"Somnambulist" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to walking in his sleep went to bed all right one night, but when he awoke he found himself on the street in the grasp of a policeman. "Hold on," he cried, "you mustn't arrest me. I'm a somnambulist." To which the policeman replied: "I don't care what your religion is—yer can't walk ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... young men of the day began to remark her. In fact, before long Malaga was very much talked about in the questionable world of equivocal women, who presently attacked her good fortune by calumnies. They said she was a somnambulist, and the Pole was a magnetizer who was using her to discover the philosopher's stone. Some even more envenomed scandals drove her to a curiosity that was greater than Psyche's. She reported ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac
... this sinister somnambulist stirred from his motionless position and advanced at a slow pace; he walked like an automaton. After taking a dozen steps he stopped, looked around him, and slightly bent forward. His strained features resumed their natural proportions, life re-animated ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... far-off dream, or as if dimly seen in the background of a sleeping memory. The past lay behind her, as if she had traversed it, covered with a veil like one in a swoon, or with the unconsciousness of a somnambulist. It was the first time that she had experienced the feeling, the impression, at once bitter and sweet, violent and celestial, of the game of life brilliant in its plenitude, its ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... "can surely not be re-established in its former religious significance, for the system upon which it rests has slept away three centuries of history; and it is of no use that this man or that man yet pretends to believe in the somnambulist. But the church has also a civic significance as an integral part of the social order of humanity. If you abandon that to the spirit of laxity and drowsiness, I can see no reason why the clergy and the whole religious apparatus should not be, and ought not to be, abolished ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... preposterous notion that I had seen this boy somewhere before, a thing obviously impossible, was like a delicate finishing touch of weirdness added to a scene fit to raise doubts as to one's sanity. I stared anxiously about me like an awakened somnambulist. ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... the interruption was instant and startling. Mr. Hallowell, who, in the last few minutes, had believed he was listening to a voice from the dead, collapsed upon the shoulder of Rainey, who sprang to support him. Like a somnambulist wrenched from sleep, Vera gave a scream of fright, half genuine, half assumed, and swayed as though about to fall. Vance caught her in his arms. He turned on Gaylor, his cunning red ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis
... possessed by an almost animal fury, struck Ian with horror, although he accepted it as a phenomenon of somnambulism. He approached but did not touch her, for he had heard that it was dangerous to awaken a somnambulist. Her voice sank rapidly to a loud whisper and he heard her articulate—"My husband! Mine! Mine!"—but in no tone of tenderness, rather pronouncing the words as a passionate claim to his possession. Then suddenly she drooped, half kneeling on the deep window-seat, ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... even asked me where I am taking you." He started like a somnambulist awakened suddenly, and there was now some meaning in his stare; a sort of alarmed speculation. He opened his mouth slowly. Flora struck in with forced ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... fire. Her love became a worship, a pure adoration, and so she gained comparative peace of mind. Her imagination took quite a childish turn, and she wanted to be able to fancy that she was employed in doing things for him. She had got to dream while awake, and, like a somnambulist, to perform acts in a semi-unconscious state. Day and night, one thought haunted her: she fancied herself tending him, counting his linen, and looking after all the details of his household, which were too petty to occupy his thoughts. ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... a somnambulist, too," said Jim, "Rob Roy McGregor. We tied him up at the roadside, in case he might wake ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... the Subby's door without having made up my mind why I had been running about in pyjamas at one o'clock in the morning; the somnambulist tale did all right to annoy Lambert, but I was not such an idiot as to try it on a don. I had to knock twice before he told me to come in, and when he saw me he only said "good-morning." So I said ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... catch in your spurs, John!' murmured the daughter of the house, as she whirled around upon his arm with the rapt soul and look of a somnambulist. 'I didn't know we should dance, or I would have put on my ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... upstairs with madame, like a somnambulist. She was to leave me to sleep alone that night. I had lost the talismanic pin I always stuck in the bolster of my bed. Uncle Silas sent up spiced claret in a little silver flagon. Madame abstractedly drank it off, and threw ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... began to make itself heard ... and at that same moment he noticed that Valeria was beginning to stir slightly. He started, gazed; she rose, thrust first one foot, then the other from the bed, and, like a somnambulist, with her dull eyes strained straight ahead, and her arms extended before her, she advanced toward the door into the garden! Fabio instantly sprang through the other door of the bedroom, and briskly running round the corner of the house, ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... grand, and in Louis Bonaparte is little; the man who kills, who transports, who banishes, who expels, who proscribes, who despoils; this man with harassed gesture and glassy eye, who walks with distracted air amid the horrible things he does, like a sort of sinister somnambulist. ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... hypnotized. What is called hypnotic suggestion is nothing but the artificial selection of one idea to the exclusion of all others, so that it passes into action. Natural somnambulism similarly exhibits the force of ideas; whatever idea is conceived by the somnambulist, he carries into action. The kind of dream in which children often live is not without analogy to somnambulism. The fixed idea is another instance of the same phenomenon, which is produced in the waking ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... experienced the horror of a somnambulist who wakes up from a complacent dream of activity to find himself walking on a quagmire. A profound disgust of the ground on which he was making his way overcame him. Even the image of the charming girl was swept from his view ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... understand his excessive somnolence in the forenoon, nor his excessive activity at night. When they found him wandering along the hallways at night, or climbing over giddy roofs, or running in the hills, they decided he was a somnambulist. In reality he was wide-eyed awake and merely under the nightroaming compulsion of his early self. Questioned by an obtuse medico, he once told the truth and suffered the ignominy of having the revelation contemptuously labeled and ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... public hospital for three weeks on account of this. It was stated that this was chorea, but of course we can not be sure on this point. Annie was always regarded as a very nervous child; she was frequently a somnambulist until she was about 12. She is very nervous before the onset of menstruation. Of recent years she has been an excessive user of tea— at times before we first saw her she is said to have had 12 cups of tea in a day. At times she was then suffering from sleeplessness, ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... — somnambulist," answered Hugh, choosing the word for its intensity. "I slept so sound that I ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... mist impenetrable, and reduced the view to brightened clouds of steam, and to white telegraphic posts, erecting themselves every moment, with their wires changing their perspective in incessant monotony, he ceased his gaze, and sat upright in his place, with the same strange rigid somnambulist air. ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... (Die Mystischen Erscheinungen der Menschlichen Natur) of Catherine Emmerich, the somnambulist nun, who, when dying, saw again the whole of her past life, would incline one to think that this strange phenomenon, which traditional Catholicism appears to have called the "Private Judgment," and which theosophy defines with greater preciseness, is not limited to asphyxia by submersion, ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... what it was, we never knew. The only possible solution was, that it might have been some somnambulist; and, in that case, it must have been some acquaintance who bad been in the house in his waking moments. But even this solution seemed unsatisfactory, and finally Kate and I gave up trying to solve the enigma, content to let it rest as the mystery ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... The Dutch, like the Germans, appear to have been prone to this species of superstition; from which, even the English of education were far from being free, a century since. Mademoiselle Normand existed in the present century, even, in the sceptical capital of France. But, the somnambulist is taking the place of the ancient ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... star, that the world resembled a stanza or melody composed in a dream; it was wonderfully excellent to the half-aroused intelligence, but hopelessly absurd at the full waking; that the first cause worked automatically like a somnambulist, and not reflectively like a sage; that at the framing of the terrestrial conditions there seemed never to have been contemplated such a development of emotional perceptiveness among the creatures subject to those conditions as that reached by thinking and educated humanity. But affliction ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... Harry had driven a stake to mark the place which the somnambulist had pointed out as indicating ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... had an only child, a lovely daughter of about fourteen years old, in whose existence his own was completely wrapped up. She was subject at times to curious fits of self-absorption or absence of mind, and while she was under their influence she resembled a somnambulist rather than a sane human being awake. Her father would not take her to a physician, for he dreaded lest he should be advised to send her away from home, and he also feared the effect which any recognition of her disorder ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... had perceived that he had followed an unconscious somnambulist, he was not yet capable of calmly reflecting upon what had occurred or of regarding the future with prudence. He knew one thing only: the fear was idle that the lovely creature whose image, surrounded by a halo of light, still hovered before him like a vision from a higher, more ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... patiently to be lifted upon the horse, and she sat on its back like a somnambulist, who was neither in a waking nor a sleeping state. The Christian priest tied two small green branches together in the form of a cross, which he held high aloft; and thus they rode through the forest, which became thicker and thicker, and the path, if path it could be ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... three shows, deafened by the noise of the organs, the whistling of the machinery of the round-abouts, and the hubbub of the crowd that came and went among the booths that were illuminated by paraffin lamps. As they were passing in front of a somnambulist's van, Monsieur de Fontrailles stopped and ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... Diderot, Helvetius,—I, a son of the Revolution, who scoff at all that antiquity and the middle-ages tell us of demoniacal possession,—well, monsieur, I affirm that nothing but such possession can explain the condition of my child. As a somnambulist she has never been able to tell us the cause of her sufferings; she has never perceived it, and all the remedies she has proposed when in that state, though carefully carried out, have done her no good. For ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... him; she was still dazed and bewildered, and still imagined herself with the companion of her trance. The strange lucidity of the somnambulist still hung over her brain and mind, though outwardly she appeared ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... back—Freud next sought for a method to render hypnotism unnecessary. He discovered it by applying an artifice which he had seen Bernheim use during a visit (1887) to the latter's clinic at Nancy. Bernheim demonstrated upon a hypnotized patient how the amnesia of the somnambulist ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... with what the boys did out of school. He was glad enough to accept utter irresponsibility for that portion of his time; so that between the two parts of the day, as they passed through the life of the master, there was almost as little connection as between the waking and sleeping hours of a somnambulist. ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... mortals! A glance sufficed to show to myself, at least, that he was in a state of tense nervous excitation, similar to that of a subject of mesmerism. A preternatural power seemed to possess him. He moved and spoke like a somnambulist, with the same insulation from surrounding minds and superiority to material obstacles. I had long known him as a brave officer; but here was something more than bravery, more than the fierce energy of the hour. His mien, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... been times when I had hurried to this girl with words eager to be spoken on my lips, and at the first sight of her they had died unuttered on my tongue, just as words die into silence in the presence of a somnambulist. ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... Latin word with a Greek termination, and that it implies the existence of a non-existent verb—may be urged with equal force against such harmless necessary words as deist, aurist, dentist, florist, jurist, oculist, somnambulist, ventriloquist, and—purist. Much more valid objection might be made to the word "scientific," which is not hybrid indeed, but is, if strictly examined, illogical and even nonsensical. The fact is ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... Grundraith, Hunkerville, Clancharlie; compared the wax, the impression, felt the twist of silk appended to the royal privy seal, approached the window, listened to the splash of the fountain, contemplated the statues, counted, with the patience of a somnambulist, the columns of ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... thousand confused ideas filled his mind. A revelation, strange and unforeseen, put an end to his suffering and dissipated his fears, by exhibiting the incomprehensible mystery under which he had been. Aminta was sleeping. Her sleep was of that somnambulist character, so common in this country of moral and physical excitement. While dreaming, Aminta had told and taught him every thing. She was innocent and pure. Yet in doubt, hesitating as the victim does, who when he marches to punishment receives a pardon, wishing to convince himself of the ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... imagination, mingled with originality, and even with a little eccentricity. For example, he believes in fortune-telling, and undertakes to predict to each one of us his fate. He has also great faith in magnetism, and has told me that a somnambulist had predicted to him, two years ago, that a member of the family of the Emperor would return to France and would dethrone Louis Philippe. He is going to Brazil to make some experiments in electricity. The other passenger is an ancient librarian of Don Pedro, who has preserved all the ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... and returned to bed unconscious, for I certainly woke there about the time when history relates that the fight was over. I do not know whose colors I wore—the Benician's, or those of the Irish champion; nor remember where the fight took place, which, indeed, no somnambulist is bound to recollect. Ought Mr. Sayers to be honored for being brave, or punished for being naughty? By the shade of Brutus the ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to be a hundred; his cold hand falls freezingly upon them; five francs replace the hundred he took away—"Whizz!" goes the ball; "click!" stops the ball; the coupeur seizes Mr. Risque's five francs, and Mr. Risque walks away like a somnambulist. ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... aggravated the discomfort. But when mounted, the men would pull the capes of their overcoats over their heads, drop their chins upon their breasts and sleep. The horses plodded along and doubtless were asleep too, doing their work as a somnambulist might, walking ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... I am compelled to make an unwilling disclosure of a secret — a sad secret about myself. Do not hate me quite — I am a somnambulist." ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... vicinity. We remember as it were but yesterday the solemnity which sat upon the faces of the assembled neighbors, as they awaited the signal-groan from an adjoining apartment, to which, at about seven P. M., the Somnambulist usually retired for the night. When the door was opened the crowd pressed in. The sleeper, dressed in white muslin, lay straight and motionless in bed; her eyes closed, her face white and inflexible as marble; ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... the one I dreaded the most. Not that I had ever walked myself, or, indeed, enjoyed the embarrassing friendship of any one who did. But I had read the books and knew all about it. I would sooner have faced a dozen ghosts than a somnambulist. ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... o'clock in the morning, as accompanied by the waiter, who, like others of his tribe, had become a kind of somnambulist ex-officio, I wended my way up one flight of stairs, and down another, along a narrow corridor, down two steps, through an antechamber, and into another corridor, to No. 82, my habitation for the night. Why I should have been so far ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... had sought distinction without misgiving, and attained it without difficulty. My one dearest object I deemed secure long before I opened my lips and asked expressly for it. I think I walked through life at that time like a somnambulist; for I have since seen that I must have been piling mistake upon mistake until out of a chaos of meaningless words and smiles I had woven a Paphian love temple. At the first menace of disappointment—a thing as new and horrible to me as death—I fled the country. I came back ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... getting up during the night in a state of somnambulism, taking pen, ink, and paper, and composing and writing sermons. When he had finished a page he would read aloud what he had written and correct it. In order to ascertain whether the somnambulist made any use of his eyes the Archbishop held a piece of cardboard under his chin to prevent his seeing the paper upon which he was writing. He continued to write without being in the slightest degree incommoded. In this state he also copied out pieces of music, ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... sat on straw-bottomed chairs, knitting black wool. The slim one got up and walked straight at me—still knitting with downcast eyes—and only just as I began to think of getting out of her way, as you would for a somnambulist, stood still, and looked up. Her dress was as plain as an umbrella-cover, and she turned round without a word and preceded me into a waiting-room. I gave my name, and looked about. Deal table in the middle, plain ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... superhuman love. Even the rumours of everyday life died away at the door of the room where she lived in seclusion; and, in past years, when she had been taken from one to the other end of France, from one inland spa to another, she had passed through the crowds like a somnambulist who neither sees nor hears anything, possessed, as she was, by the idea of the calamity that had befallen her, the bond which made her a sexless thing. Hence her purity and childishness; hence she was but an adorable daughter of suffering, who, despite the growth of ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... his knees, continued to look up to heaven. Then he rose slowly, and like a seer or a somnambulist, with eyes opened but seeing nothing, he went to his piano without knowing what he was doing. He sat down on the stool, and did not know it; his hands touched the keys and drew magnificent chords from them, and he did not hear them. He only heard the thousands of seraphic ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... proposes to do. He thinks to take her publicly to his house and to blazon her shame before the eyes of everybody! Maria feels that she is lost. She rises abruptly and says to him in the tone of a somnambulist: "That will do. We ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... greater extent than the first time, he was subjugated and controlled by one dominant idea. Throughout each day all things around him were dreamlike and unsubstantial, and he performed many actions as automatically as if he had been a somnambulist. He walked and talked or rode on the shaft of a wagon without in the least troubling to think what he was doing, and every time his thought became active it seemed to spring into vigor again merely to obey the prompting of the inner voice ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... you are a somnambulist, portends that you will unwittingly consent to some agreement of plans which will bring you anxiety ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... laid it down. The blood followed, and with the life-stream her strength flowed away. The hand that supported her head suddenly dropped, and she fell back. The man had been standing over her, speechless, motionless, breathless, like some wretched somnambulist, suddenly awakened in the commission of a crime, and gazing in horror, amazement, and unbelief upon the work of ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... to be moved, I once more threw myself on the lounge. I did not sleep; but, like a somnambulist, only dozed now and then; starting from my dreams; while Harry sat, with his hat on, at the table; the brandy before him; from which he occasionally poured into his glass. Instead of exciting him, however, to my amazement, the spirits seemed to soothe ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... man of pale complexion, with his black hair flowing over his shoulders, and with a sort of pea-coloured swaddling-cloth thrown round him. In his hand he held a long military musket, and he dashed along on the tips of his slippers with the air of a somnambulist and with the nimbleness of a tiger. At intervals a detonation ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... upon as endowed with a power almost divine. His great discovery, as he called it, was made by chance. One day he had magnetised his gardener; and observing him to fall into a deep sleep, it occurred to him that he would address a question to him, as he would have done to a natural somnambulist. He did so, and the man replied with much clearness and precision. M. de Puysegur was agreeably surprised: he continued his experiments, and found that, in this state of magnetic somnambulism, the soul of the sleeper was enlarged, and brought into more intimate communion with all nature, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... night continued, but without suffering. He was conscious of no fatigue. Calm and cool, he acted under the power of an hallucination, almost like a somnambulist. ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... which were still deserted, for all loungers and street idlers were still tarrying in Broad Street or on the castle square. Many a time Gabriel cast a look of questioning entreaty upon Rebecca, but she saw it not; she seemed to see nothing whatever, for her eyes were gazing afar off; like a somnambulist, she strode along, and even when the baby in her arms began to cry she took no notice of it, nor sought to comfort it with tender, soothing words. At last they had passed the gate behind the willow bank, ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... off into the darkling bush towards Werrina. The sun had disappeared before I left my father's side, and the track to Werrina was fifteen miles long. A strange drive, and a queer little numbed driver, creaking along through the ghostly bush, exactly as a somnambulist might, the most of his faculties in abeyance. Three words kept shaping themselves in my mind, I know, and then fading out again, like shadows. They never were spoken. My lips did not move, I think, all through the long, slow night drive. ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... she, with a shudder; "for know you not that the sleep-walkers awake out of their dreams when they are called by name? I am a somnambulist, who, with smiling courage, moves along a dizzy height; call me by name, and I shall awake, and, shuddering, plunge into the abyss beneath. Ah, Henry, I hate my name, for it is pronounced by other lips than yours. For you I will not be named as other men call me. Baptize me, my Henry; give ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... Marietta's question checked her glowing enthusiasm; it rang in her ears like the name-call in the "Somnambulist," and ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... or more peacefully, he said; he was seldom conscious of even so much as awakening once. Of course, when he said this, Eileen and her father could only open their eyes, and come to the conclusion that the poor young knight was a somnambulist, and afflicted with the habit of running ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Mrs. Molesworth
... Mr. Rayne "you are always in that state of blissful forgetfulness, and if you don't mind yourself you'll fall into a chronic state of dreaming, and then be no more to us than a veritable somnambulist, now, you wouldn't ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... men in an attack, less than women in a retreat, the finest cavalry Europe had ever seen was flying like sand before the wind: but the somnambulist rode on in his sleep, forgetting that on these vast and billowing fields twenty-six thousand gallant French heroes had died for the sake of ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... night-sky, and a single star sparkling upon it, and as he looks upon the star, he takes a sword from under his cloak, draws the steel from the scabbard, and, still gazing upon the star, sharpens it on his whetstone. Thus, with widely opened eye, yet seeing, hearing nothing, the somnambulist, wrapped in deep, magnetic sleep, strides on in the moonlight, possessed by a power of which he is not conscious, which may stain his hands with blood, or hold him back from the verge of an abyss. Passion drinks its glow from the rays of the sun; ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... room close behind the somnambulist. It is sometimes possible to question a person in that condition, and to learn what he ...
— The Crime of the French Cafe and Other Stories • Nicholas Carter
... that he had not himself suspected the strength of his passion; and the sole resource for him, as I said often, was to quit the city—to engage in active pursuits of enterprise, of ambition, or of science. But he heard me as a somnambulist might have heard me—dreaming with his eyes open. Sometimes he had fits of reverie, starting, fearful, agitated; sometimes he broke out into maniacal movements of wrath, invoking some absent person, praying, beseeching, menacing some air-wove phantom; sometimes ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... impatience; and, letting his friend cross the bridge, he went his way along the quays by himself. He walked on with his arms hanging beside him, with his face turned towards the ground, seeing nothing, but taking long strides like a somnambulist who is guided by instinct. On the Quai de Bourbon, in front of his door, he looked up, full of surprise on seeing a cab waiting at the edge of the foot pavement, and barring his way. And it was with the same automatical step that he entered the ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... Whalley opposite. He watched the deliberate upward movements of the arm; the old man put his food to his lips as though he never expected to find any taste in his daily bread, as though he did not know anything about it. He fed himself like a somnambulist. "It's an awful sight," thought Sterne; and he watched the long period of mournful, silent immobility, with a big brown hand lying loosely closed by the side of the plate, till he noticed the two engineers ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... floor neither awoke nor moved from their beds, but were suffocated without a cry. From the first an instinctive idea of the hopelessness of combating the conflagration possessed them all; to a blind, automatic feeling to flee the building was added the slow mechanism of the somnambulist; delicate women walked speechlessly, but securely, along ledges and roofs from which they would have fallen by the mere light of reason and of day. There was no crowding or impeding haste in their dumb exodus. ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... she's going to be a somnambulist?" asked Mr. Breynton. This was the first time he had remembered to be worried over any of Gypsy's peculiarities all day. He had spent so much time in looking at her, and kissing her, and wiping ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... He walked as a somnambulist down the street. In his misery he thought of Isabel Souders. He would go to her for comfort. She'd understand and believe in him! He yearned like a hurt child for the love and tenderness of some ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... perhaps it is some half-idiotic negress, some herdsman living among his cattle, who receives the gift of vision; some Hindoo fakir, seated by a pagoda, mortifying the flesh till the spirit gains the mysterious power of the somnambulist. ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... fear, in front of the transparent crystal bottle! I looked at it with fixed eyes, trying to conjecture, and my hands trembled! Somebody had drunk the water, but who? I? I without any doubt. It could surely only be I? In that case I was a somnambulist. I lived, without knowing it, that double mysterious life which makes us doubt whether there are not two beings in us, or whether a strange, unknowable and invisible being does not at such moments, when ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... (glorification through the sexual feeling of pleasure[10]), that she herself imagined it must represent a second sort of consciousness, and finally that she stood in such contact with the beloved person as that of a hypnotized subject—somnambulist—with her hypnotist. For she perceived also the mother's lightest word when most soundly asleep, in spite of her difficulty ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... to be present at all the stages of the inquiry as to the cause of death. He did so after the fashion of a somnambulist, in a hallucination which showed him things and human beings in a sort of dream, in a cloud of intoxication, in that dubious sense of unreality which perplexes the mind at the ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... sinister, gloomy, who, dragged to that point by the current of the rout, had just dismounted, had passed the bridle of his horse over his arm, and with wild eye was returning alone to Waterloo. It was Napoleon, the immense somnambulist of this dream which had crumbled, essaying once ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... said Randal, in the hollow, dreamy tone of a somnambulist. "At her father's house, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Tristan, she went down to her limousine with the furtive eagerness of a woman escaping from monotony into a secret world. She drove home with feverish cheeks, and when her husband spoke to her she gave him the blank stare of a somnambulist. ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... more letters! As in the time of the siege, if you desire to obtain news of your mother or your wife, you have no other alternative than to consult a somnambulist or a fortune-teller. This is not at all a complicated operation; of course you possess a ribbon or a look of hair, something appertaining to the absent person. This suffices to keep you informed, hour by hour, of what she says, does, and thinks. Perhaps you would prefer the ordinary course ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... They had also the expectation of a saviour, belief in whom could alone have consoled for the advent of Pizarro. Over what highways of sea or sky, the living Word, which Ormuzd spoke, reached them, there has been no somnambulist of history to divine. But in the splendour that Cuzco was, in the golden temples of the town of gold, along the scarlet lanes where sacred peacocks strolled and girls more sacred still—vestals whom Pizarro's soldiers raped—in that ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... impetuously, Will rose, put out his hand to Rosamond, still with the air of a somnambulist, ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... have been Mr. Pike's profundity of passion, that he paused like a somnambulist, actually rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand, ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... could not linger forever over a glass of ice-cream soda, while he did not dare ask for a second glass. So he left her to remain in the shop in a waking trance, and went away himself down the street like a somnambulist. Genevieve dreamed through the afternoon and knew that she was in love. Not so with Joe. He knew only that he wanted to look at her again, to see her face. His thoughts did not get beyond this, and besides, it was scarcely a thought, being more ...
— The Game • Jack London
... face, and incredulity. Marion walked quietly up to him, took the revolver from his hand, and left him standing in the doorway, his arms hanging loose at his side. She crossed the room to Haig, slowly, somewhat gropingly like a somnambulist, with a half-smiling, strange expression fixed on her chalk-white face. She stretched out her left hand to him, her right still clasping Seth's six-shooter. There was something magnetic, curiously compelling in ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... Corona, like a somnambulist or a blind woman, went slowly toward the log cabin, holding out her hands before her. She soon reached it, leaned for a moment against the log wall to recover her breath and her courage, and ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... priest to lift her on the horse, and sat like a somnambulist, neither completely asleep nor wholly awake. The Christian bound two branches together with bark, in the form of a cross, which he held up high as they rode through the forest. The wood became thicker as they went on, and at last became ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... countenanced by a fact mentioned concerning a somnambulist in the Lausanne Transactions, who sometimes opened his eyes for a short time to examine, where he was, or where his ink-pot stood, and then shut them again, dipping his pen into the pot every now and then, and writing on, but never opening his eyes afterwards, although ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... becomes a harrying beast, behaves to her lord. He had no sleep. Having put out his candle, an idea took hold of him, and he jumped up to light it again and verify the idea that this room . . . He left the bed and strode round it, going in the guise of an urgent somnambulist, or ghost bearing burden of an imperfectly remembered mission. This was ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... name. The gate leading into the garden was open; I arose without replying and entered it, I stopped before a plot of grass in the center of the garden; I was walking like a somnambulist, without ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... When the somnambulist's deliberate progress toward the mouth of the well continued he called her name softly. "Dona Isabel!" Then he repeated it louder. ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... not the woman to scream and waken a somnambulist," said Calton, decidedly, "knowing as she did the danger. There must ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... are referring to your mother, and are haunted by an idea that through some hereditary taint you might be a somnambulist and have done these things in your sleep. Come, Charles Rambert, finish your breakfast and put all that out of your head. To begin with, you would not have been strong enough, even then; and in the next place there is nothing at present to show that ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... love with Amina the somnambulist. Amina being found in the bedroom of Conte Rodolfo the day before her wedding, induces Elvino to break off the match and promise marriage to Lisa; but as the truth of the matter breaks upon him, and he is convinced of Amina's innocence, he turns over Lisa to Alessio, her ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... levels of sleep into which Mrs. Smiley seemed to lower herself at will, or upon the suggestion of those in the circle. I had adopted the theory that in the lighter trance she spoke unconsciously and wrote automatically. In the second, and deeper, trance she became the somnambulist possessed of diabolic cleverness, when, with the higher senses in abeyance, she was able to deceive and to elude all detection. In the third, or death-like, trance, I was ready to admit, for the sake of argument, that she was able, as De ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... the body is in a state of calm, nearly everything that has been written on the art of singing could be dispensed with. That, practically, is what the direction to breathe naturally amounts to. For such breathing is both natural and artistic. Unfortunately, however, a singer is not a somnambulist, and when he faces his teacher, or a large audience, he not only is not in that deliciously unconscious state induced by normal slumber, but he is very much awake, with the added tension caused by nervousness and excitement. He ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... mouth,—and shut it. A marked change took place in the expression of his countenance. His eyes became fixed and staring,—resembling the glassy orbs of the somnambulist. For a moment I feared that he was going to give me an object lesson in the 'visitations' of which I had heard so much. I rose, with a view of offering him ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... forget the pest, though it rages about them. They bear a charmed life, and think not of destruction until it touches their idol, and then they die without a pang, like zealots for their persecuted creed. A man in love wanders in the world as a somnambulist, with eyes that seem open to those that watch him, yet in fact view nothing but their own ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... 'My gentle somnambulist,' said Mr Mifflin, aggrieved, 'I was doing nothing with this tiller. We will now form a commission to inquire into what you were doing with that sheet. Were ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... person accused, and intended for arrest, a sickening horror seized and almost paralyzed her, blanching her face and turning her to stone. As he led her along the street, she staggered from the numbness that possessed her, and her eyes stared blankly, like those of a somnambulist. When she had been ushered into a room where several policemen were lounging and smoking, the intolerable sense of shame and indignation ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... leave the monastery, it is most likely that all the enormous quantity which they must have made in the course of some two centuries is still upon the premises, if one could only lay one's hands upon it. So reasonable did this seem, that about two years ago it was resolved to call in a somnambulist or clairvoyant from Turin, who, when he arrived at the spot, became seized with convulsions, betokening of course that there was treasure not far off: these convulsions increased till he reached the choir of the chapel, and here he swooned—falling down as if ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... a very old friend of his. He was rather seriously affected. He must have, in an unconscious state of mind like a somnambulist, carried the dead body of Smith to his own house without being detected in the act. Then his own fevered imagination endowed Smith with the faculty of speech, dead though the latter was; and in a moment of—well—call it temporary insanity, if you please—he inflicted the wound on the forehead ...
— Indian Ghost Stories - Second Edition • S. Mukerji
... imagination as well as mere invention. In the 'Edgar Huntley' of Charles Brockden Brown the veil of doubt skilfully shrouds the unsuspected and the unsuspecting murderer who did the evil deed in his sleep—anticipating the somnambulist ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... fall is not apt to hurt a somnambulist, for the reason that in sleep the muscles are entirely relaxed; but the jar woke Kitty, and she found herself, clad only in her little white nightgown, lying in the midst ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells
... uncle was the first to speak. He said to your aunt, 'God bless my soul, Dahlia, what are you doing here?' To which she replied, 'Well, if it comes to that, my merry somnambulist, what are you?' Your uncle then said that he thought there must be burglars in the house, as ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... but that he had locked the door securely, on leaving after his adventure with the charming somnambulist.... ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... hand in Victoire's left, and, with her lids closed uninterruptedly, her cheeks a little red, her lips quivering, the somnambulist, after some ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... to the wives who love them, were it only on account of the perpetual miracles wrought by true love in the sublime regions of the spiritual world. The woman who loves is, in relation to the man she loves, in the position of a somnambulist to whom the magnetizer should give the painful power, when she ceases to be the mirror of the world, of being conscious as a woman of what she has seen as a somnambulist. Passion raises the nervous ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... deserted dining-room of the Hotel Baltet, when served with the warmed-over soup and entrees of the table d'hote, they ate voraciously, without saying a word, eager only to get to bed. All of a sudden, Excourbanies, who was swallowing his food like a somnambulist, came out of his plate, and sniffing the air about him, remarked: "I ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... have been after midnight, for the fire was out—I was roused from sleep by Ed, who was moving about the shed. I thought at first that he was walking in his sleep,—for he was a somnambulist,—and gave him ...
— The Youth's Companion - Volume LII, Number 11, Thursday, March 13, 1879 • Various
... weight shifted from leg to leg. Fat Buck Walker was perspiring almost grotesquely, like an earthenware pitcher. Great drops hung from his chin, from his uptilted nose, and his cotton shirt was dark. Slim Simpson, white before, was like a corpse; only his great boyish eyes stared out, as a somnambulist stares, as one hypnotised. Last of all, at the end of the line was the stranger from the East, representative of another world. Piteous, horrible, the others had been; but he—but for his clothes, his most intimate friend would not have recognised him at ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... has not been a wind in the trees, and the landscape reminds me of a somnambulist—the same silence, the same mystery, the same awe. The thick foliage of the ash never stirs; even the fingery leaves hanging out from the topmost twigs are still. The hawthorns growing out of a tumbled wall are ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... strain became such that his sister Laure pawned his silver. He afterwards admitted that the journey to Vienna was the greatest folly of his life; it cost him five thousand francs and upset all his affairs. He had other financial troubles also, but found time and means to consult a somnambulist frequently as to his Predilecta, and regretted that he did not have one or two soothsayers, so that he might know daily about her. His superstition is seen early in their correspondence where he considered it a good omen that ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... laths. I thought of that now, and although it was rather a serious business, for I didn't know what minute they would come to blows, I couldn't help laughing. The sight was weird enough. Every one looked like a somnambulist as he pulled and hauled. The young lady in the stateroom was doing her full share. She was screaming, 'Won't somebody let me out?' and hammering on the door. I guess it was her screaming and hammering that brought the conductor at last, or maybe he just came ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... angry till my mother assured him that I was a somnambulist and not responsible for what I did at such a time. Then we had ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... again. Morange, as if unconscious of what went on around him, as if he were quite alone there, continued walking softly hither and thither like a somnambulist. Beauchene, with haggard mien, went off, and then came back carrying some little address-books. He turned about for another moment, and finally sat down at a writing-table which had been brought out of ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... Niura, but, turning around unexpectedly, remained as she was with her mouth open. Looking in the direction of her gaze, Jennka had to wring her hands. In the doorway stood Liubka, grown thin, with dark rings under her eyes, and, just like a somnambulist, was searching with her hand for the door-knob, as a point ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... his head on his arm, and looked at her with eyes that had lost their earthly, temporal glow. Man, where are your eyes anyway, she would have liked to exclaim. And yet she knew where they were; she knew, too, that it is dangerous to disturb a somnambulist by calling ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... settled into a kind of dreary, inanimate stupor, which resembled that of the somnambulist whom the magnetiser forgets to waken. Hitherto, with all the eccentricities or deficiencies of her mind, had mingled a wild and airy gaiety. That was vanished. She spoke little—she never played—no toys could lure ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... raised more than one corpse to life himself, was heard to say, after having attended her professionally, that her waking bliss and peace, although unfortunately unattributable even to autocatalepsy, much less to somnambulist exaltation, was on the whole, however unscientific, almost ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... I had finished this chapter, but I wish to add a curious thing, while it is in my mind. It is only relevant in that it is connected with piloting. There used to be an excellent pilot on the river, a Mr. X., who was a somnambulist. It was said that if his mind was troubled about a bad piece of river, he was pretty sure to get up and walk in his sleep and do strange things. He was once fellow-pilot for a trip or two with George Ealer, on a great New Orleans passenger ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... nothing but romances of love and chivalry. Attracted and fascinated by his heroes, his thoughts and intentions gradually turn more and more towards them, till one fine day we find him walking among us like a somnambulist. His actions are distractions. But then his distractions can be traced back to a definite, positive cause. They are no longer cases of ABSENCE of mind, pure and simple; they find their explanation in the PRESENCE of the individual in quite definite, ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... the fixed gaze of a somnambulist, she beholds neither the trembling Tetrarch, nor her mother, the fierce Herodias who watches her, nor the hermaphrodite, nor the eunuch who sits, sword in hand, at the foot of the throne—a terrible figure, veiled ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... had been suddenly dragged into consciousness out of a bad dream, and stood for a second like a half-awakened somnambulist. ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... window-sill to dry, and a gust of wind toppled them into the river. The draughts were a nuisance. This was owing to windows facing each other being left open, and as a result articles of clothing disappeared so mysteriously that we thought there must be a thief or a somnambulist on board. The third or fourth day, however, going into the saloon unexpectedly, I caught my straw hat disappearing on the wings of the wind. When last seen it was on its way to Maidenhead, bowling along at the rate of several miles an hour. So we thought it would be as well to have a boy. ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... quite a hard fall, sir," he said, in a loud, cheerful voice, and directly Carroll answered, like a somnambulist: ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... addressing him and inquiring what he wanted so late at night, when he was arrested by an icy shiver; there was something so unearthly and ghost-like in the old man's manner and bearing as well as in his set, pallid face. He perceived that he was in presence of a somnambulist. Crossing the hall obliquely with measured strides, the old man went straight to the walled-up postern that had formerly led to the tower. He came to a halt immediately in front of it, and uttered a wailing sound that seemed to come from the bottom of his heart, and was so awful and so loud ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... In vain Lucien Bonaparte commands order. Several deputies rush at the general, and fiercely shake him by the collar. He turns faint with excitement and chagrin; but Lefebvre and a few grenadiers rushing up drag him from the hall. He comes forth like a somnambulist (says an onlooker), pursued by the terrible cry, "Hors la loi!" Had the cries at once taken form in a decree, the history of the world might have been different. One of the deputies, General Augereau, fiercely demands that the motion of outlawry be put to ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... to regret not only that men have 'no religion,' but that they have next to no reflection: and go about with heads full of mere extraneous noises, with eyes wide-open but visionless,—for most part in the somnambulist state! ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... although they did not understand, reframed from questioning him, for they saw there was nothing to do but let him go ahead without interruption, just as care is taken not to wake a somnambulist abruptly. They had no mistrust of his motives, for the idea was simply untenable that Rouletabille was fool enough to hope to save himself from them by an imbecile subterfuge. No, they yielded to the impression his inspired countenance gave them, and several were so affected ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... floundered a moment, as is usual with an absent man who is recovering the train of his ideas, or a somnambulist when he is suddenly awakened, and then answered, ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... what others had earlier conjectured—that there had been clandestine meetings, whispered conferences and the like, within the first week of the lovely niece's coming to Fort Frayne. That notes had been fetched and carried by "Crappo" as well as Pete; that Miss Flower was either a somnambulist or a good imitation of one, as on two occasions the maid had "peeked" and seen her down-stairs at the back door in the dead hours of the night, or the very early morning. That was when she first came. Then, since the recapture, Miss McGrath felt ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... in this volume. The characters in "The Detective and the Somnambulist," will be easily recognized by many readers in the South. As the family of Drysdale are still living and holding a highly respectable place in society, the locality is not correctly given, and fictitious names are ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... me, And Night is above the night. The sea is beside me soughing, or is still. The earth as a somnambulist moves on In a strange sleep ... A sea-bird cries. And the cry wakes in me Dim, dead sea-folk, my sires— Who more than myself are me. Who sat on their beach long nights ago and saw The sea in its silence; And cursed it or implored: Or with the Cross defied; Then on the ...
— Nirvana Days • Cale Young Rice
... to a confessed impostor; but Joan of Arc might have been the reality which the Nun attempted to counterfeit; and the history of the true heroine might have suggested easily to the imitator the outline of her part. A revolution had been effected in Europe by a somnambulist peasant girl; another peasant girl, a somnambulist also, might have seen in the achievement which had been already accomplished, an earnest of what might be done by herself. While we call the Nun, too, an impostor, we are bound ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... been induced by some magnetic property possessed and exerted by Weir. Such things do not occur without cause, and he was not the sort of man to yield himself, physically and mentally, his will and his perceptions, to the unconscious caprice of a somnambulist. And the scene had cut itself so deeply into the tablets of his memory that he found himself forgetting more than once that it was not an actual episode of his past. He wished he could see Weir, and hear her account of her mental experiences of those hours. If her dream ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... satisfaction. He walked all the way home. Finding the drawing-room dark, he went upstairs, and spent some time between the bedroom and the dressing-room, changing his clothes, going to and fro with the air of a thoughtful somnambulist. But he shook it off before going out again to join his wife at the house of the great lady patroness ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... risks we run! famine and fire and pestilence, and the thousand forms of a cruel fate,—and yet every man lives till he—dies. How did he manage that? Is there no immediate danger? We wonder superfluously when we hear of a somnambulist walking a plank securely,—we have walked a plank all our lives up to this particular string-piece where we are. My life will wait for nobody, but is being matured still without delay, while I go about the ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... sense. Here the impostor can play off his pretended clairvoyance or second sight; for the subject will discover objects hidden from sight by the sense of smell and other senses affected with abnormal power. The somnambulist will now exhibit the utmost sensibility to suggestions made to him by the hypnotizer, so that he seems to be almost entirely controlled by the influence of the latter's will. This is what chiefly favored the early theory ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... did not exist. When Mademoiselle de Verneuil hurried, after reading the marquis's letter, to prepare the way for vengeance just as she had lately been preparing all for love, she was in that stage of mental intoxication which makes real life like the life of a somnambulist. But when she saw her house surrounded, by her own orders, with a triple line of bayonets a sudden flash of light illuminated her soul. She judged her conduct and saw with horror that she had committed a crime. Under the first shock of this conviction she sprang to the threshold of the ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... through the woods again that night just as a somnambulist searches, for he found himself towards dawn in the valley before the idol. Then it was daybreak—the world was full of light and colour. He was seated before the house door, worn out and exhausted, when, raising his head, he saw Emmeline's figure coming ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... dramatic poses of the detective of fiction. The finest among his many fine qualities was his boyish appetite for the colour and poetry of London. Basil, who walked behind, with his face turned blindly to the stars, had the look of a somnambulist. ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... your good, as people always tell their friends when they do the most disagreeable things imaginable. Forgive me, and I will let you dream in peace. You will, however, allow me to watch by you, whilst you sleep; and, my dear somnambulist, I may just take care that you do not knock your head against a post, or ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... dampness and foul air, ascended four flights of dark stone steps, and stopped before a small brown door. The card nailed upon it was like the one he had in his pocket-book. The name was 'Giuditta Astarita,' and under it, in another character, was printed the word 'Somnambulist.' ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... came home thin and puny, like a somnambulist sleeping with open eyes, and his grandmother groaned over the strain of modern education. At first he heard hardly any of the questions that were put to him, and his mother was obliged to disturb him in reveries, and to insist on ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... there was one, "Sunny Jim," a morbid transport mule, inside the tent, providing the motive power. "Sunny Jim" had always been something of a somnambulist, and this time he had sleep-walked clean through our mess and on into William's tent, where the mallet woke him up. He was then making the best of his way home to lines again, expedited ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, Feb. 7, 1917 • Various
... widening crack in the panel. It was as it had been before. She stooped low, stood up again and came towards him. From behind an unseen hand closed the panel. She came to him with her arms outstretched and all the wonderful things of life and love in her shining eyes. That faint touch of the somnambulist had passed. She came to him as she had never come before. She was a very real and a very ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Mr. Paynter, that day you first lunched here and told us about the African trees? Well, it was my birthday; I mean my first birthday. I was born then, or woke up or something. I had walked in this garden like a somnambulist in the sun. I think there are many such somnambulists in our set and our society; stunned with health, drugged with good manners, fitting their surroundings too well to be alive. Well, I came alive ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... blotted out or perverted; he could not conceive of it otherwise than as corresponding with her outward symmetry. To his thought it slumbered, as her form might repose upon her couch, in a death-like trance. She went and came among them like a somnambulist, guided by unconscious instincts, memories, ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... granary. Bags of musty smelling wheat stood at one end of this little room. Evidently Mr. Motherwell wished to discourage sleep-walking in his hired help, for the floor ended abruptly and a careless somnambulist would be precipitated on the old fanning mill, harrow teeth and other debris which littered ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... at the Key-stone, with eyes whose ray Grows dreamy like a somnambulist, and Ethel murmurs, "I saw you to-day At the church of ...
— Victor Roy, A Masonic Poem • Harriet Annie Wilkins
... 'Portrait of a Russian Peasant.' She then abandoned painting for sculpture, and one month later gained the highest commendations for a bust of 'Ariadne.' She then began to study the plastic art from life. Dissatisfied with herself, although her 'Somnambulist' gained a prize, Miss Ries left Moscow for Paris, but on her way stayed in Vienna, studying under Professor Hellmer. One year later, at the Vienna Spring Exhibition, she exhibited her 'Die Hexe.' Here is no traditional witch, though the broomstick ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... open, as is usual with somnambulists, and, from some odd instinct or other, wishing to know what the hour was, got together a number of their watches, for the purpose of comparing them, as it would seem. Among them was a repeater, belonging to our young Marylander. He happened to wake up while the somnambulist was in his chamber, and, not knowing his infirmity, caught hold of him and gave him a dreadful shaking, after which he tied his hands and feet, and so left him till morning, when he introduced him to a gentleman used to taking care of such cases ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... Margaret, the somnambulist?" asked the porteress. "She has been taken to the parlor of the abbess, for the convenience of the many who ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach |
