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bdd1200
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Young Surrey now lays down his knife and begins to complain. Noblemen, he laments, are not respected as they were in the days when England was great. The present king keeps about himself a collection of men of base degree, and no good will come of it. Cranmer creeps forward in his chair, as if to intervene, but Surrey gives him a glare that says, you're exactly who I mean, archbishop.
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Hilary Mantel |
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15956d6
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The Robespierre women (as one tended to think of them now) were all on display. Madame looked actively, rather intimidatingly benevolent; it was her aim in life to find a Jacobin who was hungry, then to go into the kitchen and make extravagant efforts, and say, "I have fed a patriot!"."
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humour
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Hilary Mantel |
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e707231
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Men like Carew, he knows, tend to blame him, Cromwell, for Anne's rise in the world; he facilitated it, he broke the old marriage and let in the new. He does not expect them to soften to him, to include him in their companionship; he only wants them not to spit in his dinner.
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Hilary Mantel |
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3c40349
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At the top of the Queen's Staircase at the Tuileries, there is a series of communicating chambers, crowded every day with clerks, secretaries, messengers, with army officers and purveyors, officials of the Commune and officers of the courts: with government couriers, booted and spurred, waiting for dispatches from the last room in the suite. Look down: outside there are cannon and files of soldiers. The room at the end was once the private ..
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Hilary Mantel |
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90a8285
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When Stephen comes into a room, the furnishings shrink from him. Chairs scuttle backwards. Joint-stools flatten themselves like pissing bitches. The woollen Bible figures in the king's tapestries lift their hands to cover their ears.
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Hilary Mantel |
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5d3f8cf
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May 29, the Central Committee of the Sections goes into "permanent session" -- what a fine, crisis-ridden sound it has, that term!"
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humour
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Hilary Mantel |
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87803a6
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And if a diversion is needed, why not arrest a general? Arthur Dillon is a friend of eminent deputies, a contender for the post of Commander-in-Chief of the Northern Front; he has proved himself at Valmy and in a halfdozen actions since. In the National Assembly he was a liberal; now he is a republican. Isn't it then logical that he should be thrown into gaol, July 1, on suspicion of passing military secrets to the enemy?
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irony
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Hilary Mantel |
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0bbaf08
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I think back to those days after the Bastille fell, the Mercure Nationale run from the back of the shop, that little Louise sticking her well-bred nose in the air and flouncing off to bawl out their printer--and you know, he was a good lad, Francois. I'd say, 'Go and do this, this, this, go and tie some bricks to your boots and jump in the Seine,' and he'd"-- Danton touched an imaginary forelock--'right away, Georges-Jacques, and do you nee..
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humour
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Hilary Mantel |
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96434e2
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Herault, Fabre thinks: and his mind drifts back--as it tends to, these days-- to the Cafe du Foy. He'd been giving readings from his latest--Augusta was dying the death at the Italiens--and in came this huge, rough-looking boy, shoe-horned into a lawyer's black suit, whom he'd made a sketch of in the street, ten years before. The boy had developed this upper-class drawl, and he'd talked about Herault--"his looks are impeccable, he's well tr..
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reminiscence
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Hilary Mantel |
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71966cb
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Again, take someone who's crippled or deformed; they can't be tied to the plank without a lot of sweat and heaving, and then the crowds (who can't see much anyway) get bored and start hissing and catcalling. Meanwhile a queue builds up, and the people at the end of the queue get awkward and start screaming or passing out. If all the clients were young, male, stoical and fit, he'd have fewer problems, but it's surprising how few of them fall..
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french-revolution
guillotine
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Hilary Mantel |
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f5c4428
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I tell you, dear Citizen Camille--it's not the deaths I can't stand. It's the judgements, the judgements in the courtroom.
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terror
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Hilary Mantel |
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e43a3ee
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He stepped back, looked up. Cut into the stone above his head were the words RUE MARAT. For a moment he had the urge to turn back around the corner, climb the stairs, shout to the servants not to bother unpacking, they'd be returning to Arcis in the morning. He looked up to the lighted windows above his head. If I go up there, he thought, I'll never be free again. If I go up there I commit myself to Max, to joining with him to finish Hebert..
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politicsics
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Hilary Mantel |
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eb17cee
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There was a man called Chaumette, scruffy and sharp-featured. He hated the aristocrats and he also hated prostitutes, and the two things used to get quite confused in his mind.
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Hilary Mantel |
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a945977
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The visitor sees the hospital as needles and knives, metal teeth, metal bars; sees the foggy meeting between the damp summer air outside and the overheated exhalations of the sick room. But the patient sees no such contrast. She cannot imagine the street, the motorway. To her the hospital is this squashed pillow, this water glass: this bell pull, and the nice judgement required to know when to ring it. For the visitor everything points outw..
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Hilary Mantel |
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a734e44
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my great-aunts and uncles died in wards like those. Wrapping and muffling themselves, gazing at the long windows streaming rain, visitors would tell the patient: 'You're in the best place.
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Hilary Mantel |
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22c196d
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Death stays when the visitors have gone, and the nurses turn a blind eye; he leans back on his portable throne, he crosses his legs, he says, 'Entertain me.
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Hilary Mantel |