"Piquet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Lebrun, now duke of Placenza were all assembled in the salon, while the First Consul was writing in his cabinet. Haydn's oratorio was to be performed that evening; the ladies were anxious to hear the music, and we also expressed a wish to that effect. The escort piquet was ordered out; and Lannes requested that Napoleon would join the party. He consented; his carriage was ready, and he took along with him Bessieres and the aide de camp on duty. I was directed to attend the ladies. Josephine had received a magnificent shawl ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... purpose of teasing him, Miss Sally had asked Tilda to take up a book and read to her for a while. The three were seated in the drawing-room after dinner, and Sir Elphinstone beginning to grow impatient for his game of piquet. On the hearth-rug before the fire were stretched Godolphus and three of Miss Sally's prize setters; but Godolphus had the warmest corner, ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the communities are free to tax themselves and where they might be expected to show some consideration for the poor, "most of the towns, and notably Aix, Marseilles and Toulon,[5271] pay their impositions," local and general, "exclusively by the tax called the "piquet." This is a tax "on all species of flour belonging to and consumed on the territory;" for example, of 254,897 livres, which Toulon expends, the piquet furnishes 233,405. Thus the taxation falls wholly on the people, while the bishop, the marquis, the president, the merchant of ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... the "Regle des Jeux de la Societe"— piquet, bezique, ecarte, whist, dice, draughts, ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... deep in massive walls built for a more bickering age than this. Count Victor took all in at a glance and found revealed to him in a flash the colossal mendacity of all the Camerons, Macgregors, and Macdonalds who had implied, if they had not deliberately stated, over many games of piquet or lansquenet at Cammercy, the magnificence of the typical ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... women abound in the present day we have undeniable proof—many as clever, no doubt, as that famous philosopheress Madame du Chatelet, who managed at one and the same moment the thread of an intrigue, her cards at piquet, and a calculation in algebra, but who may still lack the qualifications indispensably necessary to make clever politicians. Perhaps, therefore, we might be allowed to suggest that it would be well for ladies who are ambitious of ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... foreign salute to the Stars and Stripes. John Paul Jones entered Quiberon Bay, near Brest, France, and received a salute of nine guns from the French fleet, under Admiral La Motte Piquet. Jones had previously saluted the French fleet with ...
— The Little Book of the Flag • Eva March Tappan
... up to make certain of my death, but were interrupted by a piquet of my men, who unexpectedly emerged from a copse where I had posted them, and they were obliged to return to Tepelen, which they entered, riotous with joy, crying 'Ali Bey is dead, now we are free!' This news reached my harem, and I heard the cries of ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the delight and envy of the circle in which he moved—would have graced by his manners the liberality flowing from the openness of his heart, would have laughed with the women, have argued with the men, have said good things and written agreeable ones, have taken a hand at piquet or the lead at the harpsichord, and have set and sung his own verses—nugae canorae—with tenderness and spirit; a Rochester without the vice, a modern Surrey! As it is, all these capabilities of excellence stand in his way. He is too versatile for a professional man, not dull ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... bills on you in favour of Messrs. Van Cash and Co. as per margin. I have taken up your note to Col. Piquet, and discharged your debts to my Lord Lurcher and Sir Harry Rook. I herewith enclose you copies of the bills, which I have no doubt will be immediately honoured. On failure, I shall empower some lawyer in your country to recover ...
— The Contrast • Royall Tyler
... hours he reached the Place du Carrousel. The hotel de Nantes was no longer there; but the Louvre had been erected instead. Fougas employed a quarter of an hour in regarding this monument of architecture, and half an hour in contemplating two Zouaves of the guard who were playing piquet. He inquired if the Emperor was in Paris; whereupon his attention was called to the flag floating ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... Je suis bien tente de te bailler une quinte major. Quinte major is a term of piquet. It is here employed figuratively. Compare its use in 'Les Facheux,' ...
— The Jealousy of le Barbouille - (La Jalousie du Barbouille) • Jean Baptiste Poquelin de Moliere
... late in his life. It was when he had thrown away the last chance that an indulgent destiny had given him, that the ruined fop of the Regency, the sometime member of the Beef-steak Club, the man who in his earliest youth had worn a silver gridiron at his button-hole, and played piquet in the gilded saloons of Georgina of Devonshire, found himself laid on a bed of sickness in dingy London lodgings, and nearer death than he had ever been in the course of his brief military career; so nearly gliding from life's ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... declaring a point of six, "that's not the tragedy; it's the little bits coming to an end meanwhile, before the whole comes to an end: that's the tragedy...." But he added with another of his jolly laughs: "We must play. Piquet takes ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... you bringing up there? Oh, the master of the show, I suppose.—Friend," he added, addressing himself to Peveril, who, on the signal of Fenella, stepped forward almost instinctively, and kneeled down, "we thank thee for the pleasure of this morning.—My Lord Marquis, you rooked me at piquet last night; for which disloyal deed thou shalt now atone, by giving a couple of pieces to this honest youth, and five to ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... cards and pipes, which we lit. Soon the room was full of dense smoke, wherein our host and the Abbe Coignard played gravely at piquet. ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... have been deluded, even if my curiosity had not led me to question the steward; but never, by word or look, did I impugn the reality of that Barmecide bath. To his other accomplishments, M. —— added a very pretty talent for piquet; the match was even enough, though, to be interesting, at almost nominal stakes, and so we got pleasantly through ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... of interviewing the Governor all day, but at night I visited him by invitation to play a game of piquet. ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... constantly on the whimper when George's name is mentioned, and Harry's face frequently wears a look of the most ghastly alarm; but his mother's is invariably grave and sedate. She makes more blunders at piquet and backgammon than you would expect from her; and the servants find her awake and dressed, however early they may rise. She has prayed Mr. Dempster to come back into residence at Castlewood. She is not severe ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... else was the cause why you were suddenly turned out of doors? Yes, you are shut out by your own tittle-tattle. I do not know whether you play often at piquet, but you at least throw your cards away in an ...
— The Blunderer • Moliere
... regiment is at Petersburg, and Col. Cole's at Manchester; each about five hundred strong; and there is a piquet on ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... the provinces subject to high salt-tax, to accept, consume, and pay for duty-salt, 7 pounds per head at 13 sous the pound. Provincial, town or seignorial taxes on Bread, a commodity which he cannot do without, no longer exist; there is no piquet, or duty on flour, as in Provence,[3243] no duties on the sale or of grinding wheat, no impediments to the circulation or commerce of grain. And, on the other hand, through the lowering of fiscal charges, in the suppression of internal ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... a mirror's breakage. They disliked a Friday's errand. They shuddered over a seven-times sneeze or at a howling dog at midnight. And the gentle sex, especially, would and did tell fortunes almost as jealously as play quadrille and piquet. Let us be courteous to them. Let us remember that Esoteric Buddhism, Faith Healing, and Psychic Phenomena were not yet enjoying systematic cultivation and solemn propagandism; and that relatively few dying folk were ...
— The Square of Sevens - An Authoritative Method of Cartomancy with a Prefatory Note • E. Irenaeus Stevenson
... got piquet, but they're the plain shape you like. You may thank us they didn't send you ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... of which left him more and more enfeebled in mind and body; but his intervals of ease seem to have been passed in the society of those who were well disposed to cheat him, as far as they could, into a forgetfulness of his fallen condition. He played much at chess, whist, piquet, and ombre; he took exercise for awhile on horseback, latterly, on account of weakness, in his carriage; he even walked, when at Blenheim, unattended about his own grounds, and took great delight in the performance of private theatricals. We have the best ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 550, June 2, 1832 • Various
... on her seat by the invalid's couch. A whole hour and a half still remained before the gong would sound the summons to luncheon; an hour and a half of solitude beneath the shadow of the trees! Last night there had been another tete-a-tete while Madame and Captain Guest played piquet at the end of the room; this morning there had been yet another, when Elma was first installed in the garden, and Madame was interviewing her staff. Astonishing how intimate two people can become in two long ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... visited them to make sure of their presence and to inspect their rooms; and Clery remarked that the queen never broke her disdainful silence to him, though Louis often spoke to him, generally to receive some answer of brutal insult. After dinner, Louis and Marie Antoinette would play piquet or backgammon; as, while they were thus engaged, the vigilance of their keepers relaxed, and the noise of shuffling the cards or rattling the dice afforded them opportunities of saying a few words in whispers to one another, which at other times would have been overheard. ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... for suspicion. I went back with Selincourt to his rooms and we sat up the rest of the night smoking and playing auction piquet. He won about five pounds off me. Ask him: he'll ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... that the officers were in a house about a quarter of a mile distant and that he would conduct me thither, but that he himself could not presume to let us pass, from not knowing the tenor of our passport. I went accordingly with the sergeant to this house, There I found the officer commanding the piquet and several others sitting at table, carousing with beer and tobacco and nearly invisible from the clouds of smoke which pervaded the room. I explained to the officer who we were and requested him to put on the passport ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... envied the quiet existence of this old bachelor, spent on whist, boston, backgammon, reversi, and piquet, all well played, on dinners well digested, snuff gracefully inhaled, and tranquil walks about the town. Nearly all Alencon believed this life to be exempt from ambitions and serious interests; but no man has a life as simple as envious neighbors ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... between the two brothers, who protectingly joined their hands behind her back, as if she were a delicate piece of statuary that a push might damage. Soon the King had passed, and receiving the military salutes of the piquet, joined the Queen and princesses at Gloucester Lodge, the homely house of red brick in which ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... the excitement is extraordinary. While the populace basks in the sun the destiny of the city is being decided.—"M. Desmarest is elected for the 9th Arrondissement," says some one close to me.—"Lesueur is capital in the 'Partie de Piquet,'" says another. ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... delighting in nature. As they went, they talked of history, or politics, or chemistry, of literature, or physics, or morality. At sundown they returned, to find lights and cards on the tables, and they made parties of piquet, interrupted by supper. At half-past ten the game ends, they chat until eleven, and in half an hour more they are all fast asleep.[202] Each day was like the next; industry, gaiety, bodily comfort, mental activity, diversifying the hours. Grimm was often there, "the most French of all ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... the Bay of Biscay, a small town and peninsula about twenty-two miles south-east of Lorient, convoying some American vessels, and placing them under the protection of the French fleet commanded by Admiral La Motte Piquet. The story represented in this picture he tells in his own language in a letter to the Naval Committee, dated February 22, 1778: "I am happy to have it in my power to congratulate on my having seen the American flag for the first time recognized in the fullest and completest manner by the flag ...
— Thirteen Chapters of American History - represented by the Edward Moran series of Thirteen - Historical Marine Paintings • Theodore Sutro
... o'clock, when the enemy hoped to have come silently and unexpectedly upon the miners, but they had left work about a quarter of an hour before. At the report of the first piece which they fired, the piquet of the third battalion of Prussian guards, to the number of an hundred men, who marched out of the camp to sustain the body which covered the works, was thrown into some confusion, from the darkness of the night, which prevented their distinguishing ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... built inside the mess tent when cold compels. At times the conversation lasts till midnight; and, when cognac or whisky is plentiful, I have heard it abut upon the Battle of Waterloo and the Immortality of the Soul. Piquet and cart are reserved for life on board ship. Our only reading consists of newspapers, which come by camel post every three weeks; and a few "Tauchnitz," often odd volumes. I marvel, as much as Hamlet ever did, to see the passionate influence of the ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... engagement to Trina he had discontinued this habit. However, he still dropped into Frenna's one or two nights in the week. He spent a pleasant hour there, smoking his huge porcelain pipe and drinking his beer. He never joined any of the groups of piquet players around the tables. In fact, he hardly spoke to anyone but the ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... woman, resuming her seat and her reading; "he is in the back room, playing piquet ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... chanced to hear a word or two and, thinking it was some game of which they spoke, said: "Piquet or a game of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... with venison to a saint without. Who would not praise Patritio's high desert, His hand unstained, his uncorrupted heart, His comprehensive head! all interests weighed, All Europe saved, yet Britain not betrayed. He thanks you not, his pride is in piquet, Newmarket-fame, and judgment at a bet. What made (say Montagne, or more sage Charron) Otho a warrior, Cromwell a buffoon? A perjured prince a leaden saint revere, A godless regent tremble at a star? The throne a bigot keep, a genius quit, Faithless through piety, ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... was full of the masterpiece I was about to execute, and though I found much joy in renewed intercourse with my beloved lady and my master, I took no particular note of their relations. We met at meals, sometimes in the afternoons, and always of evenings, when I played dutiful piquet with Mrs. Rushworth, while Joanna made music on the piano, and Paragot read Jane Austen in an arm-chair by the fire. To me the quietude of the secluded English home had an undefinable charm like the ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... had taken as much wine as Belmont could prevail on me to drink, and he was very urgent, he asked if I played Piquet? ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... is probably a reference to the card game now called piquet, usually played for a hundred points. It is one of the oldest of its kind. See Rabelais' Gargantua, book i. ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. V. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... midnight, on our arrival at the handsome little town of Arruda, which was destined to be the piquet post of our division, in front of the fortified lines. The quartering of our division, whether by night or by day, was an affair of about five minutes. The quarter-master-general preceded the troops, accompanied by the brigade-majors and the ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... finally reduced to playing piquet with Wickham, and though she won a good deal of money from him—more, that is, than he could comfortably afford to lose—she still counted the evening a failure, bad in the present, and extremely menacing to the future. ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller
... several Companies, in order to perfect themselves in Military Exercises. No Woman was to be married till she had killed her Man. The Ladies of Fashion used to play with young Lions instead of Lap-dogs, and when they made any Parties of Diversion, instead of entertaining themselves at Ombre or Piquet, they would wrestle and pitch the Bar for a whole Afternoon together. There was never any such thing as a Blush seen, or a Sigh heard, in the Commonwealth. The Women never dressed but to look terrible, to which end they would sometimes after a Battel ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... to take refuge in movement and change. The remedy had failed; my mind was as strangely disturbed as ever. My wisest course would be to go home, and keep my good mother company over her favorite game of piquet. ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... establishment possess but one backgammon board, they monopolize that, to the detriment of the other amateurs of the game; and when asked for the board, they only answer, 'Some one is reading it, call tomorrow.' Thus the Bosquet party find themselves reduced to playing piquet, or talking about ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... from a neighbouring tavern, after which, and a gay glass or two, the maid put me to bed. Mr. H.... soon followed, and notwithstanding the fatigues of the preceding night, I found no quarter nor remission from him: he piquet himself, as he told me, on doing the honours of ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... Dolokhov's hands and thought, "Now then, make haste and let me have this card and I'll take my cap and drive home to supper with Denisov, Natasha, and Sonya, and will certainly never touch a card again." At that moment his home life, jokes with Petya, talks with Sonya, duets with Natasha, piquet with his father, and even his comfortable bed in the house on the Povarskaya rose before him with such vividness, clearness, and charm that it seemed as if it were all a lost and unappreciated bliss, long past. He could not conceive that a stupid chance, letting the ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... and having only one hour to learn it, but this hour enough, if he know that it is pronounced, to obtain its repeal, would act unnaturally in spending that hour, not in ascertaining his sentence, but in playing piquet. So it is against nature that man, etc. It is making heavy the ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... upon the cliff at a spot about a mile and a half from the mouth of the Shelif. With the assurance that they would not fail to keep their appointment with military punctuality, the two officers cordially wrung their friend's hand and retired to the Zulma Cafe for a game at piquet. Captain Servadac at once retraced his steps ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... fell about. Isabella read aloud the sporting papers to him—Isabella played piquet with him in the dull late afternoons of his convalescence—Isabella herself washed his dog Pike—that king of rough terriers! And one terrible day Paul unfortunately kissed the large pink lips of Isabella as his ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... folly of his friends.' He, like Lovat, was really 'sitting on the fence.' His clan was out; his second son AEneas led it at Falkirk. Alastair was in France. At the close of 1745, Alastair, conveying a detachment of the Royal Scots, in French service, and a piquet of the Irish brigade to Scotland, was captured on the seas and imprisoned in the Tower of London. {150d} In January 1746 we find him writing from the Tower to Waters, the banker in Paris, asking for money. Almost at this very time ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... an exceedingly fine girl," said Captain Cokely to Mat Tierney, as they were playing a game of piquet in the little drawing-room. ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... the case, Nor is complexion honour's place. But, lest we should for honour take The drunken quarrels of a rake: Or think it seated in a scar, Or on a proud triumphal car; Or in the payment of a debt We lose with sharpers at piquet; Or when a whore, in her vocation, Keeps punctual to an assignation; Or that on which his lordship swears, When vulgar knaves would lose their ears; Let Stella's fair example preach A lesson she alone can teach. In points of honour to be tried, All passions must be laid aside: Ask no advice, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... millions whom the same does sentence To heav'n b' another way — repentance. 940 Love's arrows are but shot at rovers; Though all they hit, they turn to lovers; And all the weighty consequents Depend upon more blind events, Than gamesters, when they play a set 945 With greatest cunning at piquet, Put out with caution, but take in They know not what, unsight, unseen, For what do lovers, when they're fast In one another's arms embrac't, 950 But strive to plunder, and convey Each other, like a prize, away? To change the property ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... introduced cards, and the kind inventors of piquet and cribbage, for they employed six hours at least of her ladyship's day, during which her family was pretty easy. Without this occupation my lady frequently declared she should die. Her dependants one after another relieved guard—'twas ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of Principles of Whist, and numerous guide-books on games, as Bezique, Piquet, Ecarte, Billiards, etc. Henry Jones, editor of "Pastimes" in The Field and The Queen ...
— 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.
... the Languedoc, his flagship, a regularly appointed envoy, Girard de Rayneville, who had full power to recognize the independence of the States, Silas Deane, one of the American commissioners, and such well-known officers as the comte de la Motte-Piquet, the Bailli de Suffren, De Guichen, D'Orvilliers, De Grasse and others. The history of this first expedition is a short and disastrous one. The voyage was long, owing to the ships being unequally matched in speed, and it was ninety days after leaving Toulon before they anchored in Delaware ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... interest, hence I do not forget myself. Heaven knows the excitement of nursing an innocent deceit and of seeing it grow and flower under my care will be most welcome, for the monotony of this abominable confinement—But I must inquire, do you play piquet?" ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... Ludgershall, and their influence there was so complete, that they might fairly be said to give one seat to any one they chose. With such double barrels George Selwyn was, of course, a great gun in the House, but his interest lay far more in piquet and pleasantry than in politics and patriotism, and he was never fired off with any but the blank cartridges of his two votes. His parliamentary career, begun in 1747, lasted more than forty years, yet was ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... deadly quarrel between the marquis and the general as to who should take the thing up first. Grape firmly believes they decided the matter with small swords; another version is, that they played piquet for eight-and-forty hours to settle it—the best out of so many games. Be this how it may, the general appeared as the ostensible champion, and the marquis officiated as his temoin. Grape, as my uncle's second, ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... me, but I'm fair to him. When you have a father in business, it's a good thing when you go out not to be exposed to meet eyes which seem to say to you, 'My dear fellow, your father has swindled me.' Papa has but one passion: from five to seven every day he plays piquet at his club, at ten sous a point, and as he is an excellent player, he wins seven times out of ten. He keeps an account of his games with the same scrupulous exactitude he has in all things, and he was telling the day before yesterday that piquet this ...
— Parisian Points of View • Ludovic Halevy
... their left, exposing the men to the fire of their artillery. At sun set, and during the greatest part of the night, this diversion was seconded by a feigned attack of the Corsicans: which so effectually deceived the enemy, that they withdrew a considerable piquet from the spot where the principal battery was to be constructed, in order to support the Mollinochesco; and, directing the whole of their fire to that point, enabled the troops to complete ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... platoons into column of route, your labours are at an end. All you have to do is to march; and that is no great hardship when you are as hard as nails, as we are fast becoming. On the march the mental gymnastics involved by the formation of an advanced guard or the disposition of a piquet line are removed to a safe distance. There is no need to wonder guiltily whether you have sent out a connecting-file between the vanguard and the main-guard, or if you remembered to instruct your sentry groups as to the position of the enemy and the ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay |
