"Sacristan" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and entered the Church of San Luigi dei Francesi. The Republican flag was flying at the door; the young sacristan said the fine musical service, which this church gave formerly on St. Philip's day in honor of Louis Philippe, would now be transferred to the Republican anniversary, the 25th of February. I looked at the ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... intervals with bows of ribbon very richly embroidered in gold. In this dress, the Condesa de ——- was laid in her coffin, thousands of dear friends crowding to view her beautiful costume de mort, and at length she was placed in her tomb, the key of which was intrusted to the sacristan. ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... therefore, covered with dust and cobwebs, I attained, as I did to every tomb of importance in Venice, by the ministry of such ancient ladders as were to be found in the sacristan's keeping. I was struck at first by the excessive awkwardness and want of feeling in the fall of the hand towards the spectator, for it is thrown off the middle of the body in order to show its fine cutting. Now the Mocenigo hand, severe and even stiff in its articulations, has its veins ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... and murderers whom the Vicar of Christ would punish. You know, sire, that these men had committed sacrilege. They had plundered the altar of St. Peter's of its golden pyx and candlesticks, and had poniarded the sacristan that ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... When the ladies of the king's court, and especially the princesses, pass before the king's bed they have to make an obeisance; the palace officials salute the nef on passing that.—A priest or sacristan does the same thing on passing before ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... a poor woman who had been driven to insanity by her husband's neglect and abuses on the part of the Civil Guard, her younger son having disappeared some time before in the convento, where he was a sacristan. Basilio, who is ignorant of Elias's identity, helps him to build a funeral pyre, on which his corpse and the madwoman's ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... not any evil in the world, except wrong. But it had been the dreariest week he had ever passed. As they came from the public room, he lay in wait for him once more, but again in vain: he must have gone through the sacristan's garden behind. ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... against the French if it encountered them. Some weeks previously, after the siege of Bologna had been raised by the Spaniards, there were distributed about at Rome little bits of paper having on them, "If anybody knows where the Spanish army happens to be, let him inform the sacristan of peace; he shall receive as reward a lump of cheese." Gaston de Foix arrived on the 8th of April, 1512, before Ravenna. He there learned that, on the 9th of March, the ambassador of France had been sent away from London ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... But, May," she added, after a moment's reflection, "I don't believe we need think of the man's work as mean or sordid. I should think it might be a very valuable sort of service that he renders at the hospital. Do you remember that day, the first week we were here, when we were waiting for the sacristan at the Madonna del Orto, and a little girl on the quay fell down ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... here and there the church-goers, and walking on with them, chatting softly. They all remained standing a short time under the great linden, waiting until the bell ceased, until the church-door was opened and the minister appeared with the sacristan and the four choir-boys. Not until then were they allowed to enter ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... unpopular belief when the very church was named in which the ceremony was to take place—the Church of the Holy Name; and those that hastened thither did indeed find all preparations being made for a wedding, and learned from the sacristan that Messer Simone did, indeed, upon that very morning, mean to marry the daughter of Folco Portinari. Yet, as I learned afterward, for all these assurances and all these preparations, the marriage was, up to a certain moment, no such sure a matter as Messer Simone ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Xavier—the sceptic I told the signor about—enter the church with two assistants armed with crowbars and pickaxes, and proceed immediately to the crypt, where no doubt could exist as to the noises at that moment, as the yellings, scamperings and scramblings were loud enough in all conscience. The sacristan came out from the body of the church and suggested another exorcism to the reverend father, who answered that he preferred the pickaxe, and, turning to beckon to his workmen, found they had fled. Nowise daunted, the reverend gentleman took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves and went ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... in vain for a photograph of it, and then after a brief glance at the riches of the Church of the Annunziata, where we were followed around the interior by a sacristan who desired us to note that the pillars were "All inlady, all inlady" with different marbles, and, after a chilly moment in San Lorenzo, which the worshippers and the masons were sharing between them in the prayers and repairs always going on in cathedrals, ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... beneficiary, incumbent, chaplain, curate; deacon, deaconess; preacher, reader, lecturer; capitular[obs3]; missionary, propagandist, Jesuit, revivalist, field preacher. churchwarden, sidesman[obs3]; clerk, precentor[obs3], choir; almoner, suisse[Fr], verger, beadle, sexton, sacristan; acolyth[obs3], acolothyst[obs3], acolyte, altar boy; chorister. [Roman Catholic priesthood] Pope, Papa, pontiff, high priest, cardinal; ancient flamen[obs3], flamen[obs3]; confessor, penitentiary; spiritual director. cenobite, conventual, abbot, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... statue—a palace tragic in history—a modern Parthenon surrounded by columns, peopled with sculptured friezes, and approached by a flight of steps extending the whole width of the building. I went in, for the doors had just been opened, and a white-haired Sacristan was preparing the seats for matin service. There were acolytes decorating the altar with fresh flowers, and early devotees on their knees before the shrine of the Madonna. The gilded ornaments, the tapers winking in the morning light, the ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... to tell you all about it; how Nino saw the sacristan of the Pantheon that evening, and ascertained from his little almanac—which has all kinds of wonderful astrological predictions, as well as the calendar—when it would be full moon. And perhaps what Nino said ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... warned. If, notwithstanding, you find the place good, you are the master; and, besides, I must be just—speaking of the notary—if there's something against, there's also something for him. He is as miserly as a dog, hard as an ass, bigoted as a sacristan, it is true; but he is as honest as one can be. He gives small wages, but he pays like a man. The food is bad. In fine, it is a house where one must work like a horse, but where there is no risk of a young girl's reputation. ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... St. Nicodemus, sir. Or I should say sacristan. They call him sacristan instead of sexton because St. Nicodemus is High, as I daresay you know, sir, living ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... sacristan dusting the sacred properties with a feather brush, and giving each shrine a business-like nod as he passed, was as a long-lost brother; they had hearts of aggressive tenderness for the young girls and old women who ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... 'Madame d'Ecouis avait eu de sa mere sans la connaitre et sans en etre reconnu une fille nommee Cecile. Il epousa ensuite en Lorraine cette meme Cecile qui etait aupres de la Duchesse de Bar . . . Il furent enterres dans le meme tombeau en 1512 a Ecouis.' An old sacristan used to supply curious visitors to the church with a leaflet detailing the narrative. The same story is attached to other parishes, and at Alincourt, a village between Amiens and Abbeville, the following lines are inscribed ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... had not recognized in the girl dressed as a bonne-a-toute-faire her protegee of Le Bon Pasteur, was naturally somewhat startled at this unexpected demonstration, and called aloud for the sacristan. ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... "One day," continued the sacristan, "Louis the Gentle, the son of Charlemagne, went hunting with all his retinue in this forest. They had with them a ...
— Harper's Young People, January 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Vitellius, he fled into the Capitol with his uncle Sabinus, and a part of the troops they had in the city [797]. But the enemy breaking in, and the temple being set on fire, he hid himself all night with the sacristan; and next morning, assuming the disguise of a worshipper of Isis, and mixing with the priests of that idle superstition, he got over the Tiber [798], with only one attendant, to the house of a woman who was the mother of one of his school-fellows, and ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... their curates shall not keep back the Holy Sacrament from us and ours for the sake of money. Still, it is our purpose that, whatever from ancient times has been assigned in each canon to the pastor or sacristan, it shall continue to him and yield him a fair support; but if any one in the collection thereof is dealt with severely and dangerously, it shall concern the civil authority, so that the common man be not overmatched. ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... that, to instruct the Indians how to shoot, they would bring from Chile certain Jesuits who in the world had served as soldiers. One sees them brought from the frontiers of Araucania, and from the outposts of the trans-Andean towns, half sacristan, half sergeant, instant in prayer, and yet with a look about them like a serious bull terrier — a fitting kind of priest for a frontier town, and such as could alone ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... name of a sacristan who completely despised all worldly goods, and his fame was spread abroad. On one occasion, when there was no oil for the lamps, he filled them with water, and they gave light just as if it had been oil. Visitors ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... a sacristan, and a student of the clerical academy, returning home from shooting, walked all the time by the path in the water-side meadow. His fingers were numb and his face was burning with the wind. It seemed to him that the cold that had suddenly come on had destroyed the order and harmony ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... I pushed past the leather hanging that covered the door, but the sacristan was lighting the candles for Benediction, so I went up to the bronze screen, the Cancello, that divides the public part from the part occupied by the Sisters, and ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... when Hawkhurst made his appearance on deck, followed by his men, who dragged up six individuals who had escaped the massacre. These were the bishop; his niece; a Portuguese girl, her attendant; the supercargo of the vessel; a sacristan; and a servant of the ecclesiastic: they were hauled along the deck and placed in a row before the captain, who cast his eyes upon them in severe scrutiny. The bishop and his niece looked round, the one proudly meeting the eye of Cain, although ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... master's style in making a Virgin Mary in the porch of St Peter's, and a St Peter and a St Paul in that place near where the bronze pine apple is, in a wall between the arches of the portico, on the outside. For this style he was praised, especially as he had introduced into the work a portrait of a sacristan of St Peter's lighting some lamps, and has made his figures very vigorous. This led to Simone being summoned very urgently to the Pope's court at Avignon, where he executed so many pictures in fresco and on panels that ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... Martin-Belleme and Madame Marmet to her pink-tinted house at Fiesole, which, crowned with a long balustrade, overlooked the incomparable city. The maid followed with the luggage. Choulette, lodged, by Miss Bell's attention, in the house of a sacristan's widow, in the shadow of the cathedral of Fiesole, was not expected until dinner. Plain and gentle, wearing short hair, a waistcoat, a man's shirt on a chest like a boy's, almost graceful, with small hips, the poetess was doing for her French friends ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... procession. They heard a drum beating, and then beheld a silver cross. After this appeared two torches borne by the chanters, then the cure, with stole, surplice, cope, and biretta. Four altar-boys escorted him, a fifth carried the holy-water basin, and in the rear came the sacristan. He got up on the raised edge of the hole in which stood the poplar tree, adorned with tri-coloured ribbons. On the opposite side could be seen the mayor and his two deputies, Beljambe and Marescot; then the principal personages of the district, M. de Faverges, ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... Buvat found the whole house in commotion. The doctor had said that they must send for the viaticum. They had sent for the cure, and he had arrived, and, preceded by the sacristan and his little bell, he had without any preparation entered the sick room. Clarice received it with her hands joined, and her eyes turned toward heaven; but the impression produced on her was not the less terrible. ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... the moon. These tricks of his magic spoil for us the illusions of the green-room. Can any biography shed light on the localities into which the Midsummer Night's Dream admits me? Did Shakespeare confide to any notary or parish recorder, sacristan, or surrogate, in Stratford, the genesis of that delicate creation? The forest of Arden, the nimble air of Scone Castle, the moonlight of Portia's villa, 'the antres vast and desarts idle' of Othello's captivity,—where is the third cousin, or grand-nephew, the chancellor's ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... old monastic buildings were dilapidated; the rest were in good order, being frequented as a summer retreat by the inhabitants of Palma. Now, in December, the Chartreuse was entirely abandoned, except by a housekeeper, a sacristan and a lone monk, the last offshoot of the community—a kind of apothecary, whose stock-in-trade was limited to ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... he carefully saw to his private affairs, arranged for the support of his wife and family, and entrusted the office of sacristan, which he held, to a young and worthy clerk to hold ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... The poor and youthful sacristan of Haarlem was in love. He used to walk on holydays to the spring outside the town, and sit under the willows by the canals, to indulge in his day-dreams. His heart full of the image of his bride, he used to amuse himself, in true lover's fashion, by engraving with his knife the initials ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... these pitiable ruins scattered about amid the beautiful order of the city. Here the clerk commended to me the art of the architect, who had already fitted up church and cupola for so undesirable an event, and had built them bomb-proof. The good sacristan then pointed out to me the ruins on all sides, and said doubtfully and laconically, ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... S. Paul, near to the place where the bronze pine-cone is, on a wall between the arches of the portico on the outer side; and in this he counterfeited the manner of Giotto very well, receiving so much praise, above all because he portrayed therein a sacristan of S. Pietro lighting some lamps before the said figures with much promptness, that he was summoned with very great insistence to the Court of the Pope at Avignon, where he wrought so many pictures, in fresco ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... as any one could desire. Sometimes even, it would start at night, and sound gently through the darkness, seized by strange joy, awakened, one could not tell why. All the peasants in the neighborhood declared that it was bewitched, and nobody, except the priest and the sacristan would now go near the church tower, and they went because a poor girl was living there in grief and solitude, and secretly nourished by those ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... after the pennies which attendants have to pay on taking them. Not one of these collectors has officiated less than 11 years; three of them have been at the work for 27; and what is still better they discharge their duties, as the sacristan once told us, "free gracious." That is a philanthropic wrinkle for chapel keepers and other compounders of business and piety which we commend to special notice. The singers at St. Augustine's are of more than ordinary merit. Two or three of them have most excellent voices; and the conjoint efforts ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... or ALUREDUS, OF BEVERLEY, was sacristan of the church of Beverley in the first half of the 12th century. He wrote, apparently about the year 1143, a chronicle entitled Annales sive Historia de gestis regum Britanniae, which begins with Brutus and carries the history of England down to 1129. This work was edited by T. Hearne (Oxford, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Captain Tiago? It is true his arrival was always heralded with music, he was given banquets by his debtors, and loaded with presents; but he was laughed at in secret, and called Sacristan Tiago. ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... adore, except up there to the left, where a very pale glimmer shone on polished marble among the shadows before the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament. There was one other exception; for overhead, against the half-lighted apse, where a belated sacristan still moved about, himself a shadow, busy with the last preparations of the High Altar—there burgeoned out the ominous silhouette of the vast hanging cross, but so dark that the tortured Christ upon it was invisible.... Yet surely that was right on this night, for who, of all those who were ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... vision weaving itself and flickering in the golden August weather, and in his ears a sentence running, chiming, striking upon the word "gold"— "Ding-a-ding-a-dong! 'Taty-patch a gold mine—'taty-patch a gold mine!" The prosaic Mr Latter had set the chime ringing, as a dull sacristan might unloose the music of a belfry; but like a chime of faery it rippled and trilled, closing ever upon the deep note "gold," and echoed back as from a veritable gong of ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... a valet with him from Cadiz, as one often meets with on the coasts of Spain and in the American colonies. He was a quarter Spaniard, born of a mongrel in Tucuman; he had been singing-boy, sacristan, sailor, monk, pedlar, soldier, and lackey. His name was Cacambo, and he loved his master, because his master was a very good man. He quickly saddled ...
— Candide • Voltaire
... radiant face of the Virgin, the sweet and pale countenance of Christ, the statues of the saints, the niches, the old pillars, the small chapels, all this mystic poetry pleases them, everything enchants and intoxicates them, even to the sanctimonious and hypocritical face of the beadle and the sacristan. ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... been a FESTA two days before, and the church still smelt of incense and of garlic. The little son of the sacristan was sweeping the nave, more for amusement than for cleanliness, sending great clouds of dust over the frescoes and the scattered worshippers. The sacristan himself had propped a ladder in the centre of the Deluge—which fills one of the nave ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... of inspecting the smear—a portrait of the old Sacristan on a bench in front of the main entrance—started back in surprise on seeing the Bostonian, and asked with an anxious tone ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... sacristan of the church of St. Eulalie at Neuville d'Aumont told me, as we sat under the arbor of the White Horse, one fine summer evening, drinking a bottle of old wine to the health of the dead man, now very much at his ease, whom that very morning he had borne to the grave with full ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... along, a man who had more the look of a sacristan than of a physician. Appointed by the powerful mandate of the Vice-Rector, without other merit than unconditional servility to the corporation, he passed for a spy and an informer in the eyes of ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... they had burst their pistols or fired off their crackers, the boys sometimes huddled into the back part of the Catholic church and watched the service, awed by the dim altar lights, the rising smoke of incense, and the grimness of the sacristan, an old German, who stood near to keep order among them. They knew the fellows who were helping the priest; one of them was the boy who stood on his head till he had to have it shaved; they would have liked to mock him then and ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... could not and would not go without her remaining Tintoret, and the others yielded to her at once, with that indulgent tenderness one shows to the wilfulness of a sick child. She and Margaret followed the sacristan. Ashe lingered behind in a passage of the church, surreptitiously reading an Italian newspaper. He had the ordinary cultivated pleasure in pictures; but this ardor which Kitty was throwing into her pursuit of Tintoret—the Wagner of painting—left him cold. He did not attempt ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... describing and photographing every corner of the wonderful church that dominates the little hill of Comminges. In order to carry out this design satisfactorily, it was necessary to monopolize the verger of the church for the day. The verger or sacristan (I prefer the latter appellation, inaccurate as it may be) was accordingly sent for by the somewhat brusque lady who keeps the inn of the Chapeau Rouge; and when he came, the Englishman found him an unexpectedly interesting object of study. It was not in the personal appearance ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... mean if you went into a foreign cathedral, or even into one of the Catholic churches in our large towns. The celebrant, deacon and sub-deacon, acolytes with lights, the incense and the chanting all combine to one end, one act of worship." White is much exercised by the question whether a sacristan should wear the short or the long cotta. But he finally marries and settles ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... remained in bed, and made no noise. As for myself, I could not sleep, on account of the odor of a basin of savory porridge which an old woman had at the side of her bed, and which I longed for amazingly. Being, therefore, anxious to creep near it, I raised my head and saw the sacristan take the cakes and dried figs from the sacred table, and going the round of the altars, put all that he could find into a bag. It occurred to me that it would be meritorious in me to follow his example, so ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... progressively, under favourable circumstances, without causing trouble. What hurt the people most was their sweeping character, their frequency and the petty tyranny with which they were applied. It was not without reason that Frederick II of Prussia nicknamed Joseph "my brother the sacristan." The emperor had gone as far as replacing the Catholic brotherhoods by the "Brotherhood of the Active Love of My Neighbour." All protests remained without the least result. They were merely, according to Joseph II, "the effect of delirium." Within five years, this too sensible sovereign, ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... another who wore a stole and administered all the rites of the extreme unction. After the vicar and the sacristan had gone, Manuel looked at his mother and saw her livid features, her drooping jaw. ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... great value; which case contains the bones or ashes of Charlemagne. His right arm bone is however preserved separate in a glass case. The sword of this prince too, and the Imperial crown is to be seen here. The sacristan next proceeded to show to us the other relics, but having begun with the exhibition of a rag dipped in the sweat of Jesus Christ and a nail of the Holy Cross, we began to think we had seen enough and went away perfectly ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... the hounds might lead to her discovery. On one of these occasions Martin locked her up in the great hayloft of the convent, where she could actually hear the chants in the chapel, and distinguish the chatter of the lay-sisters in the yard. Another time, in conjunction with the sacristan, he bestowed her in the great seigneurial tribune (or squire's pew) in the village church, a tall carved box, where she was completely hidden; and the only time when she had failed to obtain warning beforehand, she stood kneading bread at a tub in Martin's cottage, while the hunt passed ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... poverty of the land. Henry II, an ardent sportsman, a ruler almost completely immersed in affairs of State, made time for private reading and for working out knotty questions,[1] and very probably he had a library to his hand. King John received from the sacristan of Reading a small collection of books of the Bible and severe theology, perhaps as a diplomatic gift, perhaps as a subtle reminder that a little food for the spirit would improve his morals and ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... Capuchin, but in truth he is a prelate, and a prelate of great power; Bishop Nicodemus, to wit, prime councillor of the patriarch, and chief prompter of those measures that occasioned the civil war of 1841. A single sacristan walks behind him, his only retinue, and befitting his limited resources; but the Maronite prelate is recompensed by universal respect; his vanity is perpetually gratified, and, when he appears, Sheikh and peasant are alike proud to kiss ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... individuals as fell under the suspicion of 'possession' in order to exorcise the spirit with prayers and holy water. Aretino has made a witty scene about this in the 'Cortegiana,' where one of the Vatican servants cheats a poor fisherman, and then hands him over to the sacristan of Saint Peter's to be cured of an imaginary possession by a ceremonious exorcism. Such proceedings must have been common enough in those days when witchcraft and demonology were elements with which rulers and lawgivers had to ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... Feminarum are instructive from the present point of view. In the latter he remarks (Book II, Chapter I): "Salvation—and not of women only, but likewise of men—consists in the exhibition, principally, of modesty. Since we are all the temple of God, modesty is the sacristan and priestess of that temple, who is to suffer nothing unclean or profane to enter it, for fear that the God who inhabits it should be offended.... Most women, either from simple ignorance or from dissimulation, have the hardihood so to walk as if modesty consisted only in the integrity of the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Valdemosa, away up on the mountainside overlooking the sea. Here where the roses bloomed the whole year through, surrounded by groves of orange-trees, shut in by vines and flowers, with no society save that of the sacristan and an aged woman servant, she nursed the death-stricken man back to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... out after matins. When he arrived he found the door, through which he had come, built up and a new one opened in another place. The porter asked who he was and what he wanted, and he answered, 'I am the sacristan who a few hours ago went out, and now returning find all changed.' He gave too the names of the Abbot and of the Prior, and wondered much that the porter still would not let him in, and seemed not to remember these names. At last he was led to the Abbot, but they did not know one ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... Artemis of the Ephesians was, in the first instance, left behind by him in Asia at the time when he left that part of the world himself with Agesilaus on the march into Boeotia (3). He left it behind in charge of Megabyzus, the sacristan of the goddess, thinking that the voyage on which he was starting was fraught with danger. In the event of his coming out of it alive, he charged Megabyzus to restore to him the deposit; but should any evil happen to him, then he was ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... court, his readiest way to reach the rooms he occupied with his father, near the marquis's study. Hardly another door in either court was ever made fast except this one, which, merely in self-administered flattery of his own consequence, the conceited sacristan who assumed charge of the key, always locked at night. But there was no reason why Delaware should pay any respect to this, or hesitate to remove the bar securing one-half of the door, without which the lock ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... town, enclosed in Rome. At Monte Giordano (Palazzo Gabbrielli) it becomes the walled Umbrian town, castellated. In this gloom, this sadness of icy evening sky between the high roofs, and after the appalling sadness of a church, squalid, dark, a few people kneeling, and the sacristan extinguishing the altars after a Benediction (every grief, one would think, laid down on that floor only to pick up a weight of the grief of others); after this there was something sweet and country-like in ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... or American lover of history visits Rome without bending reverent footsteps to the Church of Santa Maria in Ara Coeli. Two visits are necessary, as on the first you are at once seized by the sacristan, who can conceive of no other motive for entering this church on the Capitol Hill than to see the miraculous Bambino—the painted doll swaddled in gold and silver tissue and "crusted over with magnificent diamonds, emeralds, and rubies." When you have heard the tale ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... would 'hold her nose in the upper part of her right fist and rub it'; another for salt would 'fillip with her right thumb and forefinger over the left thumb'; another desirous of wine would 'move her forefinger up and down the end of her thumb afore her eye'; and the guilty sacristan, struck by the thought that she had not provided incense for the Mass, would 'put her two fingers into her nostrils'. In one such table drawn up for nuns there are no less than 106 signs, and on the whole ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... of the Eulenspiegel stories—that here followed—was printed at Strassburg in 1515. 2: Lauben, 'loggia,' 'balcony' (of the town hall). 3: Wz gesein war gewesen. The preceding story tells how he had taken the rle of sacristan ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... Mass, they were approached by the Sacristan, a little, shrunken, brown old man in a cassock, who offered to serve them as a guide. The church was very dim and very silent. Here and there a woman knelt at prayer; here and there a candle burned. The Sacristan removed the frontal ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... voice, two or three dirty choristers, in soiled surplices, were charting the prayers for the dead, with an absent and sullen air, round a plain deal coffin, followed only by a sobbing old man and a child, miserably clad. The beadle and the sacristan, very much displeased at being disturbed for so wretched a funeral, had not deigned to put on their liveries, but, yawning with impatience, waited for the end of the ceremony, so useless to the interests of the establishment. At length, a few drops of holy ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... friend of uncle Jacob's, was a Benedictine monk, and a man famous for his learning; as for me, I was at that time my uncle's chorister, clerk, and sacristan; I swept the church, chanted the prayers with my shrill treble, and swung the great copper incense-pot on Sundays and feasts; and I toiled over the Fathers for the other ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... waited, and at twelve o'clock out they came, dozens of them, and began to cross the meadow. 'And now,' sez I to myself, 'look out for larks.' But what happened? Why, when they came to the pole, the priest stood in front of it, and the sacristan rang the bell, and they all fell down on their knees. But they were saying their prayers, not doing obeisance to the hat. That's what they were doing. ...
— William Tell Told Again • P. G. Wodehouse
... stone sank bodily to the ground and not a human bruise resulted. Here its behaviour was better than that of the previous campanile of S. Giorgio Maggiore, which, when it fell in 1774, killed one monk and injured two others. Nor was S. Mark's harmed, although its sacristan confesses to have been dumb for three days from the shock. The falling golden angel from the top of the campanile was found in front of the central door as though to protect the church. Sansovino's Loggetta, it is true, was crushed and buried beneath ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... portrait of her is a faithful one. I was glad to see here one of the jars from the marriage-supper in Cana. We can identify it by a piece which is broken out; and the piece is in Notre Dame in Paris. It has been in this church five hundred years. The sacristan, a very intelligent person, with a shaven crown and his hair cut straight across his forehead, who showed us the church, gave us much useful information about bones, teeth, and the remains of the garments that the virgins wore; and I could not ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... (of the Vydts family) contains the famous altar piece of the Adoration of the Lamb, by Hubert and Jan van Eyck, to study which is the chief object of a visit to Ghent. See it more than once, and examine it carefully. Ask the sacristan to let you sit before it for some time in quiet or he will hurry you on. You must observe it in close detail. Taking it in its entirety, then, the altar-piece, when opened, is a great mystical poem of the Eucharist and the Sacrifice ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... devotee persisted, he was ceremoniously conducted to the shaft. He was lowered down by means of a rope, with a loaf and a vessel of water to strengthen him in the combat against the fiend which he proposed to wage. On the following morning the sacristan offered the rope anew to the sufferer. If he mounted to the surface again, they brought him back to the church, bearing the cross and chanting psalms. If he were not to be found, the sacristan closed the door and departed. In more modern times ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... and even more than conveniently written, and that is in the note-book that belonged to Cardenio, and thou wilt take care to have it copied on paper, in a good hand, at the first village thou comest to where there is a schoolmaster, or if not, any sacristan will copy it; but see thou give it not to any notary to copy, for they write a law hand that ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... a little grated window, where they locked him up and left him. At the expiration of three quarters of an hour they again appeared, and conducted him to the house of the curate, where they sat down in conclave, the curate who was a man stone-blind being president, whilst the sacristan officiated as secretary. The surgeon having stated his accusation against the prisoner, namely, that he had detected him in the fact of selling a version of the Scriptures in the vulgar tongue, the curate proceeded to examine Vitoriano, asking him his name and place of residence—to which he replied ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... fat, were fixed upon the ikon stand. He saw the long familiar figures of the saints, the verger Matvey puffing out his cheeks and blowing out the candles, the darkened candle stands, the threadbare carpet, the sacristan Lopuhov running impulsively from the altar and carrying the holy bread to the churchwarden.... All these things he had seen for years, and seen over and over again like the five fingers of his hand.... There was only one thing, however, that was somewhat ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... I was knocking at the north door of the cathedral. A sacristan, who carried in his hand a long lighted taper, admitted me at once. Save for this taper and four candles which stood at the four corners of the bier, the vast ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... in the night that all these worthies, grave-diggers, flaxdressers, and ghosts, exercise their industry. It is in the night also the flaxdresser relates his lamentable stories. But he is no more than the sacristan addicted exclusively to the pleasure of inspiring his auditors with fear; he delights in raising a laugh; and is jocose and sentimental by turns, when he comes to speak of love and Hymen. He is the man ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... the Franciscan confraternity," we read, "called La Confraternita della Mercede, was wont to sleep in the damp recesses of the ancient chapel of Braccioforte." His name was Angelo Grillo ... This sacristan declared himself to have seen in a dream a shade issue from the spot where the body was found, clad in red, that it passed through the chapel into the adjoining cemetery. It approached him, and on being asked who ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... the south aisle and came to the anteroom of the treasury. Its door was open. They entered what had once been a tower of the old palace. The door of the treasury was also open. They went in and found the sacristan and a woman. She held the turquoise cup ...
— The Turquoise Cup, and, The Desert • Arthur Cosslett Smith
... priest of that day, "Mr." McGillivray, as the old style of address ran, more will be said later. The figure next in prominence to him in Bell's recollections was the old sacristan, Robbie Benzie. For many years he acted as "clerk" at the altar, continuing to carry out his duties when well advanced in years. During the week he carried on his trade of weaver; on Sundays he was at his post betimes, carrying a lantern with him, from which he ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... of an hour later the sacristan showed us into this granite jewel-case which contains the three marble gems called the tombs of Marguerite of Austria, Marguerite or Bourbon, and of ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... 32 of the Rzhanoff house I found the sacristan already reading prayers over the dead woman. They had taken her to the bunk which she had formerly occupied; and the lodgers, all miserable beings, had collected money for the masses for her soul, a coffin and a shroud, and the old women had dressed her and laid her out. The sacristan was reading ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... observe, good reader, concerning S. Francis of Assisi, and his sermons, when I was only five-and-twenty,—little thinking at that day how, Evangelical-bred as I was, I should ever come to write a lecture for the first School of Art in Oxford in the Sacristan's cell at Assisi,[25] or ever—among such poor treasures as I have of friends' reliquaries—I should fondly keep a little 'pinch' ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... Tonatiuh, over whose apex the struggling rays fell red and presageful. Dulled by the stained glass windows, the light that filled the semi-circular chapel at "The Lilacs", was chill and sombre, until the fair sacristan held a taper over the tall wax candles on each side of the altar, whence a mellow radiance soon streamed over all; flashing along the golden letters under the cross, and upon the gilded pipes of the little organ. On the marble steps ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... really die but only looked like dead, and very soon they found her in a hollow of a pillar in the church, half standing and half sitting, motionless. She stirred never a limb, but they saw quite plainly that she was alive, and she sits there down to this blessed day. Every New Year's Day the sacristan comes and puts a morsel of the holy bread in her mouth, and that is all she has to live on. Long, long has she rued her fatal wish who set this transient life above the eternal joys of heaven.[253] A third German story tells ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... empty, and I expected every minute to be turned out by the sacristan making his evening round to close the doors. I was leaning against a pillar, looking into the greyness of the great arches, when the organ suddenly burst out into a series of chords, rolling through the echoes of the church: it seemed to be the conclusion of ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... vesting in the sacristy. Enormous chests lined the walls of several rooms, and in those were stored gorgeous vestments, wonderfully beautiful in color and material, and enriched with gold and precious stones. Costly presents from kings and Spanish grandees were shown to me by the brother sacristan, who took an honest pride in exhibiting those blessed things. Magnificent society banners, used during processions on great festivals, were subjects of intense interest to the good brother. I saw lace albs there, with crotchet work marvellously ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... countenance as penitent as that of a sacristan caught eating meat on a Friday; but he was inwardly laughing ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... Sacristan, acolyte, player, or preacher, Each to his office, but who holds the key? Death, only Death—thou, the ultimate teacher Wilt show ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... wall. For centuries, Christians met and prayed in the little church, unconscious of the wonder-working relic hidden so near them; and it was only through a miracle, in Charlemagne's time and some say in his presence, that the holy body was discovered. This is the history which a sacristan recites to curious pilgrims as he ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... time after this fracas, a personage of venerable appearance presented himself at Epinal, and applied for the post of sacristan and bell-ringer, at that time vacant. Though he squinted, his appearance was far from disagreeable, and he obtained the appointment without difficulty. His deportment in it was in all respects edifying; ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... was not naturally malignant, but really a most useful and serviceable being. His talents were many, and various. He could crochet most perfectly, and his coverlets were unrivalled in Lancia. He decked an altar, or dressed the images as well as any sacristan. He could upholster furniture, make wax flowers, paper walls, embroider with hair, and paint plates. And when any of his female friends wished to have her hair well dressed to go to some ball, Manuel Antonio gallantly went to the rescue, and did ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... according to its frequent habit, rises and inundates the city, the Pantheon is one of the first places to be flooded—the sacristan told us. The water climbs above the altar-tops, sapping, in its recession, the cement of the fine marbles which incrust the columns, so that about their bases the pieces have to be continually renewed. Nothing ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... just inside the church door; besides, that being a more sacred place, he felt sure that God would favor him even more than Juan. He arranged his bier with the candles around him, and lay down to await the shower of money that should reward his devotions. When the sacristan went to the church to ring the bell for vespers, he saw the body lying there, and not knowing of any corpse having been carried in, he was frightened and ran to tell the padre. The padre, when he had seen the body, said it was a miracle, and that it must be buried within the church, ...
— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington, |
