"Seraglio" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... all 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 one man and one woman to each ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... British government, justly irritated at the increasing influence that the French ambassador, Count Sebastiani, was obtaining at the Ottoman court, despatched Admiral Sir John Duckworth, in command of a squadron, with orders to bombard, if necessary, the Seraglio itself. Unfortunately, Sir John Duckworth's plan of acting was exactly contrary to what would have been our gallant Nelson's in the same position. After having passed without difficulty before the then ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... palaces consisted of three wholly distinct groups of buildings, three divisions which we find exactly reproduced to-day in the seigneurial and princely dwellings of Persia, India and Turkey. First, there was the seraglio, or the palace properly so-called, which comprised the reception-halls and the men's apartments, and which is known now throughout the East under the name of selamlik; then came the harem containing the private rooms where the master saw ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various
... friends. But if you and yours were with me, eating dates in a garden at Constantinople, you might assert that we were in the best of all possible places; and I should answer, Amen: and if our wives rebelled, we would send for the chief of the black eunuchs, and sell them to the Seraglio. Then should Moses [3] learn Arabic, and we would know whether there was anything in the language or not. We would drink Cyprus wine and Mocha coffee, and smoke more tranquilly than ever we did in the Ship in ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... whispered murmurs of the gathering storm; Shuts her sweet eyelids to 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 ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... advantage of training to fit her for his seraglio in later years, the child was sent to Paris, to the home of the Ambassador's brother, President de Feriol, where she grew to beautiful girlhood as a member of the family, as fair a flower as ever was transplanted to French soil. Thus she passed the next thirteen years of her young ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... was prevailed on to assign an ancient palace for the Russian widow's use; and there, almost within sight of the royal seraglio from which she had been ousted, Yasmini had her bringing up, regaled by her mother with tales of Western outrage and ambition, and well schooled in all that pertained to her Eastern heritage by the thousand-and-one intriguers whose ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... these outrageous commissions on the sale of the most trivial playthings, there were other far more serious accusations, but equally authentic, as they all came from the same source. In addition to the seraglio there was a harem of European women, admirably equipped for His Highness by the Nabob, who should be a connoisseur in such matters, as he had been engaged in the most extraordinary occupations in Paris before his departure for the Orient: ticket speculator, ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... of many women, among whom were white women, who had been sold by outlaws such as Achmet Zek into the slavery of black harems, or taken farther north into the almost equally hideous existence of some Turkish seraglio. ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... commanded me to help reform ye, And how I'll do't, Miss —— shall inform ye. I keep the best seraglio in the nation, And hope in time to bring it into fashion; No brimstone whore need fear the lash from me, That part I'll leave to Brother Jefferey: Our gallants need not go abroad to Rome, I'll keep a whoring jubilee at home; Whoring's the darling of my inclination; An't ...
— The True-Born Englishman - A Satire • Daniel Defoe
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... attempt on Malta, and his successor, Selim II (whom 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 with false ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... desire making mere animals of them, when they marry, they act as such children may be expected to act: they dress; they paint, and nickname God's creatures. Surely these weak beings are only fit for the seraglio! Can they govern a family, or take care of the poor babes whom they bring into ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... him scarcely an hour, the old man resolved that all his female slaves should submit to the 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 ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff
... their 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
... had been deported from Judea. At first they were slaves. Subsequently manumitted, they formed a colony that in the high-viced city resembled Esther in the seraglio of Ahasuerus. Rome, amateur of cults, always curious of foreign faiths, might have been interested in Judaism. It had many analogies with local beliefs. Its adherents awaited, as Rome did, a messiah. They awaited too ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... 5th, 1536, Ibrahim 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 ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... past of that woman of the Orient, purchased long ago in the slave-mart at Adrianople for the Emperor of Morocco, then, upon the Emperor's death and the dispersion of his harem, sold to the young Bey Ahmed. Hemerlingue had married her on her exit from that second seraglio, but was unable to induce society to receive her in Tunis, where no woman, be she Moor, Turk, or European, will ever consent to treat a former slave as an equal, by virtue of a prejudice not unlike ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... princely home, the proudest harem in all this gem of the Orient, for the old Turk had acted not for himself in the purchase he had made, but as the agent of a higher will than his own, and the dumb slave was led to the seraglio of the Sultan. ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... Constantinople. 'Tramways' are built or building, a boon of inexpressible value to the aged and feeble, and a thousand dwellings have been demolished for the track of the Belgrade and Vienna Railroad, entering at the Seven Towers, and carried along the Marmora, and around the Seraglio Point, to its terminus on the Golden Horn. The demolition of much of the sea-wall to make way for it and furnish materials for embankments, is a suggestive symbol of the social and religious reconstruction, which is tearing up old foundations, and using the labors of ages ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... 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 the heats and animosities ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... court, kissed the ground before the Khalif, who rose from the throne, to greet and welcome him, and bade him take his appointed place in the Divan saying, 'O Alaeddin, thou art my guest to-night.' So presently he carried him into his seraglio and calling a slave- girl named Cout el Culoub, said to her, 'Alaeddin had a wife called Zubeideh, who used to sing to him and solace him of care and trouble; but she is gone to the mercy of God the Most High, and now I desire that thou play him an air of thy rarest fashion ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... 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 the ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth
... earthquake upon Van Klopen. Shut up in the sanctum where he composed the numberless costumes that were the wonder and delight of Paris, Van Klopen made as careful arrangements to secure himself from the interview as the Turk does to guard the approaches to his seraglio; and so Andre and Gandelu were accosted in the entrance hall by his stately footmen, clad in ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... the property 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 ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... to France for ransom, and on his return 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 of her father, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... 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 ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... 'but a little south of Nova Zembla,' took possession, not only of the affections, but even of the senses of the young king, George III., who, assisted by the widowed Princess of Wales (supposed to be attached to Lord Bute), was 'lugged out of the seraglio,' ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... Mrs. CELIA BURLEIGH was the next speaker. She pictured, in a witty, epigrammatic manner, the progress of freedom in womankind. The picture drawn was of an Asiatic seraglio, where the spirit of revolution crept in, and the ladies commenced their incendiarism by walking abroad, and then followed up the direful unsexing of themselves by gradually removing the inviolable veil first from one eye and then the other—and last and most horrible of all—from ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... absolute monarchy to one where the King governed only by the advice of his Ministers. The power of direct address to the throne was denied to any one under the rank of Governor. One ordinance created a constitution, and the next dealt with the status of the ladies of the royal seraglio. At one hour a proclamation went forth that all men were to cut their hair, and the wearied runners on their return were again despatched hot haste with an edict altering the official language. Nothing was too small, nothing too great, and nothing too contradictory for ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... the Seraglio are like the walls of Newstead gardens, only higher, and much in the same order; but the ride by the walls of the city, on the land side, is beautiful. Imagine four miles of immense triple battlements, covered with ivy, surmounted with 218 towers, and, on ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... or one of the beautiful boats which ply on the canal, I proceeded, accompanied by my janissary and dragoman, to make the circuit of the city, by rowing round the Seraglio Point into the sea of Marmora, then landing at the Seven Towers, and walking across the isthmus by the famous wall to the Golden Horn, where we again embarked, and returned to Pera. On passing the Seraglio Point, we remarked ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 279, October 20, 1827 • Various
... a gale, I concluded it would not "pay," and turned in for another nap. All that day we were crossing the Sea of Marmora with the strong current and wind against us, so it was dark before we reached Constantinople, and our ship was obliged to anchor in the outer harbor till the next morning. Seraglio Point rose just before us, and on the left the seven towers were dimly visible in the starlight. We walked the deck and watched the lights glimmer and stream out over the Sea of Marmora, and listened to the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... 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 ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... might 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 in ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... the enchanted musician, reseating himself at the piano. "(Andantino, solo.) Mahomet in his seraglio, surrounded by women, but not happy. Quartette of Houris (A major). What pompous harmony, what trills as of ecstatic nightingales! Modulation (into F sharp minor). The theme is stated (on the dominant E and repeated in F major). Here every delight is grouped and expressed to give effect ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... 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 great repute, says, that he encouraged ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... their horses, and prostrated themselves, as if for a second morning prayer. This was to give an opportunity to the Queen, with Edith and her attendants, to pass from the pavilion to the gallery intended for them. Fifty guards of Saladin's seraglio escorted them, with naked sabres, whose orders were, to cut to pieces whomsoever, were he prince or peasant, should venture to gaze on the ladies as they passed, or even presume to raise his head until the cessation of the music should make all men aware ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... habit of a slave; I have made myself as like him as I can, all but his youth and vigour; which when I had, I passed my time as well as any of my holy predecessors. Now, walking under the windows of my seraglio, if Johayma look out, she will certainly take me for Antonio, and call to me; and by that I shall know what concupiscence is working in her. She cannot come down to commit iniquity, there's my safety; but if ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... vastness of knowledge, what a grand gossip concerning all things, and more beside, did we anticipate, only to find the promise broken, and a big impostor with no more muscle than the black drone who fills the pipes and sentries the seraglio of the Sophi or the Sultan! The big, burly beggars! For a century nobody has read them, and therefore everybody has admitted them to be great. They are bulky paradoxes, and find a good reputation in neglect,—as some fools pass for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... but afterward the thunders of God's wrath pursue it across a boundless desert, beating it with ruin and woe. When you come to paint carnality, do not paint it as looking from behind embroidered curtains, or through lattice of royal seraglio, but as writhing in the agonies of a city hospital. Cursed be the books that try to make impurity decent, and crime attractive, and hypocrisy noble! Cursed be the books that swarm with libertines and desperadoes, who make the brain of the young people ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... good Caliph Haroun Alraschid (let me have the corrupted name again for once, it is so scented with sweet memories!), the usage was highly laudable, and most worthy of imitation. "O, yes! Let us," said the other creature with a jump, "have a Seraglio." ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... cushions in the State Pavilion. 'On State occasions, among which it is evident that he 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 them were grouped great numbers of eunuchs and ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... great resemblance wt those 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 ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... also due the celebrated cake of Issoudun,—one of the great creations of French confectionery; which no chef, cook, pastry-cook, or confectioner has ever been able to reproduce. Monsieur de Riviere, ambassador at Constantinople, ordered enormous quantities every year for the Seraglio. ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... her husband. Mademoiselle Celestine is a person whose points of beauty are so numerous that, in order to describe her, it would be necessary to translate the thirty verses which we are told form an inscription in the seraglio of the Grand Turk and contain each of them an excellent description of one of the thirty ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... Bikramajit, died in June, 1834; and, though his death had been some time expected, he no sooner breathed his last than charges of 'dinai', slow poison, were got up, as usual, in the zenana (seraglio). ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... up the idea with avidity. Coffee houses increased in number. The demand outstripped the supply. In the seraglio itself special officers (kahvedjibachi) were commissioned to prepare the coffee drink for the sultan. Coffee was ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... kept two nieces in the episcopal seraglio, would willingly have pardoned his secretary if he had been accused of immorality, but he could not carry his condescension so far as heresy. He wanted, however, to assure himself personally, and as Marcel was incapable of lying, he ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... 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
... Shelley's philosophy of love, and I would ask if it be conceivable that the abominable calumny prompted by theological virus, that he kept a seraglio, as his friend Leigh Hunt informs us was reported, had any real existence. Shelley was too pure for any such idea as that of promiscuous sexual intercourse to be acted on by himself; his life, which lies open before us, refutes the diabolical invention. The fact was, that at ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... sowing, and 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
... leisure, far ben in the cranny o' the rock, and come out a' tosh and tidy by the first dawn o' licht, to snuff the mornin' air, and visit the distant farm-house before Partlet has left her perch, or Count Crow lifted his head from beneath his oxter on his shed-seraglio. ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... nature with elegant sophistries. Cheat nature? Bah! One 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 ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... 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
... the individual, and in perpetuating the species; but to rely on their use as a principal constituent of happiness, were an error in speculation, and would be still more an error in practice. Even the master of the seraglio, for whom all the treasures of empire are extorted from the hoards of its frighted inhabitants, for whom alone the choicest emerald and the diamond are drawn from the mine, for whom every breeze is enriched with perfumes, for whom beauty is assembled from every quarter, ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... melancholy, 'Madam,' said he, 'it is with great regret I find 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 crown I offer you;—-my ...
— The Princess of Ponthieu - (in) The New-York Weekly Magazine or Miscellaneous Repository • Unknown
... 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
... 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 I'm jolly well going to get ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... 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 learned monks, in which he sought to persuade them that the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... between the courts of Vienna and Dresden. Schoning was detained two years in custody; and at length released on condition that he should never be employed again in the empire. The war in Hungary produced no event of importance. The ministry of the Ottoman Porte was distracted by factions, and the seraglio threatened with tumults. The people were tired of maintaining an unsuccessful war; the vizier was deposed; and in the midst of this confusion, the garrison of great Waradin, which had been blocked up by the imperialists ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... 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 Nero and his ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... most quiet and gentlemanlike of landlords, a great deal more gentlemanlike in manner and appearance than most of us who sat at his table, and smoked cool pipes on his house-top, as we looked over the hill and the Russian palace to the water, and the Seraglio gardens shining in the blue. We confronted Misseri, "Eothen" in hand, and found, on examining him, that it WAS "aut Diabolus aut amicus"—but the name is a secret; I will never breathe it, though I am ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... name on this album, with Mademoiselles Georges, Taglioni, and Grisi, and some distinguished actors, such as Frederick Lemaitre, Monrose, Bouffe, Rubini, Lablache, Nourrit, and Arnal; for he knew a set of old fellows brought up in the seraglio, as they phrased it, who did him ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... name Cerinthusas the inventor of many corruptions. That heresiarch being given up to the belly and the palate, placed therein the happiness of man. And so taught his disciples, that after the Resurrection, * * *. And what appeared most important, each would be master of an entire seraglio, like a ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... scream—was heard, as, at the signal from Tippoo, the guards of his seraglio advanced to receive the closed litter from the attendants of the Begum. The voice of the old Fakir was heard louder and sterner than before.—"Cursed is the Prince who barters justice for lust! He shall die in the gate by the sword ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... at the seat of empire, his hours were not wasted in the recluse idleness of a seraglio; and the King of the Huns could maintain his superior dignity, without concealing his person from the public view. He frequently assembled his council, and gave audience to the ambassadors of the nations; and his people might appeal to the supreme tribunal, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... 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. Linen detects its ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... column, and leave an adhesive salve; syncopate the salve, and leave a person found in a bindery; syncopate again, and leave a prayer. 2. A ladies' apartment in a seraglio, and leave injury; again, and leave a meat. 3. A rough fastening, and leave to strike together; again, and leave ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... as you are the only two of your bewitching sex in Canada, for whom my heart feels the least sympathy. To be plain, but don't tell the little Major, I am more than half in love with you both, and, if I was the grand Turk, should certainly fit out a fleet, to seize, and bring you to my seraglio. ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... mourning Favourite of a queen is not, in France, a happy one Formed rather to endure calamity with patience than to contend Grand-Dieu, mamma! will it be yesterday over again? Happiness does not dwell in palaces He is afraid to command His ruin was resolved on; they passed to the order of the day His seraglio in the Parc-aux-Cerfs History of the man with the iron mask How can I have any regret when I partake your misfortunes I hate all that savours of fanaticism I do not like these rhapsodies I love the conveniences of life too well If ever I establish a republic of women.... Indulge in the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... gentle scepticism. She was sincerely attached to her husband, "who dominated the household" like the rest of his "women folk," with the faint consciousness of that division of service which renders the position of the sultan of a seraglio at once so prominent and so precarious. The attitude of John Hale in his family circle was dominant because it had never been subjected to criticism or comparison; and perilous for ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... as these that nations suffer, that parties struggle, that warriors fight and bleed. A year afterwards gallant heads were falling, and Nithsdale in escape, and Derwentwater on the scaffold; whilst the heedless ingrate, for whom they risked and lost all, was tippling with his seraglio of mistresses in his ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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 left ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... 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; ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... 'masquerade' ('mascarata' in Hacket), 'motto', 'nuncio', 'opera', 'oratorio', 'pantaloon', 'parapet', 'pedantry', 'pianoforte', 'piazza', 'portico', 'proviso', 'regatta', 'ruffian', 'scaramouch', 'sequin', 'seraglio', 'sirocco', 'sonnet', 'stanza', 'stiletto', 'stucco', 'studio', 'terra-cotta', 'umbrella', 'virtuoso', 'vista', 'volcano', 'zany'. 'Becco', and 'cornuto', 'fantastico', 'magnifico', 'impress' (the armorial device upon shields, and appearing ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... contrary reason, in order that they may be seen enough to judge of their beauty, and to talk of it.... Girls are not shut up in Persia till they attain the age of six or seven years; before that age they go out of the seraglio, sometimes with their father, so that they may then be seen. I have seen some wonderfully pretty. They show the neck and bosom, and more beautiful ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 390, September 19, 1829 • Various
... 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
... feet in diameter. The town, for the greater 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 ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... Constantinople are not within the compass of one of our pages; but the annexed Engraving furnishes some idea of a section of this queen of cities. It extends from Seraglio Point to the Janissaries' Tower, and though commanding only a portion of the city, includes the domes of the magnificent mosques of Santa Sophia and the Sultan Achmet, which rise from a vast assemblage of towers, palaces, minarets, &c. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 387, August 28, 1829 • Various
... my 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. ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... known as the "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. ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... the very rabble in Constantinople would storm the seraglio after such a massacre. But here—oh, here, it just reminds Mr. ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... that Jourdan is a gambler and a debauchee, fond of cards, dice, and women; and that in Italy, except two hours in twenty-four allotted to business, he passed the remainder of his time either at the gaming-tables, or in the boudoirs of his seraglio—I say seraglio, because he kept, in the extensive house joining his palace as governor and commander, ten women-three French, three Italians, two Germans, two Irish or English girls. He supported them all in style; but they were his slaves, and ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... including Austria (the external policy of both countries on all these questions is synonymous), found French-Russian influences at work. Through their marvelous, efficient Intelligence System, Germany soon learned who were the prime movers and puppets; in this instance the Grand Vizier and the Seraglio officers; the then sultan, Abdul Hammid, "The Damned," being completely cowed and under the thumb of his Grand Vizier, could not be relied on for a moment. After my mission they knew in Germany that the time was ripe for a radical change, and they engineered ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... Kurroglu, 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 Chamley-bill.—The story, together with the scene between ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... 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
... 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 ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... 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 a seraglio ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... tongue and secure information of my playmates. What had become of Teddy Grover, the pride of our school on exhibition day? Could we ever forget the afternoon he stood up before the minister and the assembled population and roared "Marco Bozzaris" until we were sure the sultan was quaking in his seraglio? And how he thundered "Blaze with your serried columns, I will not bend the knee!" To our excited imaginations what dazzling triumphs the future held ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... with her. "That you must not," replied the cadi, "for it is not right that the Grand Signor's slave should be seen by any one, much less should she converse with Christians; for you know that when she comes into the Sultan's possession she will be shut up in the seraglio, and must become a Turk ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... 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, if I did not, I would quickly ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... 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
... at last, beyond 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 he knave, Exclaimed, "'Tis time to stop that breath: Thy doom is sealed, presumptuous slave! ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... describe. It was of a kind that baffles all phrases, nor have I a single simile at command to make it more clearer more confused. Her luxurious form, her blonde complexion, her silken hair, would have all become the languishing Sultana; but then her eyes, they banished all idea of the Seraglio, and were the most decidedly European, though the most brilliant that ever glanced; eagles might have proved their young at them. To a countenance which otherwise would have been calm, and perhaps pensive, they gave an expression of extreme vivacity and unusual ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... and told them that the book set forth, to those who had eyes to see, how Solomon the great king, with his threescore queens, and fourscore concubines, and virgins without number, forgets all his seraglio and his luxury in pure and noble love for the undefiled, who is but one; and how as his eyes are opened to see that God made the one man for the one woman, and the one woman to the one man, even as it was in the garden of Eden, ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... 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 ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... assumed in haste the garment of a slave of the Seraglio, and commanded his daughter to arrange her dress in a more succinct form, and to take in her ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... Arab, whom you represented as a man of more than common accomplishments, take any pleasure in his seraglio, when it is filled only with women like ...
— Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia • Samuel Johnson
... art thou, oh sultan, who art found worthy to be visited by the great prophet." And the emperor in return fell prostrate before him, thanking Mahomet for his condescension in this visit. The doctor also entered the seraglio, where he remained six days under the same figure, the building and its gardens being all the time environed with a thick darkness, so that no one, not the emperor himself, dared to enter. At the end of this time the doctor, still under the figure of Mahomet, ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... from 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 world ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... this work was so decided that it determined 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, but as the wife was incapable in money matters and administration, and ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... Christian home? Only in the sphere of christianity does the true idea of home become fully developed. Home with the savage is but a herding, a servitude. Even among many of the Jews it was little better than a Mahommedan seraglio. The most eminent of the heathen world degrade the family by making it the scene of lust, and introducing concubinage and polygamy. Plato, one of the most enlightened of the heathen, had base conceptions ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... commissions on the provision of the least toy, they laid stress upon accusations more grave but no less certain, since they also sprang from the same source. It seemed there was, adjoining the seraglio, a harem of European women admirably equipped for his Highness by the Nabob, who must have been a good judge in such matters, having practised formerly, in Paris—before his departure for the East—the most singular trades: vendor of theatre-tickets, manager of a low dancing-hall, ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... 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 its ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... 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
... vigilant 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 perhaps ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... is named the 'Paste of Sultans,' because the discovery was originally made for the Seraglio by an Arabian physician. It has been approved by the Institute on the recommendation of our illustrious chemist, Vauquelin; together with the Lotion, fabricated on the same principles which govern the composition ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... 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 ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... 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 ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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, ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... his friends on no scent of his own abode; but he makes this "own abode" a sort of Crystal Palace in the centre of a whole ring-fence of streets, with the old fronts of the houses kept to avert suspicion of the Seraglio of Eastern beauties, the menagerie and beast fights, and the slaves whom (it is rather suggested than definitely stated) he occasionally murders. He performs circus-rider feats when he meets a lady (or at least a woman) in the Bois de Boulogne; he sets her house on fire when ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... the 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
... the useless trouble of baptizing a few of these people. They appeared to be as much Christian as I was Mahometan. The cacique had more than one wife—the word of the Pandita of the settlement was the local law, and the Pandita himself of course had his seraglio. I got the first man, who had followed me, to direct me to the Pandita's house. My guide was gaily attired in bright red tight acrobat breeches, with buttons up the side, and a jacket like a waistcoat, with sleeves so close-fitting that I suppose he seldom took the trouble to undress himself. ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... malformation being an attraction for the male members of the race. Merensky says that in Basutoland the elder women begin to practice labial manipulation on their female children shortly after infancy, and Adams has found this custom to prevail in Dahomey; he says that the King's seraglio includes 3000 members, the elect of his female subjects, all of whom have labia up to the standard of recognized length. Cameron found an analogous practice among the women of the shores of Lake Tanganyika. The females ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... piece, after the following ejaculatory fashion, and with an accent difficult to express by written signs: "May, commang! maydemosels, je suis atonnay! May! commang! Maydemosel Descuilles, je suis surprise! Kesse ke say! vous permattay maydemosels etre lay filles d'ung seraglio! je ne vou pau! je vous defang! je suis biang atonnay!" And so she departed, with our prompter's copy, leaving us rather surprised, ourselves, at the unsuspected horror we had been about to perpetrate, and Mademoiselle Descuilles shrugging ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... 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 ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... friends, particularly, in Saxony and Suabia, 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, or the unwavering ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... the tide near the seraglio? 'Tis no dark cormorants that on the ripple float, 'Tis no dull plume of stone—no oars of Turkish boat, With measured beat ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... her he forced himself to appear cheerful, for she, even as a mirror, changed as he changed, and if he were silent and anxious, she solicitously inquired concerning, and endeavoured to remove the cause of his seriousness. She resided at the palace of Sweet Waters, a summer seraglio of the Sultan; the beauty of the surrounding scenery, undefiled by war, and the freshness of the river, made this spot doubly delightful. Raymond felt no relief, received no pleasure from any show of heaven or earth. ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... airy of architecture, so brilliant and varied of colour, that they suggest having been called into being by the stroke of a magician's wand to gratify the whim of an Eastern potentate. Surely, they are a vast seraglio, a triple collection of pleasure houses where captive maidens are content and nautch girls dance with feet like larks. Business, commerce, one cannot associate with this enchanting vista; nor cockroaches as long as one's foot, scorpions, tarantulas, ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... the Turkish police. The current in the Bosporus is pretty strong, and these sad relics of two misguided Dutchmen will be washed up tomorrow about Seraglio Point. In this game you must drop the curtain neat and pat at the end of each Scene, if you don't want trouble later with the missing heir and the ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... her 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 Persian custom—five, ten, or twenty. Take the score, I order you. Then in twelve ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... made our way through the crowded streets, past the Seraglio gardens and St. Sophia, till we reached the old Hippodrome, which was modeled after the Circus at Rome. Little remains of its ancient glory, for the Crusaders carried off most of its works of art. The granite obelisk of Theodosius and the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... Levett, and Francis Barber, who, coming as a servant, remained as one of the family, because he was too old to work. A Miss Carmichael, in green spectacles and bombazine, carrying a cane, completed what the Doctor called his "seraglio." Writing to Mrs. Thrale in playful mood, telling of his household troubles, he says, "Williams hates everybody; Levett hates Desmoulins, and does not love Williams; Desmoulins hates them both; Poll loves ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... about 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 London; ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... administration of justice; while the other preferred to confine himself to the role of adviser or benevolent counsellor. Even this precaution, however, was insufficient to prevent disasters. The women of the seraglio, encouraged from without by their relations or friends, plotted secretly for the removal of the irksome sovereign.* Those princes who had been deprived by their father's decision of any legitimate hope of reigning, concealed their discontent to no purpose; they were arrested ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... 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 gable projected ...
— The Children's Own Longfellow • Henry W. Longfellow
... majesty. The images of Asiatic despotism and voluptuousness have scarcely been wanting to crown the exaggerated scene. We have been taught to tremble at the terrific visages of murdering janizaries, and to blush at the unveiled mysteries of a future seraglio. Attempts so extravagant as these to disfigure or, it might rather be said, to metamorphose the object, render it necessary to take an accurate view of its real nature and form: in order as well to ascertain its true aspect and genuine appearance, as to ...
— The Federalist Papers
... 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 ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... glory. Then happiness, in the person of Hortense, had reduced the poet to idleness—the normal condition of all artists, since to them idleness is fully occupied. Their joy is such as that of the pasha of a seraglio; they revel with ideas, they get drunk at the founts of intellect. Great artists, such as Steinbock, wrapped in reverie, are rightly spoken of as dreamers. They, like opium-eaters, all sink into poverty, whereas if they had been kept up to the mark by the stern demands of life, ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... find that 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 government ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... their melancholy love. No Sailor came; the months in terror fled! Then news arrived—He fought, and he was DEAD! At the lone cottage Lucy lives, and still Walks for her weekly pittance to the mill; A mean seraglio there her father keeps, Whose mirth insults her, as she stands and weeps; And sees the plenty, while compell'd to stay, Her father's pride, become his harlot's prey. Throughout the lanes she glides, at evening's close, And softly ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe
... Let the Frenchman keep up his seraglio standards as he pleased. An Englishman trusts both his wife and his daughter—scorns, indeed, to consider whether he trusts them or no! And who comes worst off? Not the Englishman—if, at least, we are to believe the French novel on ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Harran a most magnificent and potent sultan, 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 as soon as you awake, go to your prayers, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... accompanied by one of the sweetest voices that ever beguiled a Peri, and turning to ascertain the cause of the music, I caught a glimpse of the loveliest woman in Aleppo; but I forgot, in the fervour of the moment, that my feet were treading on hallowed and forbidden ground—the gardens and seraglio of the Pacha!—and if my beautiful visitant had not expressed her assurance of unalterable protection, I should have resigned the rose of my story—the loadstar of my life. But why should I extend ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 473., Saturday, January 29, 1831 • Various
... dignified with the appellation of the king's slave; had, perhaps, been purchased from obscure parents, in a country which he had never known; and was trained up from his infancy in the severe discipline of the seraglio. [53] His name, his wealth,his honors, were the gift of a master, who might, without injustice, resume what he had bestowed. Rustan's knowledge, if he possessed any, could only serve to confirm his habits by prejudices. His language afforded not words for any form of government, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... 1536, Ibrahim, 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 ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... 1670, the splendour and corruption of the French Court had reached their acme. The seraglio of the great King recalled to mind that of Solomon, whilst his brother, enslaved by effeminacy and debauchery, had only to hold up his finger and the most important personages of the state were suitably provided ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... of that otherwise impalpable fact. I, the only Chartist there? Might there not have been dozens of them?—emissaries from London, dressed up as starving labourers, and rheumatic old women? There were actually traces of a plan for seizing all the ladies in the country, and setting up a seraglio of them in D * * * * Cathedral. How did the court know ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... breaking out of the civil war. He pined for the decorous tyranny of the old Whitehall; for the days of that sainted king who deprived his people of their money and their ears, but let their wives and daughters alone; and could scarcely reconcile himself to a court with a seraglio and without a Star-Chamber. By taking this course he made himself every day more odious, both to the sovereign, who loved pleasure much more than prerogative, and to the people, who dreaded royal prerogatives much more than royal pleasures; and thus he was at last more detested by the Court ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... 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. The point we are aiming at is to bring ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... moment before spelling" seraglio," Rosa in her haste blurted out the word, and Julia smiled and there was a little rustle of expectancy. It was evident that many of the scholars, as well as the ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... burn her heart to water. Yes, and so he had had Lucy's heart—as water to be poured over his feet. By Heaven, when he thought of it, he, James Adolphus, had been the greater rogue: to play the Grand Turk; to hoard that lovely, quivering creature in his still seraglio; to turn the key, and leave her there! And Jimmy Urquhart got in by the window. Of course he did. He was not an imaginative man by nature; but he was now a lover and had need to enhance his mistress. ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... 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 ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... in which he arrived at this dignity, really the desire and object of Ali's whole life, occurred also the death of the Sultan Abdul Hamid, whose two sons, Mustapha and Mahmoud, were confined in the Old Seraglio. This change of rulers, however, made no difference to Ali; the peaceful Selim, exchanging the prison to which his nephews were now relegated, for the throne of their father, confirmed the Pacha of Janina in the titles, offices, and privileges which ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... gallies discharged their ordinance: and we for his farewell gaue him one and twentie pieces. Then he went to his house with his gallies, and the 22 he went to the Sea, and the Castle that standeth in the water gaue him foureteene or sixteene pieces: and when he came against the Turks Seraglio he shot off all his caliuers and his great pieces, and so hee went his way. [Sidenote: The Ambassadour repaireth to the great Turks court.] The 24 our Ambassadour went to the Court, whose entertainement with the ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... good God" (saith he), "what a company of pleasures hast thou made for man!" He that should be admitted on a sudden to the sight of such a palace as that of Escurial in Spain, or to that which the Moors built at Granada, Fontainebleau in France, the Turk's gardens in his seraglio, wherein all manner of birds and beasts are kept for pleasure; wolves, bears, lynxes, tigers, lions, elephants, &c., or upon the banks of that Thracian Bosphorus: the pope's Belvedere in Rome, [3249]as pleasing as those horti pensiles in Babylon, or that Indian king's delightsome ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... shall prompt the sultan, Freed from the tumults of unsettled conquest, To fix his court, and regulate his pleasures, Soon shall the dire seraglio's horrid gates Close, like th' eternal bars of death, upon thee. Immur'd, and buried in perpetual sloth, That gloomy slumber of the stagnant soul, There shalt thou view, from far, the quiet cottage, And sigh for cheerful ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... demeanour; so that I was at times reminded of Samuel Richardson in his circle of admiring women. The wives spoke up and seemed to volunteer opinions, like our wives at home—or, say, like doting but respectable aunts. Altogether, I conclude that he rules his seraglio much more by art than terror; and those who give a different account (and who have none of them enjoyed my opportunities of observation) perhaps failed to distinguish between degrees of rank, between "my pamily" and the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... queenly manners. She played a sweet bit, a fantasia by her teacher, Herr Klug, entitled "The Five Blackbirds," and displayed a wonderful command of the resources of the keyboard. For encore she dashed off a brilliant morceau by Herr Klug, entitled "Echoes de Seraglio." This was very difficult, but for the fair debutante it was child's play. She got five recalls, and after the concert held an impromptu reception in her dressing-room, her happy parents being warmly congratulated by their fellow townsmen. We predict a great career for ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... How would Nina? How would Laura? He had said to himself, light-heartedly, that his marriage would make no difference, that he should retain them, all three, as an intellectual seraglio. Would this, after all, be possible? When they heard that he, George Tanqueray, was marrying ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... should have so great a prevalence in the female breast, and yet it is certain that to this principle it was owing, that Swift's house was often a seraglio of very virtuous women, who attended him from morning till night, with an obedience, an awe, and an assiduity that are seldom paid to the richest, or the most powerful lovers. These ladies had no doubt a pride in being thought the companions of ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... and the whole nobles of the kingdom are round about the car; so that it is wonderful to behold so many people and so much riches all in such good order, especially considering how barbarous are the people. The king of Pegu has one principal wife, who lives in a seraglio along with 300 concubines, and he is said to have 90 children. He sits every day in person to hear the suits of his people, yet he nor they never speak together. The king sits up aloft on a high seat or tribunal in a great hall, and lower down sit all his barons round about. Those that demand ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... immediately made up his mind to turn Quaker! He came down stairs, and went into mosque, the other day, with a broad-brimmed hat, straight coat, and drab trowsers; and insisted on all the ladies of his hareem putting on plain bonnets, and holding a "silent meeting" in the Seraglio! How it bothered them to do that last thing you may well suppose! More anon, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various
... in perfection in each one of them. In France it is extremely rare, not to say impossible, to meet with the thirty points of perfection, described in Persian verse, and engraved, it is said, in the Seraglio, which are needed to make a woman absolutely beautiful. Though in France the whole is seldom seen, we find exquisite parts. As to that imposing union which sculpture tries to produce, and has produced in a few rare examples like the Diana and the Callipyge, it is the privileged ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... lieutenant of police could once lay hands upon him. This personage, we may mention, was afterwards raised to the dignified office of keeper of the seals, as a reward for his industry and skill in providing victims for the royal seraglio at Versailles.[82] The man who had ventured to use his mind, was thrown into the dungeon at Vincennes by the man who played spy and pander for the Pompadour. The official record of a dialogue between Berryer and Denis Diderot, "of the Catholic, Apostolic, ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... 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 Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... taken already. To this, each thinking that it may be her turn speedily, if not now, they will in no wise consent, and have maltreated me as thou seest, and the dens of wild beasts are at this moment abodes of peace, compared to my seraglio. What is even worse, they threaten to disclose to the people the fact, of which they have unhappily become aware, that the revelation of the blessed Ad is not written upon the bones of a camel at all, but of a cow, and will therefore be accounted spurious, inasmuch as the ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... gave him the direction where to go in Stamboul. She had no special object in view. But she longed to be out in the air, to drive, to see people about her, the waterway, the forest of shipping, the domes and the minarets, the cypresses, the glades stretching towards Seraglio Point, the long, low hills of Asia. She longed, too, to hear voices, hurrying feet, the innumerable sounds of life. She hoped by seeing and hearing to fortify her will. The spirit of adventure was the spirit that held her, was the most vital part within her, ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... Jehan), prisoner in the Fort of Agra, he would think it safe to be at such a distance. Yet, notwithstanding, we have found that reason of State hath given place to that of health, or rather, to the intrigues of Rauchenara Begum, who was wild to breathe a more free air than that of the Seraglio, and to have her turn in showing herself to a gallant and magnificent army, as her sister had formerly done during the ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... "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 her she must produce something nice, blue or yellow, ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather |
