姐,51。。。
轻松的小说阅读环境
Site Manager
巴黎圣母院英文版 - BOOK EIGHTH CHAPTER IV.~LASCIATE OGNI SPERANZA~--LEAVE ALL H
繁体
恢复默认
返回目录【键盘操作】左右光标键:上下章节;回车键:目录;双击鼠标:停止/启动自动滚动;滚动时上下光标键调节滚动速度。
  In the Middle Ages, when an edifice was complete, there was almost as much of it in the earth as above it.Unless built upon piles, like Notre-Dame, a palace, a fortress, a church, had always a double bottom.In cathedrals, it was, in some sort, another subterranean cathedral, low, dark, mysterious, blind, and mute, under the upper nave which was overflowing with light and reverberating with organs and bells day and night.Sometimes it was a sepulchre.In palaces, in fortresses, it was a prison, sometimes a sepulchre also, sometimes both together.These mighty buildings, whose mode of formation and vegetation we have elsewhere explained, had not simply foundations, but, so to speak, roots which ran branching through the soil in chambers, galleries, and staircases, like the construction above.Thus churches, palaces, fortresses, had the earth half way up their bodies. The cellars of an edifice formed another edifice, into which one descended instead of ascending, and which extended its subterranean grounds under the external piles of the monument, like those forests and mountains which are reversed in the mirror-like waters of a lake, beneath the forests and mountains of the banks.At the fortress of Saint-Antoine, at the palais de Justice of paris, at the Louvre, these subterranean edifices were prisons. The stories of these prisons, as they sank into the soil, grew constantly narrower and more gloomy.They were so many zones, where the shades of horror were graduated.Dante could never imagine anything better for his hell.These tunnels of cells usually terminated in a sack of a lowest dungeon, with a vat-like bottom, where Dante placed Satan, where society placed those condemned to death.A miserable human existence, once interred there; farewell light, air, life, ~ogni speranza~--every hope; it only came forth to the scaffold or the stake.Sometimes it rotted there; human justice called this "forgetting."Between men and himself, the condemned man felt a pile of stones and jailers weighing down upon his head; and the entire prison, the massive bastille was nothing more than an enormous, complicated lock, which barred him off from the rest of the world.It was in a sloping cavity of this description, in the ~oubliettes~ excavated by Saint-Louis, in the ~inpace~ of the Tournelle, that la Esmeralda had been placed on being condemned to death, through fear of her escape, no doubt, with the colossal court-house over her head.poor fly, who could not have lifted even one of its blocks of stone!Assuredly, providence and society had been equally unjust; such an excess of unhappiness and of torture was not necessary to break so frail a creature.There she lay, lost in the shadows, buried, hidden, immured. Any one who could have beheld her in this state, after having seen her laugh and dance in the sun, would have shuddered. Cold as night, cold as death, not a breath of air in her tresses, not a human sound in her ear, no longer a ray of light in her eyes; snapped in twain, crushed with chains, crouching beside a jug and a loaf, on a little straw, in a pool of water, which was formed under her by the sweating of the prison walls; without motion, almost without breath, she had no longer the power to suffer; phoebus, the sun, midday, the open air, the streets of paris, the dances with applause, the sweet babblings of love with the officer; then the priest, the old crone, the poignard, the blood, the torture, the gibbet; all this did, indeed, pass before her mind, sometimes as a charming and golden vision, sometimes as a hideous nightmare; but it was no longer anything but a vague and horrible struggle, lost in the gloom, or distant music played up above ground, and which was no longer audible at the depth where the unhappy girl had fallen.Since she had been there, she had neither waked nor slept. In that misfortune, in that cell, she could no longer distinguish her waking hours from slumber, dreams from reality, any more than day from night.All this was mixed, broken, floating, disseminated confusedly in her thought.She no longer felt, she no longer knew, she no longer thought; at the most, she only dreamed.Never had a living creature been thrust more deeply into nothingness.Thus benumbed, frozen, petrified, she had barely noticed on two or three occasions, the sound of a trap door opening somewhere above her, without even permitting the passage of a little light, and through which a hand had tossed her a bit of black bread.Nevertheless, this periodical visit of the jailer was the sole communication which was left her with mankind.A single thing still mechanically occupied her ear; above her head, the dampness was filtering through the mouldy stones of the vault, and a drop of water dropped from them at regular intervals.She listened stupidly to the noise made by this drop of water as it fell into the pool beside her.This drop of water falling from time to time into that pool, was the only movement which still went on around her, the only clock which marked the time, the only noise which reached her of all the noise made on the surface of the earth.To tell the whole, however, she also felt, from time to time, in that cesspool of mire and darkness, something cold passing over her foot or her arm, and she shuddered.How long had she been there?She did not know.She had a recollection of a sentence of death pronounced somewhere, against some one, then of having been herself carried away, and of waking up in darkness and silence, chilled to the heart.She had dragged herself along on her hands. Then iron rings that cut her ankles, and chains had rattled. She had recognized the fact that all around her was wall, that below her there was a pavement covered with moisture and a truss of straw; but neither lamp nor air-hole.Then she had seated herself on that straw and, sometimes, for the sake of changing her attitude, on the last stone step in her dungeon. For a while she had tried to count the black minutes measured off for her by the drop of water; but that melancholy labor of an ailing brain had broken off of itself in her head, and had left her in stupor.At length, one day, or one night, (for midnight and midday were of the same color in that sepulchre), she heard above her a louder noise than was usually made by the turnkey when he brought her bread and jug of water.She raised her head, and beheld a ray of reddish light passing through the crevices in the sort of trapdoor contrived in the roof of the ~inpace~.At the same time, the heavy lock creaked, the trap grated on its rusty hinges, turned, and she beheld a lantern, a hand, and the lower portions of the bodies of two men, the door being too low to admit of her seeing their heads.The light pained her so acutely that she shut her eyes.When she opened them again the door was closed, the lantern was deposited on one of the steps of the staircase; a man alone stood before her.A monk's black cloak fell to his feet, a cowl of the same color concealed his face.Nothing was visible of his person, neither face nor hands.It was a long, black shroud standing erect, and beneath which something could be felt moving.She gazed fixedly for several minutes at this sort of spectre.But neither he nor she spoke.One would have pronounced them two statues confronting each other.Two things only seemed alive in that cavern; the wick of the lantern, which sputtered on account of the dampness of the atmosphere, and the drop of water from the roof, which cut this irregular sputtering with its monotonous splash, and made the light of the lantern quiver in concentric waves on the oily water of the pool.At last the prisoner broke the silence."Who are you?""A priest."The words, the accent, the sound of his voice made her tremble.The priest continued, in a hollow voice,--"Are you prepared?""For what?""To die.""Oh!" said she, "will it be soon?""To-morrow."Her head, which had been raised with joy, fell back upon her breast."'Tis very far away yet!" she murmured; "why could they not have done it to-day?""Then you are very unhappy?" asked the priest, after a silence."I am very cold," she replied.She took her feet in her hands, a gesture habitual with unhappy wretches who are cold, as we have already seen in the case of the recluse of the Tour-Roland, and her teeth chattered.The priest appeared to cast his eyes around the dungeon from beneath his cowl."Without light!without fire!in the water!it is horrible!""Yes," she replied, with the bewildered air which unhappiness had given her."The day belongs to every one, why do they give me only night?""Do you know," resumed the priest, after a fresh silence, "why you are here?""I thought I knew once," she said, passing her thin fingers over her eyelids, as though to aid her memory, "but I know no longer."All at once she began to weep like a child."I should like to get away from here, sir.I am cold, I am afraid, and there are creatures which crawl over my body.""Well, follow me."So saying, the priest took her arm.The unhappy girl was frozen to her very soul.Yet that hand produced an impression of cold upon her."Oh!" she murmured, "'tis the icy hand of death.Who are you?"The priest threw back his cowl; she looked.It was the sinister visage which had so long pursued her; that demon's head which had appeared at la Falourdel's, above the head of her adored phoebus; that eye which she last had seen glittering beside a dagger.This apparition, always so fatal for her, and which had thus driven her on from misfortune to misfortune, even to torture, roused her from her stupor.It seemed to her that the sort of veil which had lain thick upon her memory was rent away. All the details of her melancholy adventure, from the nocturnal scene at la Falourdel's to her condemnation to the Tournelle, recurred to her memory, no longer vague and confused as heretofore, but distinct, harsh, clear, palpitating, terrible. These souvenirs, half effaced and almost obliterated by excess of suffering, were revived by the sombre figure which stood before her, as the approach of fire causes letters traced upon white paper with invisible ink, to start out perfectly fresh.It seemed to her that all the wounds of her heart opened and bled simultaneously."Hah!" she cried, with her hands on her eyes, and a convulsive trembling, "'tis the priest!"Then she dropped her arms in discouragement, and remained seated, with lowered head, eyes fixed on the ground, mute and still trembling.The priest gazed at her with the eye of a hawk which has long been soaring in a circle from the heights of heaven over a poor lark cowering in the wheat, and has long been silently contracting the formidable circles of his flight, and has suddenly swooped down upon his prey like a flash of lightning, and holds it panting in his talons.She began to murmur in a low voice,--"Finish! finish! the last blow!" and she drew her head down in terror between her shoulders, like the lamb awaiting the blow of the butcher's axe."So I inspire you with horror?" he said at length.She made no reply."Do I inspire you with horror?" he repeated.Her lips contracted, as though with a smile."Yes," said she, "the headsman scoffs at the condemned. Here he has been pursuing me, threatening me, terrifying me for months!Had it not been for him, my God, how happy it should have been!It was he who cast me into this abyss! Oh heavens!it was he who killed him!my phoebus!"Here, bursting into sobs, and raising her eyes to the priest,--"Oh! wretch, who are you?What have I done to you? Do you then, hate me so?Alas! what have you against me?""I love thee!" cried the priest.Her tears suddenly ceased, she gazed at him with the look of an idiot.He had fallen on his knees and was devouring her with eyes of flame."Dost thou understand?I love thee!" he cried again."What love!" said the unhappy girl with a shudder.He resumed,--"The love of a damned soul."Both remained silent for several minutes, crushed beneath the weight of their emotions; he maddened, she stupefied."Listen," said the priest at last, and a singular calm had come over him; "you shall know all I am about to tell you that which I have hitherto hardly dared to say to myself, when furtively interrogating my conscience at those deep hours of the night when it is so dark that it seems as though God no longer saw us.Listen.Before I knew you, young girl, I was happy.""So was I!" she sighed feebly."Do not interrupt me.Yes, I was happy, at least I believed myself to be so.I was pure, my soul was filled with limpid light.No head was raised more proudly and more radiantly than mine.priests consulted me on chastity; doctors, on doctrines.Yes, science was all in all to me; it was a sister to me, and a sister sufficed.Not but that with age other ideas came to me.More than once my flesh had been moved as a woman's form passed by.That force of sex and blood which, in the madness of youth, I had imagined that I had stifled forever had, more than once, convulsively raised the chain of iron vows which bind me, a miserable wretch, to the cold stones of the altar.But fasting, prayer, study, the mortifications of the cloister, rendered my soul mistress of my body once more, and then I avoided women.Moreover, I had but to open a book, and all the impure mists of my brain vanished before the splendors of science.In a few moments, I felt the gross things of earth flee far away, and I found myself once more calm, quieted, and serene, in the presence of the tranquil radiance of eternal truth.As long as the demon sent to attack me only vague shadows of women who passed occasionally before my eyes in church, in the streets, in the fields, and who hardly recurred to my dreams, I easily vanquished him.Alas!if the victory has not remained with me, it is the fault of God, who has not created man and the demon of equal force.Listen.One day--Here the priest paused, and the prisoner heard sighs of anguish break from his breast with a sound of the death rattle.He resumed,--"One day I was leaning on the window of my cell.What book was I reading then?Oh! all that is a whirlwind in my head.I was reading.The window opened upon a Square.I heard a sound of tambourine and music.Annoyed at being thus disturbed in my revery, I glanced into the Square.What I beheld, others saw beside myself, and yet it was not a spectacle made for human eyes.There, in the middle of the pavement,--it was midday, the sun was shining brightly,--a creature was dancing.A creature so beautiful that God would have preferred her to the Virgin and have chosen her for his mother and have wished to be born of her if she had been in existence when he was made man!Her eyes were black and splendid; in the midst of her black locks, some hairs through which the sun shone glistened like threads of gold.Her feet disappeared in their movements like the spokes of a rapidly turning wheel.Around her head, in her black tresses, there were disks of metal, which glittered in the sun, and formed a coronet of stars on her brow.Her dress thick set with spangles, blue, and dotted with a thousand sparks, gleamed like a summer night.Her brown, supple arms twined and untwined around her waist, like two scarfs.The form of her body was surprisingly beautiful. Oh! what a resplendent figure stood out, like something luminous even in the sunlight!Alas, young girl, it was thou! Surprised, intoxicated, charmed, I allowed myself to gaze upon thee.I looked so long that I suddenly shuddered with terror; I felt that fate was seizing hold of me."The priest paused for a moment, overcome with emotion. Then he continued,--"Already half fascinated, I tried to cling fast to something and hold myself back from falling.I recalled the snares which Satan had already set for me.The creature before my eyes possessed that superhuman beauty which can come only from heaven or hell.It was no simple girl made with a little of our earth, and dimly lighted within by the vacillating ray of a woman's soul.It was an angel! but of shadows and flame, and not of light.At the moment when I was meditating thus, I beheld beside you a goat, a beast of witches, which smiled as it gazed at me.The midday sun gave him golden horns.Then I perceived the snare of the demon, and I no longer doubted that you had come from hell and that you had come thence for my perdition.I believed it."Here the priest looked the prisoner full in the face, and added, coldly,--"I believe it still.Nevertheless, the charm operated little by little; your dancing whirled through my brain; I felt the mysterious spell working within me.All that should have awakened was lulled to sleep; and like those who die in the snow, I felt pleasure in allowing this sleep to draw on.All at once, you began to sing.What could I do, unhappy wretch?Your song was still more charming than your dancing. I tried to flee.Impossible.I was nailed, rooted to the spot.It seemed to me that the marble of the pavement had risen to my knees.I was forced to remain until the end. My feet were like ice, my head was on fire.At last you took pity on me, you ceased to sing, you disappeared.The reflection of the dazzling vision, the reverberation of the enchanting music disappeared by degrees from my eyes and my ears. Then I fell back into the embrasure of the window, more rigid, more feeble than a statue torn from its base.The vesper bell roused me.I drew myself up; I fled; but alas! something within me had fallen never to rise again, something had come upon me from which I could not flee."He made another pause and went on,--"Yes, dating from that day, there was within me a man whom I did not know.I tried to make use of all my remedies. The cloister, the altar, work, books,--follies!Oh, how hollow does science sound when one in despair dashes against it a head full of passions!Do you know, young girl, what I saw thenceforth between my book and me?You, your shade, the image of the luminous apparition which had one day crossed the space before me.But this image had no longer the same color; it was sombre, funereal, gloomy as the black circle which long pursues the vision of the imprudent man who has gazed intently at the sun."Unable to rid myself of it, since I heard your song humming ever in my head, beheld your feet dancing always on my breviary, felt even at night, in my dreams, your form in contact with my own, I desired to see you again, to touch you, to know who you were, to see whether I should really find you like the ideal image which I had retained of you, to shatter my dream, perchance, with reality.At all events, I hoped that a new impression would efface the first, and the first had become insupportable.I sought you.I saw you once more.Calamity!When I had seen you twice, I wanted to see you a thousand times, I wanted to see you always. Then--how stop myself on that slope of hell?--then I no longer belonged to myself.The other end of the thread which the demon had attached to my wings he had fastened to his foot.I became vagrant and wandering like yourself. I waited for you under porches, I stood on the lookout for you at the street corners, I watched for you from the summit of my tower.Every evening I returned to myself more charmed, more despairing, more bewitched, more lost!
或许您还会喜欢:
恶意
作者:佚名
章节:14 人气:5
摘要:事件之章野野口修的笔记一事情发生在四月十六日、星期二。那天下午三点半我从家里出发,前往日高邦彦的住处。日高家距离我住的地方仅隔一站电车的路程,到达车站改搭巴士,再走上一小段路的时间,大约二十分钟到了。平常就算没什么事,我也常到日高家走走,不过那天却是有特别的事要办。这么说好了,要是错过那天,我就再也见不到他了。 [点击阅读]
午夜凶铃
作者:佚名
章节:36 人气:3
摘要:?19月5日晚上10点49分横滨数栋14层公寓和三溪园住宅区的北端紧紧相邻,这些新建的公寓已经有很多人入住。每一栋公寓有将近100户住家,算是人口相当密集了。但是,公寓里的住户们不相往来,彼此也不认识,只有在夜里窗子透出灯光时,才让人意识到这里有人居住。在南边,工厂的照明灯投射在漆黑的海面上,静静地拉出一道长影。工厂的外墙上交缠着无数管线,令人联想到人体内错综复杂的血管。 [点击阅读]
尤物
作者:佚名
章节:7 人气:8
摘要:渡边伸出不隐约的双手捧住她的脸,动作温柔得教她感到难以承受。她是没指望或许该说不敢指望会更贴切一些,他的温柔对待,以及他此刻凝视她的眼神,他把她拉进自己怀里,抱着她好长好长一段时间,什么话也没有说。终于,他开始吻她,整个晚上,因为过度渴望而凝聚成的硬结,此刻开始化解为缓缓的甜蜜,流过她的每一根神经和每一颗细胞,就象一条遗忘的溪流。 [点击阅读]
4号解剖室
作者:佚名
章节:9 人气:6
摘要:外面一片漆黑,我恍恍忽忽地不知自己昏迷了多长时间。慢慢地我听到一阵微弱而富有节奏的声音,这是只有轮子才能发出的嘎吱嘎吱声。丧失意识的人在黑暗中是听不到这么细微的声响的。因此我判断自己已经恢复了知觉,而且我从头到脚都能感受到外界的存在。我还闻到了一种气味——不是橡胶就是塑料薄膜。 [点击阅读]
阿甘正传
作者:佚名
章节:26 人气:3
摘要:朋友:当白痴的滋味可不像巧克力。别人会嘲笑你,对你不耐烦,态度恶劣。呐,人家说,要善待不幸的人,可是我告诉你——事实不一定是这样。话虽如此,我并不埋怨,因为我自认生活过得很有意思,可以这么说。我生下来就是个白痴:我的智商将近七十,这个数字跟我的智力相符,他们是这么说的。 [点击阅读]
女人十日谈
作者:佚名
章节:12 人气:5
摘要:十位年轻的女人,为活跃无聊的产房生活,十天内讲述了!”00个亲身经历的故事:初恋、引诱、遗弃、强||奸、复仇、婚外情的荒唐、性*生活的尴尬……在妙趣横生兼带苦涩酸楚的故事背后,则是前苏联社会的fu败、男人灵魂的丑陋、妇女处境的悲惨,以及她们对美好幸福生活的热烈渴望和执着追求……这便是《女人十日谈》向读者展示的画面及其底蕴。 [点击阅读]
苏菲的世界
作者:佚名
章节:52 人气:2
摘要:话说我对哲学产生兴趣是在研一时的自然辩证法课堂上。那是位颇为娘娘腔的老教授,本行研究人脑和意识,业余时间教授自然辩证法和自然科学史。不像其他政治课老师只晓得照本宣科,这老头有相当牛逼的学术基础,从古希腊哲学的朴素唯物主义,讲到近现代一系列科学危机,一贯而至,娓娓道来,一面精彩轻松的讲解着各种科学定律,一面逐步揭开科学背后的思辨踪影;当然作为一位老右愤, [点击阅读]
包法利夫人
作者:佚名
章节:52 人气:2
摘要:荐语:未满十八岁请在家长指导下阅读本书。版本较好的是上海译文出版社周克希先生的译本。价廉物美,仅10元一本,现在最便宜最没有人看的恐怕就是这些名著了。【小说】--引言小说描写的是一位小资产阶级妇女,因为不满意夫妻生活平淡无奇而和别人通|奸,最终因此身败名裂,服毒自杀的故事。 [点击阅读]
儿子与情人
作者:佚名
章节:134 人气:2
摘要:戴维。赫伯特。劳伦斯是二十世纪杰出的英国小说家,被称为“英国文学史上最伟大的人物之一”。劳伦斯于1885年9月11日诞生在诺丁汉郡伊斯特伍德矿区一个矿工家庭。做矿工的父亲因贫困而粗暴、酗酒,与当过教师的母亲感情日渐冷淡。母亲对儿子的畸型的爱,使劳伦斯长期依赖母亲而难以形成独立的人格和健全的性爱能力。直到1910年11月,母亲病逝后,劳伦斯才挣扎着走出畸形母爱的怪圈。 [点击阅读]
幻夜
作者:佚名
章节:82 人气:2
摘要:昏暗的工厂里,机床的黑影排成一排。那样子让雅也想到夜晚的墓地。不过,老爸要进入的坟墓并没有如此气派。黑影们看上去就像失去了主人的忠实奴仆。它们也许正和雅也怀着同样的心情,静静地迎接这个夜晚。雅也把盛着酒的茶碗送到嘴边。茶碗的边缘有个小缺口,正好碰在嘴唇上。喝干后,他叹了口气。旁边伸过一个酒瓶,把酒倒入他的空茶碗里。“以后在各方面都会有困难,但不要气馁,加把劲儿吧。“舅舅俊郎说。 [点击阅读]
五十度灰英文版
作者:佚名
章节:67 人气:2
摘要:E L James is a TV executive, wife, and mother of two, based in West London. Since early childhood, she dreamt of writing stories that readers would fall in love with, but put those dreams on hold to focus on her family and her career. She finally plucked up the courage to put pen to paper with her first novel, Fifty Shades of Grey. [点击阅读]
古兰经
作者:佚名
章节:116 人气:2
摘要:《古兰经》概述《古兰经》是伊斯兰教经典,伊斯兰教徒认为它是安拉对先知穆罕默德所启示的真实语言,在穆罕默德死后汇集为书。《古兰经》的阿拉伯文在纯洁和优美上都无与伦比,在风格上是达到纯全的地步。为了在斋月诵读,《古兰经》分为30卷,一月中每天读1卷。但是《古兰经》主要划分单位却是长短不等的114章。《法蒂哈》即开端一章是简短的祈祷词,其他各章大致按长短次序排列;第二章最长;最后两三章最短。 [点击阅读]
Copyright© 2006-2019. All Rights Reserved.