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

The Firm of Nucingen-Part7_Honore de Balzac(1799-1850)_Translated Works(翻译文学)-第2页

0 收藏 0 分享 0 赞

章节正文
文章总共2页


and now he criticises me! There is no greater proof of intellectual

sterility, my friends, than the piling up of facts. Le Misanthrope,



that supremecomedy, shows us that art consists in the power of

building a palace on a needle's point. The gist of my idea is in the



fairy wand which can turn the Desert into an Interlaken in ten seconds

(precisely the time required to empty this glass). Would you rather



that I fired off at you like a cannon-ball, or a commander-in-chief's

report? We chat and laugh; and this journalist, a bibliophobe when



sober, expects me, forsooth, when he is drunk, to teach my tongue to

move at the dull jogtrot of a printed book." (Here he affected to



weep.) "Woe unto the French imagination when men fain would blunt the

needle points of her pleasant humor! Dies iroe! Let us weep for



Candide. Long live the Kritik of Pure Reason, La Symbolique, and the

systems in five closely packed volumes, printed by Germans, who little



suspect that the gist of the matter has been known in Paris since

1750, and crystallized in a few trenchant words--the diamonds of our



national thought. Blondet is driving a hearse to his own suicide;

Blondet, forsooth! who manufactures newspaper accounts of the last



words of all the great men that die without saying anything!"

"Come, get on," put in Finot.



"It was my intention to explain to you in what the happiness of a man

consists when he is not a shareholder (out of compliment to Couture).



Well, now, do you not see at what a price Godefroid secured the

greatest happiness of a young man's dreams? He was trying to



understand Isaure, by way of making sure that she should understand

him. Things which comprehend one another must needs be similar.



Infinity and Nothingness, for instance, are like; everything that lies

between the two is like neither. Nothingness is stupidity; genius,



Infinity. The lovers wrote each other the stupidest letters

imaginable, putting down various expressions then in fashion upon bits



of scented paper: 'Angel! Aeolian harp! with thee I shall be complete!

There is a heart in my man's breast! Weak woman, poor me!' all the



latest heart-frippery. It was Godefroid's wont to stay in a drawing-

room for a bare ten minutes; he talked without any pretension to the



women in it, and at these times they thought him very clever. In

short, judge of his absorption; Joby, his horses and carriages, became



secondary interests in his life. He was never happy except in the

depths of a snug settee opposite the Baroness, by the dark-green



porphyry chimney-piece, watching Isaure, taking tea, and chatting with

the little circle of friends that dropped in every evening between



eleven and twelve in the Rue Joubert. You could play bouillotte there

safely. (I always won.) Isaure sat with one little foot thrust out in



its black satin shoe; Godefroid would gaze and gaze, and stay till

every one else was gone, and say, 'Give me your shoe!' and Isaure



would put her little foot on a chair and take it off and give it to

him, with a glance, one of those glances that--in short, you



understand.

"At length Godefroid discovered a great mystery in Malvina. Whenever



du Tillet knocked at the door, the live red that colored Malvina's

face said 'Ferdinand!' When the poor girl's eyes fell on that two-



footed tiger, they lighted up like a brazier fanned by a current of

air. When Ferdinand drew her away to the window or a side table, she



betrayed her secret infinite joy. It is a rare and wonderful thing to

see a woman so much in love that she loses her cunning to be strange,



and you can read her heart; as rare (dear me!) in Paris as the Singing

Flower in the Indies. But in spite of a friendship dating from the



d'Aldriggers' first appearance at the Nucingens', Ferdinand did not

marry Malvina. Our ferocious friend was not apparentlyjealous of



Desroches, who paid assiduous court to the young lady; Desroches

wanted to pay off the rest of the purchase-money due for his



connection; Malvina could not well have less than fifty thousand

crowns, he thought, and so the lawyer was fain to play the lover.



Malvina, deeply humiliated as she was by du Tillet's carelessness,

loved him too well to shut the door upon him. With her, an



enthusiastic, highly-wrought, sensitive girl, love sometimes got the

better of pride, and pride again overcame wounded love. Our friend



Ferdinand, cool and self-possessed, accepted her tenderness, and

breathed the atmosphere with the quiet enjoyment of a tiger licking



the blood that dyes his throat. He would come to make sure of it with

new proofs; he never allowed two days to pass without a visit to the






文章总共2页
文章标签:翻译  译文  翻译文  

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