Nine-tenths of it she believed to be fraud-a matter of wigs and Indian muslin and cross-lights-and the other tenth, by the most generous estimate, an affair of the dingiest and foulest of all the backstairs of life.
"The Necromancers"
Robert Hugh Benson
I could only guess at some of their stories as they were written in lines of pain about the eyes and mouths of poor old spinsters such as Balzac met hiding their misery in backstairs flats of Paris tenements-they came blinking out into the fierce sunlight of the Paris streets like captive creatures let loose by an earthquake-and of young students who had eschewed delight and lived laborious days for knowledge and art which had been overthrown by war's brutality.
"The Soul of the War"
Philip Gibbs
Buonaparte owed his command, not to a backstairs intrigue, as was currently believed in the army, but rather to his own commanding powers.
"The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2)"
John Holland Rose