双城记1.
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2020年07月30日 16:10
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CHAPTER IThe Period
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it wasthe age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was theepoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was theseason of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was thespring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we hadeverything before us, we had nothing before us, we were allgoing direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the otherway--in short, the period was so. far like the present period,that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its beingreceived, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree ofcomparison only.
There were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a plainface, on the throne of England; there were a king with a largejaw and a queen with a fair face, on the throne of France. Inboth countries it was clearer than crystal to the lords of theState preserves of loaves and fishes, that things in generalwere settled for ever.
It was the year of Our Lord one thousand seven hundred andseventy-five. Spiritual revelations were conceded to Englandat that favoured period, a sat this. Mrs. Southcott hadrecently attained her five-and-twentieth blessed birthday, ofwhom a prophetic private in the Life Guards had heralded thesublime appearance by announcing that arrangements were madefor the swallowing up of London and Westminster. Even theCock-lane ghost had been laid only a round dozen of years,after rapping out its messages, as the spirits of this veryyear last past (supernaturally deficient in originality)rapped out theirs. Mere messages in the earthly order ofevents had lately come to the English Crown and People, from acongress of British subjects in America: which, strange torelate, have proved more important to the human race than anycommunications yet received through any of the chickens of theCock-lane brood.
France, less favoured on the whole as to matters spiritualthan her sister of the shield and trident, rolled withexceeding smoothness down hill, making paper money andspending it. Under the guidance of her Christian pastors, sheentertained herself besides, with such humane achievements assentencing a youth to have his hands cut off, his tongue tornout with pincers, and his body burned alive, because he hadnot kneeled down in the rain to do honour to a dirtyprocession of monks which passed within his view, at adistance of some fifty or sixty yards. It is likely enoughthat, rooted in the woods of France and Norway, there weregrowing trees, when that sufferer was put to death, alreadymarked by the Woodman, Fate, to comedown and be sawn intoboards, to make a certain movable framework with a sack and aknife in it, terrible in history. It is likely enough that inthe rough outhouses old some tillers of the heavy landsadjacent to Paris, there were sheltered from the weather thatvery day, rude carts, be spattered with rustic mire, snuffedabout by pigs, and roosted in b
`So-ho!' the guard sang out, as loud as he could roar. `Yothere! Stand! I shall fire!'
The pace was suddenly checked, and, with much splashing andfloundering, a man's voice called from the mist, `Is that theDover mail?'
`Never you mind what it is?' the guard retorted. `Wham areyou?'
`Is that the Dover mail?'
`Why do you want to know?'
`I want a passenger, if it is.'
`What passenger?his hoarsest.
`Take that message back, and they will know that I receivedthis, as well as if I wrote. Make the best of your way. Goodnight.'
With those words the passenger opened tile coach-door and gotin; not at all assisted by his fellow-passengers, who hadexpeditiously secreted their watches and purses in theirboots, and were now making a general pretence of being asleep.
With no more definite purpose than to escape the hazard oforiginating any other kind of action.
The coach lumbered on again, with heavier wreaths of mistclosing round it as it began the descent. The guard soonreplaced his blunderbuss in his arm-chest, and, having lookedto the rest of its contents, and having looked to thesupplementary pistols that he wore in his belt, looked to asmaller chest beneath his seat, in which there were a fewsmith's tools, a couple of torches, and a tinder-box. For hewas furnished with that completeness that if the coach-lampshad been blown and stormed out, which did occasionally happen,he had only to shut himself up inside, keep the flint andsteel sparks well off the straw, and get a light withtolerable safety and ease (if he were lucky) in five minutes.
`Tom!' softly over the coach-roof.
`Hallo, Joe.'
`Did you hear the message?'
`I did, Joe.'
`What did you make of it, Tom?'
`Nothing at all, Joe.'
`That's a coincidence, too,' the guard mused, `for I made thesame of it myself Jerry, left alone in the mist and darkness,dismounted meanwhile, not only to ease his spent horse, but towipe the mud from his face, and shake the wet out of his hat-brim, which might be capable of holding about half a gallon.
After standing with the bridle over his heavily-splashed arm,until the wheels of the mail were no longer within hearing andthe night was quite still again, he turned to walk down thehill.
`After that there gallop from Temple Bar, old lady, I won'ttrust your fore-legs till I get you on the level,' said thishoarse messenger, glancing at his mare. `"Recalled to life."That's a Blazing strange message. Much of that wouldn't do foryou Jerry! I say, Jerry! You'd be in a Blazing bad way, ifrecalling to life was to come into fashion, Jerry!'
有声名著之双城记 Chapter03
CHAPTER IIIThe Night Shadows
Wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature isconstituted to be that profound secret and mystery to everyother. A solemn consideration, when enter a great city bynight, that every one of those darkly clustered housesencloses its own secret; that every room in every one of themencloses its own secret; that every beating heart in thehundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, if some of itsimaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it! Something of theawfulness, even of Death itself, is referable to this. No morecan I turn the leaves of this dear book that loved, and vainlyhope in time to read it all. No more can I look into thedepths of this unf
, Mr.
Lorry's thoughts seemed to cloud too. When dark, and he satbefore the coffee-room fire, awaiting his dinner as he hadawaited his breakfast, his mind was digging, digging, digging,in the live red coals.
A bottle of good claret after dinner does a digger in the redcoals no harm, otherwise than as it has a tendency to throwhim out of work. Mr. Lorry had been idle a lo and had justpoured out his last glassful of wine complete an appearance ofsatisfaction as is ever to be found in an elderly gentleman ofa fresh complexion who has got to the end of a bottle, when arattling of wheels came up the narrow street, and rumbled intothe inn-yard.
He set down his glass untouched. `This is Mam'selle!' saidhe.
In a very few minutes the waiter came in to announce thatMiss Manette had arrived from London, and", happy to see thegentleman from Tellson's.
`So soon?'
Miss Manette had taken some refreshment on the road, andrequired none then, and was extremely anxious to see thegentleman from Tellson's immediately, if it suited hispleasure and convenience.
The gentleman from Tellson's had nothing left for it but toempty his glass with an air of stolid desperation, settle hisodd little flaxen wig at the ears, and follow the waiter toMiss Manette's apartment. It was a large, dark room, furnishedin a funereal manner with black horsehair, and loaded withheavy dark tables. These had been oiled, until the two tallcandles on the table in the of the room were gloomilyreflected on every leaf; were buried, in deep graves of blackmahogany, and to speak of could be expected from them untilthe dug out.
The obscurity was so difficult to penetrate that Mr Lorry,picking his way over the well-worn Turkey carpet, supposedMiss Manette to be, for the moment, in some adjacent room,until, having got past the two tall candles, he saw to receivehim by the table between them and the young lady of not morethan seventeen, in a riding-cloak, and still holding her strawtravelling-hat by its ribbon in her hand. As his eyes restedon a short, slight, pretty figure, a quantity of golden hair,a pair of blue eyes that met his own with an inquiring look,and a forehead with a singular capacity (remembering how youngand smooth it was of lifting and knitting itself into anexpression that was not quite one of perplexity, or wonder, oralarm or merely of a bright fixed attention, though isincluded all the four expressions--as his eyes rested on thesethings, a sudden vivid likeness passed before him, of a childwhom he had held in his arms on the passage across that veryChannel, one cold time, when the hail drifted heavily and thesea ran high. The likeness passed away, like a breath alongthe surface of the gaunt pier-glass behind her, on the frameof which, a hospital procession of negro cupids, several head-less and all cripples, were offering black baskets of DeadSea fruit to black divinities of the feminine gender--and hemade his formal bow to Miss M