"Valenciennes" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... conduct of the allies deserves praise: the desire of reconquering these rich provinces justified this enterprise, which, moreover, was judiciously directed against the extreme right of the long front of Dumouriez. But after the French had been driven back under the guns of Valenciennes, and were disorganized and unable to resist, why did the allies remain six months in front of a few towns and permit the Committee of Public Safety to organize new armies? When the deplorable condition of France and the destitution of the wreck of the army of Dampierre are ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... pinned to a pincushion as large as a pillow, used only for this purpose! and there, in a basket on the corner of the table, what piles of cambric chemises, delicately piped and pleated, trimmed with Valenciennes lace and ornamented with bright ribbons! And all this for one person! without counting the silk stockings in that other basket, and the rings by dozens worn by the countess on her thin fingers. In this world of living beings under God's heaven, what importance given to one person, who ...
— The Little Russian Servant • Henri Greville
... Madam Esmond how my boy came by his name, I saw a tear roll down her wrinkled cheek, and I heard afterwards that she had asked Gumbo many questions about the boy who gave his name to our Miles—our Miles Gloriosus of Pall Mall, Valenciennes, Almack's, Brighton. ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... no trimming but Valenciennes for my under-linen," she decided; "it is the only lace that never offends. And I will have old English monograms in satin-stitch upon everything. My peignoirs will require a good deal of study; they admit of so much variety. I will have only a few dresses, ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... and jewels gave the distinguishing stamp to the ball—such lace!—point d'Alencon, point de Bayeux, point de Venise, point a l'aiguille, Mechlin, Guipure, Valenciennes, Chantilly, enough to have turned green with envy the soul of a cultured petit- maitre, an aesthetic ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... military position mainly through their possession. American experts had felt inclined to grant a part of the Saar region to France as compensation for the wanton destruction of French mines at Lens and Valenciennes by the Germans; but both Wilson and Lloyd George were opposed to absolute annexation of the district which the French demanded, including, as it did, more than six hundred thousand Germans and no French. Wilson was definitely hostile to any attempt to separate from the Fatherland such purely ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... steward. Business prospered beyond my father's hopes, for a great number of invalids of rank came to his house. When I attained my eleventh year, the Count de Lure, head of one of the chief families of Valenciennes, happened to be one of the boarders at the Little Chateau; and as that excellent man had taken a great fancy to me, he asked my parents permission that I should become a companion to his son, who was about. the same age. My family had intended ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... sleeper. Yes, all was quiet in the room, but not in that sleeper's soul. The broad white brow was painfully contracted, the lips drawn down and distorted, the delicate hand, half hidden by the deep Valenciennes ruffle, clutched the coverlet with convulsive force. Sigh after sigh burst from the agitated breast. John Hammond gazed upon the sleeper in an agony of apprehension, uncertain what to do. Was this dreaming only; or was it some kind of seizure which called for medical aid? At her ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... overdress of dark bay tarlatan with scarlet satin lambrequins; corn-colored polonaise, en zanier, looped with mother-of-pearl buttons and silver cord, and hauled aft and made fast by buff velvet lashings; basque of lavender reps, picked out with valenciennes; low neck, short sleeves; maroon velvet necktie edged with delicate pink silk; inside handkerchief of some simple three-ply ingrain fabric of a soft saffron tint; coral bracelets and locket-chain; coiffure of forget-me-nots ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the coal region, fifty miles from Brussels, is the last town of Belgium; eight miles further is Valenciennes, one of the strong frontier fortresses of France, with over 20,000 inhabitants, an active trade and the worth of a dukedom wasted on its fortifications. Here our baggage underwent a new custom-house scrutiny, which was expeditiously ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... realise the febrile velocity with which flows the blood in the veins of a sick man of genius. But there is a paradox in the case of Watteau, as there was in the case of Chopin, of Keats, of Robert Louis Stevenson. The painter of Valenciennes gave little sign of his malady on his joyous lyrical canvases. Keats sang of faery landscapes and Chopin's was a virile spirit; the most cheerful writer under the sun was Stevenson, who even in his ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... but looked all the more darkly determined. Also, a week later, Mr. William J. Blair, the Carmody storekeeper, had an odd tale to tell. Mrs. Wheeler had come to the store and bought a lot of fine flannel and muslin and valenciennes. Now, what in the name of time, did Mrs. Wheeler want with such stuff? Mr. William J. Blair couldn't make head or tail of it, and it worried him. Mr. Blair was so accustomed to know what everybody bought anything for that such a mystery ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... of adornments is much greater than ours, but we possess certain articles for which she has a childlike admiration: my white satin slippers embroidered with seed pearls, Salemina's pearl-topped comb, Salemina's Valenciennes handkerchief and diamond belt-clasp, my pearl frog with ruby eyes. We identified our property on her impertinent young person, and the list of her borrowings so amused the Reverend Ronald that he forgot ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... and provided the bizarre narrative with a refinement which contrasted with its crudities, like Valenciennes lace ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... is all over the world. I remember, as a young man, in the army of Occupation in France, when the soul of the nation was ground to despair, at seeing foreign soldiers lording it in la belle France, that, at Valenciennes, St. Omers, Cambray, and all great towns, constant collisions and duels occurred from the impetuous temper of the half-pay French officers, and yet, in many instances, good sense and firmness avoided ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... dealing with the father. We sat till one in the morning, and then carried it by 255 to 106. It was the best debate I ever heard.(924) The King goes to Kensington to-morrow, and not abroad. We hear of great quarrels between Marshal Wade and Duc d'Aremberg. The French King is at Valenciennes with Monsieur de Noailles, who is now looked upon as first minister. He is the least dangerous for us of all. It is affirmed that Cardinal Tencin is disgraced, who was the very worst for us. If ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... DE VALENCIENNES (Valenciennes Stitch).—This stitch appears complicated, but is really easy to work. Begin at the left hand and work six point de Bruxelles stitches at unequal distance, every alternate stitch being larger. 2nd row: Upon the first ...
— Beeton's Book of Needlework • Isabella Beeton
... of Louis XIV the Spanish Netherlands were constantly attacked by France, who acquired at one time or another the chief towns of Artois and Hainault, including some which have lately come into prominence in the great war, such as Lille, Valenciennes, Cambray, and Maubeuge. The bulk, however, of the Spanish Netherlands passed at the Treaty of Utrecht to Austria, then the chief rival of France on the Continent. They passed with the reservation that certain fortresses on their southern border were to be garrisoned ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... at a funeral. Of all the men I ever read of, the famous Cardinal de Retz possessed this happiness in the highest degree. When fortune wore her angriest look, and he fell into the power of Cardinal Mazarin, his most deadly enemy, (being confined a close prisoner in the castle of Valenciennes,) he never attempted to support his distress by wisdom or philosophy, for he pretended to neither. He only laughed at himself' and his persecutor, and seemed infinitely pleased at his new situation. In this mansion of distress, though ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... and cut glass. Margaret thought eating in bed a "filthy, foreign fad," and never indulged in it. She seated herself lazily, drank her coffee, and ate her roll and her egg slowly, deliberately, reading her letters and glancing at the paper. A charming picture she made—the soft, white Valenciennes of her matinee falling away from her throat and setting off the clean, smooth healthiness of her skin, the blackness of her vital hair; from the white lace of her petticoat's plaited flounces peered one of her slim feet, a satin slipper ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... only seven or eight, in the most magnificent trousseau. They are chemises gotten up and embroidered with the greatest care: a woman must be a queen, a young queen, to have a dozen. Each one of Caroline's was trimmed with valenciennes round the bottom, and still more coquettishly garnished about the neck. This feature of our manners will perhaps serve to suggest a suspicion, in the masculine world, of the domestic drama revealed ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... some strong effort would be necessary to quell the spirit of the Vendeans. France at the time was surrounded by hostile troops. At the moment in which the republicans were flying from the royalists at Saumur, the soldiers of the Convention were marching out of Valenciennes, that fortified city having been taken by the united arms of Austria and England. Conde also had fallen, and on the Rhine, the French troops who had occupied Mayence with so much triumph, were again on the point of being driven from ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... advance by forced marches upon Namur. He was to be supported by two divisions of the army of the North, one of four thousand men under General Dillon, which was to move from its encampment at Lille upon Tournay, and the other of ten thousand troops under General Biron, which was to advance from Valenciennes upon Mons. Before daybreak on the morning of the 28th Lafayette had his army in motion and, as they rode out of the city gates together, Calvert noted that the depression and anxiety which had weighed upon the General so ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... paintings of marriages elaborated in Christian propriety and splendor; with a bishop officiating, assisted by a dean and an archdeacon; the modesty of the bride expressed by a veil of the most expensive Valenciennes, and the robes of the bridesmaids designed by the perfectest of Parisian artists, and looped up with stuffed robins or other such tender rarities;—think with what sense of hitherto unheard-of impropriety, the British public must have received a picture of a marriage, in which ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... painter. Yet he is not ill-to-do, and has lately built himself a new stone house, big and grey and cold. Their old plastered house with the black timbers, in the Rue des Cardinaux, was prettier; dating from the time of the Spaniards, and one of the oldest in Valenciennes. ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... locks, his broad bold forehead, and shaggy brows overhanging eyes beaming with kindness. Beside him sat Mrs. Donaldson, still beautiful in her green old age. Her face was usually pale, yet her clear complexion, and the bright eyes that looked out from beneath the rich Valenciennes border of her cap, redeemed it from the appearance of ill health. Her form, stately yet inclining to embonpoint, was shown to advantage by the soft folds of the rich and glossy satin dress which ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... old and would graduate in a few weeks, yet Elsie looked like a child, lying there in that little white bed, with her golden curls scattered on the pillow and the soft whiteness of her neck and hands shaded by the delicate Valenciennes with which her night robe was profusely decorated. A quantity of hot house flowers lay scattered on the counterpane, where the girl had flung them, one by one, from a bouquet she was still tearing to pieces. A frown was on her pretty forehead, and her large violet eyes ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... of hair-powder and patches, of hoops and trains, of stiff brocades and tight-laced stomachers, and high-heeled shoes among the ladies—of flowing periwigs, and coats with huge cuffs and no collars, and voluminous skirts, of diamond-hilted rapiers, and diamond buckles, ruffles of Valenciennes and Mecklin lace, among the ruder sex. And though the individual might be metamorphosed strangely from the fair form which nature gave him, it cannot be denied that the concourse of highly-bred and graceful persons, when viewed as ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... among the peasants. They had no choice but to vote. At Savigny, near Saint-Maur, on the morning of the vote, some enthusiastic gendarmes declared that the man who voted "no" should not sleep in his bed. The gendarmerie cast into the house of detention at Valenciennes M. Parent the younger, deputy justice of the peace of the canton of Bouchain, for having advised certain inhabitants of Avesne-le-Sec to vote "no." The nephew of Representative Aubry (du Nord), having seen the agents of the prefect distribute "aye" ballots in the great ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... Maxentius. The Pont du Gard near Nismes and the St. Esprit near Lyons were originally of Roman construction. During the war of freedom, so admirably described by our countryman, whereby rose the Dutch Republic, the Huguenots, at the siege of Valenciennes, we are told, "made forays upon the monasteries for the purpose of procuring supplies, and the broken statues of the dismantled churches were used to build a bridge across an arm of the river, which was called, in derision, the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... and take out my pearl-colored grenadine; I cannot wear a heavy silk to-night; and find my Valenciennes fichu and my small diamonds, I don't suppose there is any one in particular here, unless it is Lady Oakley, and she, I presume has the room opposite this. She did, the last time we were here. John, we are really very comfortable. Mrs. Smithers knows how to keep up an attractive house, and is a charming ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... de cecile polonaise and jacket to match, trimmed with Chantilly lace and valenciennes . . . 68 5 Superb robe de chambre, richly trimmed ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... place in it. They were, in fact, during his reign, numerous and active; from the year 776 to the year 813 we may count thirty-five of these national assemblies, March-parades and May-parades, held at Worms, Valenciennes, Geneva, Paderborn, Aix-la-Chapelle, Thionville, and several other towns, the majority situated round about the two banks of the Rhine. The number and periodical nature of these great political reunions are undoubtedly a noticeable fact. What, then, went on in their midst? What character and weight ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... inhabiting the towns and villages among the mountains of Ardche and the Haute-Loire, of which articles Le Puy is the great emporium. The specimens and sample books are in cases. In the centre case are specimens from Alenon, Binche, Brussels, Cevennes mountains, Malines, Russia, Valenciennes, and Venice; the Corsage with lace trimming of the gown Marie Louise wore on the day she was married to Napoleon I.; also some ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... town to town: the intervening hills had fallen down, and the towns, as if in fright, had shrunk into themselves, contracting their suburbs as a snail his horns. The old poet was right who said that the Olympians had a delicate view. The lace-makers of Valenciennes might have had the tracing of those towns and high-roads; those knots of guipure and ligatures of finest reseau-work. And when I considered that what I looked down on—this, with its arteries and nodules of public traffic—was a nation; that each silent nodule held some thousands of men, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... serving with the Third and Fourth armies, by the Belgians and French on their left, and by the French on their right; but the check to the American advance enabled the Germans—unfortunately for them, as it turned out—to transfer reinforcements from the Meuse to Cambrai and Valenciennes. ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... a tiler in a Flemish town—Valenciennes. He meant that his son should be a carpenter, but that son tramped from Valenciennes to Paris with the purpose of becoming a great painter. He did more, he became a "school" of ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... of police at Valenciennes himself superintended the inspection of passports. For nothing in the world would he have deputed this important office to a subordinate inspector. When they presented him the passport of the so-called Leblanc, he looked the so-called ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... outset she lost her former conquests, and suffered several reverses. The Spaniards took Perpignan and Bayonne; the English, Toulon; and the Austrians, Valenciennes. It was then that the Convention, towards the end of 1793, ordered a general levy of all Frenchmen between the ages of eighteen and forty, and succeeded in sending to the frontiers a total of some 750,000 men. The old ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... this, Captain Byron was mean-spirited enough to solicit money from his wife, and she had not the heart to refuse him. With a small supply thus obtained he crossed the channel, and in 1791 died in Valenciennes, in the North of France. Of the violent temper of Byron's mother many stories are told, and of her heartless treatment of him in his early years; so that upon neither side can we find much upon which we could expect to build a very noble or well-balanced character, and ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... its usually soft, smooth tone, and Rosamond could not see the rapid beatings of the heart, nor the eager curiosity lurking in the glittering black eyes. The lady seemed indifferent, and smoothed carelessly the rich Valenciennes lace, which edged the sleeve of her ...
— Rosamond - or, The Youthful Error • Mary J. Holmes
... such cases there will have been ample time for great geographical changes, and consequently time and means for much migration. In the second place, salt-water fish can with care be slowly accustomed to live in fresh water; and, according to Valenciennes, there is hardly a single group of fishes confined exclusively to fresh water, so that we may imagine that a marine member of a fresh-water group might travel far along the shores of the sea, and ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... the honor, but those marvelous eyes of his glowed with some sort of inner warmth and he said that you had all you could do and would need help from me just as the women at the Settlement do. I'm going to present your Susan with a frock out of that linen and real Valenciennes I bought in the city last week for a blouse for my own self, and I'm going to give the making to that little Burns woman, who sews so beautifully and cheaply to support her seven offspring, while Mr. Burns supports 'The ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... the fortresses, at a moment when they had been reluctantly induced here to make an effort to save them, is vexatious in the extreme. They threaten the vengeance of a court-martial on the officers who surrendered Valenciennes; but what will that avail towards recovering these great objects, which were equally material, both to the regaining of the Netherlands, and to their security ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... thick silver comb, and her ornaments were very handsome, coral set in gold. Her shoes white satin, embroidered in gold; the sleeves and body of the chemise, which is of the finest cambric, trimmed with rich lace; and the petticoat, which comes below the dress, shows two flounces of Valenciennes. She looks beautiful in this dress, which will not be objected to in the country, though it might not suit ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... more he quaffed, the more he thirsted. He had begun with the English; but soon he came down with a proposition for new massacres. "All the troops," he said, "of the coalesced tyrants in garrison at Conde, Valenciennes, Le Quesnoy, and Landrecies, ought to be put to the sword unless they surrender at discretion in twenty-four hours. The English, of course, will be admitted to no capitulation whatever. With the English we have no treaty but death. As to the rest, surrender at discretion ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... promise you. Her very feathers must weigh something considerable. The diamonds on her stomacher would embroider a full-sized carpet-bag. She has rubies, ribbons, cameos, emeralds, gold serpents, opals, and Valenciennes lace, as if she were an immense sample out of Howell and ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... passing the Sambre, and General Lanrezac fell back on Beaumont-Givet, being apprehensive of the danger which threatened his right. On the 24th the British army retreated, in the face of a German attack, on to the Maubeuge-Valenciennes line. It appeared at first that the British had in front of them at most an army corps, with perhaps a corps of cavalry. They were apprised, however, about five o'clock in the evening that three army corps were advancing against them, while a fourth was marching against their ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan |
