A man cannot allow the heads of a dozen of his best friends to be cut off without feeling a little excitement
 Alexandre Dumas, The Vicomte de Bragelonne (1847). copy citation

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Author Alexandre Dumas
Source The Vicomte de Bragelonne
Topic excitement feeling
Date 1847
Language English
Reference
Note
Weblink https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/2609/pg2609-images.html

Context

“But it was the destiny of this great prince to excite the attention and admiration of the public in a very modified degree wherever he might be. Monsieur had fallen into this situation by habit. It was not, perhaps, this which gave him that air of listlessness. Monsieur had already been tolerably busy in the course of his life. A man cannot allow the heads of a dozen of his best friends to be cut off without feeling a little excitement; and as, since the accession of Mazarin to power, no heads had been cut off, Monsieur's occupation was gone, and his morale suffered from it. The life of the poor prince was then very dull. After his little morning hawking-party on the banks of the Beuvron, or in the woods of Cheverny, Monsieur crossed the Loire, went to breakfast at Chambord, with or without an appetite, and the city of Blois heard no more of its sovereign lord and master till the next hawking-day.” source