|
ccd0062
|
The order goes to the Tower, 'Bring up the bodies.' Deliver, that is, the accused men, by name Weston, Brereton, Smeaton and Norris, to Westminster Hall for trial. Kingston fetches them by barge; it is 12 May, a Friday.
|
|
|
Hilary Mantel |
|
b7c61c8
|
think
|
|
|
Hilary Mantel |
|
467bd80
|
Sometimes I sensed within myself-somestimes I felt it strongly- a will, a pull towards frivolity. I wanted to separate myself from the common fate of girls who are called Carmel, and identify myself with girls with casual names, names which their parents didn't think about too hard. I wanted to elect pleasure, not duty, and to be happy, and to have an expectation of happiness. I think now that this is the great division between people. Ther..
|
|
happiness
isolation
|
Hilary Mantel |
|
ac7b332
|
The fate of peoples is made like this, two men in small rooms. Forget the coronations, the conclaves of cardinals, the pomp and processions. This is how the world changes: a counter pushed across a table, a pen stroke that alters the force of a phrase, a woman's sigh as she passes and leaves on the air a trail of orange flower or rosewater; her hand pulling close the bed curtain, the discreet sigh of flesh against flesh.
|
|
|
Hilary Mantel |
|
6f11354
|
And the more the king snips and carps, the more do his petitioners seek out the company of Cromwell, so unfailing in his amiable courtesy. At home, Jo comes to him looking perplexed. She
|
|
|
Hilary Mantel |
|
9f47939
|
He glances up again, and recognizes Gregory's design. It is a system of holy simplicity: big papers on the bottom, small ones on top.
|
|
|
Hilary Mantel |
|
543ae08
|
Marlinspike goes down to the kitchen, to grow stout and live out his beastly nature. There is a summer ahead, though he cannot imagine its pleasures; sometimes when he's walking in the garden he sees him, a half-grown cat, lolling watchful in an apple tree, or snoring on a wall in the sun.
|
|
|
Hilary Mantel |
|
794479b
|
Reculer pour mieux sauter.
|
|
|
Hilary Mantel |
|
e48280e
|
it's just that you are practiced at persuading, and sometimes it's quite difficult, sir, to distinguish being persuaded by you from being knocked down in the street and stamped on.
|
|
|
Hilary Mantel |
|
196f5ff
|
peroration. He had left his opponents with nothing to say and nowhere to
|
|
|
Hilary Mantel |
|
dcc18bf
|
ALL JUNE, disasters in the Vendee. At different times the rebels have Angers, Saumur, Chinon; are narrowly defeated in the battle for Nantes, where off the coast the British navy waits to support them. The Danton Committee is not winning the war, nor can it promise a peace. If by autumn there is no relief from the news of disaster and defeat, the sansculottes will take the law into their own hands, turning on the government and their electe..
|
|
|
Hilary Mantel |
|
cbafebb
|
The fate of peoples is made like this, two men in small rooms. Forget the coronations, the conclaves of cardinals, the pomp and processions. This is how the world changes:
|
|
|
Hilary Mantel |
|
205b8e3
|
The living result of the queen's labors is the diminutive Mary--not really a whole princess, perhaps two-thirds of one.
|
|
|
Hilary Mantel |
|
89a7b89
|
The wine is one of those big, noble wines that Brandon favours, and Chapuys drinks appreciatively and says I don't understand it, nothing do I understand in this benighted country. Is Cranmer Pope now? Or is Henry Pope? Perhaps you are Pope? My men who were among the press today say they heard few voices raised for the concubine, and plenty who called upon God to bless Katherine, the rightful queen. Did they? I don't know what city they we..
|
|
|
Hilary Mantel |
|
30c6f81
|
You said,' Camille protested, 'that when you wanted to get on terms with Gabrielle you cultivated her mother. It's true, everybody saw you doing it, boasting in Italian and rolling your eyes and doing your tempestuous southerner impersonation.
|
|
|
Hilary Mantel |
|
a266c41
|
Rafe and Richard say that when my education is sufficient you mean to marry me to some old dowager with a great settlement and black teeth, and she will wear me out with lechery and rule me with her whims, and she will leave her estate away from the children she has and they will hate me and scheme against my life and one morning I shall be dead in my bed." The spaniel swivels in his son's arms, turns on him her mild, round, wondering eyes...
|
|
|
Hilary Mantel |
|
9da3766
|
When you are writing laws you are testing words to find their utmost power. Like spells, they have to make things happen in the real world, and like spells, they only work if people believe in them. If your law exacts a penalty, you must be able to enforce it - on the rich as well as the poor, the people on the Scottish borders and the Welsh marches, the men of Cornwall as well as the men of Sussex and Kent.
|
|
|
Hilary Mantel |
|
33cafd7
|
The child Elizabeth is wrapped tightly in layers, her fists hidden: just as well, she looks as if she would strike you. Ginger bristles poke from beneath her cap, and her eyes are vigilant; he has never seen an infant in the crib look so ready to take offense. Lady Bryan says, "Do you think she looks like the king?" He hesitates, trying to be fair to both parties. "As much as a little maid ought."
|
|
|
Hilary Mantel |
|
ef87ef4
|
I can remember the days,' Mirabeau said, 'when we didn't have public opinion. No one had ever heard of such a thing.
|
|
|
Hilary Mantel |
|
facf448
|
The year is now 1774. Poseurs or not, it is time to grow up. It is time to enter the public realm, the world of public acts and public attitudes. Everything that happens now will happen in the light of history. It is not a midday luminary, but a corpse-candle to the intellect; at best, it is a secondhand lunar light, error-breeding, sand-blind and parched. Camille Desmoulins, 1793: "They think that gaining freedom is like growing up: you ha..
|
|
|
Hilary Mantel |
|
9c49249
|
This relentless bonhomie of yours, I knew it would wear out in the end. It is a coin that has changed hands so often. And now the small silver is worn out and we see the base metal.
|
|
|
Hilary Mantel |
|
0250b8a
|
Georges was in a rage. It is a spectacle to comtemplate, his rage. He tore off his cravat, strode about the room, his throat and chest glistening with sweat, his voice shaking the windows. "This bloody so-called Revolution has been a waste of time. What have the patriots got out of it? Nothing." He glared around the room. He looked as if he would hit anyone who contradicted him. Outside there was some far-off shouting, from the direction of..
|
|
|
Hilary Mantel |
|
2d35ae6
|
Henry stirs into life. "Do I retain you for what is easy? Jesus pity my simplicity, I have promoted you to a place in this kingdom that no one, no one of your breeding has ever held in the whole of the history of this realm."
|
|
|
Hilary Mantel |
|
4fa86ce
|
He was, in all, so clean, so sweet, so golden, that I backed off, afraid he must be American and about to convert me to some cult.
|
|
|
Hilary Mantel |
|
5617460
|
Cromwell. I am not such a hard man that I don't see how you are left. Do you know what I say? I say I don't know one man in England who would have done what you have done, for a man disgraced and fallen. The king says so. Even him, Chapuys, the Emperor's man, he says, you cannot fault what's-he-called. I say, it's a pity you ever saw Wolsey. It's a pity you don't work for me." "Well," he says, "we all want"
|
|
|
Hilary Mantel |
|
28d2b22
|
We say, how did it happen? We ask ourselves." The duke sniffs. "We ask ourselves, but by the steaming blood of Christ we have no bloody answer." The steaming blood of Christ. It's an oath worthy of Thomas Howard, the senior duke."
|
|
|
Hilary Mantel |
|
1a99468
|
I once had every hope,' he says. 'The world corrupts me, I think. Or perhaps it's just the weather. It pulls me down and makes me think like you, that one should shrink inside, down and down to a little point of light, preserving one's solitary soul like a flame under a glass. The spectacles of pain and disgrace I see around me, the ignorance, the unthinking vice, the poverty and the lack of hope, and oh, the rain - the rain that falls on E..
|
|
human-nature
|
Hilary Mantel |
|
cac1d8c
|
I do no damage. This is damage, this." He picked up a paper from Camille's desk. "I can't read your writing, but I take it the general tenor is that Brissot should go and hang himself."
|
|
humour
|
Hilary Mantel |
|
20588a0
|
Rumours crop in the short summer nights. Dawn finds them like mushrooms in the damp grass. Members of Thomas Cromwell's household have been seeking a midwife in the small hours of the morning. He is hiding a woman at some country house of his, a foreign woman who has given him a daughter. Whatever you do, he says to Rafe, don't defend my honour. I have women like that all over the place. They will believe it, Rafe says. The word in the city..
|
|
|
Hilary Mantel |
|
a96bf7d
|
For I imagine the devil, when he goes to walk in the world, spruces himself in his dressing room, where the fire burns blue in its grate and the mirrors are draped with black. I imagine how he sleeks his rough fur with babies' fat, polishes his teeth with ground bones, and swills his mouth with blood; then taking from its peg his tall shiny hat, he sets it upon his head to hide his horns. Its riband is trimmed with plucked feathers from th..
|
|
|
Hilary Mantel |
|
e411a02
|
news comes from Rome that the Emperor's Spanish and German troops, who have not been paid for months, have run wild through the Holy City paying themselves, plundering the treasuries and stoning the artworks. Dressed satirically in stolen vestments, they have raped the wives and virgins of Rome. They have tumbled to the ground statues and nuns, and smashed their heads on the pavements. A common soldier has stolen the head of the lance that ..
|
|
|
Hilary Mantel |
|
8247dae
|
The door was flung open. Maurice Duplay filled it; energetic master, shirt- sleeves rolled up. He threw out his arms, the good Jacobin Duplay, and formed a sentence totally original, something which had never been uttered in the history of the world: "Camille, you have a son, and your wife is very well, and is asking you to be at home, right now."
|
|
wit
|
Hilary Mantel |
|
79079ee
|
Ask Robespierre. Ask the man with the conscience which is more important, your friend or your country-- ask him how he weighs an individual in the scheme of things. Ask him which comes first, his old pals or his new principles. You ask him, Camille.
|
|
robespierre
|
Hilary Mantel |
|
0b43377
|
Cravats grow higher, as if they mean to protect the throat. The highest cravats in public life will be worn by Citizen Antoine Saint-Just, of the National Convention and the Committee of Public Safety. In the dark and harrowing days of '94, an obscene feminine inversion will appear: a thin crimson ribbon, worn round a bare white neck.
|
|
french-revolution
|
Hilary Mantel |
|
8645aaf
|
This may interest you. A letter from my dear cousin Fouquier-Tinville." Camille cast an eye over his relative's best handwriting. "Squirm, flattery, abasement, squirm, dearest sweetest Camille, squirm squirm squirm ... 'the election of the Patriot Ministers ... I know them all by reputation, but I am not so happy as to be known by them--"
|
|
humour
|
Hilary Mantel |
|
1c29cf5
|
So, Lucile thinks, Gabrielle has the prospect of escape; but in her apartment at the rue des Cordeliers, she sits still and silent, in the conscious postures of pregnant women. Sometimes she cries; this chit Louise Gely trips down the stairs to join her in a few sniffles. Gabrielle is crying for her marriage, her soul and her king; Louise is crying, she supposes, for a broken doll or a kitten run over in the street. Can't stand it, she thin..
|
|
|
Hilary Mantel |
|
fed27fa
|
Elijah told Ahab that the dogs would lick his blood, and so it came to pass, as you would imagine, since only the successful prophets are remembered
|
|
|
Hilary Mantel |
|
37b8d6f
|
But Christendom was overturned for the Boleyn marriage, to put the ginger pig in the cradle;
|
|
|
Hilary Mantel |
|
94f1aa3
|
The year now is 1774. Poseurs or not, it is time to grow up. It is time to enter the public realm, the world of public acts and public attitudes. Everything that happens now will happen in the light of history. It is not a midday luminary, but a corpse-candle to the intellect; at best, it is a secondhand lunar light, error-breeding, sand-blind and parched.
|
|
|
Hilary Mantel |
|
e75896e
|
I daresay something will happen, between now and '91, to make your fortunes look up.
|
|
revolution
|
Hilary Mantel |
|
c86bdc4
|
God knows," Charpentier said, "I like the present scheme of things very little, but I dread to think what will happen if the conduct of reform falls into hands like yours." "Reform?" Camille said. "I'm not talking about reform. The city will explode this summer."
|
|
|
Hilary Mantel |
|
2dc6b01
|
The Revolution is your bride," he said. "As the Church is the Bride of Christ."
|
|
|
Hilary Mantel |
|
d9b7ca4
|
But just as everything was going along politely, quietly and wonderfully -- in poured Citizen Danton and his crew.
|
|
humour
|
Hilary Mantel |
|
d4788dd
|
You once told me, when you visited my house, how Anne conducts herself with men: she says, "Yes, yes, yes, yes, no."' Wyatt nods; he recognises those words; he looks sorry he spoke them. 'Now you may have to transpose one word of that testimony. Yes, yes, yes, no, yes."
|
|
trial
|
Hilary Mantel |