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Antechamber

noun
1.
A large entrance or reception room or area.  Synonyms: anteroom, entrance hall, foyer, hall, lobby, vestibule.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Antechamber" Quotes from Famous Books



... week following our first interview with his excellency, Sir Evan McCregor, we received an invitation to dine at Government House with a company of gentlemen. On our arrival at six o'clock, we were conducted into a large antechamber above the dining hall, where we were soon joined by the Solicitor-General, Hon. R.B. Clarke. Dr. Clarke, a physician, Maj. Colthurst, Capt. Hamilton, and Mr. Galloway, special magistrates. The appearance of the Governor about an hour afterwards, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... set hard together. He signed the mass of orders and drafts made payable to Nicolas Philibert, and when done, threw into the fire the pen which had performed so unwelcome an office. Bigot sent for the chief clerk who had brought the bills and orders, and who waited for them in the antechamber. "Tell your master, the Bourgeois," said he, "that for this time, and only to prevent loss to the foolish officers, the Intendant has signed these army bills; but that if he purchase more, in defiance of the sole right of the Grand Company, ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... and upon the hideous pandemonium broke the sharp crack of my rifle, once, twice, thrice. Three lions rolled, struggling and biting, to the floor. Victory seized my arm, with a quick, "This way! Here is a door," and a moment later we were in a tiny antechamber at the foot of a narrow ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... that Pao-y and Tai-y should only remain with her in this part to break her loneliness, but that Ying Ch'un, T'an Ch'un, and Hsi Ch'un, the three of them, should move on this side in the three rooms within the antechamber, at the back of madame lady Wang's quarters; and that Li Wan should be told off to be their attendant and to keep an eye ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... astonished at his sudden elevation. On the contrary, being now considered perfectly established in place and power, he became more than ever the object of venal adoration. Men of rank and dignity thronged his antechamber, waiting patiently their turn for an audience; and titled dames demeaned themselves to take the front seats of the carriages of his wife and daughter, as if they had been riding with princesses ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving

... opened in the Propaganda, till it was closed by the decision of the Congregation of Bishops and Regulars early in the following March. Nor was the "insolence of office" quite absent. He was once heard to tell of his having been snubbed in the Pope's antechamber by some one in attendance, and often put aside till he was vexed with many weary hours of waiting and by being ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott

... then removed to the castle of Saumur, from which he was liberated at the beginning of April. I had heard nothing of him for three years, when one day, shortly after the Restoration, whilst sitting at breakfast with my family at my house in the Rue Hauteville, I heard an extraordinary noise in the antechamber, and before I had time to ascertain its cause I found myself in the arms. of a young man, who embraced me with extraordinary ardour. It was La Sahla. He was in a transport of gratitude and joy at his liberation, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... large matted room, forty-two feet long by twenty-seven feet deep, with an antechamber at each end. The chapel and the antechambers are all very profusely decorated with pictures on the walls, with carved panels and painted ceilings. The Holy of Holies of this temple is accessible to the public only by special permit. It is composed of three chambers, ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck

... a bench outside the ladies' cabin, in a sort of antechamber between the steward's pantry and store-rooms, strongly perfumed with the odour of grocery, and waited for Marian's coming. He had no shadow of doubt that she would come to him instantly, in defiance of any other guardian or counseller. Whatever lies might have been told her—however ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon

... duke leaving the king, Desmond joined him in the antechamber, and as they walked towards the ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty

... into a reverie, or else he slept with open eyes. Calling up his courage the gallant rose at last and moved across the room. All unversed in tavern ways was the magnificent Gonzaga, and he who at court, in ballroom or in antechamber, was a very mirror of all the graces of a courtier, felt awkward ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini

... because I admired her wisdom; but before I went I must first see the king, to provide against any insult being offered to me, such as befell Bombay when I sent him with medicine. Having despatched him, I repaired again to the palace. In the antechamber I found a number of Wakungu, as usual, lounging about on the ground, smoking, chatting, and drinking pombe, whilst Wasoga amused them singing and playing on lap-harps, and little boys ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... adventurers who pounced on the monarchy and the treasury of Frederick the Great. Their course of action, very complex and very powerful, was well designed to captivate a fantastic and voluptuous bigot. However, they would never have gained more than an antechamber or alcove influence, they would never have risen to political influence, had they not known how to pervert the noblest inclinations of the King, whilst flattering the lowest. Mediocre and secondary as ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea

... many other adventures, and afterwards was kept in an apartment of its own, in the castle of Ofen, with an antechamber guarded by two grenadiers. The door was of iron, with three locks, and the crown itself was contained in an iron chest with five seals. All this, however, did not prevent it from being taken away and lost in the Revolution ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the powers of the conscious mind seem almost insignificant. Derived from the Unconscious during the process of evolution, the conscious is, as it were, the antechamber where the crude energies of the Unconscious are selected and adapted for action on the world outside us. In the past we have unduly exaggerated the importance of the conscious intellect. To claim for it the discoveries of civilisation ...
— The Practice of Autosuggestion • C. Harry Brooks

... cheaply; I should be glad if you would undertake to copy these airs I have brought with me." "Have the goodness to walk in, madam." We crossed a small obscure closet, which served as a species of antechamber, and entered the sitting-room of M. de Rousseau, who seated me in an arm-chair, and motioning to Henriette to sit down, once more inquired my wishes respecting the music. "Sir," said I, "as I live in the country, ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon

... into the room through which there was a second outlet into the gallery, when the next moment he recollected that he had left his watch and seals lying on the table. She must not see these first. He ran back and brought them away with him. At the same instant he heard the hostess in the antechamber showing Ottilie the way to her apartments. He sprang to the bedroom door. It was shut. In his haste, as he had come back for his watch, he had forgotten to take out the key, which had fallen out, and lay ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... short time between two and three hundred gentlemen were gathered in the courtyard and antechamber of Coligny's house. Some walked up and down, silent and stern. Others gathered in groups, and passionately discussed the matter. This was an attack not only upon the Admiral but upon the Huguenots in general. It was the work of the Guises, ever the deadliest foes of the Reformed faith—the authors ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty

... long in clearing away the last of the snow that clogged the entrance to the old bears' den. They could then mark the line of the gaping hole that cleft the rock, and which served as an antechamber to ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren

... to the door of the antechamber, and returned in an instant with Cocardasse and Passepoil, now both gorgeously dressed in an extravagantly modish manner, which became them, if possible, less than their previous rags and tatters. Both men saluted Gonzague profoundly, and ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... walls were lined with buckskins and not with woollen materials, for wool condenses the vapours and impregnates the atmosphere with damp. The partitions were taken down in the poop, and the officers had a large comfortable room, warmed by a stove. Both this room and that of the crew had a sort of antechamber, which prevented all direct communication with the exterior, and prevented the heat going out; it also made the crew pass more gradually from one temperature to another. They left their snow-covered garments in these antechambers, ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... apartments were several rooms en suite; the music-room was divided from the salon by curtains. I entered the salon unannounced; for the valet de chambre was an old family-servant, and having known me for so many years as garcon de famille, he let me proceed through the antechamber unaccompanied. The heavy curtains over the music-room were dropped; but as I entered, I heard a low murmur of voices coming from it. The thick Turkey carpet which lay on the inlaid ivory floor of the salon ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... to grow dark. anotar to note. antartico antarctic. ante before, in the presence of. antemano; de —— beforehand. antepasado ancestor. anterior former, previous, preceding. antes before, rather. antesala antechamber. anticuado antiquated. antiguo antique, old. antipodas m. pl. antipodes antojar vr. (with personal dative) to have a fancy or desire. anudar to knot. anunciar to announce. anadidura addition; por —— in addition. anadir ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon

... day, if he wanted, try the taste of being a bee all out for a little while." But to see him, nobody would have thought he was doing anything but basking in the sun. The scents of the flowers all about his feet came and went on the eddies of the air, paying my lord many a visit in his antechamber, his brain; the windy noises of the insects, the watery noises of the pigeons, the noises from the poultry yard, the song of the mountain river, visited, him also through the portals of his ears; but at the moment, the boy seemed lost in the ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... toward midnight, he stealthily drew out the dagger, and smote himself upon the belly. He would have immediately died from loss of blood, had he not by falling from the low couch made a noise and aroused those sleeping in the antechamber. Thereupon his son and some others who rushed in duly put back his bowels into his belly again, and brought medical attendance for him. Then they took away the dagger and locked the doors, that he might obtain sleep,—for ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio

... girls, perched on ladders, washed down these splendid walls. These girls wore wide hoops, being obliged to put on breeches, as otherwise they would have interested the passers by in an unseemly manner. After looking at the house we went down again, and M. d'O—— left me alone with Esther in the antechamber, where he worked with his clerks. As it was New Year's Day there was not ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... raised road was reached, paved with white marble, on both sides of which were planted deep green fir trees, and kingfisher-green cypress trees. On the moon-shaped platform were laid out antiquities, tripods, libation-vases, and other similar articles. In front of the antechamber was hung a gold-coloured flat tablet, with nine ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... little creak, the sudden stir. Behind the door was the obscene thing, the alarming presence, and terror would come over her as at death, or the birth of a child. Better, perhaps, burst in and face it than sit in the antechamber listening to the little creak, the sudden stir, for her heart was swollen, and pain threaded it. My son, my son— such would be her cry, uttered to hide her vision of him stretched with Florinda, inexcusable, irrational, in a woman with three children living at Scarborough. ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... myself in the best manner I could, and, after studying some compliments I thought necessary on such an occasion, proceeded to Northumberland House, and acquainted the servants that I had particular business with the duke. They showed me into an antechamber, where, after waiting some time, a gentleman, very elegantly dressed, made his appearance; taking him for the duke, I delivered all the fine things I had composed in order to compliment him on the honor he had done ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving

... other accessories (the choragus was the manager and director); he is making two actors, got up as satyrs, rehearse their parts; behind them, another comedian, assisted by a costumer of some kind, is trying to put on a yellow garment which is too small for him. Thus we can re-people the antechamber of the stage. We see already those comic masks that were the principal resource in the wardrobe of the ancient players. Some of them were typical; for instance, that of the young virgin, with her hair parted on her forehead ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier

... gorged spider awaits the fly, with desire indeed, but without anxiety. Her office consisted of three rooms, opening into one another within, each connected by doors with the hall without. A solemn youth kept guard in the antechamber, a bilious lad whose feverish imagination enshrined Sister Claire and McMeeter on the same altar, and fed its fires on the promises of the worthy pair some day to send him on a mission as glorious as their own. The ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith

... from the ladies' bower into the stir of the antechamber. Met halfway by their escort, they proceeded toward the dining-room. Advance was a little slow; there was some confusion here and even crowding, replete diners blocking the way of those just going in. Just at the door, a party of five or six managed to come between Carlisle and Canning, ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... winter of 1907 was a very pretty affair. Up the rose-red carpeted stairs the guests walked, the statues looking silently on, but apparently there was no Galatea to step down from her niche and join the happy throng. In the antechamber each guest was asked to write his name in the large autograph books kept for that purpose, and then, passing on, was received by the Ambassador and Ambassadress in the first of the splendid series of salons thrown open for the occasion. At this time ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting

... one morning to pay my respects, I found in his antechamber one Innis, a messenger of Philadelphia, who had come from thence express with a paquet from Governor Denny for the General. He delivered to me some letters from my friends there, which occasion'd my inquiring when he was to return, and where be lodg'd, that I might send some letters by him. He ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin

... home The Bethlehem Society Bonne Maman Memoirs of an office porter—Servants The festivities in honour of the Bey A Corsican election A day of spleen The Exhibition Memoirs of an office porter—In the antechamber A public man The apparition The Jenkins pearls The funeral La Baronne Hemerlingue The sitting Dramas of Paris Memoirs of an office porter—The last leaves At Bordighera The first night ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... commonwealth just as if the city had inherited it from his heirs. From all sides kings and ambassadors flocked to Rome to congratulate her; and they showed that fawning is never more abject than when kings are in the antechamber. King Massinissa, who only desisted from presenting himself in person on being expressly prohibited from doing so, ordered his son to declare that he regarded himself as merely the beneficiary, and the Romans as ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... these two made his way up the staircase with the air of a man well acquainted with the locality. Passing through a large antechamber containing several nuns, who bowed to the ground as he passed, he ran rather than walked to a reception-room, which, it must be confessed, bore but little trace of that austerity which is ordinarily ascribed to ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)

... the house, which remains undivided, forms a single long gallery serving as a common antechamber to all the private rooms, each of which opens to it by a wooden door (Pls. 36, 38). It is in a sense, though roofed and raised some 20 feet above the ground, the village street, as well as a common ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... wild confusion and bewilderment, Ben was somehow vaguely aware that Satan had often been in the shed-room before,—in the antechamber of his own heart. Whenever this heart of his was full of unkindness, and hardened against his brother, although those better fraternal instincts which he kept repressed and dwarfed might repudiate this cruelty under the pretext that he did ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock

... wouldn't listen, but go she would, and asked me to support her; so I went. 'Madame is not at home.'—'Up to that! we'll wait,' said Madame Mahuchet, 'if we have to stay all night,'—and down we camped in the antechamber. Presently the doors began to open and shut, and feet and voices came along. I felt badly. The guests were arriving for dinner. You can see the appearance it had. The countess sent her maid to coax Madame Mahuchet: 'Pay you to-morrow!' in short, all the snares! Nothing ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac

... light into the more distant parts of the hall. One or the other occasionally threw an inquiring glance toward the door, and leaned forward as if to listen. After a while, steps were heard in the antechamber, and the countenances of the honorable members of the Council ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach

... we got down to the subject of my visit he said that von der Lancken was mistaken, that passports could be granted only by Colonel von Claer who had his office about a block away. I began to smell a rat about this time, but kept plugging away. I spent an hour and a quarter in the antechamber of the Colonel, being unable to get to him or to any of his officers. It was all part of a game. Both von der Lancken and Herwarth harped upon the danger of the trip to Antwerp, advised against it and told how terribly they would feel if anything were to happen to me. I ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson

... descent into a blotchy tin bath, and the effort to identify one's soap and nail-brush among the promiscuous implements of ablution. That memory had faded now, and Betton saw only the dark hours to which his blue and white temple of refreshment formed a kind of glittering antechamber. For after his bath came his breakfast, and on the breakfast-tray ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton

... we traversed an antechamber, and then passing on we reached a vast dome, of dimensions so great that I could perceive no end in that gloom. The twinkling lights served only to disclose the darkness and to indicate the immensity of the cavern. In the midst there arose two enormous columns, which ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille

... DE, born at Chantilly; served in the Seven Years' War; attended in the antechamber in the palace when Louis XV. lay dying; was one of the first to emigrate on the fall of the Bastille; seized every opportunity to save the monarchy; was declared a traitor to the country, and had his estates confiscated for threatening to restore ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... commissaire returned and showed me into the chambers of Graf von Wedel, Privy Councilor to the German Emperor. With another man in evening dress, I was told to wait in an antechamber. We bowed, and although we took pretty good stock of each other, neither spoke. It is an unwritten law not to hold unnecessary conversation in the Imperial Secret Service. After about half an hour's wait, we were shown into the Count's private room. ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves

... conversed with great humour and vivacity. While the multitude were talking of "Bennet's grave looks," ["Bennet's grave looks were a pretence" is a line in one of the best political poems of that age,] his mirth made his presence always welcome in the royal closet. While Buckingham, in the antechamber, was mimicking the pompous Castilian strut of the Secretary, for the diversion of Mistress Stuart, this stately Don was ridiculing Clarendon's sober counsels to the King within, till his Majesty cried with laughter, and the Chancellor with vexation. There perhaps never was a man whose outward ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... dwelling of Hanan. John, who was known in the house, was admitted without difficulty; but Peter was stopped at the entrance, and John was obliged to beg the porter to let him pass. The night was cold. Peter stopped in the antechamber, and approached a brasier, around which the servants were warming themselves. He was soon recognized as a disciple of the accused. The unfortunate man, betrayed by his Galilean accent, and pestered by questions from the servants, one of whom, a kinsman of Malchus, had seen him at Gethsemane, denied ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan

... event during my stay in Edinburgh, but which had then appeared to me a robe too lovely and angelic to be ever worn short of heaven—I went with Miss Duncan to Mr. Dawson's at the appointed time. We entered through one small lofty room, perhaps I ought to call it an antechamber, for the house was old-fashioned, and stately and grand, the large square drawing- room, into the centre of which Mrs. Dawson's sofa was drawn. Behind her a little was placed a table with a great cluster candlestick upon it, bearing seven or eight wax-lights; and ...
— Round the Sofa • Elizabeth Gaskell

... of a long gallery, 28, and looking out upon the upper terraces of the garden, from which the eye took in the whole gulf of Naples to the point of Sorrento, and the island of Capreae. 14. Procaeton, or antechamber. 15. Lodge of the cubicular slave, or attendant upon the bed-room. 16. Bed-room, probably that of the master, or else the state-chamber. b. Alcove. Several rings were found here which had evidently belonged to a curtain to draw across the front ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... staircase along the grand Gallery;" in which supreme region (Apartments of the late King Friedrich of gorgeous memory) her Majesty now is for the occasion. "The Queen received him at the door of her third Antechamber," says Wilhelmina; third or outmost Antechamber, end of that grand Gallery and its peerages and shining creatures: "he gave the Queen his hand, and led her in." We Princesses were there, at least the grown ones of us were. All standing, except the Queen only. "He refused ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... the first plank of your antechamber, instead of betraying with so much innocence the myriad thoughts which were suggested to you on the steps, the celibate has not a single glance to which you could attach any significance. The mask of social convention wraps with its thick veil his whole bearing; but a clever husband must already ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac

... in his brother's hand, and the bedpost cut in two, he set up a loud cry, "Help here! hola! help! This traitor of a brother is come to kill me!" Whereupon, hearing the noise, a number of servants who slept in the antechamber came running up, and the King ordered Jennariello to be bound, and sent him the same ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile

... a wax candle, passed through the antechamber, drew back the bolts, turned the key, pulled the door back, and saw his sweetheart standing pale as a corpse, leaning ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... the severed cord still about his neck, the veins stood out upon his forehead, and rage rendered him speechless. He beckoned to Mesrur, the ever faithful, who instantly pulled Ibrahim from his seat, and, taking him aside into an antechamber, forthwith struck ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin

... enough that Beppo found himself in a dark antechamber for him to be instantly scrupulous in his footing and breathing. As he touched the curtain, a door opened on the other side of the interior, and a tender gabble of fresh feminine voices broke the stillness and ran on like a brook coming from leaps to a level, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... and passed on into the last antechamber, which was empty of all but a single chamberlain-in-waiting. This chamberlain bowed respectfully to ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini

... completion of the temple. This great temple was wholly rock-cut, and is now threatened by gradual ruin by sliding on the planes of stratification. A small temple, immediately to the south of the first, is believed to have had a built antechamber: it is the earliest known example of a "birth chapel,'' such as was usually attached to Ptolemaic temples for the accommodation of the divine mother-consort and her son. The third and northernmost temple, separated from the others by a ravine, is on a large ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... part of the way with him, accompanying him out of the room and into the next and the next. Her noble old apartment offered a succession of three, the first two of which indeed, on entering, smaller than the last, but each with its faded and formal air, enlarged the office of the antechamber and enriched the sense of approach. Strether fancied them, liked them, and, passing through them with her more slowly now, met a sharp renewal of his original impression. He stopped, he looked back; the whole thing made a vista, ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James

... towards the door of the apartment, crossed the parlour, and safely entered the antechamber; but when he attempted to pass farther, the word "Back! Back!" echoed from one to the other, by two men armed with carabines, convinced him that the Lady of Lochleven's suspicions had not, even in the midst of her ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... Breadalbane urging us to come immediately to the Castle. . . . Taymouth Castle, though not more than fifty years old, has the air of an old feudal castle. . . . As we were ushered up the magnificent staircase through first a large antechamber, then through a superb hall with lofty ceiling glowing with armorial bearings, and with the most light and delicate carving on every part of the oaken panelling, then through a long gallery, of heavier carving filled with fine old cabinets, into the library, it seemed ...
— Letters from England 1846-1849 • Elizabeth Davis Bancroft (Mrs. George Bancroft)

... one would have found the Superior Council in session in the antechamber of the Governor's apartment, at the Chateau St. Louis. The members sat at a round table, at the head was the Governor, with the Bishop on his right and the Intendant on his left. The councillors sat in the order of their appointment, and the attorney-general also had ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... what a work there would be of pages, and grooms of the chamber, to get the pretty rogue clandestinely shuffled out by the backstairs, like a prohibited commodity, when the step of the Earl of Woodstock was heard in the antechamber!" ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... moved with our heads together, from corridor to antechamber, from antechamber to curtained salon of the lower floor. The private apartments of the Bonaparte family were thrown open, and in the mahogany furnished room, all hung with yellow satin, I noticed a Swiss clock which pointed its minute finger to a quarter ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... apartment in a hotel of some pretension was in the rue d'Anjou. There were a large antechamber, two salons, and an inner room, where he wrote, and finally had his bed. His town servants were his German valet, Bastien, who served during the last visit to America, a footman, and a coachman. Cooper wrote: "When I show myself at the door Bastien ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips

... of the Palace at Berlin, one must say, few things equal it in the world. "From the Outer Saloon or Antechamber, called SALLE DES SUISSES [where the halberdier and valet people wait] you pass through six grand rooms, into a saloon magnificently decorated: thence through two rooms more, and so into what they call the Picture-Gallery, a room ninety feet long. All this is in a line." ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... had afforded him a glimpse of "a world existing behind the masonic world, more secret than it, unsuspected by it as by the outside world."[680] Freemasonry, then, "can only be the half-lit antechamber of the real secret society. That is the truth."[681] "There exists then necessarily a permanent directing Power. We cannot see that Power, therefore it ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster

... who know not what they do. Against him or for him we are all called upon to declare ourselves. There is no neutrality for any single true-born American. If any seek such a position, the stony finger of Dante's awful muse points them to their place in the antechamber of ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... in all probability, a few minutes would introduce him to that presence before which he had, ere this, trembled. The Marquess was at home, and anxious to see Mr. Rigby. In a few minutes that gentleman was ascending the private staircase, entering the antechamber, and waiting to be received in the little saloon, exactly as our Coningsby did more than five years ago, scarcely less agitated, but by feelings of ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli

... alone, Beryl had shut out even Sister Serena, and as the officer locked her into a dark antechamber, adjoining the court-room, she began to pace the floor. One tall, narrow window, dim with inside dust, showed her through filmy cobwebs the gray veil of rain falling ceaselessly outside, darkening the day that seemed a fit ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... if a single apartment only be required; but if, on account of relationship, or from any other cause, several families are to reside under one roof, the passages are made common to all, and the first apartment (in that case made smaller) forms a kind of antechamber, from which you go through an arched doorway five feet high into the inhabited apartments. When there are three of these, which is generally the case, the whole building, with its adjacent passages, forms a ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry

... the executive chamber, and heard, one by one, the stories of the callers who had massed the antechamber during his prolonged absence. From all sections, of all degrees, of all political types, their importunities were variants of a single theme—the thing he could give. Him they gave nothing, not even encouragement. Five o'clock came at last, and he left the plain little work-cell behind the sumptuous ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther

... great chamber cut up into smaller rooms, with long halls, with walls twenty feet in height. In one of the rooms is a fireplace, and over the doorways are carved wood lintels. An entrance from the south is given through a spacious antechamber. The rafters, hauled fifteen miles, must have weighed ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller

... among many favourites. The court was full of flatterers as assiduous and as obsequious as himself; his proud Castilian blood could brook no companions.... But one day, as he was moodily waiting in the royal antechamber, thinking of these things, it occurred to him that a certain profession had always been in great honour among princes, and he remembered that he had a cousin of eighteen, who was being educated in a convent near Xiormonez. She was beautiful. With buoyant heart ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham

... a girl with talents," said she. "I shall ask for her as a souvenir of my visit here; she may do very well as a statue to ornament my great-grandchildren's antechamber;" ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen

... court. So were many of the upper civil-servants, the king's military staff, and in a sense, the guards and household troops. So were the "great services," partaking of the nature of public offices, ceremonial honors, and domestic labors. Of this kind were the Household, the Chamber, the Antechamber and Closet, the Great and the Little Stables, with their Grand Squire, First Squire and pages, who had to prove nobility to the satisfaction of the royal herald. There was the department of hunting and that of buildings, a separate one for royal journeys, one for the guard, another ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell

... ministerial terriers," requesting his attendance in Lincoln's-Inn Fields (Newcastle House). Being lame, and greatly over-taxed, Fielding excused himself. But the Duke sent Mr. Carrington again next day, and Fielding with great difficulty obeyed the summons. After waiting some three hours in the antechamber (no unusual feature, as Lord Chesterfield informs us, of the Newcastle audiences), a gentleman was deputed to consult him as to the devising of a plan for putting an immediate end to the murders and robberies which had become so common. This, although ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson

... early one morning, after the saints were safely bestowed at Seligenstadt, he found Hildoin waiting for an audience in the Emperor's antechamber, and began to talk to him about the miracle of the bloody exudation. In the course of conversation, Eginhard happened to allude to the remarkable fineness of the garment of the blessed Marcellinus. Whereupon Abbot Hildoin observed (to Eginhard's stupefaction) ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... good deal more than a joke in calling Perez, Duke of Stockbridge. The antechamber of the headquarters room, at the guardhouse, was often half full of a morning with gentlemen, and those of lower degree as well, waiting to see him with requests. Some wanted passes, or authority ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy

... Maitresse came in, and I thought it was the signal for me to go—which apparently it was. There was a little pause; then the Queen held out her hand and said, "I hope to see you again very soon." The King shook hands kindly with me, and I reached the antechamber, ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone

... in Carentan struck half-past nine as he spoke. Lanterns were being lit in Mme. de Dey's antechamber, servants were helping their masters and mistresses into sabots, greatcoats, and calashes. The card players settled their accounts, and everybody went out together, after the fashion of all little ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne

... small antechamber, into which several doors opened, and which was lighted by a small iron lamp, they met a second interruption from the waiting-maid of Rowena, who, saying in a tone of authority, that her mistress desired ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... the voice of Vargrave, in the little stone-paved antechamber without, inquiring of the servant if Mr. Maltravers was at home, which had startled and interrupted Cesarini as he was about to reply to Ernest. Each recognized that sharp clear voice; each glanced ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... from the antechamber at her Grace's call; and smiling when he saw what she wanted, he lifted the dog ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt

... dear fellow, exhibits the magnificence of the Louis XIV. manner, you enter a fine billiard-room unrivalled so far as I know in Paris itself. The entrance to this suite of ground-floor apartments is through a semi-circular antechamber, at the lower end of which is a fairy-like staircase, lighted from above, which leads to other parts of the house, all built at various epochs—and to think that they chopped off the heads of the wealthy in 1793! Good heavens! why can't people understand that the ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac

... but a slender space for mine art to work, and"—The seer, as he uttered this with great solemnity, entered the antechamber. The gallant stood there, just meditating a retreat. A flush of anger and confusion passed for a moment over Kelly's visage. Quickly recovering his self-possession, with a severe aspect, he stood before ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... this event required over a month, and it was called the fete of the camellias. Immense quantities of that beautiful flower were massed on the staircase, and in the antechamber and supper-room. During this month the formalities for constituting the entail were concluded in Paris; the estates adjoining Lanstrac were purchased, the banns were published, and all doubts finally dissipated. Friends and enemies ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac

... aunt in, Joseph?" he inquired of the servant whom he found in the antechamber, very busy in the ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet

... and Bismarck hold whispered consultations in which Bismarck is so sure of himself that his mind at times wanders off war to chatty anecdotes. "This afternoon, in the antechamber of the King," says Bismarck, "I was so weary I fell asleep on the sofa. Is not this garden fine? Suppose we take a look at the old trees in the park, behind ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel

... into Holland from all directions. The prices of the necessaries of life rose again by degrees; houses and lands, horses and carriages, and luxuries of every sort, rose in value with them, and for some months Holland seemed the very antechamber of Plutus. The operations of the trade became so extensive and so intricate, that it was found necessary to draw up a code of laws for the guidance of the dealers. Notaries and clerks were also appointed, who devoted themselves exclusively to the interests of the trade. The designation ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... stair; neither reproved me for the fracas nor questioned me about my coming. He would not pry into Monsieur's business; and, save as I concerned Monsieur, he had no interest in me whatsoever. He led the way straight into an antechamber, where a page sprang up to bar ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle

... weight, the character of an angel of peace, the common father of the Christians. By his voice, the sword of Charles was chained in the scabbard; and the Greek ambassadors beheld him, in the pope's antechamber, biting his ivory sceptre in a transport of fury, and deeply resenting the refusal to enfranchise and consecrate his arms. He appears to have respected the disinterested mediation of Gregory the Tenth; but Charles was insensibly disgusted by the pride and partiality ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... story confidently told, and as confidently repeated with additional circumstances, that a sudden disgust was taken by Johnson upon occasion of his having been one day kept long in waiting in his Lordship's antechamber, for which the reason assigned was, that he had company with him; and that at last, when the door opened, out walked Colley Cibber; and that Johnson was so violently provoked when he found for whom he had been so long excluded, that ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... the Greek, raising her eyes with a well-executed air of surprise, 'do I intrude? I came but to say that in the antechamber there is—' ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... nothing but the faint patter of the dripping slime, and he went swiftly to the end of the musty antechamber and discovered at the distant end the fourth wall, hitherto unseen. Reaching from the left corner of the scarlet tomb was a narrow staircase built ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts

... go and tell him that M. de Saint Remy is here. I find it very singular that this notary makes me wait in his antechamber; it smells of ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue

... have made our good friend's acquaintance, we will wish him farewell, and I will presently introduce you to his companions of the antechamber, who are ranged on the two sides of the door, to make the toilettes for the visitors who present themselves, and to put them in order for being received in the drawing-room. You will see there some jolly little fellows, who are also very useful in their ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace

... the servants, and, with the exception of Gregory, there was not a soul who wished him harm, so that, when it became known that he had not been sent on a mission, but had disappeared, the matter became the constant subject of conversation in the antechamber, the kitchen, and the stables. There was another place where people busied themselves about it a great deal—this was the ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... grew, and hotter yet, till at last we could scarcely breathe, and the perspiration poured out of us. Half an hour more, and though we were all now stark naked, we could hardly bear it. The place was like an antechamber of the infernal regions proper. I dipped my hand into the water and drew it out almost with a cry; it was nearly boiling. We consulted a little thermometer we had — the mercury stood at 123 degrees. From the surface of the water rose a dense cloud of steam. Alphonse groaned out that we were already ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard

... eyes so that mother or father might keep them from their books for a while. There were of course academies of a better class than these schools open to the street, and probably Publius Silius would be taken to one where his "guardian" waits with others in an antechamber, while he is himself being taught in a room where the walls are pictured with historical or mythological scenes, or with charts or maps, and where there stand busts of eminent writers. The boys ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker

... followed; but before he reached the door of the upper room, with a yell so loud and unearthly that it made the old man's heart stand still, the murderer darted out; his face livid; his hair bristling, his eyes starting with horror. With a single bound he cleared the stairs; crossed the antechamber, the gate swung heavily to, and he was gone! And this was the last that was ever known of Bill Jones. A few months afterward, the body of a man was found floating in one of the docks, and was supposed to be his; but it was so mutilated and disfigured, that it was impossible to ascertain ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various

... had just commenced to work at my embroidery, when a chamberlain entered hastily, and cried aloud: 'His royal highness the Duke of Courland.' The princess rose precipitately to receive him in the antechamber. At first I thought I would retire; but curiosity, or some feeling, I know not what, overcame my fear, and I remained. He entered, approached my workstand, and asked after my health. Notwithstanding my ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various

... drew so many quiet fingers across his tired brain, half obliterating deep and ugly impressions, giving him back something of the sense of youth and future. Perhaps he dimly appreciated that California is a hell for the ambitious; he knew that it was the antechamber of a possible heaven to the man ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... furniture in the antechamber was a wooden bench on which Pierre perceived two female patients awaiting their turn in the charge of a young hospitaller. But on entering the meeting room the number of persons packed inside it quite surprised him, whilst ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... handsome. The regular duty was to guard the Queen from weapons and from poison; to watch over her safety by day and night wherever she went, by land or water. At the Palace the Captain's place was in the antechamber, where he could almost hear the conversations between her and her counsellors. To share them he had but to be beckoned within. Naturally the command seemed to be a stepping-stone to a Vice-Chamberlainship at least, if not to the ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing

... sxmiro, ado. Anomaly anomalio. Anonymous anonima. Answer respondi. Answer (affirmatively) jesi. Answerable for, to be respondi pri. Ant formiko. Antagonist kontrauxulo. Antarctic antarktika. Antecedents antauxajxo. Antechamber antauxcxambro. Antedate antauxdatumi. Antelope antilopo. Anterior antauxa. Anteroom antauxcxambro. Anthem antemo, himnego. Ant-hill formikejo. Anthropology antropologio. Antichrist antikristo. Anticipate antauxvidi. Antidote kontrauxveneno. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... composed of mud and bits of straw, and has strong thick walls: in shape it precisely resembles an oven, or depressed beehive. The opening is large and arched, and directly in front, within the nest, there is a partition, which reaches nearly to the roof, thus forming a passage or antechamber ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... she cried, 'and after sunset meet me in my antechamber. Bring a scribe to score the games; Rei shall be the judge, and hold the stakes. But beware of the golden Cup of Pasht! Drain it not to-night, lest I win a love-game, though we do not ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang

... the father's brain, And Mercy from that hour implored in vain. Ah! who will e'er believe the words I say? His daughters he accused, and the same day They both were cast into the dungeon's gloom, That dismal antechamber of the tomb, Arraigned, condemned, and sentenced to the flame, The secret torture and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... gentlemen, was it that lost the Duke of Montmorency his head?" said Cardinal Zapata to Bautru and Barrault, envoys of France, whom he met in the antechamber of the King of Spain. "His crimes," replied Bautru. "No," said the cardinal, "but the clemency of his Majesty's predecessors." Louis XIII. and Cardinal Richelieu have assuredly not merited that, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... I did," said the other, simply. "We said farewell with our eyes in the presence, while the Queen talked with my Lord of Leicester; in the antechamber with our hands; in the long gallery with our lips; and when we reached the gardens, and there was none at all to see, we e'en put our arms about each other and wept. It is a right noble wench, my sister, and loves me dearly. And then, while we talked, one of her ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston

... in obedience to the command conveyed through Carlos, had been patiently waiting in the antechamber for the summons to appear and receive the commands of Fernandez concerning me; and now, the interview being at an end, the former was ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood

... an antechamber, which must be hung with red, and lighted with seven lights, where he is clothed with a white robe, as an emblem of the purity of his life and manners. The Master of Ceremonies brings him barefooted to the Council Chamber door, on which he knocks seven times, ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan



Words linked to "Antechamber" :   narthex, edifice, room, building



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