He took the imperial hand and shook it in the glad-to-see-you-but-keep-off English fashion. - Frederick Rolfe

Brisk and prompt to war, soft and not in the least able to resist calamity, fickle in catching at schemes, and always striving after novelties – French characteristics remained unaltered twenty centuries after Julius Caesar made a note of them for all time.

It's all nonsense to say that the Fifteenth Century can't possibly speak to the Twentieth, because it is the Fifteenth and not the Twentieth, and because those two Centuries haven't got a Common Denominator. They have. It's Human Nature.

That cold white candent voice which was more caustic than silver nitrate and more thrilling than a scream.