I was received by a
solemn man-servant out of livery, was informed that the family had retired for the night, and was then led into a large and lofty room where my supper was awaiting me, in a forlorn manner, at one extremity of a lonesome mahogany wilderness of dining-table.
It was in such
solemn surroundings that our first plays were played.
He transfixed me with a pitying stare and requested me in his deep
solemn voice to remember the "well- established fact" that genius was not transmissible.
As he approached, he heard the noise of the pulleys which grated under the weight of the massy pails; he also fancied he heard the melancholy moaning of the water which falls back again into the wells -- a sad, funereal,
solemn sound, which strikes the ear of the child and the poet -- both dreamers -- which the English call splash; Arabian poets, gasgachau; and which we Frenchmen, who would be poets, can only translate by a paraphrase -- the noise of water falling into water.
And then rose up that
solemn veiled figure, and drew aside the veil.
As if in mockery of the meagre show of verdure that the spot exhibited, it remained a noble and
solemn monument of former fertility.
Balashev was only two horses' length from the equestrian with the bracelets, plunies, necklaces, and gold embroidery, who was galloping toward him with a theatrically
solemn countenance, when Julner, the French colonel, whispered respectfully: "The King of Naples!" It was, in fact, Murat, now called "King of Naples." Though it was quite incomprehensible why he should be King of Naples, he was called so, and was himself convinced that he was so, and therefore assumed a more
solemn and important air than formerly.
Comfort me by a
solemn assurance, that when the little parlour in which I sit at this instant shall be reduced to a worse furnished box, I shall be read with honour by those who never knew nor saw me, and whom I shall neither know nor see.
Let him who shall be victorious and prove to be the better man take the woman and all she has, to bear them to his home, but let the rest swear to a
solemn covenant of peace whereby you Trojans shall stay here in Troy, while the others go home to Argos and the land of the Achaeans."
Then the people begun to flock in, and the beats and the girls took seats in the front row at the head of the coffin, and for a half an hour the people filed around slow, in single rank, and looked down at the dead man's face a minute, and some dropped in a tear, and it was all very still and
solemn, only the girls and the beats holding handkerchiefs to their eyes and keep- ing their heads bent, and sobbing a little.
Nothing more passed at the time, but that night, as Nicholas sat beside his bed, Smike started from what had seemed to be a slumber, and laying his hand in his, prayed, as the tears coursed down his face, that he would make him one
solemn promise.
She had to make and receive at least fourteen presents--to make fourteen
solemn promises of writing every week: "Send my letters under cover to my grandpapa, the Earl of Dexter," said Miss Saltire (who, by the way, was rather shabby).