THE enormous iron padlock on the doors of the wall cupboard was the only object in the room on which the eye could rest without becoming afflicted1 by the miserable2 unloveliness of forms and the poverty of material. Unsaleable in the ordinary course of business on account of its noble proportions, it had been ceded3 to the Professor for a few pence by a marine5 dealer in the east of London. The room was large, clean, respectable, and poor with that poverty suggesting the starvation of every human need except mere6 bread. There was nothing on the walls but the paper, an expanse of arsenical green, soiled with indelible smudges here and there, and with stains resembling faded maps of uninhabited continents.
At a deal table near a window sat Comrade Ossipon, holding his head between his fists. The Professor, dressed in only his suit of shoddy tweeds, but flapping to and fro on the bare boards a pair of incredibly dilapidated slippers7, had thrust his hands deep into the over-strained pockets of his jacket. He was relating to his robust8 guest a visit he had lately been paying Co the Apostle Michaelis. The Perfect Anarchist9 had even been unbending a little.
`The fellow didn't know anything of Verloc's death. Of course! He never looks at the newspapers. They make him too sad, he says. But never mind. I walked into his cottage. Not a soul anywhere. 1 had to shout half a dozen times before he answered me. I thought he was fast asleep yet, in bed. But not at all. He had been writing his book for four hours already. He sat in that tiny cage in a litter of manuscript. There was a half-eaten raw carrot on the table near him. His breakfast. He lives on a diet of raw carrots and a little milk now.'
`How does he look on it?' asked Comrade Ossipon, listlessly.
`Angelic ... I picked up a handful of his pages from the floor. The poverty of reasoning is astonishing. He has no logic10. He can't think consecutively11. But that's nothing. He has divided his biography into three parts, entitled `Faith, Hope, Charity'. He is elaborating now the idea of a world planned out like an immense and nice hospital, with gardens and flowers, in which the strong are to devote them+selves to the nursing of the weak.'
The Professor paused.
`Conceive you this folly12, Ossipon? The weak! The source of all evil on this earth!' he continued with his grim assurance. `I told him that I dreamt of a world like shambles13, where the weak would be taken in hand for utter extermination14.
`Do you understand, Ossipon? The source of all evil! They are our sinister15 masters - the weak, the flabby, the silly, the cowardly, the faint of heart, and the slavish of mind. They have power. They are the multitude. Theirs is the kingdom of the earth. Exterminate16, exterminate! That is the only way of progress. It is! Follow me, Ossipon. First the great multitude of the weak must go, then the only relatively17 strong. You see? First the blind, then the deaf and the dumb, then the halt and the lame18 - and so on. Every taint19, every vice20, every prejudice, every convention must meet its doom21.'
`And what remains22?' asked Ossipon in a stifled23 voice.
`I remain - if I am strong enough,' asserted the sallow little Professor, whose large ears, thin like membranes24, and standing25 far out from the sides of his frail26 skull27, took on suddenly a deep red tint28.
`Haven't I suffered enough from this oppression of the weak?' he continued forcibly. Then tapping the breast-pocket of his jacket: `And yet I am the force,' he went on. `But the time! The time! Give me time! Ah! that multitude, too stupid to feel either pity or fear. Sometimes I think they have everything on their side. Everything - even death - my own weapon.
`Come and drink some beer with me at the Silenus,' said the robust Ossipon after an interval29 of silence pervaded30 by the rapid flap, flap of the slippers on the feet of the Perfect Anarchist. This last accepted. He was jovial31 that day in his own peculiar32 way. He slapped Ossipon's shoulder.
`Beer! So be it! Let us drink and be merry, for we are strong, and tomorrow we die.'
He busied himself with putting on his boots, and talked meanwhile in his curt33, resolute34 tones.
`What's the matter with you, Ossipon? You look glum35 and seek even my company. I hear that you are seen constantly in places where men utter foolish things over glasses of liquor. Why? Have you abandoned your collection of women? They are the weak who feed the strong - eh?'
He stamped one foot, and picked up his other laced boot, heavy, thick-soled, unblacked, mended many times. He smiled to himself grimly.
`Tell me, Ossipon, terrible man, has ever one of your victims killed herself for you - or are your triumphs so far incomplete - for blood alone puts a seal on greatness? Blood. Death. Look at history.'
`You be damned,' said Ossipon, without turning his head.
`Why? Let that be the hope of the weak, whose theology has invented hell for the strong. Ossipon, my feeling for you is amicable36 contempt. You couldn't kill a fly.'
But rolling to the feast on the top of the omnibus the Professor lost his high spirits. The contemplation of the multitudes thronging37 the pavements extinguished his assurance under a load of doubt and uneasiness which he could shake off after a period of seclusion38 in the room with the large cupboard closed by an enormous padlock.
`And so,' said over his shoulder Comrade Ossipon, who sat on the seat behind. `And so Michaelis dreams of a world like a beautiful and cheery hospital.'
`Just so. An immense charity for the healing of the weak,' assented39 the Professor, sardonically40.
`That's silly,' admitted Ossipon. `You can't heal weakness. But after all Michaelis may not be so far wrong. In two hundred years doctors will rule the world. Science reigns41 already. It reigns in the shade maybe - but it reigns. And all science must culminate42 at last in the science of healing - not the weak, but the strong. Mankind wants to live - to live.'
`Mankind,' asserted the Professor with a self-confident glitter of his iron-rimmed spectacles, `does not know what it wants.'
`But you do,' growled43 Ossipon. `Just now you've been crying for time - time. Well, the doctors will serve you out your time - if you are good. You profess4 yourself to be one of the strong - because you carry in your pocket enough stuff to send yourself and, say, twenty other people into eternity44. But eternity is a damned hole. It's time that you need. You - if you met a man who could give you for certain ten years of time, you would call him your master.'
`My device is: No God! No master,' said the Professor, sententiously, as he rose to get off the bus.
Ossipon followed. `Wait till you are lying flat on your back at the end of your time,' he retorted, jumping off the footboard after the other. `Your scurvy45, shabby, mangy little bit of time,' he continued across the street, and hopping46 on to the kerbstone.
`Ossipon, I think you are a humbug,' the Professor said, opening masterfully the doors of the renowned47 Silenus. And when they had established themselves at a little table he developed further this gracious thought. `You are not even a doctor. But you are funny. Your notion of a humanity universally putting out the tongue and taking the pill from pole to pole at the bidding of a few solemn jokers is worthy48 of the prophet. Prophecy! What's the good of thinking of what will be!' He raised his glass. `To the destruction of what is,' he said, calmly.
He drank and relapsed into his peculiarly close manner of silence. The thought of a mankind as numerous as the sands of the seashore, as indestructible, as difficult to handle, oppressed him. The sound of exploding bombs was lost in their immensity of passive grains without an echo. For instance, this Verloc affair. Who thought of it now? Ossipon, as if suddenly compelled by some mysterious force, pulled a much-folded newspaper out of his pocket. The Professor raised his head at the rustle49. `What's that paper? Anything in it?' he asked.
Ossipon started like a scared somnambulist.
`Nothing. Nothing whatever. The thing's ten days old. I forgot it in my pocket, I suppose.'
But he did not throw the old thing away. Before returning it to his pocket he stole a glance at the last lines of a paragraph. They ran thus: `An impenetrable mystery seems destined50 to hang for ever over this act of madness or despair.'
Such were the end words of an item of news headed:
`Suicide of Lady Passenger from a cross-Channel Boat.' Comrade Ossipon was familiar with the beauties of its journalistic style. `An impenetrable mystery seems destined to hang forever... 'He knew every word by heart. `An impenetrable mystery... `And the robust anarchist, hanging his head on his breast, fell into a long reverie.
He was menaced by this thing in the very sources of his existence. He could not issue forth51 to meet his various conquests, those that he courted on benches in Kensington Gardens, and those he met near area railings, without the dread52 of beginning to talk to them of an impenetrable mystery destined... He was becoming scientifically afraid of insanity53 lying in wait for him amongst these lines. `To hang for ever over.' It was an obsession54, a torture. He had lately failed to keep several of these appointments, whose note used to be an unbounded trustfulness in the language of sentiment and manly55 tenderness. The confiding56 disposition57 of various classes of women satisfied the need of his self-love, and put some material means into his hand He needed it to live. It was there. But if he could no longer make use of it, he ran the risk of starving his ideals and his body... `This act of madness or despair.'
`An impenetrable mystery' was sure `to hang for ever' as far as all mankind was concerned. But what of that if he alone of all men could never get rid of the cursed knowledge? And Comrade Ossipon's knowledge was as precise as the newspaper man could make it - up to the very threshold of the `mystery destined to hang forever... '.
Comrade Ossipon was well informed. He knew what the gangway man of the steamer had seen: `A lady in a black dress and a black veil, wandering at midnight alongside on the quay58. `Are you going by the boat, ma'am,' he had asked her, encouragingly. `This way.' She seemed not to know what to do. He helped her on board. She seemed weak.'
And Ossipon knew also what the stewardess59 had seen: a lady in black with a white face standing in the middle of the empty ladies' cabin. The stewardess induced her to lie down there. The lady seemed quite unwilling61 to speak, and as if she were in some awful trouble. The next the stewardess knew she was gone from the ladies' cabin. The stewardess then went on deck to look for her, and Comrade Ossipon was informed that the good woman found the unhappy lady lying down in one of the hooded62 seats. Her eyes were open, but she would not answer anything that was said to her. She seemed very ill. The stewardess fetched the chief steward60, and those two people stood by the side of the hooded seat consulting over their extraordinary and tragic64 passenger. They talked in audible whispers (for she seemed past hearing) of St Malo and the Consul63 there, of communicating with her people in England. Then they went away to arrange for her removal down below, for indeed by what they could see of her face she seemed to them to be dying. But Comrade Ossipon knew that behind that white mask of despair there was struggling against terror and despair a vigour65 of vitality66, a love of life that could resist the furious anguish67 which drives to murder and the fear, the blind, mad fear of the gallows68. He knew. But the stewardess and the chief steward knew nothing, except that when they came back for her in less than five minutes the lady in black was no longer in the hooded seat. She was nowhere. She was gone. It was then five o'clock in the morning, and it was no accident either. An hour afterwards one of the steamer's hands found a wedding ring left lying on the seat. It had stuck to the wood in a bit of wet, and its glitter caught the man's eye. There was a date, 14 June 1879, engraved69 inside. `An impenetrable mystery is destined to hang for ever...
And Comrade Ossipon raised his bowed head, beloved of various humble70 women of these isles71, Apollo-like in the sunniness of its bush of hair.
The Professor had grown restless meantime. He rose.
`Stay,' said Ossipon, hurriedly. `Here, what do you know of madness and despair?'
The Professor passed the tip of his tongue on his dry, thin lips, and said doctorally:
`There are no such things. All passion is lost now. The world is mediocre72, limp, without force. And madness and despair are a force. And force is a crime in the eyes of the fools, the weak and the silly who rule the roost. You are mediocre. Verloc, whose affair the police has managed to smother73 so nicely, was mediocre. And the police murdered him. He was mediocre. Everybody is mediocre. Madness and despair! Give me that for a lever, and I'll move the world. Ossipon, you have my cordial scorn. You are incapable74 of conceiving even what the fat-fed citizen would call a crime. You have no force.' He paused, smiling sardonically under the fierce glitter of his thick glasses.
`And let me tell you that this little legacy75 they say you've come into has not improved your intelligence. You sit at your beer like a dummy76. Good-bye.'
`Will you have it?' said Ossipon, looking up with an idiotic77 grin.
`Have what?'
`The legacy. All of it.'
The incorruptible Professor only smiled. His clothes were all but falling off him, his boots, shapeless with repairs, heavy like lead, It water in at every step. He said:
`I will send you by-and-by a small bill for certain chemicals which I shall order tomorrow. I need them badly. Understood - eh?'
Ossipon lowered his head slowly. He was alone. `An impenetrable mystery... 'It seemed to him that suspended in the air before him he saw his own brain pulsating78 to the rhythm of an impenetrable mystery. It was diseased clearly.`... This act of madness or despair.'
The mechanical piano near the door played through a valse cheekily, then felt silent all at once, as if gone grumpy.
Comrade Ossipon, nicknamed the Doctor, went out of the Silenus beer-hall. At the door he hesitated, blinking at a not too splendid sunlight - and the paper with the report of the suicide of a lady was in his pocket. His heart was beating against it. The suicide of a lady - `this act of madness or despair'.
He walked along the street without looking where he put his feet; and he walked in a direction which would not bring him to the place of appointment with another lady (an elderly nursery governess putting her trust in an Apollo-like ambrosial79 head). He was walking away from it. He could face no woman. It was ruin. He could neither think, work, sleep, nor eat. But he was beginning to drink with pleasure, with anticipation80, with hope. It was ruin. His revolutionary career, sustained by the sentiment and trustfulness of many women, was menaced by an impenetrable mystery - the mystery of a human brain pulsating wrongfully to the rhythm of journalistic phrases... Will hang for ever over this act... , - it was inclining towards the gutter81 - `... of madness or despair.'
`I am seriously ill,' he muttered to himself with scientific insight. Already his robust form, with an Embassy's secret-service money (inherited from Mr Verloc) in his pockets, was marching in the gutter as if in training for the task of an inevitable82 future. Already he bowed his broad shoulders, his head of ambrosial locks, as if ready to receive the leather yoke83 of the sandwich board. As on that night, more than a week ago, Comrade Ossipon walked without looking where he put his feet, feeling no fatigue84, feeling nothing, seeing nothing, hearing not a sound. `An impenetrable mystery... ' He walked disregarded. `... This act of madness or despair.'
And the incorruptible Professor walked, too, averting85 his eyes from the odious86 multitude of mankind. He had no future. He disdained87 it. He was a force. His thoughts caressed88 the images of ruin and destruction. He walked frail, insignificant89, shabby, miserable - and terrible in the simplicity90 of his idea calling madness and despair to the regeneration of the world. Nobody looked at him. He passed on unsuspected and deadly, like a pest In the street full of men.
The End
1 afflicted | |
使受痛苦,折磨( afflict的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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2 miserable | |
adj.悲惨的,痛苦的;可怜的,糟糕的 | |
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3 ceded | |
v.让给,割让,放弃( cede的过去式 ) | |
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4 profess | |
v.声称,冒称,以...为业,正式接受入教,表明信仰 | |
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5 marine | |
adj.海的;海生的;航海的;海事的;n.水兵 | |
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6 mere | |
adj.纯粹的;仅仅,只不过 | |
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7 slippers | |
n. 拖鞋 | |
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8 robust | |
adj.强壮的,强健的,粗野的,需要体力的,浓的 | |
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9 anarchist | |
n.无政府主义者 | |
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10 logic | |
n.逻辑(学);逻辑性 | |
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11 consecutively | |
adv.连续地 | |
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12 folly | |
n.愚笨,愚蠢,蠢事,蠢行,傻话 | |
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13 shambles | |
n.混乱之处;废墟 | |
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14 extermination | |
n.消灭,根绝 | |
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15 sinister | |
adj.不吉利的,凶恶的,左边的 | |
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16 exterminate | |
v.扑灭,消灭,根绝 | |
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17 relatively | |
adv.比较...地,相对地 | |
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18 lame | |
adj.跛的,(辩解、论据等)无说服力的 | |
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19 taint | |
n.污点;感染;腐坏;v.使感染;污染 | |
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20 vice | |
n.坏事;恶习;[pl.]台钳,老虎钳;adj.副的 | |
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21 doom | |
n.厄运,劫数;v.注定,命定 | |
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22 remains | |
n.剩余物,残留物;遗体,遗迹 | |
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23 stifled | |
(使)窒息, (使)窒闷( stifle的过去式和过去分词 ); 镇压,遏制; 堵 | |
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24 membranes | |
n.(动物或植物体内的)薄膜( membrane的名词复数 );隔膜;(可起防水、防风等作用的)膜状物 | |
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25 standing | |
n.持续,地位;adj.永久的,不动的,直立的,不流动的 | |
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26 frail | |
adj.身体虚弱的;易损坏的 | |
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27 skull | |
n.头骨;颅骨 | |
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28 tint | |
n.淡色,浅色;染发剂;vt.着以淡淡的颜色 | |
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29 interval | |
n.间隔,间距;幕间休息,中场休息 | |
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30 pervaded | |
v.遍及,弥漫( pervade的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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31 jovial | |
adj.快乐的,好交际的 | |
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32 peculiar | |
adj.古怪的,异常的;特殊的,特有的 | |
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33 curt | |
adj.简短的,草率的 | |
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34 resolute | |
adj.坚决的,果敢的 | |
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35 glum | |
adj.闷闷不乐的,阴郁的 | |
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36 amicable | |
adj.和平的,友好的;友善的 | |
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37 thronging | |
v.成群,挤满( throng的现在分词 ) | |
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38 seclusion | |
n.隐遁,隔离 | |
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39 assented | |
同意,赞成( assent的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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40 sardonically | |
adv.讽刺地,冷嘲地 | |
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41 reigns | |
n.君主的统治( reign的名词复数 );君主统治时期;任期;当政期 | |
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42 culminate | |
v.到绝顶,达于极点,达到高潮 | |
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43 growled | |
v.(动物)发狺狺声, (雷)作隆隆声( growl的过去式和过去分词 );低声咆哮着说 | |
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44 eternity | |
n.不朽,来世;永恒,无穷 | |
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45 scurvy | |
adj.下流的,卑鄙的,无礼的;n.坏血病 | |
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46 hopping | |
n. 跳跃 动词hop的现在分词形式 | |
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47 renowned | |
adj.著名的,有名望的,声誉鹊起的 | |
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48 worthy | |
adj.(of)值得的,配得上的;有价值的 | |
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49 rustle | |
v.沙沙作响;偷盗(牛、马等);n.沙沙声声 | |
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50 destined | |
adj.命中注定的;(for)以…为目的地的 | |
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51 forth | |
adv.向前;向外,往外 | |
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52 dread | |
vt.担忧,忧虑;惧怕,不敢;n.担忧,畏惧 | |
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53 insanity | |
n.疯狂,精神错乱;极端的愚蠢,荒唐 | |
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54 obsession | |
n.困扰,无法摆脱的思想(或情感) | |
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55 manly | |
adj.有男子气概的;adv.男子般地,果断地 | |
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56 confiding | |
adj.相信人的,易于相信的v.吐露(秘密,心事等)( confide的现在分词 );(向某人)吐露(隐私、秘密等) | |
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57 disposition | |
n.性情,性格;意向,倾向;排列,部署 | |
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58 quay | |
n.码头,靠岸处 | |
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59 stewardess | |
n.空中小姐,女乘务员 | |
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60 steward | |
n.乘务员,服务员;看管人;膳食管理员 | |
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61 unwilling | |
adj.不情愿的 | |
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62 hooded | |
adj.戴头巾的;有罩盖的;颈部因肋骨运动而膨胀的 | |
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63 consul | |
n.领事;执政官 | |
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64 tragic | |
adj.悲剧的,悲剧性的,悲惨的 | |
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65 vigour | |
(=vigor)n.智力,体力,精力 | |
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66 vitality | |
n.活力,生命力,效力 | |
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67 anguish | |
n.(尤指心灵上的)极度痛苦,烦恼 | |
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68 gallows | |
n.绞刑架,绞台 | |
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69 engraved | |
v.在(硬物)上雕刻(字,画等)( engrave的过去式和过去分词 );将某事物深深印在(记忆或头脑中) | |
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70 humble | |
adj.谦卑的,恭顺的;地位低下的;v.降低,贬低 | |
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71 isles | |
岛( isle的名词复数 ) | |
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72 mediocre | |
adj.平常的,普通的 | |
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73 smother | |
vt./vi.使窒息;抑制;闷死;n.浓烟;窒息 | |
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74 incapable | |
adj.无能力的,不能做某事的 | |
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75 legacy | |
n.遗产,遗赠;先人(或过去)留下的东西 | |
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76 dummy | |
n.假的东西;(哄婴儿的)橡皮奶头 | |
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77 idiotic | |
adj.白痴的 | |
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78 pulsating | |
adj.搏动的,脉冲的v.有节奏地舒张及收缩( pulsate的现在分词 );跳动;脉动;受(激情)震动 | |
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79 ambrosial | |
adj.美味的 | |
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80 anticipation | |
n.预期,预料,期望 | |
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81 gutter | |
n.沟,街沟,水槽,檐槽,贫民窟 | |
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82 inevitable | |
adj.不可避免的,必然发生的 | |
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83 yoke | |
n.轭;支配;v.给...上轭,连接,使成配偶 | |
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84 fatigue | |
n.疲劳,劳累 | |
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85 averting | |
防止,避免( avert的现在分词 ); 转移 | |
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86 odious | |
adj.可憎的,讨厌的 | |
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87 disdained | |
鄙视( disdain的过去式和过去分词 ); 不屑于做,不愿意做 | |
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88 caressed | |
爱抚或抚摸…( caress的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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89 insignificant | |
adj.无关紧要的,可忽略的,无意义的 | |
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90 simplicity | |
n.简单,简易;朴素;直率,单纯 | |
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