Borzoi

“ Genius, supine in the dark across the room, grew first restive, then indignant, then furious, and thence, passing round the circle of exhausted emotions, came back by the way of despair to a disgusted silence. ”

“ Literature is the heart of the world, winged with all its joys and sorrows, with all the dreams and hopes of men, with their despair and wrath, with their reverence before the beauty of nature, their fears in face of her mysteries. ”

“ Olimpia, clinging to life, was driven upon the second course. It took two halberdiers to hold her up.
Borso had before him the deposition of the page-boy and the report of the watch. From the words of the first he suspected that both women were concerned—until he had heard the second. This was to the effect that the Captain's head had been cut off.
"No, no," said Borso to himself, "I am heartily sorry for my young friend the chimney-sweeping poet, but I can't think him a fool. He would never have married a woman who could cut off a man's head. Yet stay! ”

“ In that same night of mine and countermine Duke Borso, who had broken up the circle early by reason of his toothache, went wandering the long corridors of the Schifanoia under the sting of his scourge. He found his spacious pleasure-house valueless against that particular annoy, but (as always) he was the more whimsical for his affliction. Nothing works your genuine man of humour so nearly as himself. The sight of his own image, puffed and blinking in nightcap, bed-gown, and slippers, when he came upon it in a long mirror, set him chuckling. ”

“ Borso spoke.
"Justice shall be done. The innocent has condemned the guilty: let that woman be hanged. We have learned the value of clean hands this day. Mistress Bellaroba, you have a man in ten thousand; Angioletto, my friend, you have what you deserve, a woman in ten million. It is not fair that the worth of you two should be known only to me and the Blessed Virgin; you shall tell it now to a priest. Come along, and let me have the whole story with my breakfast."
Thus Duke Borso did judgment for his good town of Ferrara in times very remote from our own. ”

“ His were times of artless Art and of franchise—immoral, yet mainly innocent. Children call each other pet names, hold hands, kiss, and no one is hurt. So it was in Ferrara when Borso ruled it. Præteriere Borsii tempora! True enough. There were those who saw that tuneful time in the shaping; we, alas! look down on the splintered shards. But we know that if Assyrian balm was ever for the world's chaffer it was in the days of Borso, the good Duke.
Angioletto loved his Bellaroba with all his heart: no debonair Lionella could decoy him to be untrue. ”

“ Any collision, however, was prevented by the landlord, who, suddenly appearing, thrust himself between us. “There shall be no fighting here,” said he, “no one shall fight in this house, except it be with myself; so if you two have anything to say to each other, you had better go into the field behind the house. But you fool,” said he, pushing Hunter violently on the breast, “do you know whom you are going to tackle with—this is the young chap that beat Blazing Bosville, only as late as yesterday, in Mumpers’ Dingle. ”

“ In the capital of Borovia the leader-writer of the Borovian Patriot got to work. "How does Borovia stand?" he asked. "If Essenland occupies Ruritania, can any thinking man in Borovia feel safe with the enemy at his gates?" (The Borovian peasant, earning five marks a week, would have felt no less safe than usual, but then he could hardly be described as a thinking man.) "It is vital to the prestige of Borovia that the integrity of Ruritania should be preserved. Otherwise we may resign ourselves at once to the prospect of becoming a fifth-rate power in the eyes of Europe." ”

“ I tell you what, young man, you are not over civil, this evening; but you are ill, as I said before, and I shan’t take much notice of your language, at least for the present; as for my size, I am not so much bigger than yourself; and as for being fierce, you should be the last one to fling that at me. It is well for you that I can be fierce sometimes. If I hadn’t taken your part against blazing Bosville, you wouldn’t be now taking tea with me.”
“It is true that you struck me in the face first; but we’ll let that pass. So that man’s name is Bosville; what’s your own?”
“Isopel Berners.” ”

“ Ferrarese princes had been very favourable specimens of the Italian sovereigns of those days.
As for good–old–times Borso, the just, though he had not the advantage of book–learning himself, he honoured it in others. The fact of his own deficiency in this respect, we gather from the amusingly frank avowal of a contemporary chronicler, who in a dedication of his book to his sovereign, [20] remarks that, "Fortune, ever the enemy of worth, has not willed, that to your other singular accomplishments should be added that of literature." ”

“ It is far easier to blame men for engaging in such enterprises at all, than to point out how they should guide themselves when once in them. The more rigidly honourable and high-minded a man was in such a position, the more certain he would be to draw on him distrust and suspicion. Borjes himself was first regarded as a spy, and never to the very last did he possess the full confidence of the Italians. To attempt to dissuade men from cruelty, who knew that they would themselves be shot the moment they fell into the hands of the enemy ”

“ Over and over I have seen Liot Borson bring from the sea men who hated him, and whom no one else would venture life for. Never mortal man walked closer with God than Liot Borson. I, who have lived alone with him for twenty years, I know this; and I will dare to say that in the matter of Bele Trenby he did no worse, and perhaps a great deal better, than any other man would have done. Why was Bele on the moss? He was a sailor and a stranger. A man must have life-knowledge of the moss to walk it in the night-time. ”

“ Temple, church, and mosque have risen in succession in her cities, have flourished awhile in splendour, then crumbled into ruin. At last the sabbath rest has fallen upon her.
The name Bozrah signifies a fortress, and must have described the city from very ancient times. It would be of the highest importance to dwellers in the cultivated lands to have here, on their border, a strong defence against the wild rovers from the deserts. So true is this, that it came to be said, “The prosperity of Bozrah is the prosperity of Haurân.” ”

“ For am I not the strongest man in Tangier, and the most noble also?” Here he brandished his barrel over his head, and his face looked almost demoniacal. “Hear me, Joanna,” he continued, “you know that I am the strongest man in Tangier, and I tell you again, for the thousandth time, that I am the most noble. Who are the consuls? Who is the Pasha? They are pashas and consuls now, but who were their fathers? I know not, nor do they. But do I not know who my fathers were? Were they not Moors of Garnata (Granada) , and is it not on that account that I am the strongest man in Tangier? ”

“ So I read and laugh over my Boswell in the library when the lamps are lit, buried in cushions and surrounded by every sign of civilisation, with the drawn curtains shutting out the garden and the country solitude so much disliked by both sage and disciple. Indeed, it is Bozzy who asserts that in the country the only things that make one happy are meals. "I was happy," he says, when stranded at a place called Corrichatachin in the Island of Skye, and unable to get out of it because of the rain,—"I was happy when tea came. Such I take it is the state of those who live in the country. ”

“ I pray my husband and Chico are safe."
"They're on our heels! The whole French army—in taxicabs!"
"Run, fools! No army in the world can beat the taxi drivers of Paris!"
"My poor Eloise! She gave her life for France!"
"Colonel Brissac, I wish you wouldn't come here."
"Listen to me, Diane. The world is upside down—ideals, beliefs, traditions, all in the discard!"
"What do the old rules matter now? Each day may be our last. Let me take care of you!"
"Chico fights at the Front—I fight here in a munitions factory—"
"—We are shoulder to shoulder—that is all that matters." ”

“ The population round about was entirely an agricultural one, and all united in hating the gypsies as their greatest enemies, because of their depredations. Add to this the fact that Borrow was a frequenter of public-houses, of which there were seven in the village, and was wont to boast that you could get at the true man only after he had been mellowed into speech by good English ale. Then he would open his heart and unburden his mind of all the accumulated knowledge that he possessed, and add something to the epic of the soil. Borrow’s overbearing manner made people shy of him. ”

“ In the early part of this century there lived at Lerwick, in the Shetland Islands, a man called Liot Borson. He was no ignoble man; through sea-fishers and sea-fighters he counted his forefathers in an unbroken line back to the great Norwegian Bor, while his own life was full of perilous labor and he was off to sea every day that a boat could swim. Liot was the outcome of the most vivid and masterful form of paganism and the most vital and uncompromising form of Christianity. For nearly eight hundred years the Borsons had been christened, but who can deliver a man from his ancestors? ”

“ This roused me. I pushed him back. "Get me some brandy," I said to Borsen. "I am faint a bit. You shall have all the story you want; but that little beast must stop here."
"This is monstrous," cried Borsen indignantly.
"Lander, take my message to Herr Feldermann. If he wants the police, he shall have them," I added to Borsen.
"No, no," cried von Felsen hurriedly. "We'd better talk first."
Borsen looked at him keenly and then at me.
"You see?" I said. "You needn't go, Lander."
Borsen crossed and spoke eagerly to von Felsen, and I turned to Althea, who brought me a glass of wine. ”

“ On arriving at the mouth of the dingle, which fronted the east, I perceived that Charles’s wain was nearly opposite to it, high above in the heavens, by which I knew that the night was tolerably well advanced. The gypsy encampment lay before me; all was hushed and still within it, and its inmates appeared to be locked in slumber; as I advanced, however, the dogs, which were fastened outside the tents, growled and barked; but presently recognising me, they were again silent, some of them wagging their tails. As I drew near a particular tent, I heard a female voice say—“Some one is coming!” ”

“ Knapp expresses himself as much terrified by the invasion of the free path by “a party rushing madly up, striving to keep pace with a mettlesome steed . . . at the sight of whose enormous hoofs and shaggy fetlocks you are all but ready to perish.” Such niggling super refinement would be quite repugnant to Borrow’s highway robustious temperament. ”

“ The Meridiana of Pulci was not the daughter of old Carus Borzlam, but of Caradoro, a great pagan king of the East, who, being besieged in his capital by Manfredonio, another mighty pagan king, who wished to obtain possession of his daughter, who had refused him, was relieved in his distress by certain paladins of Charlemagne, with one of whom, Oliver, his daughter Meridiana fell in love.”
“I see,” said, Ursula, “that it must have been altogether a different person, for I am sure that Meridiana Borzlam would never have fallen in love with Oliver. Oliver! ”

“ Borsen was almost unnerved. He sat with his head buried in his hands as he listened, and at the end his face was grey and drawn, and he looked across at me with a deep sigh of anguish. "We are in your hands, Mr. Bastable. It will ruin the Count."
"There is even worse yet, if it has to be told," I replied grimly.
"What are your terms?"
"A pardon for Baron von Ringheim and the restoration of his estates--you have already obtained the promise of that, you know--and the clearance of all complications affecting myself; a confession that he lied to Hagar Ziegler in accusing me of her father's murder ”

“ Then a cablegram told that Leon was on his way home.
"For why, mamma, get all tired out and make yourself little before the cooks?"
"For shame, papa! That maybe our boy comes home on his birthday—and not have a cake made by his own mamma's hands."
"All right—all right—drive me crazy because he's got a birthday."
"It's Leon!"
"Mamma! He's an officer!"
"I bet my boy is a General!"
"I was your son's buddy in France..."
"No, he is here. They have just brought him over on a hospital ship—wounded—"
Months of suffering had driven the daylight from the mind of Leon Kantor. ”

“ The Chancellor, however, expected in return for the patents in question a gratuity which was thought excessive at Ferrara. The opinion of Borso, himself created Duke of Modena and Reggio in return for an annual payment of 4,000 gold florins, when his imperial patron was distributing titles and diplomas to all the little court, is not mentioned. The humanists, then the chief spokesmen of the age, were divided in opinion according to their personal interests, while the Emperor was greeted by some of them with the conventional acclamations of the poets of imperial Rome. ”

“ And they looked fiercely at each other, but Borromée, quickly assuming an air of amiable urbanity, said, "Vive Dieu, you are cunning, M. Robert Briquet."
"I, reverend father; and why do you say so?"
"When you were at the convent of the Jacobins, you made me believe you were only a simple bourgeois."
"Ah!" replied Chicot, "and what must we say of you, M. Borromée?"
"Of me?"
"Yes, of you."
"And why?"
"For making me believe you were only a monk. You must be more cunning than the pope himself; but you took me in the snare." ”