[She] stopped in the doorway, her arms laden with tablets, and moved her colorless lips for a moment before she spoke, as if she were formulating an address. [...]
“Hurry up! We don’t have time to stage a tableau-vivant here before the house.”
John Kennedy Toole. A Confederacy of Dunces (1980)
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The roar of guns, that had not ceased for ten hours, wearied the ear and gave a peculiar significance to the spectacle, as music does to tableaux vivants.
Leo Tolstoy. War and Peace: 10 (Book Ten) . Simon & Schuster
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It was a museum used for propaganda displays of various kinds—scale models of rocket bombs and Floating Fortresses, wax-work tableaux illustrating enemy atrocities, and the like.
George Orwell. 1984 (1949)
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He stopped for but a short time in front of her, but even his momentary attitudes were sufficient to compose a complete tableau vivant, and, as it were, an historical scene.
Marcel Proust. In Search of Lost Time [volume 4]
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They stood around the bed in tableau as the sun came up.