酷兔英语
    当前位置:
  1. 首页
  2. 文章
  3. 娱乐英语
  4. 原版小说
  5. 正文

New Arabian Nights-Part37_ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON(1850-1894)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

0 收藏 0 分享 0 赞

章节正文
文章总共2页
with some turrets and a large porch before the door; it was half-



ruinous, he remembered, and had long stood empty; and so he made

three steps of it and jumped into the shelter of the porch. It was



pretty dark inside, after the glimmer of the snowy streets, and he

was groping forward with outspread hands, when he stumbled over



some substance which offered an indescribablemixture of

resistances, hard and soft, firm and loose. His heart gave a leap,



and he sprang two steps back and stared dreadfully at the obstacle.

Then he gave a little laugh of relief. It was only a woman, and



she dead. He knelt beside her to make sure upon this latter point.

She was freezing cold, and rigid like a stick. A little ragged



finery fluttered in the wind about her hair, and her cheeks had

been heavily rouged that same afternoon. Her pockets were quite



empty; but in her stocking, underneath the garter, Villon found two

of the small coins that went by the name of whites. It was little



enough; but it was always something; and the poet was moved with a

deep sense of pathos that she should have died before she had spent



her money. That seemed to him a dark and pitiable mystery; and he

looked from the coins in his hand to the dead woman, and back again



to the coins, shaking his head over the riddle of man's life.

Henry V. of England, dying at Vincennes just after he had conquered



France, and this poor jade cut off by a cold draught in a great

man's doorway, before she had time to spend her couple of whites -



it seemed a cruel way to carry on the world. Two whites would have

taken such a little while to squander; and yet it would have been



one more good taste in the mouth, one more smack of the lips,

before the devil got the soul, and the body was left to birds and



vermin. He would like to use all his tallow before the light was

blown out and the lantern broken.



While these thoughts were passing through his mind, he was feeling,

half mechanically, for his purse. Suddenly his heart stopped



beating; a feeling of cold scales passed up the back of his legs,

and a cold blow seemed to fall upon his scalp. He stood petrified



for a moment; then he felt again with one feverishmovement; and

then his loss burst upon him, and he was covered at once with



perspiration. To spendthrifts money is so living and actual - it

is such a thin veil between them and their pleasures! There is



only one limit to their fortune - that of time; and a spendthrift

with only a few crowns is the Emperor of Rome until they are spent.



For such a person to lose his money is to suffer the most shocking

reverse, and fall from heaven to hell, from all to nothing, in a



breath. And all the more if he has put his head in the halter for

it; if he may be hanged to-morrow for that same purse, so dearly



earned, so foolishly departed! Villon stood and cursed; he threw

the two whites into the street; he shook his fist at heaven; he



stamped, and was not horrified to find himself trampling the poor

corpse. Then he began rapidly to retrace his steps towards the



house beside the cemetery. He had forgotten all fear of the

patrol, which was long gone by at any rate, and had no idea but



that of his lost purse. It was in vain that he looked right and

left upon the snow: nothing was to be seen. He had not dropped it



in the streets. Had it fallen in the house? He would have liked

dearly to go in and see; but the idea of the grisly occupant



unmanned him. And he saw besides, as he drew near, that their

efforts to put out the fire had been unsuccessful; on the contrary,



it had broken into a blaze, and a changeful light played in the

chinks of door and window, and revived his terror for the



authorities and Paris gibbet.

He returned to the hotel with the porch, and groped about upon the



snow for the money he had thrown away in his childishpassion. But

he could only find one white; the other had probably struck



sideways and sunk deeply in. With a single white in his pocket,

all his projects for a rousing night in some wild tavern vanished



utterly away. And it was not only pleasure that fled laughing from

his grasp; positivediscomfort, positive pain, attacked him as he



stood ruefully before the porch. His perspiration had dried upon

him; and though the wind had now fallen, a binding frost was



setting in stronger with every hour, and be felt benumbed and sick

at heart. What was to be done? Late as was the hour, improbable



as was success, he would try the house of his adopted father, the

chaplain of St. Benoit.



He ran there all the way, and knocked timidly. There was no

answer. He knocked again and again, taking heart with every






文章总共2页
文章标签:名著  

章节正文
Copyright © 2023 Qeto All rights reserved.
商务合作 | 联系我们 | 关于我们 | 版权声明 | 隐私条款 | 如果智培

京ICP备05059198号-1 京公网安备 11011202003401号