📝 您未登录，登录后完成练习可保存成绩、查看最佳记录。
总字符
0
正确字符
0
错误字符
0
错误率
0.00%
耗时(秒)
0
速度 WPM
0
0 / 71
1"I would not say happily, my friend," returned the uncle, with refined politeness; "I would not be sure of that. A good
2opportunity for consideration, surrounded by the advantages of solitude, might influence your destiny to far greater
3advantage than you influence it for yourself. But it is useless to discuss the question. I am, as you say, at a
4disadvantage. These little instruments of correction, these gentle aids to the power and honour of families, these
5slight favours that might so incommode you, are only to be obtained now by interest and importunity. They are sought by
6so many, and they are granted (comparatively) to so few! It used not to be so, but France in all such things is changed
7for the worse. Our not remote ancestors held the right of life and death over the surrounding vulgar. From this room,
8many such dogs have been taken out to be hanged; in the next room (my bedroom), one fellow, to our knowledge, was
9poniarded on the spot for professing some insolent delicacy respecting his daughter--his daughter? We have lost many
10privileges; a new philosophy has become the mode; and the assertion of our station, in these days, might (I do not go so
11far as to say would, but might) cause us real inconvenience. All very bad, very bad!" The Marquis took a gentle little
12pinch of snuff, and shook his head; as elegantly despondent as he could becomingly be of a country still containing
13himself, that great means of regeneration. "We have so asserted our station, both in the old time and in the modern time
14also," said the nephew, gloomily, "that I believe our name to be more detested than any name in France." "Let us hope
15so," said the uncle. "Detestation of the high is the involuntary homage of the low." "There is not," pursued the nephew,
16in his former tone, "a face I can look at, in all this country round about us, which looks at me with any deference on
17it but the dark deference of fear and slavery." "A compliment," said the Marquis, "to the grandeur of the family,
18merited by the manner in which the family has sustained its grandeur. Hah!" And he took another gentle little pinch of
19snuff, and lightly crossed his legs. But, when his nephew, leaning an elbow on the table, covered his eyes thoughtfully
20and dejectedly with his hand, the fine mask looked at him sideways with a stronger concentration of keenness, closeness,
21and dislike, than was comportable with its wearer's assumption of indifference. "Repression is the only lasting
22philosophy. The dark deference of fear and slavery, my friend," observed the Marquis, "will keep the dogs obedient to
23the whip, as long as this roof," looking up to it, "shuts out the sky." That might not be so long as the Marquis
24supposed. If a picture of the chateau as it was to be a very few years hence, and of fifty like it as they too were to
25be a very few years hence, could have been shown to him that night, he might have been at a loss to claim his own from
26the ghastly, fire-charred, plunder-wrecked rains. As for the roof he vaunted, he might have found that shutting out the
27sky in a new way--to wit, for ever, from the eyes of the bodies into which its lead was fired, out of the barrels of a
28hundred thousand muskets. "Meanwhile," said the Marquis, "I will preserve the honour and repose of the family, if you
29will not. But you must be fatigued. Shall we terminate our conference for the night?" "A moment more." "An hour, if you
30please." "Sir," said the nephew, "we have done wrong, and are reaping the fruits of wrong." "We have done wrong?"
31repeated the Marquis, with an inquiring smile, and delicately pointing, first to his nephew, then to himself. "Our
32family; our honourable family, whose honour is of so much account to both of us, in such different ways. Even in my
33father's time, we did a world of wrong, injuring every human creature who came between us and our pleasure, whatever it
34was. Why need I speak of my father's time, when it is equally yours? Can I separate my father's twin-brother, joint
35inheritor, and next successor, from himself?" "Death has done that!" said the Marquis. "And has left me," answered the
36nephew, "bound to a system that is frightful to me, responsible for it, but powerless in it; seeking to execute the last
37request of my dear mother's lips, and obey the last look of my dear mother's eyes, which implored me to have mercy and
38to redress; and tortured by seeking assistance and power in vain." "Seeking them from me, my nephew," said the Marquis,
39touching him on the breast with his forefinger--they were now standing by the hearth--"you will for ever seek them in
40vain, be assured." Every fine straight line in the clear whiteness of his face, was cruelly, craftily, and closely
41compressed, while he stood looking quietly at his nephew, with his snuff-box in his hand. Once again he touched him on
42the breast, as though his finger were the fine point of a small sword, with which, in delicate finesse, he ran him
43through the body, and said, "My friend, I will die, perpetuating the system under which I have lived." When he had said
44it, he took a culminating pinch of snuff, and put his box in his pocket. "Better to be a rational creature," he added
45then, after ringing a small bell on the table, "and accept your natural destiny. But you are lost, Monsieur Charles, I
46see." "This property and France are lost to me," said the nephew, sadly; "I renounce them." "Are they both yours to
47renounce? France may be, but is the property? It is scarcely worth mentioning; but, is it yet?" "I had no intention, in
48the words I used, to claim it yet. If it passed to me from you, to-morrow--" "Which I have the vanity to hope is not
49probable." "--or twenty years hence--" "You do me too much honour," said the Marquis; "still, I prefer that
50supposition." "--I would abandon it, and live otherwise and elsewhere. It is little to relinquish. What is it but a
51wilderness of misery and ruin!" "Hah!" said the Marquis, glancing round the luxurious room. "To the eye it is fair
52enough, here; but seen in its integrity, under the sky, and by the daylight, it is a crumbling tower of waste,
53mismanagement, extortion, debt, mortgage, oppression, hunger, nakedness, and suffering." "Hah!" said the Marquis again,
54in a well-satisfied manner. "If it ever becomes mine, it shall be put into some hands better qualified to free it slowly
55(if such a thing is possible) from the weight that drags it down, so that the miserable people who cannot leave it and
56who have been long wrung to the last point of endurance, may, in another generation, suffer less; but it is not for me.
57There is a curse on it, and on all this land." "And you?" said the uncle. "Forgive my curiosity; do you, under your new
58philosophy, graciously intend to live?" "I must do, to live, what others of my countrymen, even with nobility at their
59backs, may have to do some day--work." "In England, for example?" "Yes. The family honour, sir, is safe from me in this
60country. The family name can suffer from me in no other, for I bear it in no other." The ringing of the bell had caused
61the adjoining bed-chamber to be lighted. It now shone brightly, through the door of communication. The Marquis looked
62that way, and listened for the retreating step of his valet. "England is very attractive to you, seeing how
63indifferently you have prospered there," he observed then, turning his calm face to his nephew with a smile. "I have
64already said, that for my prospering there, I am sensible I may be indebted to you, sir. For the rest, it is my Refuge."
65"They say, those boastful English, that it is the Refuge of many. You know a compatriot who has found a Refuge there? A
66Doctor?" "Yes." "With a daughter?" "Yes." "Yes," said the Marquis. "You are fatigued. Good night!" As he bent his head
67in his most courtly manner, there was a secrecy in his smiling face, and he conveyed an air of mystery to those words,
68which struck the eyes and ears of his nephew forcibly. At the same time, the thin straight lines of the setting of the
69eyes, and the thin straight lips, and the markings in the nose, curved with a sarcasm that looked handsomely diabolic.
70"Yes," repeated the Marquis. "A Doctor with a daughter. Yes. So commences the new philosophy! You are fatigued. Good
71night!"
🎉 全部完成！共 71 行