What did it all mean? Then Auguste Moleux turned and faced the men. "Mes enfants," he said, "my little cabbages! wake up! the government of the Republic has decreed that to-day is to be a day of gaiety and public rejoicings!"
"Gaiety? Public rejoicings forsooth, when the bread-winner of every family ..."
"Hush! Be silent, all of you," quoth Auguste impatiently, "you do not understand! All that is at an end ...英文原著 · 《The Elusive Pimpernel》
`And yet he was not always in a mad humour; in fact, Sixteen- String Jack, for all his gaiety, was a proud, melancholy man. The shadow of the tree was always upon him, and he would make me miserable by talking of his certain doom. ``I have a hundred pounds in my pocket,'' he would say; ``I shall spend that, and then I shan't last long.'' And though I never thought him serious, his prophecy came true enough. Only a few months before the end we had visited Tyburn together. With his usual carelessness, he passed the line of constables who were on guard.英文原著 · 《A Book of Scoundrels》
Even in his gaiety there was an unpleasant spice of greed and truculence. Once, when he was still seen in fashionable company, he went to a masquerade, dressed in a rich Spanish habit, lent him by a Captain in the Guards, and he made so fine a show that he captivated a young and beautiful Cyprian, whom, when she would have treated him with generosity, he did but reward with the loss of all her jewels.英文原著 · 《A Book of Scoundrels》
The humours of the situation were all the Deacon's own. He dressed the part in black; his respectability grinned behind a vizard; and all the while he trifled nonchalantly with a pistol. Breaking the silence with snatches from The Beggar's Opera, he promised that all their lead should turn to gold, christened the coulter and the crow the Great and Little Samuel, and then went off to drink and dice at the Vintner's. How could anger prevail against this undying gaiety? And if Smith were peevish at failure, he was presently reconciled, and prepared once more to die for his Deacon.英文原著 · 《A Book of Scoundrels》
Princess Ligovski presented me to her, as a relation of her own. Tea was served. The guests were numerous, and the conversation was general. I endeavoured to please the Princess, jested, and made her laugh heartily a few times. Princess Mary, also, was more than once on the point of bursting out laughing, but she restrained herself in order not to depart from the role she had assumed. She finds languor becoming to her, and perhaps she is not mistaken. Grushnitski appears to be very glad that she is not infected by my gaiety. After tea we all went into the drawing- room.英文原著 · 《A Hero of Our Time》
Young Sir John Oxon's visit to his relative at Eldershawe being at an end, he returned to town, and remaining there through a few weeks of fashionable gaiety, won new reputations as a triumpher over the female heart. He made some renowned conquests and set the mode in some new essences and sword-knots. But even these triumphs appeared to pall upon him shortly, since he deserted the town and returned again to the country, where, on this occasion, he did not stay with his relative, but with Sir Jeoffry himself, who had taken a boisterous fancy to him.英文原著 · 《A Lady of Quality》