A Tale of Two Cities-CHAPTER 5 The Jackal

CHAPTER 5,The Jackal,THOSE were drinking days, and moot ¹ men drank hard. So very great is the improvement Time has brought about in such habits, that a moderate statement of the quantity of wine and punch which one man would swallow in the course of a night, without any detriment ² to his reputation as a perfect gentleman, would seem, in these days, a ridiculous exaggeration. The learned profession of the law was certainly not behind any other learned profession in its Bacchanalian ³ Propensities ⁴; neither was Mr. Stryver, already fast shouldering his way to a large and lucrative ⁵ practice, behind his compeers in this particular, any more than in the drier parts of the legal race.,A favourite at the Old Bailey, and eke ⁶ at the Sessions, Mr. Stryver had begun cautiously to hew ⁷ away the lower staves of the ladder on which he mounted. Sessions and Old Bailey had now to summon their favourite, specially ⁸, to their longing ⁹ arms; and shouldering itself towards the visage of the Lord Chief Justice in the Court of King's Bench, the florid countenance ¹⁰ of Mr. Stryver might be daily seen, bursting out of the bed of wigs ¹¹, like a great sunflower pushing its way at the sun from among a rank garden full of flaring ¹² companions.,ad once been noted ¹³ at the Bar, that while Mr. Stryver was a glib ¹⁴ man, and an unscrupulous, and a ready, and a bold, he had not that faculty ¹⁵ of extracting the essence from a heap of statements, which is among the most striking and necessary of the advocate's accomplishments ¹⁶. But a remarkable ¹⁷ improvement came upon him as to this. The more business he got, the greater his power seemed to grow of getting at its pith and marrow ¹⁸; and however late at night he sat carousing ¹⁹ with Sydney Carton, he always had his points at his fingers' ends in the morning.,Sydney Carton, idlest and most unpromising of men, was Stryver's great ally. What the two drank together, between Hilary Term and Michaelmas, might have floated a king's ship. Stryver never had a case in hand, anywhere, but Carton was there, with his hands in his pockets, staring at the ceiling of the court; they went the same Circuit, and even there they prolonged their usual orgies late into the night, and Carton was rumoured ²⁰ to be seen at broad day, going home stealthily and unsteadily to his lodgings ²¹, like a dissipated cat. At last, it began to get about, among such as were interested in the matter, that although Sydney Carton would never be a lion, he was an amazingly good jackal, and that he rendered suit and service to Stryver in that humble ²² capacity.,`What's the matter?',`Ten o'clock, sir.',`What do you mean? Ten o'clock at night?',`Yes, sir. Your honour told me to call you.',`Oh! I remember. Very well, very well.',The oil versus nuclear equation is largely moot.石油和核能之间的关系还很有争议
。,Smoking is a detriment to one's health.吸烟危害健康。