"Seraglio" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... who loved his subjects, and was equally beloved by them. He was endued with all virtues, and wanted nothing to complete his happiness but an heir. Though he had the finest women in the world in his seraglio, yet was he destitute of children. He continually prayed to heaven for them; and one night in his sleep, a comely person, or rather a prophet, appeared to him, and said, "Your prayers are heard; you have obtained what you have desired; rise ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... generation may do it, perhaps two, but the third—— Can we ever rise above nature or sink below her? Did she not turn on Jerusalem as upon Sodom, upon St. Anthony in his desert as upon Nero in his seraglio? Does she not always cry in brutal triumph: "I am here still, at the bottom of things, warming the roots of life; you cannot starve me nor tame me nor thwart me; I made the world, I rule it, and ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... fleets and forces ready to meet him at Constantinople, his death or capture would seem to be the certain consequence of his fantastic expedition. The strongest imaginable probability is, that instead of wearing the diadem of France, his head would have figured on the spikes of the seraglio. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... world, I pursued the road of Dover and Lausanne. My habitation was embellished in my absence, and the last division of books, which followed my steps, increased my chosen library to the number of between six and seven thousand volumes. My seraglio was ample, my choice was free, my appetite was keen. After a full repast on Homer and Aristophanes, I involved myself in the philosophic maze of the writings of Plato, of which the dramatic is, ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... Pau. Henry's Spartan grandfather would scarce have approved the courses of the youth, whose education he had commenced on so simple a scale. For Margaret of Valois, hating her husband, and living in most undisguised and promiscuous infidelity to him, had profited by her mother's lessons. A seraglio of maids of honour ministered to Henry's pleasures, and were carefully instructed that the peace and war of the kingdom were playthings in their hands. While at Paris royalty was hopelessly sinking in a poisonous marsh, there was ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... help you. Against all the rules of etiquette and good breeding, I condescend to introduce you alive into the harem. Can you appreciate the height of your good fortune? H'm! A vigorous old chap like you! Inside the most holy seraglio? Baa! Baa! All those pretty ladies? Baa! Baa! Eh! is that nothing to you? Baa! Baa! (More to the public.) As a rule, we are very particular on this point—absolutely rigorous. As a rule, not even a flea is admitted into the harem before it has been carefully examined to see whether ...
— Turandot, Princess of China - A Chinoiserie in Three Acts • Karl Gustav Vollmoeller
... and a large isolated hill constituting the south-western portion of the territory. Hence the claim of Constantinople to be enthroned, like Rome, upon seven hills. The 1st hill is distinguished by the Seraglio, St Sophia and the Hippodrome; the 2nd by the column of Constantine and the mosque Nuri-Osmanieh; the 3rd by the war office, the Seraskereate Tower and the mosque of Sultan Suleiman; the 4th by the mosque ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... to wander in this forbidden field is unwittingly betrayed by his remarking at Sky, in support of the doctrine that animal substances are less cleanly than vegetable: "I have often thought that, if I kept a seraglio, the ladies should all wear linen gowns, or cotton, I mean stuffs made of vegetable substances. I would have no silks: you cannot tell when it is clean: it will be very nasty before it is perceived to be so; linen detects its own dirtiness." His virtue thawed ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... short-lived. Mahmud's son, Ghijas-ud-Din, had been for many years his father's right hand, both in council and in the field. But no sooner did he come to the throne in 1469 than he discharged all the affairs of the state on to his own son and retired into the seraglio, where 15,000 women formed his court and provided him even with a bodyguard. Five hundred beautiful young Turki women, armed with bows and arrows, stood, we are told, on his right hand, and, on ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... examination of the wise physician. The latter could scarcely conceal his joy at the idea of once more beholding his beloved sister, and with palpitating heart followed Thiuli, who conducted him to his seraglio. They reached an unoccupied room, which ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff
... in, and used to discourse on them by the hour. On fine days he was driven to the green-houses in his pony-chair, and waddled through them, prodding and leering at the fruit, like a fat Turk in his seraglio. When he bragged to me of the expense of growing them I was reminded of a hideous old Lothario bragging of what his pleasures cost. And the resemblance was completed by the fact that he couldn't eat as much as a mouthful ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... mother had been supplied with rich dresses by one of the merchants who was employed by the ladies of the grand seignior's seraglio. My brother had done this merchant some trifling favours, and, upon application to him, he readily engaged to recommend the new scarlet dye. Indeed, it was so beautiful, that, the moment it was seen, it was preferred to every other colour. Saladin's shop was soon crowded with customers; and ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... Apiarian laws would be a strange Utopia! the bowstring would be used there as unmercifully as it is in the seraglio, to say nothing of the summary mode of bringing down the population to the means of subsistence. But this is straying from the subject. The consequences of defective order are indeed frightful, whether we regard the physical or the moral evils ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... quickly, "Oh, you'd make nothing out of it if you went to buying evening clothes. I've thought of that. Mrs. Nathanmeyer has a troop of daughters, a perfect seraglio, all ages and sizes. She'll be glad to fit you out, if you aren't sensitive about wearing kosher clothes. Let me take you to see her, and you'll find that she'll arrange that easily enough. I told ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... actual state of the city, the palace and gardens of the Seraglio occupy the eastern promontory, the first of the seven hills, and cover about one hundred and fifty acres of our own measure. The seat of Turkish jealousy and despotism is erected on the foundations of a Grecian republic; but it may ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... in getting out of a very high coach, showed one of the handsomest legs he had ever seen: but as all this was no obstruction to his designs, he resolved to purchase her at any rate, in order to place her in his seraglio. ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... absence, not only of the king, but of the flower of the Persian race—and, above all, the tranquil possession of the imperial palace, conspired to favour the deceit. [39] Placed on the Persian throne, but concealing his person from the eyes of the multitude in the impenetrable pomp of an Oriental seraglio, the pseudo Smerdis had the audacity to despatch, among the heralds that proclaimed his accession, a messenger to the Egyptian army, demanding their allegiance. The envoy found Cambyses at Ecbatana in Syria. Neither cowardice nor sloth was the fault of that monarch; he sprang ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... is as you would desire it, a love-adventure. This French gentleman was made a slave to the Dey of Tripoli; by his good qualities, gained his master's favour; and after, by corrupting an eunuch, was brought into the seraglio privately, to see the ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... how all the women of the King's seraglio are to behave, and therefore we shall now speak separately only about ...
— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana
... that, as Queen of Saxony, she had but to say the word to establish a court a la Catharine II; time and again she refers to the great Empress's male seraglio, and to the enormous sums she squandered on her favorites. If the Diarist had known that Her Majesty of Russia, when in the flesh, never suffered to be longer than twenty-four hours without a lover, Louise, no doubt, would have made the most elaborate plans to prevent, in her own case, a ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... pride, and lust." "You shall, you insolent dogs," exclaimed king and nobles, "we heed not your barking." "You shall," reiterated the Pope, in the portentous thunderings of the Vatican. "You shall," came echoed back from the palaces of Vienna, from the dome of the Kremlin, from the seraglio of the Turk, and, in tones deeper, stronger, more resolute, from constitutional, liberty-loving, happy England. Then was France a volcano, and its lava-streams deluged Europe. The people were desperate. In the blind fury of their frenzied self-defense ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... included this Quaker audience, he delighted to deck his unpleasing person in a vest of cloth of gold, lined with sable of the richest contrasting blackness. Around him were ranged the servants of the Seraglio—the highest rank of lacqueys standing nearest the royal person, the "Paicks" in their embroidered coats and caps of beaten gold, and the "Solacks," adorned with feathers, and armed with bows and arrows. Behind ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... manner. He was even a greater traveller than Remenyi, and visited almost, if not quite, every civilised country. His travels took him throughout Europe, America, Australia, and Asia. He was, in 1885, invited by the Sultan of Turkey to perform in his seraglio, the only violinist to whom such a compliment had ever been paid. The Sultan on this occasion decorated him with the Order of the Medjidie, second class, and presented him with some ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... traditional fame—all other palaces and prisons appear like things of an hour. The oldest bit of palace in Europe, that of the west front of the Burg in Vienna, is of the time of Henry the Third. The Kremlin in Moscow, the Doge's Palazzo in Venice, are of the fourteenth century. The Seraglio in Stamboul was built by Mohammed the Second. The oldest part of the Vatican was commenced by Borgia, whose name it bears. The old Louvre was commenced in the reign of Henry the Eighth; the Tuilleries in that of Elizabeth. In the time of our civil war Versailles ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... this high distinction had been granted him as a reward for his numerous good works. Accordingly he laid aside the title of king and aimed at making himself a god. With this view, and in imitation of Buddha, who, before being advanced to the rank of a divinity, had quitted his royal palace and seraglio and retired from the world, Badonsachen withdrew from his palace to an immense pagoda, the largest in the empire, which he had been engaged in constructing for many years. Here he held conferences with the most ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... find his bones, it proves how long ago he lived. That is the game you've been playing with this Smith affair. Because Smith's head is small for his shoulders you call him microcephalous; if it had been large, you'd have called it water-on-the-brain. As long as poor old Smith's seraglio seemed pretty various, variety was the sign of madness: now, because it's turning out to be a bit monochrome—now monotony is the sign of madness. I suffer from all the disadvantages of being a grown-up person, and ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... wealth and bade rebuild the house more handsomely than before. As for himself, he took to wife the cateress and lay with her that night; and on the morrow he assigned her a separate lodging in his seraglio, with a fixed allowance and serving-maids to wait on her; and the people marvelled at his ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... of the Kislar Aga [kizlar-aghasi] (the slave of the Seraglio and guardian of the women), who appoints the Waywode. A pander and eunuch—these are not polite, yet true appellations—now governs the governor ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... jealousy is commonly felt by every married man; he cannot, from the roving nature of their mode of life, surround his wives with the walls of a seraglio, but custom and etiquette have drawn about them barriers nearly as impassable. When a certain number of families are collected together they encamp at a common spot; and each family has a separate hut, or ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... very rabble in Constantinople would storm the seraglio after such a massacre. But here—oh, here, it just reminds Mr. Lincoln ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... Janizaries and Spahies came in a tumultuary manner to the Seraglio." (HOWELL, Familiar ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... all measure Incurred the desperate displeasure Of his Serene and raging Highness: Whether he twitched his most revered And sacred beard, Or had intruded on the shyness Of the seraglio, or let fly An epigram at royalty, None knows: his sin was an occult one, But records tell us that the Sultan, Meaning to terrify the knave, Exclaimed, "'Tis time to stop that breath; Thy doom is sealed, presumptuous slave! Thou ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... shame. Mimi was his minion. He treated her as an Oriental tyrant might treat the mute guardian of the seraglio, and told her everything,—that Charlie had forestalled them in the matter of the drains of the noble mansion, that Charlie had determined to destroy Doy and Doy, that he, Mr. Prohack, was caught in a trap, that ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... myself obliged to exceed the bounds I have prescribed myself in gaining your heart, but you must now consent either to marry me or publicly abjure your religion; all my power cannot exempt you from the laws which oblige the women of the seraglio to embrace our faith.—-I adore you, and though I ought to compel you to a change so beneficial to you, yet I will not, since it is not your desire.—I promise you the free exercise of your religion in private, provided you accept of the ...
— The Princess of Ponthieu - (in) The New-York Weekly Magazine or Miscellaneous Repository • Unknown
... overflowed and was not distinguished from the lower part of her body, and no part restrained by stays 80) no wonder that a child dreaded such an ogress, and that the mob of London were highly diverted at the importation of so uncommon a seraglio! They were food from all the venom of the Jacobites; and, indeed nothing could be grosser than the ribaldry that was vomited out in lampoons, libels, and every channel of abuse, against the sovereign and the ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... affords a sight of, to those who have eyes. I know a good many, and it was a pleasure to look at them in company with my young friend. There were the shrubs and flowers in the Franklin-Place front-yards or borders; Commerce is just putting his granite foot upon them. Then there are certain small seraglio- gardens, into which one can get a peep through the crevices of high fences,—one in Myrtle Street, or backing on it,—here and there one at the North and South Ends. Then the great elms in Essex Street. Then the stately horse-chestnuts in that vacant lot in Chambers Street, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... having found means to get into the palace, and having with his own eyes seen Sardanapalus in the midst of his infamous seraglio; enraged at such a spectacle, and not able to endure that so many brave men should be subject to a prince more soft and effeminate than the women themselves, immediately formed a conspiracy against him. Belesis, governor of Babylon, and several others, ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... dominions comprised in them, by the establishment of a satrap or pashaw system of governing the provinces, by an invariable and speedy degeneracy in the princes of the royal house, the effeminate nurslings of the seraglio succeeding to the warrior sovereigns reared in the camp, and by the internal anarchy and insurrections which indicate and accelerate the decline and fall of these unwieldy ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... the Emperor Mu of the Chou dynasty was making a tour of his empire, a skillful mechanic, Yen Shih by name, was brought into his presence and entertained him and the women of his seraglio with a dance performed by automaton figures, which were capable not only of rhythmical movements of their limbs, but of accompanying their ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland
... years of age married Maria, daughter of Stanislas, the dethroned king of Poland. The whole life of Louis was one of idle sensuality. When he was old he established a seraglio of fifteen-year-old girls, the most beautiful that could be bought or kidnapped. On this harem he spent a hundred million francs, or twenty million dollars. It was he who, when warned of the impending ruin of his nation, said "After me the deluge." ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... walls, a procession of eight tall negroes in linen tunics, who filed noiselessly across the atrium like a moving frieze of bronze. In that fantastic setting, and the hush of that twilight hour, the vision was so like the picture of a "Seraglio Tragedy," some fragment of a Delacroix or Decamps floating up into the drowsy brain, that I almost fancied I had seen the ghosts of Ba-Ahmed's executioners revisiting with dagger and bowstring the scene of ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... attain, in rallying round him the scattered members of a race, warlike, fanatical, one in faith, in language, in habits, and in adversity. Nay, even supposing the Turkish Caliph, like the Saracenic of old, still to slumber in his seraglio, he might appoint a vicegerent, Emir-ul-Omra, or Mayor of the Palace, such as Togrul Beg, to conquer with his authority ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... "yamacks," who, under the guise of militia, held the Turkish capital in terror. The situation in Constantinople had finally grown unendurable even to the Turks, and the Pasha of Rustchuk appeared at the gates of the city to restore Selim III, who was still a captive in the Seraglio. When the doors of that sacred inclosure were forced open, the first object seen was the body of the murdered sovereign, killed by Mustapha in the belief that he himself was now the sole available survivor of Othman's line. But the ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... went to the royal seraglio, and, following his ancient custom, was admitted to the table of his master, sleeping after the meal at his side. At least so it was supposed, but none knew save those engaged in the murder what passed on that fatal night; the next day his dead body ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... and Mrs. Downs and her niece, with all the tourists in Constantinople, were placed in open carriages by their dragomans, and driven in a long procession to the Seraglio to see the Sultan's treasures. Those of them who had waited two weeks for this chance looked aggrieved at the more fortunate who had come at the eleventh hour on the last night's steamer, and seemed ...
— The Princess Aline • Richard Harding Davis
... on the 21st December, 1775, the Begum complained of a breach of engagements on the part of the Nabob, soliciting your protection for herself, her mother, and for all the women belonging to the seraglio of the late Nabob, from the distresses to which they were reduced; in consequence whereof it was agreed in consultation, 3d January, 1776, to remonstrate with the Vizier,—the Governor-General remarking, that, as the representative of our ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... Sultanic manner as the disgusting Roxane. I have already observed that Turkey, in its naked rudeness, hardly admits of representation before a cultivated public. Racine felt this, and merely refined the forms without changing the main incidents. The mutes and the strangling were motives which in a seraglio could hardly be dispensed with; and so he gives, on several occasions, very elegant circumlocutory descriptions of strangling. This is, however, inconsistent; when people are so familiar with the idea of a thing, they usually call it also by ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... into the saddle among the salaams of the dusky multitude, and all the ladies of the seraglio waved their scented handkerchiefs out of ...
— Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia - being the adventures of Prince Prigio's son • Andrew Lang
... about the ears of old Ready-Money, who, however, trudged on in silence with his prey, heeding their abuse as little as a hawk that has pounced upon a barn-door hero regards the outcries and cacklings of his whole feathered seraglio. ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... part, is well built, although the walls of the dwellings, a few palaces excepted, are of mud; but their interior makes amends for the roughness of their external appearance. The Mutsellim resides in a seraglio, on the banks of the river. I enquired in vain for a piece of marble, with figures in relief, which La Roque saw; but in the corner of a house in the Bazar is a stone ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... with too tender a regard for a monarch who violated his most solemn engagements the moment he fancied he could do so with impunity, and whose court, already openly profligate, threatened to present the appearance of an Eastern seraglio. A hasty glance at the prominent facts of the dispute will leave us in doubt whether to admire most the dignified and Christian forbearance of the Pope while a hope of saving his adversary remained, ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... marvels seen in new-found America and the Indies, and, perhaps, like Captain John Smith, could mingle stories of the naive simplicity of the natives beyond the Atlantic, with charming narratives of the wars in Hungary, the beauties of the seraglio of the Grand Turk, and the barbaric pomp of the Khan of Tartary. There were those in the streets who would see Raleigh go to the block on the scaffold in Old Palace Yard, who would fight against King Charles on the fields of Newbury or Naseby, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Greek ladies of Venice may be carefully watched by their husbands, they are neither secluded nor guarded in a seraglio like the Turkish women; for during our stay at Venice, a great person spoke to his Majesty of a young and beautiful Greek, who was an enthusiastic admirer of the Emperor of the French. This lady ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... at once saluted as Gholab Bashaw, and the next day set forth amidst great Acclamations, and in sumptuous state, for Constantinople. Arrived there, I was handsomely lodged in a Palace close to the Old Seraglio, and admitted to no less than three solemn Audiences with the Commander of the Faithful, the Caliph Al Islam, the Padishaw of Roum, the Great ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... mystery was disclosed. A little white slave from the seraglio of this embryo tyrant had flown the cage! No wonder she was watched, little surprise that she did not care to eat. He straightened himself, the hair on his round head ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... is not disagreeable to have the gum that oozes from a plumb-tree upon your fingers, because it is vegetable, but if you have any candle-grease, any tallow upon your fingers, you are uneasy till you rub it off. I have often thought, that, if I kept a seraglio, the ladies should all wear linen gowns, or cotton—I mean stuffs made of vegetable substances. I would have no silk; you cannot tell when it is clean: it will be very nasty before it is perceived to be so. ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... with torches. Prince Vierfuenfsechs-Siebenachtneun offered her his hand, and was condemned by the Kaiser to six months' confinement in his little castle. In Yildiz Kiosk, the tyrant who still throve there conferred on her the Order of Chastity, and offered her the central couch in his seraglio. She gave her performance in the Quirinal, and, from the Vatican, the Pope launched against her a Bull which fell utterly flat. In Petersburg, the Grand Duke Salamander Salamandrovitch fell enamoured of her. Of every article in the apparatus of her conjuring-tricks ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... Imp[erial] Majesty's observations. But he has read some of them, sans doute, so I may have the same vanity as poor Dick Edgcumbe had, of thinking that the Emperor of Constantinople had from the windows of his seraglio heard him play upon the ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... approaching night, And hails with freshened charms the rising light. Veiled, with gay decency and modest pride, Slow to the mosque she moves, an eastern bride, There her soft vows unceasing love record, Queen of the bright seraglio of ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... observers" seems to talk nonsense, for marriage in the seraglio does not hinge on the submission of one wife to one husband, but on a plurality of wives that English and German women have only endured in certain historic cases. In both western countries marriage has its roots in the fidelity of ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... he is favoring them with, and handing over the coins with the business-like air of people satisfied that they are getting its full equivalent. Consequently I am not much astonished when, rounding Seraglio Point, my companion calls my attention to several large sections of whalebone suspended on the wall facing the water, and tells me that they are placed there by the fishermen, who believe them to be a talisman of no small efficacy ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... Turks have done little of importance. The buildings in the Seraglio gardens are low and insignificant. The Tchinli Kiosque, now the Imperial Museum, is however, asimple but graceful two-storied edifice, consisting of four vaulted chambers in the angles of a fine cruciform hall, ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... chroniclers. Such a subject as Halil's strange career must irresistibly have appealed to an author who is nothing if not vivid and romantic, and ever delights in startling contrasts. On the other hand, the unique episode of Guel-Bejaze, "The White Rose," and her terrible experiences in the Seraglio are largely, if not entirely, of Jokai's own invention, and worthy, as told by him, of a place in The Thousand and ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... substantial, but of the same superior colours with the bulawan. They are made generally half a yard wide, and three yards long: these sell at Fas, from two to fifty dollars each. The superior kind made for the ladies of the horam[157], or emperor's seraglio, for the ladies of the bashaws, and for those of the great and opulent, are intermixed with a beautiful gold-thread, much superior to any that is manufactured in Europe, insomuch, that the gold-thread imported from Leghorn and Marseilles is used only in such hazams ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... decencies and forms. Thus you are incapable of estimating the public virtues and the public deficiencies of a brother or a son; and one reason why we have no Brutus, is because you have no Portia. Turkey has its seraglio for the person; but custom in Europe has also ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... they were none of these, and it was their characters that made the fate and doom of the situation. As for the court, Vergennes used an expression which suggests the very keyword of the situation. He had been ambassador in Turkey, and was fond of declaring that he had learnt in the seraglio how to brave the storms of Versailles. Versailles was like Stamboul or Teheran, oriental in etiquette, oriental in destruction of wealth and capital, oriental in antipathy to a reforming grand vizier. It was the Queen, as we now know by incontestable evidence, who persuaded the King to dismiss ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 8: France in the Eighteenth Century • John Morley
... "Faith! what a seraglio she has! But listen, gentlemen: you know that I am a Gascon; that they accuse us of exaggerating and ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... Mohammed Ali, to whom Mr. Salt recommended him. Mr. Baghos immediately prepared to introduce him to the Pasha, that he might come to some arrangement respecting the hydraulic machine, which he proposed to construct for watering the gardens of the seraglio. As they were proceeding toward the palace, through one of the principal streets of Cairo, a fanatical Mussulman struck Mr. Belzoni so fiercely on the leg with his staff, that it tore away a large piece of flesh. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... authority at Bagdad, he exercised as Leader of the Faithful—Emir al-Muminin—religious authority over all Mohammedans from Spain to India. At a later time the vizier arrogated all authority to himself, and the Caliph spent his time either in the mosque or in the seraglio.] ...
— The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela • Benjamin of Tudela
... when he read the lady's billet, assumed the dress of a Haji, gained access to the seraglio gardens on the presence that he was entrusted with a private message to the Princess Nighara from her father the Sultan, whom he had met on the road to Mecca, and carried the amorous young lady to his fortress of ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... mean time, M. De Legal's secretary set open all the doors of the inquisition, and released the prisoners, who amounted in the whole to 400; and among these were 60 beautiful young women, who appeared to form a seraglio for ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... 24, Mormondom threw up its first trenches in the valley of the Great Salt Lake, as that saline body was then known and recorded. In this salubrious region was planted the analogy of the harem of Mohammed, and the seraglio of Brigham became the center of the sensual system of the Latter-Day Saints. So blatant was the apostle Heber Kimball that he said he himself had enough wives to whip the ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan
... in the hie exchange at London. I saw also that vast stupendious building, the Louwre, which hath layd many kings in their graves and yet stands unfinished; give[54] all be brought to a close that is in their intentions I think the Grand Seigniours seraglio sall bear no proportion to it. All we saw of it was the extrinsecks, excepting only the king's comoedy house which the force of mony unlocked and cost open; which truly was a very pleasant sight, nothing to be sein their but that which by reason of gilding glittered like gold. But the thing that ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... find their food and clothing miraculously provided. No, nor can you, I am afraid, give me what all maids really, in their heart of hearts, desire far more than any sugar-candy Arcadia. Oh, as I have so often told you, Kit, I think you love no woman. You love words. And your seraglio is tenanted by very beautiful words, I grant you, though there is no longer any Sestos builded of agate and crystal, either, Kit Marlowe. For, as you may perceive, sir, I have read all that lovely poem you ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... German castle a woman whom the gazette of the capital described as the Electress Dowager of Hanover. This was the unfortunate Princess Sophia, the wife of George. Thirty-two years of melancholy captivity she had endured, while George was drinking and hoarding money and amusing himself with his seraglio of ugly women. She died protesting her innocence to the last. In the closing days of her illness, so runs the story, she gave into the hands of some one whom she could trust, a letter addressed to her husband, and obtained ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... could easily fill our biography with the pleasant passages which we have heard him relate as having happened to him at Constantinople, such as his having been taken up on suspicion of a design of penetrating the seraglio, etc.; but, with the deepest convincement of this gentleman's own veracity, we think that some of the stories are of that whimsical, and others of that romantic nature, which, however diverting, would be out of place in a narrative of this kind, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... Russ loves craft;—The Turk takes at once to the dagger;—the Russ begins by the snare; but when the matter presses, he will use the steel as readily as any Turk on earth. The ferocity of the Turk flourishes in the streets, in his own house, in the seraglio—every where that he has a victim within his reach, and that it pleases him to destroy that victim. The Russ knows something more of the law, and is by no means so domestic a cut-throat; but his mercy in the field or in the stormed city, is ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 401, November 28, 1829 • Various
... Irene stands at a short distance to the north-east of S. Sophia, in the first court of the Seraglio. Its identity has never been questioned, for the building was too much in the public eye and too near the centre of the ecclesiastical affairs of the city to render possible any mistake concerning its real character. It is always ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... sovereign. These wives were in many respects in the condition of slaves: in one particular they were especially so, namely, that on the death of a sovereign they descended, like any other property, to the heir, who added as many of them as he pleased to his own seraglio. Until this was done, the unfortunate women were shut up in close seclusion on the death of their lord, like mourners who retire from the world when suffering any ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Grey expressed the greatest anxiety that the Russian armament should arrive in time to arrest the progress of the Egyptians. They did arrive—at least the fleet did—and dropped anchor under the Seraglio. At this juncture arrived Admiral Roussin in a ship of war, and as Ambassador of France. He immediately informed the Sultan that the interposition of Russia was superfluous, that he would undertake to conclude a treaty, and to answer for the acquiescence of ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... presented himself before the sultan, who fancied he perceived a sort of intimacy between the young man and Zara, which excited his suspicion and jealousy. A letter, begging that Zara would meet him in a "secret passage" of the seraglio, fell into the sultan's hands, and confirmed his suspicions. Zara went to the rendezvous, where Osman met her and stabbed her to the heart. Nerestan was soon brought before him, and told him he had murdered his sister, and all he wanted of her was to tell her of the death ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... palace consisted of six large courts, surrounded by walls. The outside of the seraglio resembled a granary. The mosque is built in the same manner. I know not if the inside is any thing more agreeable, but there is nothing in its exterior to please the eye. The city is separated from the palace by masses of clay. The filth and bones of ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... Delphi, and a part of Thessaly, and was ruled by the family of Accaioli, plebeians of Florence (1384-1456). The last duke of this dynasty was strangled by Mahomet II., who educated his sons in the discipline of the seraglio. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... that made it possible to offer the patrons of the theater damaged goods under cover of the delights of luxury. So tricked out, it was displayed in the market, to the joy of old gentlemen and young women. And it all reeked of death and the seraglio. ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... gravest ministers were not too dignified to scramble,—even Akbhar must not detain us. Nor Aurengzebe, who made his marches, seated on a throne flashing with gold and rich brocades, and borne on the shoulders of men; while his princesses and favorite begums followed in all the pomp and glory of the seraglio, nestled in delicious pavilions curtained with massy silk, and mounted on the backs of stately elephants of Pegu ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... continued Mr. Brittle, "is an amazing delicate article, in the way of a jewel—a frog of Turkish agate for burning pastiles in, my Lady; just such as they use in the seraglio; and indeed this one I may call invaluable, for it was the favourite toy of one of the widowed Sultanas till she grew devout and gave up perfumes. One of her slaves disposed of it to my foreign partner. Here it opens at the tail, where you put in the pastiles, and closing it up, the vapour issues ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... though of that there is almost nothing which represents the great period of the sea-republic, except the fine, and in most parts well-conditioned walls. Here and there a double-arched window, with a bit of fine carving in the capitals, peeps out from the jutting uglinesses of seraglio windows, close latticed and mysterious; one or two fine doorways, neglected and battered as to their ornamentation, some coats of arms, three or four arched gateways, and as many fountains, are all that will catch the eye of the artist inside the walls, unless it be the port, with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... 62) says that he was stabbed in the back as he was bowing to the departing messenger, who had solemnly assured him of the Sultan's pardon and favour. His head was cut off, sent to Constantinople, and fixed on the grand gate of the Seraglio, with the sentence of death by its side. Recently fresh interest has been aroused in Ali by the publication of Mr. Bain's translation of Maurus Jokai's semi-historical novel 'Janicsarok vegnapjai', under the title of 'The ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... Shielding the house from storms, on the north, were the barns and the farm-yard. There stood the broad-wheeled wains and the antique ploughs and the harrows; There were the folds for the sheep; and there, in his feathered seraglio, Strutted the lordly turkey, and crowed the cock, with the selfsame Voice that in ages of old had startled the penitent Peter. Bursting with hay were the barns, themselves a village. In each one Far o'er ...
— The Children's Own Longfellow • Henry W. Longfellow
... to his Mistresse, is Not cosend nor forsworne to gett her favour, Bestowes no rings nor empties his Exchequer To appear still in new rich suites, but lives Free o' the stock of Nature, yet loves none. Like the great Turke he walkes in his Seraglio, And doth command which concubine best pleases; When he has done he falls to graze or sleepe, And makes as he had never knowne the Dun, White, ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... commenced their system with popular enthusiasm, and terminated it with general subjection. Napoleon and Louis Philippe are playing the same part as the Suleimans and the Mahmouds. The Chambers are but a second-rate Divan, the Prefects but inferior Pachas: a solitary being rules alike in the Seraglio and the Tuileries, and the whole nation bows to his despotism on condition that they have no ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... mercy all the mysteries of the public street. This contrivance, which enables you to see the world without being seen, certainly gives you a tempting advantage over the untimely caller or the impertinent creditor; but it encourages, in my opinion, a habit of vision better adapted to a sultan's seraglio than to the discreet eyes ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... ... 'tis a nature I love! I would there were more of thy proud and chilly temperament in Al- Kyris! ... Our men are like velvet-winged butterflies, drinking honey all day and drowsing in sunshine—full to the brows of folly,—frail and delicate as the little dancing maidens of the King's seraglio, . . nervous too, with weak heads, that art apt to ache on small provocation, and bodies that are apt to fail easily when but slightly fatigued. Aye!—thou art a man ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... entertaining and interesting and NEW books I ever read in my life—Tully's Residence in Tripoli, written by the sister of the consul, who resided there for ten years, spoke the language, and was admitted to a constant intercourse with the ladies of the seraglio, who are very different from any seraglio ladies we ever before heard of. No Arabian tale is equal in magnificence and entertainment; no tragedy superior in strength of interest to the tragedy recorded in the last ten pages of this incomparable book. Some people affect to disbelieve, and say ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... tarnished his glory by the most terrible and cruel murders, blasphemies, and licentiousness of every kind. His revenues were princely; but his prodigality was sufficient to render even an Emperor a bankrupt. Wherever he went he had in his suite a seraglio, a band of players, a company of musicians, a society of sorcerers and magicians, an almost incredible number of cooks, packs of dogs of various kinds, and above 200 led horses. Mezerai, an author of ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... before me for one twinkling of an eye. I am never out of thy heart. And I am contained in nothing but in thy heart, and in a heart like thy heart. And I am nearer unto thee than thou art to thyself." This prince had in his Golden Seraglio three ladies of surpassing beauty, and all four, in this royal monastery, passed their lives, and left the ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... of no principle, who six years earlier had kept a ballet-girl, and who now, thanks to his position, made himself a seraglio with the pretty wives of the under-clerks, and lived in the world of journalists and actresses, became devotedly attentive all the evening to Celestine, and was the ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... reaping would go on. The aristocracy are not the farmers who work the land, and raise the produce, but are the mere consumers of the rent; and when compared with the active world are the drones, a seraglio of males, who neither collect the honey nor form the hive, but exist only for ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... Mozart's career as an operatic composer. A few months later he quarreled with the archbishop, and the unpleasant connection came to an end. His second opera, "Die Entfuehrung aus dem Serail" ("The Elopement from the Seraglio"), was produced at Vienna July 16, 1782. This was his first opera in German. In August of this year he was married to Constance Weber, younger sister of her who had first enchanted him. The marriage was congenial in many ways, ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... real pleasure to the queen," says Madame Campan. "She, however, expressed some astonishment that a necklace made for the adornment of French women should be worn in the seraglio, and, thereupon, she talked to me a long time about the total change which took place in the tastes and desires of women in the period between twenty and thirty years of age. She told me that when she was ten years younger she loved diamonds madly, but that she had no ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... has called divine.—The compilers of the Bible have placed these songs after the book of Ecclesiastes; and the chronologists have affixed to them the aera of B.C. 1014, at which time Solomon, according to the same chronology, was nineteen years of age, and was then forming his seraglio of wives and concubines. The Bible-makers and the chronologists should have managed this matter a little better, and either have said nothing about the time, or chosen a time less inconsistent with the supposed divinity of those songs; ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... Present State of the Ottoman Empire. 1689. 8vo.—Ricault was secretary to the English Embassy at the Porte in 1661. The Mahometan religion, the seraglio, the maritime and land forces of Turkey are particularly noticed by him. An excellent translation into French, with most valuable notes, by Bespier, was published at Rouen, in 1677. 2 ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... place of pious visitation. According to the best authorities (no Christian being allowed to see them) the cloak given to the bard by Mohammed is still preserved together with the Khirkah or Sanjak Sherif ("Holy Coat" or Banner, the national oriflamme) at Stambul in the Upper Seraglio. (Pilgrimage, i. 213.) Many authors repeat this story of Mu'awiyah, the Caliph, and Ka'ab of the Burdah, but it is an evident anachronism, the poet having been dead nine years before the ruler's accession ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... tragedy of the seraglio, although the role of the hero is feeble, has virile qualities. The fury of Eastern passion, a love resembling hate, is represented in the Sultana Roxane. In the Vizier Acomat, deliberate in craft, intrepid in danger, Racine proved, as he proved by his ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... wanted my treasures and the seraglio my daughter. Death is easy, and I am ready for it; but I will not let my daughter go into the harem, nor myself be made a beggar. I determined to upset the calculations of my enemies and fly with my daughter and my property; but I could not go by sea, for the new galleys would ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... the red reflection tingeing the smoke from her stacks was visible. I watched her until she was lost in the moonlight, thinking all the while of those weighted sacks so often dropped overboard along the Bosporus and off Seraglio Point ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... is to say, be always fashionably drunk, despise the Tyranny of your Bed, and reign absolutely—keep a Seraglio of Women, and let my Bastard Issue inherit; be seen once a Quarter, or so, with you in the Park for Countenance, where we loll two several ways in the gilt Coach like ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... he expect it,' said Scythrop, 'when the whole thousand were locked up in his seraglio? His experience is no precedent for a free state of society like that ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... Boabdil the vizier, taking with him some of those foreign slaves of a seraglio, who know no sympathy with human passion outside its walls, bent his way to the palace of Muza, sorely puzzled and perplexed. He did not, however, like to venture upon the hazard of the alarm it might occasion throughout the neighbourhood, if he endeavoured, at so unseasonable ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that is it was an absolutism, marked by luxury, display, and taxation so heavy as to amount almost to oppression. Its luxuriousness and display are illustrated by his seraglio, which included seven hundred wives (1 Kings xi. 3); and its despotic nature is seen in such acts as his summary and severe punishment of Adonijah, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... particular districts or ladyships, after the manner of lordships in other parts, over which matrons of known abilities preside, and have, for the support of their age and infirmities, certain taxes paid out of the rewards for the amorous labours of the young. This seraglio of Great Britain is disposed into convenient alleys and apartments, and every house, from the cellar to the garret, inhabited by nymphs of different orders, that persons of every rank may be accommodated with ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... quarteroon girls, whose complexion hardly separates them from our own race, is most winningly graceful; and Esther, with abated breath, timidly asked my pardon for intruding, while she declared I had made so bitter an enemy of Unga-golah,—the head-woman of the seraglio,—that, in spite of danger, she stole to my quarters with a warning. Unga swore revenge. I had insulted and thwarted her; I was able to thwart her at all times, if I remained the Mongo's "book-man;"—I must soon "go to another country;" but, ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... Ottoman historians surname "the Drunkard"), was reported to be a half-imbecile wretch, devoid of either intelligence or enterprise. So Europe breathed more freely. But while the "Drunkard" idled in his seraglio by the Golden Horn, the old statesmen, generals, and admirals, whom Suleiman had formed, were still living, and Europe had lulled itself ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... wife, who, in the one hundred and second year of the Hegyra, sat upon the throne of Persia, had two sons, ALMORAN and HAMET, and they were twins. ALMORAN was the first born, but Solyman divided his affection equally between them: they were both lodged in the same part of the seraglio, both were attended by the same servants, and both received instructions from ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth
... well, Prexaspes. I know them—those Egyptian fillies! They need a hard curb and the lash at times. Beware the tyranny of your own harem. I would not have the satrapies know how certain bright eyes in the seraglio can make the son of Darius play the fool. There is nothing more dangerous than women. It will take all your courage to master them. A hard task lies before you. I have given you one wife, but you know our good ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... women and eunuchs within the palace, and the sanguinary feuds and excesses of the soldiery without. The Sultan Ibrahim, the only surviving brother and successor of Mourad, was in his twenty-fifth year at the time of his accession; but he had been closely immured in the seraglio from the moment of his birth; and the dulness of his temperament (to which he probably owed his escape from the bowstring, by which the lives of his three brothers had been terminated by order of Mourad) had never been improved by cultivation. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... is the most silly of all those which still survive among us. The Orientals take their brides without distressing themselves about the past and lock them up in order to be more certain about the future; the French put their daughters into a sort of seraglio defended by their mothers, by prejudice, and by religious ideas, and give the most complete liberty to their wives, thus showing themselves much more solicitous about a woman's past than about her future. ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... the morning, I was standing on deck; we made sail towards the mouth of the Bosphorus, skirting the walls of Constantinople. After half an hour's navigation through ships at anchor, we touched the walls of the seraglio, which prolongs those of the city, and form, at the extremity of the hill which supports the proud Stamboul, the angle which separates the sea of Marmora from the canal of the Bosphorus, and the harbour of the Golden ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... distasteful and clogging as abundance. What appetite would not be baffled to see three hundred women at its mercy, as the grand signor has in his seraglio? And, of his ancestors what fruition or taste of sport did he reserve to himself, who never went hawking without seven thousand falconers? And besides all this, I fancy that this lustre of grandeur brings with it no little disturbance and uneasiness upon the enjoyment ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... is widow of the late vizier, who was killed at Peterwaradin, though that ought rather to be called a contract than a marriage, since she never has lived with him; however, the greatest part of his wealth is hers. He had the permission of visiting her in the seraglio; and, being one of the handsomest men in the empire, had very much engaged her affections.—When she saw this second husband, who is at least fifty, she could not forbear bursting into tears. He is indeed a man of merit, and the declared favourite of the sultan, ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... AGHA, a word, said to be of Tatar origin, signifying a dignitary or lord. Among the Turks it is applied to the chief of the janissaries, to the commanders of the artillery, cavalry and infantry, and to the eunuchs in charge of the seraglio. It is also employed generally as a term of respect in addressing wealthy men of leisure, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... capable of assisting him to kill the time, and who, even when the state was brought by maladministration to the depths of humiliation and to the brink of ruin, could still exclude unwelcome truth from the purlieus of his own seraglio, and refuse to see and hear whatever might disturb his luxurious repose. Later in life, the ill-bred familiarity of the Scottish divines had given him a distaste for Presbyterian discipline, while ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... four o'clock, I set out for the seraglio with Dr Teriano, the Vizier's physician, and the Vizier's Italian secretary. The gate of the palace was not unlike the entrance to some of the closes in Edinburgh, and the court within reminded me of Smithfield, in ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... defenceless wives and daughters. It was on this occasion that Alexander the Sixth's son, the infamous Caesar Borgia, selected forty of the most beautiful from the principal ladies of the place, and sent them back to Rome to swell the complement of his seraglio. The dreadful doom of Capua intimidated further resistance, but inspired such detestation of the French throughout the country, as proved of infinite prejudice to their cause in their subsequent struggle with the ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... which preyed upon his mind more than his defeat beneath the Oaks: a figure, on the crude stage of a country tavern; in the manor window, with an aureole around her from the sinking sun; in the grand stand at the races, the gay dandies singling her out in all that seraglio of beauty. ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... appetite in every species of luxury and voluptuousness) where a plurality of wives are to be found. Every great officer of state has his haram consisting of six, eight, or ten women, according to his circumstances and his inclination for the sex. Every merchant also of Canton has his seraglio; but a poor man finds one wife quite sufficient for all his wants, and the children of one woman as many, and sometimes more, than ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow |
