A Tale of Two Cities-CHAPTER 23 FIRE RISES

FIRE RISES,There was a change on the village where the fountain fell, and where the mender of roads went forth ¹ daily to hammer out of the stones on the high way such morsels ² of bread as might serve for patches to hold his poor ignorant soul and his poor reduced body together. The prison on the crag was not so dominant ³ as of yore; there were soldiers to guard it, but not many; there were officers to guard the soldiers, but not one of them knew what his men would do—beyond this: that it would probably not be what he was ordered.,Far and wide lay a ruined country, yielding nothing but desolation. Every green leaf, every blade of grass and blade of grain, was as shrivelled and poor as the miserable ⁴ people. Everything was bowed down, dejected, oppressed, and broken. Habitations fences, domesticated ⁵ animals, men, women, children, and the soil that bore them—all worn out.,Monseigneur (often a most worthy ⁶ individual gentleman) was a national blessing ⁷, gave a chivalrous ⁸ tone to things, was a polite example of luxurious ⁹ and shining life, and a great deal more to equal purpose; nevertheless, Monseigneur as a class had, somehow or other, brought things to this. Strange that Creation, designed expressly for Monseigneur, should be so soon wrung ¹⁰ dry and squeezed out! There must be something short-sighted in the eternal arrangements, surely! Thus it was, however; and the last drop of blood having been extracted from the flints, and the last screw of the rack having been turned so often that its purchase crumbled ¹¹, and it now turned and turned with nothing to bite, Monseigneur began to run away from a phenomenon so low and unaccountable.,But, this was not the change on the village, and on many a village like it. For scores of years gone by, Monseigneur had squeezed it and wrung it, and had seldom graced it with his presence except for the pleasures of the chase—now, found in hunting the people; now, found in hunting the beasts, for whose preservation ¹² Monseigneur made edifying ¹³ spaces of barbarous and barren wilderness ¹⁴. No. The change consisted in the appearance of strange faces of low caste, rather than in the disappearance ¹⁵ of the high-caste, chiseled ¹⁶, and otherwise beautified and beautifying features of Monseigneur.,For, in these times, as the mender of roads worked, solitary ¹⁷, in the dust, not often troubling himself to reflect that dust he was and to dust he must return, being for the most part too much occupied in thinking how little he had for supper and how much more he would eat if he had it—in these times, as he raised his eyes from his lonely labour, and viewed the prospect ¹⁸, he would see some rough figure approaching on foot, the like of which was once a rarity in those parts, but was now a frequent presence. As it advanced, the mender of roads would discern without surprise, that it was a shaggy-haired man, of almost barbarian ¹⁹ aspect, tall, in wooden shoes that were clumsy even to the eyes of a mender of roads, grim, rough, swart, steeped in the mud and dust of many highways, dank with the marshy ²⁰ moisture of many low grounds, sprinkled with the thorns and leaves and moss ²¹ of many byways through woods.,The man looked at him, looked at the village in the hollow, at the mill, and at the prison on the crag. When he had identified these objects in what benighted ²² mind he had, he said, in a dialect that was just intelligible ²³:,“How goes it, Jacques?”,“All well, Jacques. ”,“Touch then!
”,They joined hands, and the man sat down on the heap of stones.,He gave forth a series of works in rapid succession.他很快连续发表了一系列的作品。,They are the most delicate morsels. 这些确是最好吃的部分 。 来自辞典例句