He looked to the spot where Defarge the vendor of wine had stood, a moment before; but the wretched father was grovelling on his face on the pavement in that spot, and the figure that stood beside him was the figure of a dark stout woman, knitting.
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“All right again before long!” laughed the stranger, with a solemnly derisive sort of laugh. “Look ye; when Captain Ahab is all right, then this left arm of mine will be all right; not before.”
The postmaster interposed himself between this man and the rider’s bridle (at which he was evidently making), and soothingly said, “Let him be; let him be! He will be judged at Paris.”
However curious it may seem for an oil-ship to be borrowing oil on the whale-ground, and however much it may invertedly contradict the old proverb about carrying coals to Newcastle, yet sometimes such a thing really happens; and in the present case Captain Derick De Deer did indubitably conduct a lamp-feeder as Flask did declare.
Frankenstein — Chapter 10: On my return, I found the following letter from my father:—
“You are not listening to a word I am saying, Jim,” cried Sibyl, “and I am making the most delightful plans for your future. Do say something.”
“Nine days and nine nights did we sail, and on the tenth day our native land showed on the horizon. We got so close in that we could see the stubble fires burning, and I, being then dead beat, fell into a light sleep, for I had never let the rudder out of my own hands, that we might get home the faster. On this the men fell to talking among themselves, and said I was bringing back gold and silver in the sack that Aeolus had given me. ‘Bless my heart,’ would one turn to his neighbour, saying, ‘how this man gets honoured and makes friends to whatever city or country he may go. See what fine prizes he is taking home from Troy, while we, who have travelled just as far as he has, come back with hands as empty as we set out with—and now Aeolus has given him ever so much more. Quick—let us see what it all is, and how much gold and silver there is in the sack he gave him.’
“Yet come it will, the day decreed by fates! (How my heart trembles while my tongue relates!) The day when thou, imperial Troy! must bend, And see thy warriors fall, thy glories end. And yet no dire presage so wounds my mind, My mother’s death, the ruin of my kind, Not Priam’s hoary hairs defiled with gore, Not all my brothers gasping on the shore; As thine, Andromache! Thy griefs I dread: I see thee trembling, weeping, captive led! In Argive looms our battles to design, And woes, of which so large a part was thine! To bear the victor’s hard commands, or bring The weight of waters from Hyperia’s spring. There while you groan beneath the load of life, They cry, ‘Behold the mighty Hector’s wife!’ Some haughty Greek, who lives thy tears to see, Imbitters all thy woes, by naming me. The thoughts of glory past, and present shame, A thousand griefs shall waken at the name! May I lie cold before that dreadful day, Press’d with a load of monumental clay! Thy Hector, wrapt in everlasting sleep, Shall neither hear thee sigh, nor see thee weep.”
“Hold!” said Monsieur the Marquis. “Hold the horses! Who threw that?”
His mother! He had something on his mind to ask of her, something that he had brooded on for many months of silence. A chance phrase that he had heard at the theatre, a whispered sneer that had reached his ears one night as he waited at the stage-door, had set loose a train of horrible thoughts. He remembered it as if it had been the lash of a hunting-crop across his face. His brows knit together into a wedge-like furrow, and with a twitch of pain he bit his underlip.
“Go along with you,” cried Flask, “it’s a lamp-feeder and an oil-can. He’s out of oil, and has come a-begging.”
“You are a cursed emigrant,” cried a farrier, making at him in a furious manner through the press, hammer in hand; “and you are a cursed aristocrat!”
We returned to our college on a Sunday afternoon: the peasants were dancing, and every one we met appeared gay and happy. My own spirits were high, and I bounded along with feelings of unbridled joy and hilarity.
“Aeolus entertained me for a whole month asking me questions all the time about Troy, the Argive fleet, and the return of the Achaeans. I told him exactly how everything had happened, and when I said I must go, and asked him to further me on my way, he made no sort of difficulty, but set about doing so at once. Moreover, he flayed me a prime ox-hide to hold the ways of the roaring winds, which he shut up in the hide as in a sack—for Jove had made him captain over the winds, and he could stir or still each one of them according to his own pleasure. He put the sack in the ship and bound the mouth so tightly with a silver thread that not even a breath of a side-wind could blow from any quarter. The West wind which was fair for us did he alone let blow as it chose; but it all came to nothing, for we were lost through our own folly.
Mrs. Bennet’s eyes sparkled. “A gentleman and a stranger! It is Mr. Bingley, I am sure. Why, Jane--you never dropped a word of this--you sly thing! Well, I am sure I shall be extremely glad to see Mr. Bingley. But--good Lord! how unlucky! there is not a bit of fish to be got to-day. Lydia, my love, ring the bell. I must speak to Hill this moment.”
“No, we hav’n’t. He’s sick they say, but is getting better, and will be all right again before long.”
“Aye, among some of us old sailor chaps, he goes by that name. Ye hav’n’t seen him yet, have ye?”
Henry rejoiced in my gaiety, and sincerely sympathised in my feelings: he exerted himself to amuse me, while he expressed the sensations that filled his soul. The resources of his mind on this occasion were truly astonishing: his conversation was full of imagination; and very often, in imitation of the Persian and Arabic writers, he invented tales of wonderful fancy and passion. At other times he repeated my favourite poems, or drew me out into arguments, which he supported with great ingenuity.
The Picture of Dorian Gray — Chapter 12: Chapter V (part 2/2)
“Yet while my Hector still survives, I see My father, mother, brethren, all, in thee: Alas! my parents, brothers, kindred, all Once more will perish, if my Hector fall, Thy wife, thy infant, in thy danger share: Oh, prove a husband’s and a father’s care! That quarter most the skilful Greeks annoy, Where yon wild fig-trees join the wall of Troy; Thou, from this tower defend the important post; There Agamemnon points his dreadful host, That pass Tydides, Ajax, strive to gain, And there the vengeful Spartan fires his train. Thrice our bold foes the fierce attack have given, Or led by hopes, or dictated from heaven. Let others in the field their arms employ, But stay my Hector here, and guard his Troy.”