Your minister may be an anointed bishop, he may be a gowned and hooded doctor, he may be a king's chaplain, he may be the minister of the largest and the richest and the most learned parish in the city, but, unless he strikes terror and pain into your conscience every Sabbath, unless he makes you tremble every Sabbath under the eye and the hand of God, he is no true minister to you. As Goodwin says, he is a wooden cannon. As Leighton says, he is a mountebank for a minister.英文原著 · 《Bunyan Characters-3》
Thus reminded, I turned to the solemn traveller; but my eyes had no sooner met his than he twisted his visage into so wry a smile --if smile it could be called--that wherever there was a horse collar he must have won the prize. To hide my amusement, I asked them what they were. "Mountebanks?" I said curtly.英文原著 · 《From the Memoirs of a Minister of France》
"He is coming," he answered, with more than his usual gloom. "He passed this way this morning, and announced that on his return he should spend the night here. We found the goodwife all of a tremble when we arrived. He is a hard man, monsieur," the mountebank continued bitterly. "She cried after him that she hoped that God would change his heart, but he only answered that even if St. Brieuc changed his body--you know the legend, monseigneur, doubtless--he should be here."英文原著 · 《From the Memoirs of a Minister of France》
But the Mayor of Gol, a stout, big, placid man, looked at us doubtfully. "Well," he said, "I know these two; they are strolling mountebanks, honest knaves enough but always in some mischief."英文原著 · 《From the Memoirs of a Minister of France》
Such Nations cannot have a King to command them; can only have this or the other scandalous swindling Copper Captain, constitutional Gilt Mountebank, or other the like unsalutary entity by way of King; and the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children in a frightful and tragical manner, little noticed in the Penny Newspapers and Periodical Literatures of this generation. Oh, my friends--! But there is plain Business waiting us at hand.英文原著 · 《History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 21》
Neal, we are con men, grifters, mountebanks, flimflammers.美剧 · 《White Collar》