LAST PAGE
The Abbey burned for three days and three nights, and the last efforts were of no avail. As early as that morn?ing of the seventh day of our sojourn1 in that place, when the survivors2 were fully3 aware that no building could be saved, when the finest constructions showed only their ruined outer walls, and the church, as if drawing into itself, swallowed its tower—even at that point everyone’s will to combat the divine chastisement4 failed. The rush for the last few buckets of water grew more and more listless, while the chapter house and the superb apartments of the abbot were still burning. By the time the fire reached the far side of the various workshops, the servants had long since saved as many objects as they could, and had chosen to beat the countryside to recapture at least some of the livestock5, which had fled beyond the walls in the confusion of the night.
I saw some of the servants venture into what remained of the church: I presumed they were trying to get into the crypt to seize some precious object before running away. I do not know whether they succeeded, whether the crypt had not already collapsed6, whether the louts did not sink into the bowels7 of the earth in their attempt to reach the treasure.
Meanwhile, men were coming up from the village to lend a hand or to try to snatch some further booty. The dead for the most part remained among the ruins, which were still red-hot. On the third day, when the wounded had been treated and the corpses8 found outside had been buried, the monks10 and all the others collected their belongings11 and abandoned the still-smoking abbey, as a place accursed. They scattered12, I do not know whereto.
William and I left those parts on two horses we found astray in the wood; we considered them res nullius by now. We headed east. When we reached Bobbio again, we began to receive bad news of the Emperor. On arriving in Rome, he had been crowned by the people. Considering any agreement with John now impossible, he had chosen an antipope, Nicholas V Marsilius had been named spiritual vicar of Rome, but through his fault, or his weakness, things very sad to report were taking place in that city. Priests loyal to the Pope and unwilling13 to say Mass were tortured, an Augustinian prior had been thrown into the lions’ pit on the Capitoline. Marsilius and John of Jandun had declared John a heretic, and Louis had had him sentenced to death. But the Emperor’s misrule was antagonizing the local lords and depleting14 public funds. Gradually, as we heard this news, we delayed our descent to Rome, and I realized that William did not want to find himself witnessing events that would dash his hopes.
When we came to Pomposa, we learned that Rome had rebelled against Louis, who had moved back up toward Pisa, while John’s legates were triumphantly15 entering the papal city.
Meanwhile, Michael of Cesena had realized that his presence in Avignon was producing no results—indeed, he feared for his life—so he had fled, joining Louis in Pisa.
Soon, foreseeing events and learning that the Bavarian would move on to Munich, we reversed our route and decided16 to proceed there, also because William sensed that Italy was becoming unsafe for him. In the ensuing months and years, Louis saw the alliance of his supporters, the Ghibelline lords, dissolve; and the following year the Antipope Nicholas was to surrender to John, presenting himself with a rope around his neck.
When we came to Munich, I had to take leave of my good master, amid many tears. His destiny was uncertain, and my family preferred for me to return to Melk. After that tragic17 night when William revealed to me his dismay before the ruins of the abbey, as if by tacit agreement we had not spoken again of that story. Nor did we mention it in the course of our sorrowful farewell.
My master gave me much good advice about my future studies, and presented me with the glasses Nicholas had made for him, since he had his own back again. I was still young, he said to me, but one day they would come in handy (and, truly, I am wearing them on my nose now, as I write these lines). Then he embraced me with a father’s tenderness and dismissed me.
I never saw him. again. I learned much later that he had died during he great plague that raged through Europe toward the middle of this century. I pray always that God received his soul and forgave him the many acts of pride that his intellectual vanity had made him commit.
Years later, as a grown man, I had occasion to make a journey to Italy, sent by my abbot. I could not resist temptation, and on my return I went far out of my way to revisit what remained of the abbey.
The two villages on the slopes of the mountain were deserted20, the lands around them uncultivated. When I climbed up to the top, a spectacle of desolation and death appeared before my eyes, which moistened with tears.
Of the great and magnificent constructions that once adorned21 that place, only scattered ruins remained, as had happened before with the monuments of the an?cient pagans in the city of Rome. Ivy22 covered the shreds23 of walls, columns, the few architraves still intact. Weeds invaded the ground on all sides, and there was no telling where the vegetables and the flowers had once grown. Only the location of the cemetery24 was recog?nizable, because of some graves that still rose above the level of the terrain25. Sole sign of life, some birds of prey26 hunted lizards27 and serpents that, like basilisks, slithered among the stones or crawled over the walls. Of the church door only a few traces remained, eroded28 by mold. Half of the tympanum survived, and I still glimpsed there, dilated29 by the elements and dulled by lichens30, the left eye of the enthroned Christ, and something of the lion’s face.
The Aedificium, except for the south wall, which was in ruins, seemed yet to stand and defy the course of time. The two outer towers, over the cliff, appeared almost untouched, but all the windows were empty sockets31 whose slimy tears were rotting vines. Inside, the work of art, destroyed, became confused with the work of nature, and across vast stretches of the kitchen the eye ran to the open heavens through the breach32 of the upper floors and the roof, fallen like fallen angels. Everything that was not green with moss33 was still black from the smoke of so many decades ago.
Poking34 about in the rubble35, I found at times scraps36 of parchment that had drifted down from the scriptorium and the library and had survived like treasures buried in the earth; I began to collect them, as if I were going to piece together the torn pages of a book. Then I noticed that in one of the towers there rose, tottering37 but still intact, a circular staircase to the scriptorium, and from there, by climbing a sloping bit of the ruin, I could reach the level of the library: which, however, was only a sort of gallery next to the outside walls, looking down into the void at every point.
Along one stretch of wall I found a bookcase, still miraculously38 erect39, having come through the fire I cannot say how; it was rotted by water and consumed by termites40. In it there were still a few pages. Other remnants I found by rummaging41 in the ruins below. Mine was a poor harvest, but I spent a whole day reaping it, as if from those disiecta membra of the library a message might reach me. Some fragments of parchment had faded, others permitted the glimpse of an image’s shadow, or the ghost of one or more words. At times I found pages where whole sentences were legible; more often, intact bindings, protected by what had once been metal studs. ... Ghosts of books, appar?ently intact on the outside but consumed within; yet sometimes a half page had been saved, an incipit was discernible, a title.
I collected every relic42 I could find, filling two travel?ing sacks with them, abandoning things useful to me in order to save that miserable43 hoard44.
Along the return journey and afterward45 at Melk, I spent many, many hours trying to decipher those remains46. Often from a word or a surviving image I could recog?nize what the work had been. When I found, in time, other copies of those books, I studied them with love, as if destiny had left me this bequest47, as if having identified the destroyed copy were a clear sign from heaven that said to me: Tolle et lege. At the end of my patient reconstruction48, I had before me a kind of lesser49 library, a symbol of the greater, vanished one: a library made up of fragments, quotations50, unfinished sentences, amputated stumps51 of books.
?
The more I reread this list the more I am convinced it is the result of chance and contains no message. But these incomplete pages have accompanied me through all the life that has been left me to live since then; I have often consulted them like an oracle52, and I have almost had the impression that what I have written on these pages, which you will now read, unknown reader, is only a cento, a figured hymn53, an immense acrostic that says and repeats nothing but what those fragments have suggested to me, nor do I know whether thus far I have been speaking of them or they have spoken through my mouth. But whichever of the two possibilities may be correct, the more I repeat to myself the story that has emerged from them, the less I manage to under?stand whether in it there is a design that goes beyond the natural sequence of the events and the times that connect them. And it is a hard thing for this old monk9, on the threshold of death, not to know whether the letter he has written contains some hidden meaning, or more than one, or many, or none at all.
But this inability of mine to see is perhaps the effect of the shadow that the great darkness, as it approaches, is casting on the aged19 world.
Est ubi gloria nunc Babyloniae? Where are the snows of yesteryear? The earth is dancing the dance of Macabré; at times it seems to me that the Danube is crowded with ships loaded with fools going toward a dark place.
All I can do now is be silent. O quam salubre, quam iucundum et suave55 est sedere in solitudine et tacere et loqui cum Deo! Soon I shall be joined with my beginning, and I no longer believe that it is the God of glory of whom the abbots of my order spoke18 to me, or of boy, as the Minorites believed in those days, perhaps not even of piety56. Gott ist ein lauter Nichts, ihn rührt kein Nun54 noch Hier. … I shall soon enter this broad desert, perfectly57 level and boundless58, where the truly pious59 heart succumbs60 in bliss61. I shall sink into the divine shadow, in a dumb silence and an ineffable62 union, and in this sinking all equality and all inequality shall be lost, and in that abyss my spirit will lose itself, and will not know the equal or the unequal, or anything else: and all differences will be forgotten. I shall be in the simple foundation, in the silent desert where diversity is never seen, in the privacy where no one finds himself in his proper place. I shall fall into the silent and uninhabited divinity where there is no work and no image.
It is cold in the scriptorium, my thumb aches. I leave this manuscript, I do not know for whom; I no longer know what it is about: stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus.
The End
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1
sojourn
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| v./n.旅居，寄居；逗留 | |
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survivors
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| 幸存者，残存者，生还者( survivor的名词复数 ) | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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chastisement
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| n.惩罚 | |
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livestock
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| n.家畜，牲畜 | |
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collapsed
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| adj.倒塌的 | |
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bowels
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| n.肠，内脏，内部；肠( bowel的名词复数 )；内部，最深处 | |
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corpses
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| n.死尸，尸体( corpse的名词复数 ) | |
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monk
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| n.和尚，僧侣，修道士 | |
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monks
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| n.修道士，僧侣( monk的名词复数 ) | |
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11
belongings
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| n.私人物品，私人财物 | |
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12
scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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13
unwilling
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| adj.不情愿的 | |
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depleting
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| 使大大的减少，使空虚( deplete的现在分词 )； 耗尽，使枯竭 | |
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15
triumphantly
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| ad.得意洋洋地；得胜地；成功地 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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tragic
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| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 | |
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18
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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19
aged
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| adj.年老的，陈年的 | |
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deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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21
adorned
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| [计]被修饰的 | |
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22
ivy
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| n.常青藤，常春藤 | |
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shreds
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| v.撕碎，切碎( shred的第三人称单数 )；用撕毁机撕毁（文件） | |
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24
cemetery
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| n.坟墓，墓地，坟场 | |
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25
terrain
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| n.地面，地形，地图 | |
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26
prey
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| n.被掠食者，牺牲者，掠食；v.捕食，掠夺，折磨 | |
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lizards
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| n.蜥蜴( lizard的名词复数 ) | |
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28
eroded
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| adj. 被侵蚀的，有蚀痕的 动词erode的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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29
dilated
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| adj.加宽的，扩大的v.（使某物）扩大，膨胀，张大( dilate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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30
lichens
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| n.地衣( lichen的名词复数 ) | |
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31
sockets
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| n.套接字，使应用程序能够读写与收发通讯协定(protocol)与资料的程序( Socket的名词复数 )；孔( socket的名词复数 )；（电器上的）插口；托座；凹穴 | |
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32
breach
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| n.违反，不履行；破裂；vt.冲破，攻破 | |
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33
moss
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| n.苔，藓，地衣 | |
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34
poking
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| n. 刺，戳，袋 vt. 拨开，刺，戳 vi. 戳，刺，捅，搜索，伸出，行动散慢 | |
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35
rubble
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| n.（一堆）碎石，瓦砾 | |
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scraps
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| 油渣 | |
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37
tottering
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| adj.蹒跚的，动摇的v.走得或动得不稳( totter的现在分词 )；踉跄；蹒跚；摇摇欲坠 | |
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38
miraculously
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| ad.奇迹般地 | |
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39
erect
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| n./v.树立，建立，使竖立；adj.直立的，垂直的 | |
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40
termites
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| n.白蚁( termite的名词复数 ) | |
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41
rummaging
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| 翻找，搜寻( rummage的现在分词 )； 海关检查 | |
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42
relic
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| n.神圣的遗物，遗迹，纪念物 | |
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43
miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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44
hoard
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| n./v.窖藏，贮存，囤积 | |
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45
afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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46
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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47
bequest
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| n.遗赠；遗产，遗物 | |
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48
reconstruction
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| n.重建，再现，复原 | |
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49
lesser
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| adj.次要的，较小的；adv.较小地，较少地 | |
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50
quotations
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| n.引用( quotation的名词复数 )；[商业]行情（报告）；（货物或股票的）市价；时价 | |
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51
stumps
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| （被砍下的树的）树桩( stump的名词复数 )； 残肢； （板球三柱门的）柱； 残余部分 | |
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52
oracle
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| n.神谕，神谕处，预言 | |
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53
hymn
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| n.赞美诗，圣歌，颂歌 | |
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54
nun
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| n.修女，尼姑 | |
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55
suave
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| adj.温和的；柔和的；文雅的 | |
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56
piety
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| n.虔诚，虔敬 | |
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57
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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58
boundless
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| adj.无限的；无边无际的；巨大的 | |
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59
pious
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| adj.虔诚的；道貌岸然的 | |
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60
succumbs
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| 不再抵抗（诱惑、疾病、攻击等）( succumb的第三人称单数 )； 屈从； 被压垮； 死 | |
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61
bliss
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| n.狂喜，福佑，天赐的福 | |
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62
ineffable
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| adj.无法表达的，不可言喻的 | |
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