"Bagatelle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the Silver Lion, in a place called Soho," he said. "Here we meet from day to day and dream of a free Russia. We also play bagatelle." He gave the English name for the latter. "It is a club and a restaurant. To-night it is necessary that you should be here, Sophia Kensky, because of the great happenings ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... the bagatelle home to his father's farm, where a neighbour, one Van Niekirk, saw it and was struck by its brilliancy. It chanced that the Irishman O'Reilly was passing that way and to him it was entrusted to take to Colesberg ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... important and ambitious role, you had the greatest political salon in Vienna—in Europe—and you went away to rest that you might continue to play it, not that you might feel fresh enough once more to have liaisons like other foolish old women. . . . But the part you played then was a bagatelle to the one awaiting you now. With your splendid mental gifts, your political genius, your acquired statecraft, your wealth, and your restored beauty, you could become the most powerful woman in Europe. But only as my wife. Even you are not strong enough to play the ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... one point he was very clear: it should not succeed except upon the very best of terms for himself, his daughter should not be sacrificed unless the price paid for the victim was positively princely, such guilt was not to be incurred for a bagatelle. If George married Angela, the Isleworth estates must pass back into his hands for a very low sum indeed. But would his cousin be willing to accept such a sum? That was the rub, and that, too, was what must be made clear without any further ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... impose a fine or tax upon the superficial area of the cultivated land. Thus, no one will cultivate more than is absolutely necessary, as he dreads the difficulties that broad acres of waving crops would entail upon his family. The bona fide tax is a bagatelle to the amounts squeezed from him by the extortionate soldiery, who are the agents employed by the sheik; these must have their share of the plunder, in excess of the amount to be delivered to their employer; ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... dollars for the landlord. But who is he? How is the poor landlord, or victualler to discover somebody else, who is neither lodger, stranger, nor traveller. The landlord cannot detect him, but all sheriffs, grand jurors, and constables are required to hunt for him! Vive la bagatelle! ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... he meets; Much specious lore, but little understood, (Veneering oft outshines the solid wood), His solid sense, by inches you must tell, But mete his cunning by the Scottish ell! A man of fashion too, he made his tour, Learn'd "vive la bagatelle et vive l'amour;" So travell'd monkeys their grimace improve, Polish their grin—nay, sigh for ladies' love! His meddling vanity, a busy fiend, Still making work his ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... abroad that this was the case, for it was one of the kind that is always in this uncomfortable plight. If one day someone were to present it with a million pounds and four billiard tables, next week we should be asked to subscribe to a fund to buy it a bagatelle board. At any rate, in a burst of generosity, Daphne had undertaken that we would get up a show. When she told us of her involving promise, we ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... not our place to amuse our lawyer. He might go and smoke in the Justice-room, and then Welldrum could play bagatelle with him." ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... keep these fields clear from weeds, as we should say,—no easy task, it may be assumed, with a soil so luxuriant, and where frost is unknown. Yet the amount of cotton produced annually in the Hot Land is shamefully small, not exceeding ten million pounds,—a mere bagatelle, which Manchester would devour in a week. Consider what an increase in cottons and calicoes, what a gain in shirts and sheets, would follow from the seizure of those fields by Americans from Mississippi ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... Monsieur." She laughed, but her voice still quivered. "Some good-for-nothing who took me for some one else, whom he had seen somewhere else, and knew—something—about. Nothing at all, a bagatelle, that might happen to any one. But I thank you so much! ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... was warm enough by the time I got to my inn; and it required a refreshing draught of porter, with half an hour's repose, ere I could determine to give no further thought to Christie and her opinions than those of any other vulgar, prejudiced old woman. I resolved at last to treat the thing EN BAGATELLE, and calling for writing materials, I folded up a cheque for L100, with ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... father for aid, and in prompt response out came cases of boxing-gloves, hockey and lacrosse sets, and footballs enough to keep every man going. Norah sent a special gift—a big case of indoor games for wet weather, with a splendid bagatelle board that made the battalion deeply envied by less fortunate neighbours: until a German shell disobligingly burst just above it, and reduced it to fragments. However, Norah's disgust at the news was so deep that the Tired People in residence at Homewood at the moment conspired together, ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... at it that way. And what's thirty-five? A bagatelle, brother, a bagatelle. Now, if we were ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... with people who only mind their own business. However, I accept your expressions of regret; I reciprocate your 'Good-evening'; and I trust to find you improved in temper, dress, manners, and appearance the next time I have the honor of meeting you. Adieu, Monsieur Guillaume, and! Vive la bagatelle!" ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... to the end, for he is fighting against unscrupulous legions. One well-known bookmaker coolly announced in 1888 that he had written off three hundred thousand pounds of bad debts. Consider what a man's genuine business must be like when he can jauntily allude to three hundred thousands as a bagatelle by the way. That same man has means of obtaining "information" sufficient to discomfit any poor gambler who steps into the Ring and expects to beat the bookmakers by downright above-board dealing. As soon as he ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... pokes, a human raven, over the scenes of carnage. Disjointed household organizations rearrange themselves. The railway trains once more run regularly. Laughter, clinking of glasses, and smirking loiterers on the boulevards testify that thoughtless, heartless Paris is itself once more. "Vive la bagatelle." ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... going to the room where the performance was held, and, under pretext of not finding places, going away; Madame de Bourgogne agreeing to explain their absence in this way to the King. I notice this very insignificant bagatelle to show how the King thought only of himself, and how much he wished to be obeyed; and that that which would not have been pardoned to the nieces of a dying man, except at the Court, was a duty there, and one which it needed great address to escape from, without seriously ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... drawing nigh when we had to present ourselves before that company of men of genius, each with his own crow; and I was still unprovided; and yet I thought it would be stupid to fail of such a madcap bagatelle; [3] but what particularly weighed upon my mind was that I did not choose to lend the light of my countenance in that illustrious sphere to some miserable plume-plucked scarecrow. All these considerations made me devise a pleasant trick, for the ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... room. They're always quarreling there, over their drink and the bagatelle-board; and Dick has to turn them out. But gentlemen ought to ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... of good ink have been used in writing about the musician, the composer of the most magnificent operas in the world; weeks, months, years have gone to the writing. But all the paper, all the ink, all the labour, all the mental effort and sympathy and love seem a bagatelle when we look through the bibliographies and realize how much paper, ink, effort—not always to be called mental—sympathy and love have been used up in expounding Wagner's philosophy. The cases of Whitman and Browning ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... the little covered carriage that started with them for Wigton—a most desirable carriage for any country, except for its having a flat roof and no sides; which caused the plumps of rain accumulating on the roof to play vigorous games of bagatelle into the interior all the way, and to score immensely. It was comfortable to see how the people coming back in open carts from Wigton market made no more of the rain than if it were sunshine; how the Wigton policeman taking a country walk of half-a- dozen miles ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... is but a bagatelle to the fashions in deformity which we find among nearly all American women. There are throughout the country numbers of large manufactories which make "corsets"—a peculiar waist and lung compressor, used ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... and a box-kite elevator projecting far in front. The wings were fixed at a considerable dihedral angle, and the engine was a twenty-four horse-power Antoinette. In his first trial, which took place at Bagatelle on the 23rd of July 1906, Santos Dumont attached a spindle-shaped balloon to the upper surface of the machine, to help it into the air. The combination of the two modes he soon found to be impossible; with the balloon ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... afternoon wore on, they returned to the garden for tea, and a peaceful stillness continued to reign about them, the very sky smiling placidly at her fears. Not by assuring her that Hugh was unusual horseman, that he had passed through many dangers beside which this was a bagatelle, could the student of the feminine by her side have done half so well. And it may have been that his success encouraged him as he saw emerging, as the result of his handiwork, an unexpectedly attractive—if still somewhat serious-woman ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... demeanor America was making herself respected at Vienna; to send an escort for Mr. Spence, who had endeared himself to his fellow-countrymen in Constantinople; and to send a jackass for Mister O'Sullivan, who had at Lisbon become celebrated for his misfortunes at bagatelle and chess—to drum them all together for the one grand object. As for Seymour, Pierce thought it not good policy to disturb him, seeing that nothing had been heard from him since he found his way to St. Petersburg. With such spirits ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... non l'amour constant; Ce peuple fou, brusque et galant, Chansonnier insupportable, Superbe en sa fortune, en son malheur rampant, D'un bavardage impitoyable, Pour cacher le creux d'un esprit ignorant, Tendre amant de la bagatelle, Elle entre seule en sa cervelle; Leger, indiscret, imprudent, Comme ume girouette il revire a tout vent. Des siecles des Cesars ceux des Louis sont l'ombre; Rome efface Paris en tout sens, en tout point. Non, des vils Francais vous n'etes pas du nombre; ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... of the elasticity of a body is proportionate to the velocity of the wave-motion which it can transmit. A good illustration of the transmission of wave-motion may be shown with a number of ivory bagatelle or billiard balls. If eight or more of these be put in a row, all touching each other, and a single ball be placed about an inch or so away from the others in a straight line with them, then when the single ball is struck with a cue ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... of the most revolting orgies. If a stranger merchant passed through their territory, he was besieged by them all, big and little alike, and robbed of whatever he possessed. Each one appropriated a bagatelle, until the traveller was stripped bare. If the victim ventured to remonstrate with one or another, he would show him that he had taken a mere trifle, not worth talking about. And the end was that they hounded ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... Sophie, who, as I take it, has not quite managed to come to satisfactory terms with her brother—and I have no doubt her price for assistance has been high—has informed me more than once that her brother desires to do me so much honor. The count, perhaps, thinks that he can manage such a bagatelle without any aid from his sister; and my dearest Sophie seems to feel that she can do better with me herself in my widowed state, than if I were to take another husband. They are so kind and so ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... office. My uncle keeps his accounts with me. Sometimes we look them over. We stayed until midnight; I dismissed my carriage. As we walked homeward we met some friends coming out of the rooms of the Bagatelle Club; five or six of my uncles and cousins, and also Doctor Keene. We all fell a-talking of my grandfather's fete de grandpere of next month, and went to have some coffee. When we separated, and my uncle and my cousin Achille Grandissime ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... de l'Aigle, sister to the Due de Broglie. (Now Madame Gautier is putting on her bonnet, to take us to La Bagatelle.) I forgot to tell you that Prince Potemkin is nephew to the famous Potemkin. He has just returned from England, particularly pleased with Mr. Coke, of Norfolk, and struck by the noble and useful ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... action, there can be no doubt that the Nile has the intention of filling up by degrees the whole eastern Mediterranean, and that in process of time—say in no more than a few million years or so, a mere bagatelle to the geologist—with the aid of the Po and some other lesser streams, it will transform the entire basin of the inland sea into a level and cultivable plain, like Bengal or Mesopotamia, themselves (as we shall see) the final result of ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... Lucien. "Such a journey is a mere bagatelle to them. Now, if I knew the precise moment at which the carrion was discovered by the first one, I could tell how far each of the others had come—that is, each of them whose arrival ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... citizen of the middle class, who somehow or other finds himself in possession of L20,000. He could, of course, spend his money at the rate of L2,000 a year, a mere bagatelle in these days of fantastic, senseless luxury. But then he would have nothing left at the end of ten years. So, being a "practical person," he prefers to keep his fortune intact, and win for himself a snug little annual income ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... for the hilarity. You might see 'em all over camp, for it's August weather an' the walls of the tents an' teepees is looped up to let in the cool, daubin' the ocher on their faces an' braidin' the feathers into their ha'r. This organisin' for a baile ain't no bagatelle, an' two hours is the least wherein any se'f-respectin' buck who's out to make a centre shot on the admiration of the squaws an' wake the envy of rival bucks, can lay on the pigments, so he paints away at his face, careful an' acc'rate, sizin' up results meanwhile in a jimcrow lookin' glass. ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... has exhausted its stock of major crimes: parricide is out of date; infanticide has become from constant occurrence decidedly low; homicide grows tame and uninteresting; and fratricide is a mere bagatelle, not worthy of attention. The dramatist must therefore awaken new sympathies by contriving new crimes—he must invent. In this the Sadler's Wells genius has been fortunate. He has brought forward a novelty in assassination, which is harrowing in the extreme: it may be called Farm-house-icide! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 23, 1841 • Various
... no idea what prices men are willing to pay for what they desire. Faery even with my means would seem a mere bagatelle to most young fellows of ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... his touch (it was this act of his, I think, that had most to do with my displeasure), and merely bidding him observe that the enormous price of the kettle-supporter had been reduced for me by his exhibition to a bagatelle, I left the shop of the screaming anatomist—or Afropath, or whatever it may seem most fitting that he should ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... when we wished it was bad enough, but to those poor fellows who had to swelter and toil in the stokehole it must have been very trying, though compared with what was yet to come this was a mere bagatelle. We had encountered that blasting wind known as the "sirocco"—the scourge of the Mediterranean—which after gathering force and heat in the African deserts comes with its fiery and sand-laden breath to sap the moisture ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... that Loftie shall not cost me more than three. Thus I shall save four hundred a year. Catherine is only seventeen now. By the time she is twenty I shall have a trifle over and above my income to fall back upon. Twelve hundred pounds is a bagatelle with most people, but I feel I shall effect wonders with it. Catherine and Mabel will be out of the common, very out of the common. Unique people have an advantage over those who resemble the herd. Catherine and Mabel are to be strongly individual. In any room they are to be noticeable. Little ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... than, upon your cash dealings?-Yes; the fisherman has a greater advantage by having a discount upon these small purchases when they are all taken together, than he would have if he were paying for them separately. The discount upon two ounces of tobacco or a quarter pound of tea would be a mere bagatelle; but when the whole of his purchases [Page 141] in the course of the year are added together and the 5 per cent. taken off the whole, it comes to something. With our fishermen, as a rule, I consider that these accounts ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... accompanied all she said, so much astonished and transported him, that he cried out, without knowing that he did so, 'Good God!—is it possible a monastery can contain such charms!'—She affected to treat the admiration he expressed, as no other than meer bagatelle; but how serious a satisfaction she took in it, ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... fervently than did Arthur Maynwaring? For whatever may have been the faults of this dashing Whig, he had the courage of his sins, and took up his abode with Anne in the full light of day, as though a marriage ceremony were a bagatelle not worth the recollecting. The world was forgiving, to be sure, nor is it probable that either one of this easily-mated pair suffered any loss of public esteem by the union. Dukes—nay, even Duchesses—were glad to meet Nance, and Royalty ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... tout, c'est a dire pour une bagatelle; but what can you expect from such animals? For what are you imprisoned? Did I not hear say for Gypsyism ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... money the certificates of public debt. I flatter myself that this arrangement will very soon absorb the whole of these certificates, and thus rid us of our domestic debt, which is four fifths of our whole debt. Our foreign debt will be then a bagatelle. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... is of very little consequence. It is a bagatelle. All she proposes to do is to purchase all the slaves in the United States—out of her own funds—and ship them ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... reality by conjuring up a figure in tail-coat and gold buttons dispensing justice while H.H. the romantic and picturesque Raja, G.C.S.I., amuses himself. Yet we hear cries from the gallery of "Vive M. le Raja; vive la bagatelle!" ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... them "Sensation Dramas." What a sensation Drama this is! What have people been flocking to see at the Adelphi Theatre for the last hundred and fifty nights? A woman pitched overboard out of a boat, and a certain Miles taking a tremendous "header," and bringing her to shore? Bagatelle! What is this compared to the real life-drama, of which a midday representation takes place just opposite the Adelphi in Northumberland Street? The brave Dumas, the intrepid Ainsworth, the terrible Eugene Sue, the cold-shudder-inspiring "Woman in White," the astounding author of the "Mysteries ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... on making three miles an hour for every hour of the twenty-four, things would not have been bad. This rate of speed would have carried them to their destination in a dozen days,—a mere bagatelle. But they knew enough of river-navigation to disregard such data. They knew the current of the Solimoes to be extremely slow; they had heard of the strange phenomenon, that, run which way the river ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... is waiting for the coroner and jury on their return. Mr. Tulkinghorn, also. Mr. Tulkinghorn is received with distinction and seated near the coroner between that high judicial officer, a bagatelle-board, and the coal-box. The inquiry proceeds. The jury learn how the subject of their inquiry died, and learn no more about him. "A very eminent solicitor is in attendance, gentlemen," says the coroner, "who, I am informed, was accidentally ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... might have been hewn by the diamond adzes of the Genii for a second Babel-experiment, in expectance of the wrath of Allah. Here and there the tools had left a faint scratch, only deep as the width of Broadway and a bagatelle of five hundred feet in length; but that detracted no more from the unblemished four-square contour of the entire mass than a pin-mark from the symmetry of a door-post. A city might have been built on its grand flat top. And, oh! the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... not dead. No; it was incredible—to fall forty feet and not be killed—they talk of it yet all through the valley of the Lake St. John—it was a miracle! But Vaillantcoeur had broken only a nose, a collar-bone, and two ribs—for one like him that was but a bagatelle. A good doctor from Chicoutimi, a few months of nursing, and he would be on his feet again, almost as good a man ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... and found the bagatelle-board on the table. Fritz and Minna were playing a game of the desultory sort—with the inevitable ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... de Montesquieu, and when they were parted wrote to her often; this correspondence lasted till Josephine's death. One day Madame de Montesquieu received orders from the Emperor to take the little king to Bagatelle, where Josephine then was. She had obtained permission to see this child, whose birth had covered Europe with fetes. It is well known how disinterested Josephine's love for Napoleon was, and how she viewed everything that could increase his glory and render it more durable; and there entered into ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... are a mere bagatelle compared with the enormous population, being only 238,499; but with the army they have been able to hold the country in subjection. The British government takes a fatherly interest in the native states, and they have been loyal without exception in later years, though the history of India ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... corner, "'Tis true, Sir, I see now it is one of mine: but such a trifle was not worthy of being brought by such a gentleman as you seem to be; nor of my trouble to receive it in person. Your servant, Sir, might have delivered the bagatelle to mine."—"Nothing should be called so that belongs to the Countess of ——"—"She was no Countess, Sir, that dropt that handkerchief, and a gentleman would not attempt to penetrate, unbecomingly, through the disguises a lady thinks proper to assume; especially at such a place where every ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... lost in one lifetime, beginning, for that seems always the most mysterious of losses—what cat would gnaw, what rat would nibble—three pale blue canisters of book-binding tools? Then there were the bird cages, the iron hoops, the steel skates, the Queen Anne coal-scuttle, the bagatelle board, the hand organ—all gone, and jewels, too. Opals and emeralds, they lie about the roots of turnips. What a scraping paring affair it is to be sure! The wonder is that I've any clothes on my ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... domesticated in the editor's house, Mr. Tupman and Mr. Snodgrass were in a great measure cast upon their own resources. Taking but little interest in public affairs, they beguiled their time chiefly with such amusements as the Peacock afforded, which were limited to a bagatelle-board in the first floor, and a sequestered skittle-ground in the back yard. In the science and nicety of both these recreations, which are far more abstruse than ordinary men suppose, they were gradually initiated by Mr. Weller, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... "I am lost in the South Sea. The roaring of the waves and the madness of the people are justly put together. It is all wilder than St. Anthony's dream, and the bagatelle is more solid than anything that has ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... thanks aside. 'It was a bagatelle,' he said. We became friendly. He moved to my table, and we fraternized over ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... "I am offered ten livres for the yellow birds. Une bagatelle! Onze, Gaspard! Onze! onze livres, pour l'amour ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... were portfolios to examine, and books to turn over; there was a bagatelle board in one corner of the room, a little group busy upon some game of guessing in another corner, and another group eagerly arranging specimens in a microscope, while the Doctor seemed to be ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various
... abolished without compensation to their owners; that slavery should be destroyed with like disregard of the claims (for rights he would allow none) of the proprietors, and a multitude of extravagances of the same sort. Therefore say I, Vive la Bagatelle; motley is your ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... where the gilt came from. When she engaged herself to Jasper, he told her that, for the present at least, he was a comparatively poor man; he had three hundred a year of his own. This he assured her was a mere bagatelle, but as he was almost certain to earn as much more in his profession, and as Hilda had money, he thought they might marry if she did not mind living very prudently. Of course Hilda did not mind—she knew nothing at ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... will spare yourself and your sister," said the Captain, "by being reasonable. What, after all, is the sum I have named? To your wealthy father a bagatelle. I repeat, I have been too modest. But since I have said twenty thousand pieces of eight, twenty thousand pieces ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... your side, and careless youth overflow the bumper of Johannisberger to health, and youth, and beauty. I have heard the stern cynic jingle his Napoleons in unison with the frantic strains, and sneer out, "Vive la bagatelle!" Daughters of marble! daughters of marble! Turn your snowy arms to the glittering gorgeous, scatter the golden heaps, deluge the world with champagne. Diamonds, diamonds must win hearts. I have watched you in a deeper, darker, ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... but the amount was only a bagatelle to him: a bucket-shop had swallowed it within an hour. He had lost his instinct. It was only the love ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... prime minister that he was a resident landlord. He has resided almost entirely in Paris, cultivating the friendship of Napoleon instead of the welfare of the people who pay him a revenue of 60,000 l. a year. Bagatelle, his Paris residence, has, it is said, absorbed Irish rents in its 'improvements', till it has been made worth three quarters of a million sterling. If the residence cost so much, fancy may try to conceive the amount of hard-earned money squandered on the luxuries and pleasures of which it ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... point, tho' you think, I dare say. That 'tis debt or the Cholera drives me away, 'Pon honor you're wrong;—such a mere bagatelle As a pestilence, nobody now-a-days fears; And the fact is, my love, I'm thus bolting, pell-mell, To get out of the way of these horrid new Peers;[1] This deluge of coronets frightful to think of; Which England is now for her sins on the brink of; This coinage of nobles,—coined ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... sum to complete this undertaking, which could not but establish his fame as a connoisseur, and in all likelihood would secure his appointment as Director of a certain Gallery which he must not name. The money could be had for the asking from twenty persons—a mere bagatelle of a hundred and fifty pounds or so; but how much pleasanter it would be if this little loan could be arranged between brothers Daniel would engage to return the sum on publication of the book, probably some six months hence. Of course he ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... any milk pudding, as I now know, has a most vicious habit of cleaving to the dish in which it was cooked. Rice is the least evil offender. The others are absolutely wicked. To clean oleaginous scum from a dinner-tin is not easy, but it is a mere bagatelle compared with cleaning the scorched high-tide-mark of tapioca or sago from the shores of a large metal pudding-basin. I have tried scraping with a knife blade, I have tried every reasonable form of friction, and I can simply state as a fact from my own personal ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... soul. Good God! what was he to do? He covered his face with his hands, and turned round and round mentally in that darkness to see if anywhere there might be a gleam of light; but none was visible east or west. A hundred pounds, only a hundred pounds; a bagatelle, a thing that to many men was as small an affair as a stray sixpence; and here was this man, as good, so to speak, as any—well educated, full of gifts and accomplishments, well born, well connected, not a prodigal nor open sinner, losing ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... over everything for this object; letters from England incessantly urged a very different course; friends in Paris pressed her to visit them, to accompany them hither and thither, to join musical parties, to compose little songs (some bagatelle in celebration of a birthday or wedding), to drive to the further end of the town to play to this person or that who had heard of Madame's great talent. Hadria was glad to do anything she could to express her gratitude for the kindness she had received ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... built against the mountain, stands on a low eminence west of the head of the park, and from this to our hotel extends a broad foot-way, lined with stalls and booths, "where bright-colored Spanish wools, trinkets and toys are sold, where bagatelle and tir au pistolet, roundabouts and peepshows,—all the 'fun of the fair,' in fact,—is set out for the amusement of idle Eaux Bonnes." These are sure indications of fashionable prosperity. Wherever these evanescent summer stalls appear, at Saratoga or St. Moritz or Eaux Bonnes, they tell ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... 'A bagatelle, Madam,' said Dangerfield, shaking his head and waving his hand slightly; 'but I hope to do them, or at least the public, a service of some importance, by bringing conviction home to the assassin who struck him down, and that in terms so clear ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... midst of a desert of sentences. And Coleridge—than whom in the mines of mental science few have dug deeper, and though Xerxes-hosts of word-slaves waited on his pen—often wrote apparently mere bagatelle—the most transcendental nonsense. Yet he who takes the pains to husk away his obscurity of style will find solid ears of thought to recompense his labor. Bentham and Kant required interpreters—Dumont ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... New Zealand, roughly represents a couple of days' sail; but to us, who were apparently incapable of hurry under any circumstances, it meant a good week's bludgeoning the protesting waves before the grim outliers of the Three Kings came into view. Even then, although the distance was a mere bagatelle, it was another two days before we arrived off that magnificent harbour where reposes the oldest township in New Zealand—Russell, where rest the mortal remains of the first really Pakeha Maori, but which, for some unaccountable reason, is still left undeveloped and neglected, visited only ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... windows, and a hundred people might have been looking at them from without. A second glance showed me, that among some children, were the heir presumptive, and his sister Mademoiselle d'Artois. The exhibition could merely be an attempt to feel the public pulse, for the country-house of La Bagatelle, to which the children go two or three times a week, is much better suited to taking the air. I could not believe in the indifference that was manifested, had I not seen it. The children are both engaging, particularly the daughter, and ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... your easy-chair, you may fancy that this is a mere bagatelle—a little bewilderment that one may easily escape from who has a good horse between his thighs. It is only to strike boldly out, and by riding on in a straight line, you ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... Now don't hurry away. It's lonely here all by myself, and I like a young gentleman like you to talk to. I knew a nice little boy once, just your age, that used to come and see me regular once a week and play bagatelle with me. He was a good player at ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... devotional, but on publishing the 'Task' he assures Newton that he has admitted none but Scriptural images, and kept as closely as possible to Scriptural language. Elsewhere he quotes Swift's motto, Vive la bagatelle! as a justification of 'John Gilpin.' Fox is recorded to have said that Swift must have been fundamentally a good-natured man because he wrote so much nonsense. To me the explanation seems to be very different. Nothing ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... don't you see one of those naval officers has turned round and heard you? My dear Clopper, it was a mere childish bagatelle." ...
— The Fatal Boots • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a mere bagatelle, your excellency. They would like to imitate their betters and live a life of ease and luxury; as though a serf were created for anything but labor. They complain that they cannot lie upon a bed of roses. They want their taxes remitted and would like their children to be sent to school, ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... on the ground floor for the use of special customers, William had arranged a room upstairs where they could smoke and drink. There were tables in front of the windows and chairs against the walls, and in the middle of the room a bagatelle board. ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... minutes went on our fears of interruption grew fainter, and our hopes rose to fever heat. We were all well mounted, our horses were fresh and full of vigor, and to all but one of us the ride itself was the merest bagatelle. But I noticed, riding side by side with the count, that he was reeling in the saddle like a drunken man, and at one moment he gave such a lurch towards me that if I had not been at hand to support him he would have ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... and some women of elegance, often visited him; and he wrote, from time to time, either verse or prose; of his verses he willingly gave copies, and is supposed to have felt no discontent when he saw them printed. His favourite maxim was, "Vive la bagatelle;" he thought trifles a necessary part of life, and, perhaps, found them necessary to himself. It seems impossible to him to be idle, and his disorders made it difficult or dangerous to be long seriously studious, or laboriously diligent. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... cared for would have made me supremely happy, but vive la bagatelle! I want to know when I ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... an affair of thousands of thousands, perhaps millions, were quite a bagatelle," he said. "My dear boy, don't you understand, realise, the importance of this business? It's nothing less than a ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... Middleton, with a smile, which concealed more earnestness than he liked to show; "as to the title, a Republican cannot be supposed to think twice about such a bagatelle. The estate!—that might be a more ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to change their way of life or proving persistent lawbreakers might be hived in reserves with their wives and families. The reserves themselves would cost nothing, the Indians could find employment as other Indians have, and the expense of establishing would be a bagatelle. As a matter of fact, in spite of all the bad bargains having always been on the Indian side when sales and treaties were made with the whites, there is enough money to the credit of the Indians in the hands of the Government to ...
— Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador • William Wood
... of cash would disapoint either of us in our expectations, since I dow assure you that I dont look upon anything I tuch upon such journeys as solid, for it does not long stick in my pockets. I will drop this point, being fully perswaded if my correspondence proves anything amusing, such Bagatelle will not be grudged, but if I go forward, I beg credit be sent me either upon this place or Paris, any mony I receve passes for being remitted by the order of Baron Kenady {175} [Newcastle]. All this is fully submitted to your better judgement, only I beg you'l be fully ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... return. The question that I wish I could answer to the many that ask, and to our friend Colbert de Torcy (to whom I made your compliments in the manner you commanded) is, What is done for me: and to what I am recalled? It may look like a bagatelle, what is to become of a philosopher like me? but it is not such: what is to become of a person who had the honour to be chosen, and sent hither as intrusted, in the midst of a war, with what the Queen designed should make the peace; returning with the Lord Bolingbroke, one of the ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... have been a mere bagatelle but for the Gap Gang cutting in on our line of retreat. That added interest, and made a bright little affair of what would otherwise have been ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... a run, they plunged again into the trough of those low waves. The First Brigade had proved its mettle, but here it began to lose. Men gasped, wavered, fell out of line and were left behind. In Virginia the July sunshine is no bagatelle. It beat hard to-day, and to many in these ranks there was in this July Sunday an awful strangeness. At home—ah, at home!—crushed ice and cooling fans, a pleasant and shady ride to a pleasant, shady church, a little dozing through a comfortable sermon, ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... n'y a qu'une lettre touchant M. Loke [he wrote to a friend]. La seule matiere philosophique que j'y traite est la petite bagatelle de l'immortalite de l'ame; mais la chose a trop de consequence pour la traiter serieusement. Il a fallu l'egorger pour ne pas heurter de front nos seigneurs les theologiens, gens qui voient si clairement la spiritualite de l'ame qu'ils feraient bruler, s'ils pouvaient, les corps de ceux ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... touched that of smaller people. To Roland, Bevis, and Clifford she was a charming companion. She would go walks with them in the woods, help them to arrange their various collections of butterflies, foreign stamps, and picture post cards, and play endless games of draughts, halma, or bagatelle. ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... throat—was it required of me to whet the knife for them? They set out to strip me of the last penny I had, and they had every advantage, despotic powers, with complete access to all my private papers. If the robbers overlooked something that I had, a bagatelle I needed for the days of my adversity, was it my business to pluck them by the sleeve and turn traitor to myself? Why, the law itself gave me what they passed over. I was declared a bankrupt. Don't you ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... a hundred or two, more or less. What is this loss at cards? A mere bagatelle! You are playing for a principality. You want your kingdom in Virginia; and if you listen to my opinion, the little misfortune which has happened to your swain is a piece of great ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and they drove thence straight to the hospital, to pick up Noel. Leila came to them in the waiting-room, and Pierson, thinking they would talk more freely about Noel's health if he left them alone, went into the recreation room, and stood watching a game of bagatelle between two convalescents. When he returned to the little sitting-room they were still standing by the hearth, talking in low voices. Gratian must surely have been stooping over the fire, for her face was red, almost ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Without the White Nile trade Khartoum would almost cease to exist; and that trade is kidnapping and murder. The character of the Khartoumers needs no further comment. The amount of ivory brought down from the White Nile is a mere bagatelle as an export, the annual value being about ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... besides his or her apartment under the king's roof has his or her chateau and palace with his or her own circle, the queen at Trianon and at Saint-Cloud, Mesdames at Bellevue, Monsieur at the Luxembourg and at Brunoy, the Comte d'Artois at Meudon and at Bagatelle, the Duc d'Orleans at the Palais Royal, at Monceaux, at Rancy and at Villers-Cotterets, the Prince de Conti at the Temple and at Ile-Adam, the Condes at the Palais-Bourbon and at Chantilly, the Duc de Penthievre at Sceaux, Anet and Chateauvilain. I ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... more I hope to sit, [liv] And smile at folly, if we can't at wit; Yes, Friend! for thee I'll quit my cynic cell, And bear Swift's motto, "Vive la bagatelle!" Which charmed our days in each AEgean clime, As oft at home, with revelry and rhyme. Then may Euphrosyne, who sped the past, Soothe thy Life's scenes, nor leave thee in the last; But find in thine—like pagan Plato's bed, [lv] [31] ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... at the end of the week he had lost only a matter of fifteen pounds, congratulated himself on having begun his better life. Cox and Fred Pepper, who divided the trifle between them, laughed at the bagatelle. ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... to old times, alas!" said Hamilton, gaily; "for what we all had to do then was a bagatelle to this, and you have made the supreme sacrifice of ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... F minor was better than Hummel's in A flat, which Haslinger had just published, and had not Klengel at Dresden been surprised to hear that he had received no payment for the Variations? But Chopin will make Haslinger repent of it. "Perhaps he thinks that if he treats my compositions somewhat en bagatelle, I shall be glad if only he prints them; but henceforth nothing will be got from me gratis; my motto will be 'Pay, animal!'" But evidently the animal wouldn't pay, and in fact did not print the compositions till after Chopin's death. ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... the wine and the general good cheer, became witty and amusing in his conversation; he was a man who had evidently seen a good deal of the world, and who was accustomed to take everything in life a la bagatelle. He told us gay stories of his life in St. Petersburg; of the pranks he had played in the Florentine Carnival; of his journey to the American States, and his narrow escape from the matrimonial clutches of ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... from all communication with the world, and every thing that I hold dear in it!—c'est pis que la cage de fer de Tamerlan. (It is worse than Tamerlane's iron cage.) I would prefer being delivered up to the Bourbons. Among other insults," said he,—"but that is a mere bagatelle, a very secondary consideration,—they style me General! they can have no right to call me General; they may as well call me Archbishop, for I was head of the church, as well as the army. If they do not ...
— The Surrender of Napoleon • Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland
... should rather like to have the thanks of Congress," answered Sam, as if that were a mere bagatelle. This conversation occurred in a restaurant. A young officer was sitting alone at the next table, and he gave his order to the waiter in a high, ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... possible scale. Everything about the Casino is so harmoniously undersized that it seems a matter of course that the newspapers in the reading-room should be printed in the very finest type. Of course there is a reading-room, and a dancing-room, and a cafe, and a billiard-room, with a bagatelle board instead of a table, and a little terrace on which you may walk up and down with very short steps. I hope the prices are as tiny as everything else, and I suspect, indeed, that Yport honestly claims, not that she is attractive, ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... deepest of human feelings—questions of religion, questions of race, questions even of national existence—are concerned. To enforce the decisions of a tribunal in such cases would require armies compared to which those of the present day are a mere bagatelle, and plunge the world into a sea of troubles compared to which those now existing are as nothing. What has been done is to provide a way, always ready and easily accessible, by which nations can settle most of their ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... of Dunkirk with a huge gun or guns, doing considerable damage and killing several persons; Germans make further gains on the west bank of the Ypres Canal; French repulse Germans in the Argonne, near Bagatelle; French take trenches in the Forest of Le Pretre; French artillery bombards fortifications ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... and his fiery unreason was the subject we discussed, and Fred laid law down as to how he should be dealt with whenever the chance should come to bring him to book. But Rustum Khan was a bagatelle compared to what was coming, if we had only known it. While we talked I saw Gregor Jhaere, the attaman of gipsies, ride down the track on a brown mule and dismount within ten yards of Kagig. He hobbled his mule, and went and sat close by Kagig and the Turk, engaging ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... examined with keen glances each side of the path they were traversing. They hesitated as to whether they would go to the Catelan Cross or under the walls of the Bagatelle. At last they took a turn to the right; and they drew up in a kind of quincunx in the ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... no observations upon political affairs. The town fascinated him more than any other in Europe; he notes that the city is rapidly beautifying under the emperor, that the people seem gay and happy, and 'Vive la bagatelle!' is again the burden of their song. His excuse for remissness in correspondence was, "I am a young ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner |
