak yourself in drink and fail in your blow, and I am not ready with the poisoned stiletto the thing won't come off neatly. But why did not the Roman let ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... large that the whole world stood on it, and which, in the day of the Messiah, the scholars would eat from the head and the ignorant from the tail, a smile appeared on Meir's thin lips. It was a smile similar to the stiletto. It pierced the one on whose lips it appeared, and it seemed as though it would like to pierce the one who caused it. Ber answered this smile by a sigh. But the four young men who sat opposite Meir noticed it, and ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... effeminately dressed in loose Turkish trousers of crimson silk, which were elegantly matched by a loose tunic of the same color and texture.—This was fastened to his person by a red silken sash, which also confined in its soft but close embrace, a large pair of pistols and a small Spanish stiletto of the most costly workmanship. The head of this strange being was covered with a crimson cap, and his countenance, might have been truely termed handsome, had not the lower part of it been enveloped in a mass of long black hair, ...
— Blackbeard - Or, The Pirate of Roanoke. • B. Barker
... clouds (Fig. 22) was taken from the aura of a rough and partially intoxicated man in the East End of London, as he struck down a woman; the flash darted out at her the moment before he raised his hand to strike, and caused a shuddering feeling of horror, as though it might slay. The keen-pointed stiletto-like dart (Fig. 23) was a thought of steady anger, intense and desiring vengeance, of the quality of murder, sustained through years, and directed against a person who had inflicted a deep injury on the one who sent it forth; had the latter been possessed of a strong and trained will, ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant
... shows your kind and artless nature; but don't you see it is of no use? People who are bent upon assassinating you in the manner mentioned will write "No thorn" upon their envelopes too; and you open the case, and presently out flies a poisoned stiletto, which springs into a man's bosom, and makes the wretch howl with anguish. When the bailiffs are after a man, they adopt all sorts of disguises, pop out on him from all conceivable corners, and tap his miserable shoulders. His wife is taken ill; his sweetheart, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... delicate shroudy scarf with long flying ends, rose like some tired hothouse orchid, beautiful still, but fading, paling, passing; and she hated Gay's youth and freshness with a poignant hatred that was like the piercing of a stiletto. She wondered why she had been such a fool as to wear that gown of purplish amethystine tulle tonight. It was a colour that made her face look hard and artificially tinted. True, her bare neck and shoulders, which were of a perfection rarely seen outside of an art gallery, showed ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... For the two forenamed things had so heated my blood, That a little phlebotomy would do me good: I sent for chirurgeon, who came in a trice, And swift to shed blood, needed not be called twice, But tilted stiletto quite thorough the vein, From whence issued out the ill humours amain; When having twelve ounces, he bound up my arm, And I gave him two Georges, which did him no harm: But after my bleeding, I soon understood It had cooled my devotion as ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... twenty knows more than any one on earth could teach him, and more than he ever will know again; a time when, no matter how kind his heart, he is incased in a mental haughtiness before which plain Wisdom is dumb. But a time will come when the keenness of some girl's stiletto of wit will prick the empty bubble of his flamboyant egoism, and he will, for the first time, learn that he is but an untrained ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... of snow, yet I was obliged to venture forth; for being supposed to dine out, I could not of course remain at home. Where to go I knew not: I was like my first father—"the world was all before me." I flung my coat round me, and hurried forth with the feelings of a bandit longing for a stiletto. At the foot of the stairs, I staggered against two or three smiling rascals, priding themselves upon their punctuality. They had just arrived—to make the tour of Turkey. How I hated them!—As I rushed by ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... repulse him. On the night of the murder—it was after the opera—he was heard to threaten her. She defied him, and one of the women in the company testified that he sought to intimidate Malban by placing the point of his stiletto against her white neck. But, in spite of all this, he was acquitted. I was in New York when the trial ended, but I read of the verdict in the press dispatches. Some one killed her, that is certain, and the nasty job was done in her room at the hotel. I heard some of the evidence, and I'll say that ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... concerned, take him, comrade, and free of cost. Only I warn you, watch him well or you will find a stiletto in your back.' ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... engage in a serious quarrel they are prone to decide it with the stiletto, or, if they belong to the class which subscribes to the code, they meet on the field of honor with rapiers or pistols; Anglo-Saxons are accustomed to settle their disputes in a court of law or with their ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... doll," I said. I took a better look at this honey. Face it, he was an oily snake, cleaned up as much as possible, but not enough. No amount of dude ranch duds, gold spurs or Indian jewelry could hide his stiletto mentality. He was just a Tenderloin hoodlum with some of the scum scraped off. Well, I ...
— Vigorish • Gordon Randall Garrett
... they were both sharp and strong, they became in the hands of scholars quite formidable instruments when used against their schoolmasters. Afterward they came to be employed in all the bloody relations and uses to which a 'bare bodkin' can be put, and hence our acceptation of 'stiletto.' Caesar himself, it is supposed, got his 'quietus' by means of a 'stylus;' nor is he the first or last character whose 'style' has been his (literary, if ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... pliers. In five days the symptoms had all abated, and the would-be suicide was well enough to start for the Continent. Muhlig was consulted by a mason who, ten years before, had received a blow from a stiletto near the left side of the sternum. The cicatrix was plainly visible, but the man said he had been able to perform his daily labors, although at the present time suffering from intense dyspnea and anasarca. A loud bellows-sound could be heard, which the man said had been audible ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... is that known as broderie anglaise, and sometimes as Madeira work, over which our grandmothers spent much time, perhaps without adequate result. The pattern is followed out by round holes pierced in the linen with a stiletto and then overcast round the edges. At the present day the work is done mostly by machinery, though hand work also ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie
... the leaves of the prickly pear, suggested themselves as fit for the purpose. I gathered a stock of them, laid them to dry in the sun, pulled apart the reticulated layers, and of these had soon begun to fashion two loose garments, one to hang from her waist, the other from her shoulders. With the stiletto-point of an aloe-leaf and various filaments, I sewed together three ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... to me. On her declaring firmly that she would not divulge anything, a struggle took place for a paper which she picked off a table; and before her attendants could come to her assistance she received a severe cut from a stiletto. The assassin was seized, condemned, and ordered for execution, without the last ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... of literature we are startled at discovering genius with the mind, and, if we conceive the instrument it guides to be a stiletto, with the hand of an assassin—irascible, vindictive, armed with indiscriminate satire, never pardoning the merit of rival genius, but fastening on it throughout life, till, in the moral retribution of human nature, ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... ask this oath of you,' she answered: 'that neither with sword nor stiletto, nor with provoked quarrel, nor staves, nor clubs, nor assassins, ye do seek ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... personalities, schools of thought, bodies of doctrine, historical events, have contributed in defining the situation and determining the attitudes and values of our various immigrant groups in characteristic ways in their home countries. To the Sicilian, for example, marital infidelity means the stiletto; to the American, the divorce court. And even when the immigrant thinks that he understands us, he nevertheless does not do this completely. At the best he interprets our cultural traditions in terms of his own. Actually the situation is progressively ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... had made up his mind, that, come what might, enemy or no enemy, live or die, he would solve the mystery of Elsie Venner, sooner or later. He was not a man to be frightened out of his resolution by a scowl, or a stiletto, or any unknown means of mischief, of which a whole armory was hinted at in that passing look Dick Venner had given him. Indeed, like most adventurous young persons, he found a kind of charm in feeling that there might be some dangers in the ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... wives have often told how they Saw Cupid bitten by a flea; And thereupon, in tears half drown'd, He cried aloud: Help, help the wound! He wept, he sobb'd, he call'd to some To bring him lint and balsamum, To make a tent, and put it in Where the stiletto pierced the skin; Which, being done, the fretful pain Assuaged, and ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... fisherman of the Lagunes of sufficient importance to be struck by a stiletto? Do thy work, then!" he added, glancing at his brown and naked bosom; "there is nothing ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... herdsman, motionless as a statue, with his long, slender pike tapering up like a lance into the air; or, beholds a long train of mules slowly moving along the waste like a train of camels in the desert; or, a single herdsman, armed with blunderbuss and stiletto, and prowling over the plain. Thus the country, the habits, the very looks of the people, have something of the Arabian character. The general insecurity of the country is evinced in the universal use of weapons. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 547, May 19, 1832 • Various
... wildly, "Lead me to your mistress!" In terror Martiniere lifted up the candle, and its light fell upon a young man's face, deathly pale and fearfully agitated. Martiniere almost dropped on the floor with fright, for the man now threw open his mantle and showed the bright hilt of a stiletto sticking out of the bosom of his doublet. His eyes flashed fire as he fixed them upon her, crying still more wildly than before, "Lead me to your mistress, I tell you." Martiniere now believed Mademoiselle was ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... that reflection disturbed her little. She was free to pursue the object of her journey and satisfy the desire for revenge which filled her heart. As the train whirled toward London she whetted the stiletto of vengeance upon the grindstone of her wounded feelings. That paper exhibited by Dacre would furnish the needed proof of conspiracy, and then good-by, Lord Brompton, to your cherished schemes for fortune. It made her wince ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... that each Spanish lady should have her cortejo, or devoted attendant. "Behind each lady who smiles at you," he explains, "there stands—not a duenna, such a one as is represented on our stage—but a grim, black, ugly grandee, ready to avenge with the stiletto every glance you may chance to give to the lady ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... rank was found murdered, with a stiletto, known to be mine, buried in his bosom, and it was with difficulty that I could establish ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... perhaps they even laugh at themselves. Their personality is generous; like Murat's kingly garments, it attracts danger. But Conti's duplicity will be known only to the women who love him. In his art he has that deep Italian jealousy which led the Carlone to murder Piola, and stuck a stiletto into Paesiello. That terrible envy lurks beneath the warmest comradeship. Conti has not the courage of his vice; he smiles at Meyerbeer and flatters him, when he fain would tear him to bits. He knows his weakness, and cultivates ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... at this moment. We have, as a nation, no small share of self-sufficiency and self-esteem. If we do not thank God for it, we are right well pleased to know that we are not like that Publican there, "who eats garlic, or carries a stiletto, or knouts his servants, or indulges in any other taste or pastime of 'the confounded foreigner.'" The 'Times' proclaims how infinitely superior we are every morning; and each traveller—John Murray in hand—expounds in his bad French, that an Englishman is the only European native brought up ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... about them, as the Italian and Spanish ladies conceal the stiletto in their garters. It does not come within my province to describe the Tibboos, but I may say briefly of the social condition of those tribes, in that country it is "Man and his Mistress," and not "Woman and her Master." The Tibboo ladies do not even ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... hastily clicked something under the table, while Helen turned pale, but quickly drew a small stiletto from a ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... forwards stealthily. I reached the steward's pantry in the deckhouse amidships, without being seen and secured some polenta and a baraca of water; when, as I was creeping aft again and close to the poop, that villain of a mate caught hold of my arm, pointing a stiletto in my face at the same time, and threatening to stab me if I uttered a cry. But, before I could open my mouth, he shoved a gag in it and then proceeded to drag me to the side of the ship, lashing me to the spot whence your two officers ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... That, of course, was not to be considered. The third one was the one through which I had seen Rustan glide; and at the thought of entering that room, and falling into the tender mercies of the mysterious Mameluke, I shuddered. A stealthy stiletto with poisoned point I had no doubt would make short work with me. And even could it be possible to seize a moment when Rustan was out of the room in attendance on his master, it was more than likely the room would prove a cul-de-sac and I would be more securely ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... her, she followed the messenger to the street; then, as acting under sudden impulse, left him waiting for a moment, while she returned to bolt a door. In that moment, unseen by the messenger, she slipped a sheathed stiletto into ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... others surrounded Guerra as he set his foot on the ground, pinioning his arms and plunging their hands into his pockets, from whence they drew two small pistols and a black mask, such as was worn at the carnivals; besides these weapons, he carried a stiletto in ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various
... a fine linen shirt of snowy whiteness, loose white nankeen trousers confined at the waist by a crimson silk sash, and a pair of canvas slippers on his otherwise naked feet. He wore a pair of gold rings in his small well-shaped ears, and the gold- mounted horn handle of what was doubtless a stiletto peeped unobtrusively from among the folds of his sash. A crimson cap of knitted silk with a tassel of the same depending from its pointed crown lay on a chair near him, and completed a costume which, whilst it undoubtedly set off his very fine figure to advantage, struck ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... dangers to be met with in superstitious countries, these mydratic alkaloids are among the worst. They offer a chance for crimes of the most fiendish nature—worse than with the gun or the stiletto. They are worse because there is so little fear of detection. That crime is the production ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... the abuse saleable. But, in my case, the man flew like a bull-dog at the throat, with a pertinacity and acharnement of malice that would have caused me to laugh immoderately, had it not been for one intolerable wound to my feelings. These mercenary libellers, whose stiletto is in the market, and at any man's service for a fixed price, callous and insensible as they are, yet retain enough of the principles common to human nature, under every modification, to know where to plant their wounds. Like savage hackney coachmen, they know where there is a raw. And ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... was a small phial containing spirits of hartshorn, sal volatile, very strong, that would stab through the nostrils, like a stiletto, deep into the gray kernels that lie in the core of the brain. Excellent in cases of sudden syncope or fainting, such as sometimes require the opening of windows, the dashing on of cold water, the cutting of stays, perhaps, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... loose in Peter. For this day, this hour, this minute the gods of destiny had given him birth. All things in the world were blotted out for him except one—the six inches of naked shank between the bootlegger's trouser-leg and his shoe. He dove in. His white teeth, sharp as stiletto-points, sank into it. And a wild and terrible yell came from Jed Hawkins as he loosed the girl's hair. Peter heard the yell, and his teeth sank deeper in the flesh of the first thing he had ever hated. It was ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... rush him. Well, they got as far as the garrote. Everything lovely and easy. Then Mr. Victim introduces a few specialties. Picks a gun from somewhere around his shirt-front, shoots the garroter over his shoulder; kills the man in front, who is at him with a stiletto, ducks a couple of shots from the gang, and lays out two more of 'em. The rest take to the briny. Tally: two dead, one dying, one wounded, Mr. Guest walks to the shore end, meets two patrolmen, and turns in his gun. 'I've done a job ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... which had been tried for producing manuscript in duplicate had all proved distasteful and unsatisfactory. My husband was particularly irritated by the delay caused by having to press down the hard lead-pencil or stiletto. He could not bear any slow process for expressing the swiftly running thoughts, and he tried another plan which enabled him to write very nearly as fast as the ideas came. Using glazed paper and a soft pencil ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... at an altitude of five thousand feet or more, the temperature of the night is even more cruel than that of the day. Immediately after sunset a sharp chill becomes perceptible. At first it is a welcome relief from the intolerable heat. By nine o'clock it begins to cut like a stiletto, and at midnight the water suspended in shallow dishes clinks into ice. The drivers burrow deep into the sand and wrap woollen baracans about them; the camels shiver and even blubber like ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... sort of false shame, some sneaky shyness before the boys, hinders me. I am leaning my elbow on the soft fur of the rug, and my head on my hand, and am staring up at the stars, cool and throbbing, so like little stiletto-holes pricked in heaven's floor, as they steal out in systems and ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... fits of tender melancholy, and, like Miss Cornelia, adored moonlight, pensive music, and sentimental poetry. But she would have shrunk from contact with a brigand, in a sugar-loaf hat, with a carbine slung across his shoulder, and a stiletto in his sash, with precisely the same kind and degree of horror and disgust that would have affected her in the presence of a vulgar footpad, in a greasy Scotch-cap, armed with a horse-pistol and a sheath-knife. Her romantic tastes differed in many respects from her Aunt Cornelia's. She, too, had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... hit the country, and he took six darkies on the Orpheum circuit. Five of them were boys he had grown up with; the other was the little mulatto, Babe Divine, who was a wharf nigger round New York, and long before that a plantation hand in Bermuda, until he stuck an eight-inch stiletto in his master's back. Almost before Carlyle realized his good fortune he was on Broadway, with offers of engagements on all sides, and more money than he had ever ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... that it was murder. The confusion of the garage was proof of it; and the instrument, once I looked about me, was not far to seek. Divided between rage, horror, and pity, I saw a sort of sharp stiletto suitable for use as a penknife or letter opener, which, after doing its work, had been cast ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... foot; and particularly animated in his action. He wore a jerkin lined with red, a dark yellow waistcoat, blue breeches, a breast-pouch with fifty cartridges, four pistols, and a small hanger by his side. In his breeches-pocket he kept a small stiletto. He also bore a long gun. On his head he wore continually a net, and upon that his hat. His wife followed him in all his excursions, and he greatly esteemed and loved her. He remained some time in the mountains near Rome, and with his associates ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 282, November 10, 1827 • Various
... their nurses. The amount of crime is almost nothing to what it was. The Roman, no longer pent in ignorance and crouching beneath espionage, no longer stabs in the dark. His energies have true vent; his better feelings are roused; he has thrown aside the stiletto. The power here is indeed miraculous, since no doubt still lurk within the walls many who are eager to incite brawls, if only to ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... home to his lodging, the Englishman was set upon by the Italian, and pricked with his stiletto, narrowly escaping with his life. He gave him what he called "a good English black-eye," and bawled loudly for justice. The Italian ran off, and was no more seen; and the Englishman, whose ugly name was Hogg, talked big about applying to his ambassador, Sir William Trumbull, ...
— Jacques Bonneval • Anne Manning
... using the three-cornered stiletto-blade as a wedge, he forced open the slender silver hinges of the casket. The Earl no sooner saw them give way than he snatched the casket from Sir Richard's hand, wrenched off the cover, and tearing out the splendid contents, flung them on the floor in a transport of rage, while he eagerly ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... generous Maecenas; for observe, I should be sorry to fare like my foolhardy colleagues and cousins, who, armed with stiletto and pocket-pistol, hold their court in gloomy ravines, or mix in the subterranean laboratory the wondrous polychrest, which, when taken with proper zeal, tickles our political noses, either too little or too much, with throne vacancies or state-fevers. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... hand inside the reja when a dark, scowling face made its appearance at her side, her hand was rudely seized, and with a scream she disappeared. The young officer fancied he saw the bright gleaming of a stiletto within the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... to a quail's; her jet-black hair, smoothed close to her head, was gathered in a large roll that fell low on her neck behind, and held by a silver spadina or pin, that, if occasion demanded, would make a serviceable stiletto; her full face was brown, while the red blood shone through her cheeks, and her lips were full and ripe. Her eyes of deep gray, shaded with long black lashes, sparkled with light when she was aroused. Her sisters resembled her strikingly, except Rita, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of proud dignity that I had seen in life was there—calm, composed, serene. The inanimate clay was clothed in the simple black of a citizen of the Republic; the only mark of office being the red silken sash that covered the spot in the breast where the stiletto-stroke of hate ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... Monsieur, I am too deeply impressed with the respect I owe to Madame la Marquise, to give her an opportunity of saying to me: 'Grandchamp, my son has been killed with a shot or with a sword; why were you not before him?' Or, 'He has received a stab from the stiletto of an Italian, because he went at night beneath the window of a great princess; why did you not seize the assassin?' This would be very disagreeable to me, Monsieur, for I never have been reproached with anything ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... and kujur or kunjur are names for weapons of the lance or spear kind; the pedang, rudus, pamandap, and kalewang are of the sword kind, and slung at the side, the siwar is a small instrument of the nature of a stiletto, chiefly used for assassination; and the kris is a species of dagger of a particular construction, very generally worn, being stuck in front through the folds of a belt that goes ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... keepers, and was always called the "Dodger" by them, being viewed in much the same light as the treacherous miscreant was by the Italian nobleman of the dark ages, who, because he was skilled in the use of the stiletto, was employed to remove a ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... in the very town where Catherine de' Medici was born, and within a stone's throw of Rome, where Borgia and his holy father sent cardinals to the other world by hecatombs, are surprised to hear that there is such an instrument as a stiletto. The papal is now a mere gouty chair, and the good old souls don't even waddle out of ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... like tigers, making the lovely summer day hideous with their cries and shrieks—the women, the fiercer by far, tearing each other's hair. One fiendish creature drew her scissors, and, using them like a stiletto, drove the sharp point into a ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... hearth. It was the fragments of the toy stiletto, broken by an uncontrollable twitch of the small ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... neither the laws nor the religion under which they lived tended to mitigate. Their hatred was especially directed against the Neapolitan revolutionists; and the fishermen, in concert among themselves, chose each his own victim, whom he would stiletto when the day of vengeance should arrive. The head of one was sent off one morning to Troubridge, with his basket of grapes for breakfast; and a note from the Italian who had, what he called, the glory of presenting it, saying, he had killed the man as he was running away, ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... but her fatal letter gave the first intelligence, and no other letter, at that period, found its way to me. She sent hers, I think, by some trusty returned prisoner. She little knew my then terrible situation ; hovering over my head was the stiletto of a surgeon for a menace of cancer yet, till that moment, hope of escape had always been held out to me by the Baron de Larrey— hope which, from the reading of that fatal ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... wicked uncle of the folk tale. The cruel stepmother is disguised as a haughty, scheming marchioness in The Sicilian Romance. The ogre drops his club, assumes a veneer of polite refinement and relies on the more gentlemanlike method of the dagger and stiletto for gaining his ends. The banditti and robbers who infest the countryside in Gothic fiction are time honoured figures. Travellers in Thessaly in Apuleius' Golden Ass, like the fugitives in Shelley's Zastrozzi and St. ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... frame four excellent statues. These carvings have been esteemed so highly that artists came to study them all the way from Flanders. The altar is coloured, like most of the Spanish retablos. Cano was a pugnacious character, always getting into scrapes, using his stiletto, and being obliged to shift his residence on short notice. It is remarkable that his erratic life did not interfere with his work, which seems to have gone calmly on in spite of domestic and civic ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... by any editor to do this reportorial stiletto work, let me urge you to take to professional burglary, rather than consent to write ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... of Corsicans, they conversed in Napoleon's mother-tongue. The ex-Emperor's first serious observation, which bore on the character of the Corsicans, was accompanied by a quick searching glance: "They carry the stiletto: are they not a bad people?"—Lowe saw the snare and evaded it by the reply: "They do not carry the stiletto, having abandoned that custom in our service: I was very well satisfied with them." They then conversed ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... the resources of Spanish science, Escovedo persisted in living, and Perez determined that he must be shot or stabbed. Enriquez went off to his own country to find a friend who was an assassin, and to get 'a stiletto with a very fine blade, much better than a pistol to kill a man with.' Enriquez, keeping a good thing in the family, enlisted his brother: and Martinez, from Aragon, brought 'two proper kind of men,' Juan de Nera and Insausti, who, ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... she plucked a thin stiletto from under her cloak, and brandished it before him. Alan recognized it as one which he had missed after ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... it and thrust it gently within the breast of his waistcoat. There, guided by him, her fingers closed on the handle of a tiny stiletto. ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... my poor friend as we were resting in a posada on the road from San Felipe; and, while engaging him in an apparently friendly conversation respecting the political points of the rising, he suddenly stabbed the dear old man in the back with a long stiletto which he had hidden ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... deep, regular breathing of the sleeper, Ah Sin and his friend proceeded to their work. The former drew a slender stiletto-like knife from a fan which protruded above the collar of his blouse, and, stooping down, began skilfully to remove the dirt which covered the bag of gold-dust. From time to time he stole a glance at the sleeper to ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... D', one of the firebrands of the French Revolution; "rose into furor almost Pythic; highest where many were high," but veered round to royalism, which he at length intrigued on behalf of—to death by the stiletto (1765-1812). ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... without a doubt St. Peter will not close the door in your face. But for myself, I avow I should need potent protection if, being only a poor prince, I had slept with my daughter, and if I had used the stiletto and the cantarella as often as ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... time that Madame De Berney plunged a stiletto into his pride. And the gaze of Balzac turned towards Poland, and he began to write letters to the imprisoned chatelaine, pouring out his soul to her. His heart was full of sorrow. To ease the pain he traveled for six months through ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard |
