If you pry it up, so as to get it overhead, and expose its rows of teeth, it seems a terrific
portcullis; and such, alas!
Some thirty minutes later five hundred iron clad horses carried their mailed riders beneath the portcullis of the grim pile, and Norman the Devil, riding at their head, spurred rapidly in the direction of the castle of Peter of Colfax.
Shandy returned to his master with the reply, and together Norman of Torn and Bertrade de Montfort clattered across the drawbridge beneath the portcullis of the castle of the Earl of Leicester, brother-in-law of Henry III of England.
They dismounted at a hostelry which Don Quixote recognised as such and did not take to be a castle with moat, turrets,
portcullis, and drawbridge; for ever since he had been vanquished he talked more rationally about everything, as will be shown presently.
The king was conducted to the castle with great pomp, and Fouquet saw him dismount under the
portcullis, and say something in the ear of D'Artagnan, who held his stirrup.
"Celluloid teeth, nine dollars a set, as like as not -- the loose-fit kind, that go up and down like a
portcullis when you eat, and fall out when you laugh."
The Count Luigi raised money, like the rest, and one mild September morning, armed with battle-ax,
portcullis and thundering culverin, he rode through the greaves and bucklers of his donjon-keep with as gallant a troop of Christian bandits as ever stepped in Italy.
It is certain that this monastery, which had a grand air, both as a church and as a seignory; that abbatial palace, where the bishops of Paris counted themselves happy if they could pass the night; that refectory, upon which the architect had bestowed the air, the beauty, and the rose window of a cathedral; that elegant chapel of the Virgin; that monumental dormitory; those vast gardens; that portcullis; that drawbridge; that envelope of battlements which notched to the eye the verdure of the surrounding meadows; those courtyards, where gleamed men at arms, intermingled with golden copes;--the whole grouped and clustered about three lofty spires, with round arches, well planted upon a Gothic apse, made a magnificent figure against the horizon.
To the right of the Tournelles, that truss of enormous towers, black as ink, running into each other and tied, as it were, by a circular moat; that donjon keep, much more pierced with loopholes than with windows; that drawbridge, always raised; that portcullis, always lowered,--is the Bastille.
Then the porter raised some difficulties, but the Count of Monte Cristo produced a permit from the governor of Rome, allowing him to leave or enter the city at any hour of the day or night; the
portcullis was therefore raised, the porter had a louis for his trouble, and they went on their way.
"Young man," quoth Sir Nigel, sternly, "if you are of the same way of thought as your brother, you may not pass under
portcullis of mine."
Rolls-Royce workers from the threatened Bootle plant and from other Rolls-Royce sites across the UK will also attend the inquiry at
Portcullis House, London.
portcullis - gate consisting of an iron or wooden grating that hangs in the entry to a castle or fortified town; can be lowered to prevent passage