"Somnambulist" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dragged to that point by the current of the rout, had just dismounted, had passed the bridle of his horse over his arm, and with wild eye was returning alone to Waterloo. It was Napoleon, the immense somnambulist of this dream which had crumbled, essaying once more ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... pale complexion, with his black hair flowing over his shoulders, and with a sort of pea-coloured swaddling-cloth thrown round him. In his hand he held a long military musket, and he dashed along on the tips of his slippers with the air of a somnambulist and with the nimbleness of a tiger. At intervals a detonation could ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... horror seized and almost paralyzed her, blanching her face and turning her to stone. As he led her along the street, she staggered from the numbness that possessed her, and her eyes stared blankly, like those of a somnambulist. When she had been ushered into a room where several policemen were lounging and smoking, the intolerable sense of shame and indignation shook off ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... to be faithful to the wives who love them, were it only on account of the perpetual miracles wrought by true love in the sublime regions of the spiritual world. The woman who loves is, in relation to the man she loves, in the position of a somnambulist to whom the magnetizer should give the painful power, when she ceases to be the mirror of the world, of being conscious as a woman of what she has seen as a somnambulist. Passion raises the nervous tension of a woman to the ecstatic pitch at which ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... was made by chance. One day he had magnetised his gardener; and observing him to fall into a deep sleep, it occurred to him that he would address a question to him, as he would have done to a natural somnambulist. He did so, and the man replied with much clearness and precision. M. de Puysegur was agreeably surprised: he continued his experiments, and found that, in this state of magnetic somnambulism, the soul of the sleeper was enlarged, and brought into more intimate communion ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... dampness and foul air, ascended four flights of dark stone steps, and stopped before a small brown door. The card nailed upon it was like the one he had in his pocket-book. The name was 'Giuditta Astarita,' and under it, in another character, was printed the word 'Somnambulist.' ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... Several deputies rush at the general, and fiercely shake him by the collar. He turns faint with excitement and chagrin; but Lefebvre and a few grenadiers rushing up drag him from the hall. He comes forth like a somnambulist (says an onlooker), pursued by the terrible cry, "Hors la loi!" Had the cries at once taken form in a decree, the history of the world might have been different. One of the deputies, General Augereau, fiercely demands that the motion of outlawry be put to the vote. Lucien ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... suppressed, in his final edition, is the Latin translation of 'The Somnambulist' by his son. This will be republished, more especially as it was included by Wordsworth himself in the second ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... making all the inanimate things which, on the spoken stage, cannot act at all, the leading actors in the films. But they need not necessarily act to a diabolical end. An angel could have as well been brought from the cabinet as a murderous somnambulist, and every act of his could have been a work of beneficence and health and healing. I could not help but think that the ancient miracle play of the resurrection of Osiris could have been acted out with similar simple means, with a mummy case and great sarcophagus. The wings of Isis and Nephthys ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... in the morning, as accompanied by the waiter, who, like others of his tribe, had become a kind of somnambulist ex-officio, I wended my way up one flight of stairs, and down another, along a narrow corridor, down two steps, through an antechamber, and into another corridor, to No. 82, my habitation for the night. Why I should ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... are referring to your mother, and are haunted by an idea that through some hereditary taint you might be a somnambulist and have done these things in your sleep. Come, Charles Rambert, finish your breakfast and put all that out of your head. To begin with, you would not have been strong enough, even then; and in the next place there is nothing at present to show that you are mad, ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... limousine with the furtive eagerness of a woman escaping from monotony into a secret world. She drove home with feverish cheeks, and when her husband spoke to her she gave him the blank stare of a somnambulist. ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... hypnotized. What is called hypnotic suggestion is nothing but the artificial selection of one idea to the exclusion of all others, so that it passes into action. Natural somnambulism similarly exhibits the force of ideas; whatever idea is conceived by the somnambulist, he carries into action. The kind of dream in which children often live is not without analogy to somnambulism. The fixed idea is another instance of the same phenomenon, which is produced in the waking state, and which, when exaggerated, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... precise observation, whether trained or natural, the visions of a seer and apparitions of such vividness that he himself is deceived by them. By virtue of this faculty of second sight, of intuitions like those of a somnambulist, he sees farther into the supernatural world than any one else whatever. The life that he perceives in dream has a certain accent of the other world, which makes real life seem pale and almost cold. Look at his "Portrait of a Woman in the Louvre," two ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... me, And Night is above the night. The sea is beside me soughing, or is still. The earth as a somnambulist moves on In a strange sleep ... A sea-bird cries. And the cry wakes in me Dim, dead sea-folk, my sires— Who more than myself are me. Who sat on their beach long nights ago and saw The sea in its silence; And cursed it or implored: Or with the Cross defied; ...
— Nirvana Days • Cale Young Rice
... but, turning around unexpectedly, remained as she was with her mouth open. Looking in the direction of her gaze, Jennka had to wring her hands. In the doorway stood Liubka, grown thin, with dark rings under her eyes, and, just like a somnambulist, was searching with her hand for the door-knob, as ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... confessed impostor; but Joan of Arc might have been the reality which the Nun attempted to counterfeit; and the history of the true heroine might have suggested easily to the imitator the outline of her part. A revolution had been effected in Europe by a somnambulist peasant girl; another peasant girl, a somnambulist also, might have seen in the achievement which had been already accomplished, an earnest of what might be done by herself. While we call the Nun, too, an impostor, we are bound to believe that she first imposed upon herself, and that her wildest ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... in the lexicon of such characters) in the Bois, where the fashionable young men of the day began to remark her. In fact, before long Malaga was very much talked about in the questionable world of equivocal women, who presently attacked her good fortune by calumnies. They said she was a somnambulist, and the Pole was a magnetizer who was using her to discover the philosopher's stone. Some even more envenomed scandals drove her to a curiosity that was greater than Psyche's. She reported ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac
... into a kind of dreary, inanimate stupor, which resembled that of the somnambulist whom the magnetiser forgets to waken. Hitherto, with all the eccentricities or deficiencies of her mind, had mingled a wild and airy gaiety. That was vanished. She spoke little—she never played—no toys could lure her—even the poor dog failed ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... not without great difficulty that he climbed the stone steps, and when he reached the level ground of the quai at the summit he walked very slowly, supported by his companion's arm, with the shuffling gait of a somnambulist. The day had not dawned yet, but the reflected light from the burning buildings cast a lurid illumination on the wide Place. They made their way in silence across its deep solitude, sick at heart to behold the mournful scene of ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... been Mr. Pike's profundity of passion, that he paused like a somnambulist, actually rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand, and seemed ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... have to be present at all the stages of the inquiry as to the cause of death. He did so after the fashion of a somnambulist, in a hallucination which showed him things and human beings in a sort of dream, in a cloud of intoxication, in that dubious sense of unreality which perplexes the mind at the ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... they are angry with any one woman in particular. But his exhibition must go on in spite of wretchedness; and he went about mechanically, talking of curtains and candles, and music, and attitudes, and pauses, and emphasis, looking like a somnambulist whose "eyes are open but their sense is shut," and often surprising those concerned by the utter ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... overcome by astonishment and fear, in front of the transparent crystal bottle! I looked at it with fixed eyes, trying to conjecture, and my hands trembled! Somebody had drunk the water, but who? I? I without any doubt. It could surely only be I? In that case I was a somnambulist. I lived, without knowing it, that double mysterious life which makes us doubt whether there are not two beings in us, or whether a strange, unknowable and invisible being does not at such moments, when our soul is in a state of torpor, animate our captive body which obeys ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... was still dazed and bewildered, and still imagined herself with the companion of her trance. The strange lucidity of the somnambulist still hung over her brain and mind, though outwardly she appeared ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... river. The draughts were a nuisance. This was owing to windows facing each other being left open, and as a result articles of clothing disappeared so mysteriously that we thought there must be a thief or a somnambulist on board. The third or fourth day, however, going into the saloon unexpectedly, I caught my straw hat disappearing on the wings of the wind. When last seen it was on its way to Maidenhead, bowling along at the rate of several miles an hour. So we thought ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... after Harry had driven a stake to mark the place which the somnambulist had pointed out as indicating ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... A glance sufficed to show to myself, at least, that he was in a state of tense nervous excitation, similar to that of a subject of mesmerism. A preternatural power seemed to possess him. He moved and spoke like a somnambulist, with the same insulation from surrounding minds and superiority to material obstacles. I had long known him as a brave officer; but here was something more than bravery, more than the fierce energy of the hour. His mien, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Sinton put on his great-coat—the identical one he used to wear before he went away—and his hat and his gloves, and walked out into the crowded streets of London, with feelings somewhat akin, probably, to those of a somnambulist. Having been so long accustomed to the free-and-easy costume of the mines, Ned felt about as uncomfortable and stiff as a warrior of old must have felt when armed cap-a-pie. His stalwart frame was some what ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... stooped low, stood up again and came towards him. From behind an unseen hand closed the panel. She came to him with her arms outstretched and all the wonderful things of life and love in her shining eyes. That faint touch of the somnambulist had passed. She came to him as she had never come before. She was a very real and ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... roughly: but I assure you it was for your good, as people always tell their friends when they do the most disagreeable things imaginable. Forgive me, and I will let you dream in peace. You will, however, allow me to watch by you, whilst you sleep; and, my dear somnambulist, I may just take care that you do not knock your head against a post, ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... regret not only that men have 'no religion,' but that they have next to no reflection: and go about with heads full of mere extraneous noises, with eyes wide-open but visionless,—for most part in the somnambulist state! ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... times of emotional stress. The description of a sleepwalker digging a grave—a picture which captivated Shelley's imagination—is the starting-point of the book. Edgar Huntly is impelled by curiosity to track him down. The somnambulist, Clithero, has, in self-defence, killed the twin-brother of his patron, Mrs, Lorimer, to whom he is deeply attached. Obsessed by the idea of the misery his deed will arouse in her mind, he attempts, in a moment of frenzy, ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... by name. The gate leading into the garden was open; I arose without replying and entered it, I stopped before a plot of grass in the centre of the garden; I was walking like a somnambulist, without knowing ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... not to be moved, I once more threw myself on the lounge. I did not sleep; but, like a somnambulist, only dozed now and then; starting from my dreams; while Harry sat, with his hat on, at the table; the brandy before him; from which he occasionally poured into his glass. Instead of exciting him, however, to my amazement, the spirits seemed to soothe him ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... not reciprocally exclusive terms, and Monsieur Pitres has established the fact that a subject who sleeps may still simulate." Messieurs Binet and Fere in their book speak of "the honest Hublier, whom his somnambulist Emelie cheated for four ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... hour. No one had shouted orders at him, he had not been slapped with the ends of the reins, no whip had been cracked in his vicinity. He had been permitted to amble and to walk and had availed himself of the permission. For the most recent mile he had been, practically, a somnambulist. Now out of his dreams, whatever they may have been, came this howling terror. He jumped and snorted. Then the wind, tearing a prickly dead branch from a scrub oak by the roadside, cast it full into his dignified countenance. ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... attack, less than women in a retreat, the finest cavalry Europe had ever seen was flying like sand before the wind: but the somnambulist rode on in his sleep, forgetting that on these vast and billowing fields twenty-six thousand gallant French heroes had died for the sake of ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... floundered a moment, as is usual with an absent man who is recovering the train of his ideas, or a somnambulist when he is suddenly awakened, and ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... about the time when history relates that the fight was over. I do not know whose colors I wore—the Benician's, or those of the Irish champion; nor remember where the fight took place, which, indeed, no somnambulist is bound to recollect. Ought Mr. Sayers to be honored for being brave, or punished for being naughty? By the shade of Brutus the elder, I ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... love with Amina the somnambulist. Amina being found in the bedroom of Conte Rodolfo the day before her wedding, induces Elvino to break off the match and promise marriage to Lisa; but as the truth of the matter breaks upon him, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... reading the marquis's letter, to prepare the way for vengeance just as she had lately been preparing all for love, she was in that stage of mental intoxication which makes real life like the life of a somnambulist. But when she saw her house surrounded, by her own orders, with a triple line of bayonets a sudden flash of light illuminated her soul. She judged her conduct and saw with horror that she had committed a crime. Under the first shock of this conviction ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... of blood is said still to be practised in parts of Russia by parents "to preserve their child from the temptations of the prince of darkness," and in 1874, "a country-school teacher of the Strassburg district, and his wife, upon the advice of a somnambulist, struck their own aunt with the fire-tongs until the blood flowed, with which they sprinkled their child supposed to have been bewitched by her" (361. 73). Here it is the blood of adults that is used, but the practice demands ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... nothing but juggling. 3d. Because commissions will not commonly do any work. The first ground is not correct: M. FOISSAC, a physician of Paris, has invited our attention to it, and offered to subject a magnetic somnambulist to its exploration; and very reputable physicians, members of the Academy, MM. ROSTAN, (the ramollissement man, is his head soft too?) and GEORGET, have in their recent publications called the attention ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... When the somnambulist's deliberate progress toward the mouth of the well continued he called her name softly. "Dona Isabel!" Then he repeated it louder. ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... student, she took the gold medal for her 'Portrait of a Russian Peasant.' She then abandoned painting for sculpture, and one month later gained the highest commendations for a bust of 'Ariadne.' She then began to study the plastic art from life. Dissatisfied with herself, although her 'Somnambulist' gained a prize, Miss Ries left Moscow for Paris, but on her way stayed in Vienna, studying under Professor Hellmer. One year later, at the Vienna Spring Exhibition, she exhibited her 'Die Hexe.' Here is no traditional witch, though the broomstick on which she will ride through the air is ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... mere invention. In the 'Edgar Huntley' of Charles Brockden Brown the veil of doubt skilfully shrouds the unsuspected and the unsuspecting murderer who did the evil deed in his sleep—anticipating the somnambulist hero of Wilkie ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... Jones was a very old friend of his. He was rather seriously affected. He must have, in an unconscious state of mind like a somnambulist, carried the dead body of Smith to his own house without being detected in the act. Then his own fevered imagination endowed Smith with the faculty of speech, dead though the latter was; and in a moment of—well—call it temporary insanity, if you please—he inflicted the wound ...
— Indian Ghost Stories - Second Edition • S. Mukerji
... had been suddenly dragged into consciousness out of a bad dream, and stood for a second like a half-awakened somnambulist. ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... madame, like a somnambulist. She was to leave me to sleep alone that night. I had lost the talismanic pin I always stuck in the bolster of my bed. Uncle Silas sent up spiced claret in a little silver flagon. Madame abstractedly drank ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... its nakedness and beauty. This must be done, even though it may sometimes give pain and cause irritation. If a man be walking in a trance towards the crumbling edge of some ghastly precipice, who—let me ask—acts with the greater charity, he who is afraid to interfere, and will calmly allow the somnambulist to walk on, till he fall over into the abyss; or he who will shout, and, if need be, roughly shake him from his fatal sleep, and so, perhaps, save him from destruction? Surely, to allow a fellow-creature to ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... 14 years. At one time she was in a public hospital for three weeks on account of this. It was stated that this was chorea, but of course we can not be sure on this point. Annie was always regarded as a very nervous child; she was frequently a somnambulist until she was about 12. She is very nervous before the onset of menstruation. Of recent years she has been an excessive user of tea— at times before we first saw her she is said to have had 12 cups of tea in a day. At times she was then suffering from sleeplessness, and was wont to ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... the hour was, got together a number of their watches, for the purpose of comparing them, as it would seem. Among them was a repeater, belonging to our young Marylander. He happened to wake up while the somnambulist was in his chamber, and, not knowing his infirmity, caught hold of him and gave him a dreadful shaking, after which he tied his hands and feet, and then went to sleep till morning, when he introduced him to a gentleman used to taking care of such ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... Jeanne d'Arc at Valcouleurs a battle at Rouvray, a hundred leagues away, does not communicate any lofty philosophic truths.[14] The phenomena of clairvoyance, in Hegel's opinion, merely indicate that the 'material' is really 'ideal,' which, perhaps, is as much as we can ask from them. 'The somnambulist and clairvoyant see without eyes, and carry their visions directly into regions where the waiting consciousness of orderly intelligence cannot enter' (Wallace). Hegel admits, however, that 'in ordinary ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... away. Your uncle was the first to speak. He said to your aunt, 'God bless my soul, Dahlia, what are you doing here?' To which she replied, 'Well, if it comes to that, my merry somnambulist, what are you?' Your uncle then said that he thought there must be burglars in the house, as he ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... three levels of sleep into which Mrs. Smiley seemed to lower herself at will, or upon the suggestion of those in the circle. I had adopted the theory that in the lighter trance she spoke unconsciously and wrote automatically. In the second, and deeper, trance she became the somnambulist possessed of diabolic cleverness, when, with the higher senses in abeyance, she was able to deceive and to elude all detection. In the third, or death-like, trance, I was ready to admit, for the sake of argument, that she was able, as De ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... more letters! As in the time of the siege, if you desire to obtain news of your mother or your wife, you have no other alternative than to consult a somnambulist or a fortune-teller. This is not at all a complicated operation; of course you possess a ribbon or a look of hair, something appertaining to the absent person. This suffices to keep you informed, hour by hour, of what she says, does, and thinks. Perhaps ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... blotted out or perverted; he could not conceive of it otherwise than as corresponding with her outward symmetry. To his thought it slumbered, as her form might repose upon her couch, in a death-like trance. She went and came among them like a somnambulist, guided by unconscious ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... Sue in the days when her intellect scintillated like a star, that the world resembled a stanza or melody composed in a dream; it was wonderfully excellent to the half-aroused intelligence, but hopelessly absurd at the full waking; that the first cause worked automatically like a somnambulist, and not reflectively like a sage; that at the framing of the terrestrial conditions there seemed never to have been contemplated such a development of emotional perceptiveness among the creatures subject to those conditions as ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... life had reached its goal at the point where he was too tired and broken-hearted to think. He could hardly be said to "live" any longer, and his existence was scarcely more than a vegetation. Like a somnambulist, he received upon the pupils of his eye impressions which did not awaken a response in ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... mother assured him that I was a somnambulist and not responsible for what I did at such a time. Then we had a ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... writes, "can surely not be re-established in its former religious significance, for the system upon which it rests has slept away three centuries of history; and it is of no use that this man or that man yet pretends to believe in the somnambulist. But the church has also a civic significance as an integral part of the social order of humanity. If you abandon that to the spirit of laxity and drowsiness, I can see no reason why the clergy and the whole religious apparatus should ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... veiled in the dark clouds of Waterloo, and Napoleon the Great, uncrowned, unthroned, and stunned by the dreadful shock that annihilated the Grand Army and the Old Guard, "wandered aimlessly about on the lost field," in the gloom that palled a fallen empire, as Hugo describes him, "the somnambulist of a ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... monastery, it is most likely that all the enormous quantity which they must have made in the course of some two centuries is still upon the premises, if one could only lay one's hands upon it. So reasonable did this seem, that about two years ago it was resolved to call in a somnambulist or clairvoyant from Turin, who, when he arrived at the spot, became seized with convulsions, betokening of course that there was treasure not far off: these convulsions increased till he reached the choir of the chapel, and here he ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... had so exhausted and worn out this actor in it, that he had become a mere somnambulist. He was too tired to rest in his sleep, until he was even tired out of being too tired, and dropped into oblivion. Late in the afternoon he awoke, and in some anxiety sent round to Eugene's lodging hard by, to inquire if ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... old he lived alone high above a busy part of the town. He was a recluse. His black hair that fell in a slant across his forehead and the rigidity of his eyes gave him the appearance of a somnambulist. He found life unnecessary and submitted to it ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... moved through on horseback! The Dutchmen, the "fraus," the "spreading," the sauer-kraut—the conestogas, the red barns, the guttural voices, the strange faces—were these actual things, or the mere fancies of a somnambulist? Was I an officer of real cavalry making a real march; or a fanciful being, one of a ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... pages of my books, now already growing old, I receive the impression that, like a somnambulist, I have frequently been walking close to the cornice of a roof, entirely unconsciously, but in imminent danger of falling off; again, it seems to me that I have been travelling paths beset with thorns, which have played havoc ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... Seco, sectum cut secant, dissect Sedeo, sessum sit supersede, obsession Sentio, sensum feel presentiment, consensus Sequor, secutus follow sequence, persecute, ensue Signum sign insignia, designate *Solus alone solitude, desolate Solvo, solutum loosen solvent, dissolute *Somnus sleep somnambulist, insomnia *Sono sound consonant, resonance *Sors, sortis lot sort, assortment Specio, spectum look despicable, suspect Spiro, spiratum breathe perspire, conspiracy *Spondeo, sponsum promise respond, espouse Sto, steti, statum stand constant, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... have been after midnight, for the fire was out—I was roused from sleep by Ed, who was moving about the shed. I thought at first that he was walking in his sleep,—for he was a somnambulist,—and gave him a shake. ...
— The Youth's Companion - Volume LII, Number 11, Thursday, March 13, 1879 • Various
... remember, Mr. Paynter, that day you first lunched here and told us about the African trees? Well, it was my birthday; I mean my first birthday. I was born then, or woke up or something. I had walked in this garden like a somnambulist in the sun. I think there are many such somnambulists in our set and our society; stunned with health, drugged with good manners, fitting their surroundings too well to be alive. Well, I came alive somehow; and you know how deep in us ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... like an earthenware pitcher. Great drops hung from his chin, from his uptilted nose, and his cotton shirt was dark. Slim Simpson, white before, was like a corpse; only his great boyish eyes stared out, as a somnambulist stares, as one hypnotised. Last of all, at the end of the line was the stranger from the East, representative of another world. Piteous, horrible, the others had been; but he—but for his clothes, his most intimate friend would ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... Fontaine, or again, perhaps it is some half-idiotic negress, some herdsman living among his cattle, who receives the gift of vision; some Hindoo fakir, seated by a pagoda, mortifying the flesh till the spirit gains the mysterious power of the somnambulist. ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... slept more comfortably in any room in his life, or more peacefully, he said; he was seldom conscious of even so much as awakening once. Of course, when he said this, Eileen and her father could only open their eyes, and come to the conclusion that the poor young knight was a somnambulist, and afflicted with the habit of running and leaping ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Mrs. Molesworth
... tells us, came home thin and puny, like a somnambulist sleeping with open eyes, and his grandmother groaned over the strain of modern education. At first he heard hardly any of the questions that were put to him, and his mother was obliged to disturb him in reveries, and to insist on his taking part in games with the ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... you are a somnambulist, portends that you will unwittingly consent to some agreement of plans which will bring you anxiety or ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... there they showed the effect of the heat. One man, collarless, with waistcoat unbuttoned, and hat set far back from his forehead, waved a fan before his death-white flabby face, and set down one foot after the other with the heaviness of a somnambulist. Another, as they passed him, was saying huskily to the friend at his side, "I can't stand this much longer. My hands tingle as if they had gone to sleep; my heart—" But still the multitude hurried on, passing, repassing, encountering, evading, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... "We found a somnambulist, too," said Jim, "Rob Roy McGregor. We tied him up at the roadside, in case he might wake up and ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... tarrying in Broad Street or on the castle square. Many a time Gabriel cast a look of questioning entreaty upon Rebecca, but she saw it not; she seemed to see nothing whatever, for her eyes were gazing afar off; like a somnambulist, she strode along, and even when the baby in her arms began to cry she took no notice of it, nor sought to comfort it with tender, soothing words. At last they had passed the gate behind the willow bank, and found themselves without the ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... emotions which he could neither control nor analyze,—and though he felt himself fully alive,—alive to his very finger-tips, he was ever and anon aware of a curious sensation like that experienced by a suddenly startled somnambulist, who, just on the point of awaking, hesitates reluctantly on the threshold of dreamland, unwilling to leave one realm of shadows for another more seeming true, yet equally transient. Entangled in perplexed reveries he scarcely noticed the brilliant crowds of people ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... straw-bottomed chairs, knitting black wool. The slim one got up and walked straight at me—still knitting with downcast eyes—and only just as I began to think of getting out of her way, as you would for a somnambulist, stood still, and looked up. Her dress was as plain as an umbrella-cover, and she turned round without a word and preceded me into a waiting-room. I gave my name, and looked about. Deal table in the middle, plain chairs all round the walls, on one end a large shining map, ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... rushed forward, and, kneeling beside the prostrate figure, discovered that, unearthly as was the scream which had preceded her fall, it was the Lady Alice. I saw the fact in a moment: the Lady Alice was a somnambulist. Startled by the noise of my advance, she had awaked; and the usual terror and fainting had followed. She was cold and motionless as death. What was to be done? If I called, the probability was that no one would hear ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... to ask Uncle Dozie to accompany her home; and as he was no somnambulist, with all his napping, he carried his niece safely ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... Frankfurt-on-the-Main, and consequently spoke at once of the Jews, declared that they had lost all feeling for the beautiful and noble, and that they sold English goods twenty-five per cent. under manufacturers' prices. A fancy to humbug him came over me, and I told him that I was a somnambulist, and must beforehand beg his pardon should I unwittingly disturb his slumbers. This intelligence, as he confessed the following day, prevented him from sleeping a wink through the whole night, especially since the idea ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... was to be lost; his life depended upon instant action. And yet, comprehending this, he went to work slowly, and as a somnambulist might, acting almost by instinct, and well knowing that a blunder ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... up during the night in a state of somnambulism, taking pen, ink, and paper, and composing and writing sermons. When he had finished a page he would read aloud what he had written and correct it. In order to ascertain whether the somnambulist made any use of his eyes the Archbishop held a piece of cardboard under his chin to prevent his seeing the paper upon which he was writing. He continued to write without being in the slightest degree incommoded. In this state he also copied out pieces of music, and ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... But they had a Satan. They had also the expectation of a saviour, belief in whom could alone have consoled for the advent of Pizarro. Over what highways of sea or sky, the living Word, which Ormuzd spoke, reached them, there has been no somnambulist of history to divine. But in the splendour that Cuzco was, in the golden temples of the town of gold, along the scarlet lanes where sacred peacocks strolled and girls more sacred still—vestals whom Pizarro's soldiers raped—in that City of the Sun, the ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... gone with her to the fair at Saint Cloud, and went into three shows, deafened by the noise of the organs, the whistling of the machinery of the round-abouts, and the hubbub of the crowd that came and went among the booths that were illuminated by paraffin lamps. As they were passing in front of a somnambulist's van, Monsieur de Fontrailles stopped and ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... believe that he had not himself suspected the strength of his passion; and the sole resource for him, as I said often, was to quit the city—to engage in active pursuits of enterprise, of ambition, or of science. But he heard me as a somnambulist might have heard me—dreaming with his eyes open. Sometimes he had fits of reverie, starting, fearful, agitated; sometimes he broke out into maniacal movements of wrath, invoking some absent person, praying, beseeching, menacing ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... (Die Mystischen Erscheinungen der Menschlichen Natur) of Catherine Emmerich, the somnambulist nun, who, when dying, saw again the whole of her past life, would incline one to think that this strange phenomenon, which traditional Catholicism appears to have called the "Private Judgment," and which theosophy defines with greater preciseness, is not limited ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... have grown to be a hundred; his cold hand falls freezingly upon them; five francs replace the hundred he took away—"Whizz!" goes the ball; "click!" stops the ball; the coupeur seizes Mr. Risque's five francs, and Mr. Risque walks away like a somnambulist. ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... a somnambulist than a wakeful man, pulled out the large canvas bag he carried by way of a ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... slumber was so deep and absorbing that a fascinating repose seemed to pass contagiously from her to him as he gazed upon her; and he started as if from a dream, when the lady moved, and, without opening her eyes, rose, and passed from the room with the gait of a somnambulist. ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... seemed to her like a far-off dream, or as if dimly seen in the background of a sleeping memory. The past lay behind her, as if she had traversed it, covered with a veil like one in a swoon, or with the unconsciousness of a somnambulist. It was the first time that she had experienced the feeling, the impression, at once bitter and sweet, violent and celestial, of the game of life brilliant in its plenitude, its regularity ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... place. We put our books there, and used practically to live there for weeks together. That was just after I came into the place, before I went abroad. Alice was sixteen. I can see her now sitting in the doorway of the little house, hour after hour, staring into the woods like a somnambulist, one arm behind her head. One day I said to her: "Alice, what are you thinking of?" "Myself!" she said. So then I laughed at her, and teased her. And she answered quite quietly, "I know it is a ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a fall is not apt to hurt a somnambulist, for the reason that in sleep the muscles are entirely relaxed; but the jar woke Kitty, and she found herself, clad only in her little white nightgown, lying in the midst ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells
... shudder; "for know you not that the sleep-walkers awake out of their dreams when they are called by name? I am a somnambulist, who, with smiling courage, moves along a dizzy height; call me by name, and I shall awake, and, shuddering, plunge into the abyss beneath. Ah, Henry, I hate my name, for it is pronounced by other lips than yours. For ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... on me, I was in a complete maze. It was not till yesterday, when I was alone again, after having gone over my defence with Mr. Bramshaw, and shown what I could prove, that I saw exactly how it must have been, as clear as a somnambulist. I sometimes could fancy I had seen Sam listening at the window, and have to struggle not to think I knew him under ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... right hand in Victoire's left, and, with her lids closed uninterruptedly, her cheeks a little red, her lips quivering, the somnambulist, after some rambling ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... clandestine meetings, whispered conferences and the like, within the first week of the lovely niece's coming to Fort Frayne. That notes had been fetched and carried by "Crappo" as well as Pete; that Miss Flower was either a somnambulist or a good imitation of one, as on two occasions the maid had "peeked" and seen her down-stairs at the back door in the dead hours of the night, or the very early morning. That was when she first came. Then, since the recapture, ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... then, like some somnambulist suddenly interfered with, vacantly stared at his visitor, and ended by looking down on the deck. He maintained this posture so long, that Captain Delano, almost equally disconcerted, and involuntarily almost as rude, turned suddenly from him, walking forward ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... house-steward, and was on the point of addressing him and inquiring what he wanted so late at night, when he was arrested by an icy shiver; there was something so unearthly and ghost-like in the old man's manner and bearing as well as in his set, pallid face. He perceived that he was in presence of a somnambulist. Crossing the hall obliquely with measured strides, the old man went straight to the walled-up postern that had formerly led to the tower. He came to a halt immediately in front of it, and uttered a wailing sound that seemed ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... room close behind the somnambulist. It is sometimes possible to question a person in that condition, and to learn what he would not disclose ...
— The Crime of the French Cafe and Other Stories • Nicholas Carter
... mouth,—and shut it. A marked change took place in the expression of his countenance. His eyes became fixed and staring,—resembling the glassy orbs of the somnambulist. For a moment I feared that he was going to give me an object lesson in the 'visitations' of which I had heard so much. I rose, with a view of offering him ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... should say she is! Why she married a somnambulist, who gets up in his sleep every morning ...
— The New Pun Book • Thomas A. Brown and Thomas Joseph Carey
... to me. At school, at Oxford, in society, I had sought distinction without misgiving, and attained it without difficulty. My one dearest object I deemed secure long before I opened my lips and asked expressly for it. I think I walked through life at that time like a somnambulist; for I have since seen that I must have been piling mistake upon mistake until out of a chaos of meaningless words and smiles I had woven a Paphian love temple. At the first menace of disappointment—a thing as new and horrible to me as death—I fled the country. I came back with only ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... to be present at the inquiry as to the cause of death. He did so like a somnambulist, in a kind of vision which showed him men and things as in a dream, in a cloud of intoxication, with that sense of unreality which perplexes the mind at the time ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... beds, but were suffocated without a cry. From the first an instinctive idea of the hopelessness of combating the conflagration possessed them all; to a blind, automatic feeling to flee the building was added the slow mechanism of the somnambulist; delicate women walked speechlessly, but securely, along ledges and roofs from which they would have fallen by the mere light of reason and of day. There was no crowding or impeding haste in their dumb exodus. It was only when Mrs. Barker awoke disheveled in the courtyard, and with an hysterical ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... Like a somnambulist aroused from her sleep Natasha went out of the room and, returning to her hut, fell sobbing ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... same object, which in Marat was grand, and in Louis Bonaparte is little; the man who kills, who transports, who banishes, who expels, who proscribes, who despoils; this man with harassed gesture and glassy eye, who walks with distracted air amid the horrible things he does, like a sort of sinister somnambulist. ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... of apprehension—an unearthly dread fell upon me. Like one subject to the power of magic, I had to go on—on—in the track of the spectre-like somnambulist. For that was what I took my master to be, notwithstanding that it was not the time of full moon, when this visitation is wont to attack the sleeper. Finally Cardillac disappeared into the deep shade on the side of the street. By a sort of ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... he actually began to measure it! Miss Du Page saw no more. Hurriedly closing her door, she locked and bolted it, firmly convinced that Gabriel Lane was harboring in the guise of Uncle Sylvester a somnambulist, a maniac, ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... pest, though it rages about them. They bear a charmed life, and think not of destruction until it touches their idol, and then they die without a pang, like zealots for their persecuted creed. A man in love wanders in the world as a somnambulist, with eyes that seem open to those that watch him, yet in fact view nothing but ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... Jean appeared, candle in hand, peering into the room and at Mlle. Fouchette in the dazed way more characteristic of the somnambulist than of one awake and in the ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... is unquestionably a somnambulist. He has been wandering about the garden, and rolling in the mud, in his sleep. There have been no robbers or thieves here to-night. The poor boy fell on the roof; that was what waked him up; and the noise of his fall was what caused me to ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic
... all terrors upon earth, sleep-walking was the one I dreaded the most. Not that I had ever walked myself, or, indeed, enjoyed the embarrassing friendship of any one who did. But I had read the books and knew all about it. I would sooner have faced a dozen ghosts than a somnambulist. ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... but remaining on his knees, continued to look up to heaven. Then he rose slowly, and like a seer or a somnambulist, with eyes opened but seeing nothing, he went to his piano without knowing what he was doing. He sat down on the stool, and did not know it; his hands touched the keys and drew magnificent chords from them, and ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... congregants had passed over his body, Uriel arose and went through the pillared portico, speaking no word. The congregants, standing in groups about the canal-bridge, still discussing the terrible scene, moved aside, shuddering, silenced, as like a somnambulist that strange figure went by, the shoulders thrown back, the head high, in superb pride, the nostrils quivering, but the face as that of the dead. Never more was he seen of men. Shut up in his study, he worked feverishly day and night, writing his autobiography. ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... herself patiently to be lifted upon the horse, and she sat on its back like a somnambulist, who was neither in a waking nor a sleeping state. The Christian priest tied two small green branches together in the form of a cross, which he held high aloft; and thus they rode through the forest, which became thicker and thicker, and ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... recite it, would have gone distracted. Yet the "best judges" said he murdered his own poetry—we say about as much as Homer. Wordsworth recites his own Poetry (catch him reciting any other) magnificently—while his eyes seem blind to all outward objects, like those of a somnambulist. Coleridge was the sweetest of sing-songers—and his silver voice "warbled melody." Next to theirs, we believe our own recitation of Poetry to be the most impressive heard in modern times, though we cannot deny that the leathern-eared have ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... the bush. Pocket pressed for earlier details with a morbid appetite which was not gratified without reluctance, and out of a laconic interchange the deed was gradually reconstructed with appealing verisimilitude. It was Baumgartner who had first caught sight of the somnambulist, treading warily like the blind, yet waving the revolver as he went, as though any moment he might let it off. The moment came with a wretched reeling man who joined Baumgartner on the path, and would not be warned. The poor man had raised a drunken shout and been shot pointblank ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... was instant and startling. Mr. Hallowell, who, in the last few minutes, had believed he was listening to a voice from the dead, collapsed upon the shoulder of Rainey, who sprang to support him. Like a somnambulist wrenched from sleep, Vera gave a scream of fright, half genuine, half assumed, and swayed as though about to fall. Vance caught her in his arms. He turned on Gaylor, his cunning red ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis
... time after her sense of ill-usage, her revolt for the nonce against social law, her passionate desire for primitive life, may have showed in her face. Winterborne was looking at her, his eyes lingering on a flower that she wore in her bosom. Almost with the abstraction of a somnambulist he stretched out his hand ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... the little Gottfried in the story thought of this with such intensity, and with such perfect faith in its truth, as to cause him to walk in his sleep, like a somnambulist. No doubt your dear mother can tell you many strange and extraordinary stories of somnambulists, who do the most wonderful and startling things while in this kind of trance state, of which they are utterly ...
— The Big Nightcap Letters - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... not my strength,—her powers were a surprise. She passed into new states of great advance, but I understood these no better. It were long to tell her peculiarities. Her childhood was full of presentiments. She was then a somnambulist. She was subject to attacks of delirium, and, later, perceived that she had spectral illusions. When she was twelve, she had a determination of blood to the head. 'My parents,' ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... had seen this boy somewhere before, a thing obviously impossible, was like a delicate finishing touch of weirdness added to a scene fit to raise doubts as to one's sanity. I stared anxiously about me like an awakened somnambulist. ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... dream—which would seem to have been induced by some magnetic property possessed and exerted by Weir. Such things do not occur without cause, and he was not the sort of man to yield himself, physically and mentally, his will and his perceptions, to the unconscious caprice of a somnambulist. And the scene had cut itself so deeply into the tablets of his memory that he found himself forgetting more than once that it was not an actual episode of his past. He wished he could see Weir, and hear her account ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... there was one, "Sunny Jim," a morbid transport mule, inside the tent, providing the motive power. "Sunny Jim" had always been something of a somnambulist, and this time he had sleep-walked clean through our mess and on into William's tent, where the mallet woke him up. He was then making the best of his way home to lines again, expedited by William and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, Feb. 7, 1917 • Various
... although they did not understand, reframed from questioning him, for they saw there was nothing to do but let him go ahead without interruption, just as care is taken not to wake a somnambulist abruptly. They had no mistrust of his motives, for the idea was simply untenable that Rouletabille was fool enough to hope to save himself from them by an imbecile subterfuge. No, they yielded to the impression his inspired countenance gave them, and several were so affected that ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... utter irresponsibility for that portion of his time; so that between the two parts of the day, as they passed through the life of the master, there was almost as little connection as between the waking and sleeping hours of a somnambulist. ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... laid it down. The blood followed, and with the life-stream her strength flowed away. The hand that supported her head suddenly dropped, and she fell back. The man had been standing over her, speechless, motionless, breathless, like some wretched somnambulist, suddenly awakened in the commission of a crime, and gazing in horror, amazement, and unbelief upon the work of ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... the ball; but I shouldn't have kept them there if Jim hadn't taken the opportunity of executing another astounding buck-jump, which landed him safe on his man's shoulders, where he stuck like a scared cat on the back of a somnambulist. So between us we brought our quarry to earth and gained no end of ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... wife, so refined, so self-contained, into a creature possessed by an almost animal fury, struck Ian with horror, although he accepted it as a phenomenon of somnambulism. He approached but did not touch her, for he had heard that it was dangerous to awaken a somnambulist. Her voice sank rapidly to a loud whisper and he heard her articulate—"My husband! Mine! Mine!"—but in no tone of tenderness, rather pronouncing the words as a passionate claim to his possession. Then suddenly she drooped, half kneeling on the deep window-seat, half fallen across ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... words uttered impetuously, Will rose, put out his hand to Rosamond, still with the air of a somnambulist, and ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... originality, and even with a little eccentricity. For example, he believes in fortune-telling, and undertakes to predict to each one of us his fate. He has also great faith in magnetism, and has told me that a somnambulist had predicted to him, two years ago, that a member of the family of the Emperor would return to France and would dethrone Louis Philippe. He is going to Brazil to make some experiments in electricity. The other passenger is an ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... suppose a man has taken to reading nothing but romances of love and chivalry. Attracted and fascinated by his heroes, his thoughts and intentions gradually turn more and more towards them, till one fine day we find him walking among us like a somnambulist. His actions are distractions. But then his distractions can be traced back to a definite, positive cause. They are no longer cases of ABSENCE of mind, pure and simple; they find their explanation in the PRESENCE of the individual in quite definite, though imaginary, surroundings. Doubtless ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... farther end of the long, deserted dining-room of the Hotel Baltet, when served with the warmed-over soup and entrees of the table d'hote, they ate voraciously, without saying a word, eager only to get to bed. All of a sudden, Excourbanies, who was swallowing his food like a somnambulist, came out of his plate, and sniffing the air about him, remarked: ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet |
