Nothing has been said here at any length of the great culture of the Troubadours as it appeared in Provence or Languedoc, great as was their influence in history and their influence on St. Francis. Something more may be said of them when we come to summarise5 his relation to history; it is enough to note here in a few sentences the facts about them that were relevant to him, and especially the particular point now in question, {75}which was the most relevant of all. Everybody knows who the Troubadours were; everybody knows that very early in the Middle Ages, in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, there arose a civilisation6 in Southern France which threatened to rival or eclipse the rising tradition of Paris. Its chief product was a school of poetry, or rather more especially a school of poets. They were primarily love-poets, though they were often also satirists and critics of things in general. Their picturesque7 posture8 in history is largely due to the fact that they sang their own poems and often played their own accompaniments, on the light musical instruments of the period; they were minstrels as well as men of letters. Allied9 to their love-poetry were other institutions of a decorative10 and fanciful kind concerned with the same theme. There was what was called the "Gay Science," the attempt to reduce to a sort of system the fine shades of flirtation11 and philandering12. There were the things called Courts of Love, in which the same delicate subjects were dealt with with legal pomp and pedantry13. There is one point in this part of the business that must be remembered in relation to St. Francis. There were manifest moral dangers in all this superb sentimentalism; but it is a mistake to suppose that its only danger of exaggeration was in the direction of sensualism. There was a strain in the southern romance that was actually an excess {76}of spirituality; just as the pessimist14 heresy15 it produced was in one sense an excess of spirituality. The love was not always animal; sometimes it was so airy as to be almost allegorical. The reader realises that the lady is the most beautiful being that can possibly exist, only he has occasional doubts as to whether she does exist. Dante owed something to the Troubadours; and the critical debates about his ideal woman are an excellent example of these doubts. We know that Beatrice was not his wife, but we should in any case be equally sure that she was not his mistress; and some critics have even suggested that she was nothing at all, so to speak, except his muse16. This idea of Beatrice as an allegorical figure is, I believe, unsound; it would seem unsound to any man who has read the Vita Nuova and has been in love. But the very fact that it is possible to suggest it illustrates17 something abstract and scholastic19 in these medieval passions. But though they were abstract passions they were very passionate20 passions. These men could feel almost like lovers, even about allegories and abstractions. It is necessary to remember this in order to realise that St. Francis was talking the true language of a troubadour when he said that he also had a most glorious and gracious lady and that her name was Poverty.
But the particular point to be noted21 here is not concerned so much with the word Troubadour {77}as with the word Jongleur. It is especially concerned with the transition from one to the other; and for this it is necessary to grasp another detail about the poets of the Gay Science. A jongleur was not the same thing as a troubadour, even if the same man were both a troubadour and a jongleur. More often, I believe, they were separate men as well as separate trades. In many cases apparently the two men would walk the world together like companions in arms, or rather companions in arts. The jongleur was properly a joculator or jester; sometimes he was what we should call a juggler22. This is the point, I imagine, of the tale about Taillefer the Jongleur at the battle of Hastings, who sang of the death of Roland while he tossed up his sword and caught it, as a juggler catches balls. Sometimes he may have been even a tumbler; like that acrobat23 in the beautiful legend who was called "The Tumbler of Our Lady," because he turned head over heels and stood on his head before the image of the Blessed Virgin24, for which he was nobly thanked and comforted by her and the whole company of heaven. In the ordinary way, we may imagine, the troubadour would exalt25 the company with earnest and solemn strains of love and then the jongleur would do his turn as a sort of comic relief. A glorious medieval romance remains26 to be written about two such companions wandering through the world. At any rate, if there is one {78}place in which the true Franciscan spirit can be found outside the true Franciscan story, it is in that tale of the Tumbler of Our Lady. And when St. Francis called his followers27 the Jongleurs de Dieu, he meant something very like the Tumblers of Our Lord.
Somewhere in that transition from the ambition of the Troubadour to the antics of the Tumbler is hidden, as under a parable28, the truth of St. Francis. Of the two minstrels or entertainers, the jester was presumably the servant or at least the secondary figure. St. Francis really meant what he said when he said he had found the secret of life in being the servant and the secondary figure. There was to be found ultimately in such service a freedom almost amounting to frivolity29. It was comparable to the condition of the jongleur because it almost amounted to frivolity. The jester could be free when the knight30 was rigid31; and it was possible to be a jester in the service which is perfect freedom. This parallel of the two poets or minstrels is perhaps the best preliminary and external statement of the Franciscan change of heart, being conceived under an image with which the imagination of the modern world has a certain sympathy. There was, of course, a great deal more than this involved; and we must endeavour however insufficiently32 to penetrate33 past the image to the idea. It is so far like the tumblers that it is really to many people a topsy-turvy idea.
{79}Francis, at the time or somewhere about the time when he disappeared into the prison or the dark cavern34, underwent a reversal of a certain psychological kind; which was really like the reversal of a complete somersault, in that by coming full circle it came back, or apparently came back, to the same normal posture. It is necessary to use the grotesque35 simile36 of an acrobatic antic, because there is hardly any other figure that will make the fact clear. But in the inward sense it was a profound spiritual revolution. The man who went into the cave was not the man who came out again; in that sense he was almost as different as if he were dead, as if he were a ghost or a blessed spirit. And the effects of this on his attitude towards the actual world were really as extravagant37 as any parallel can make them. He looked at the world as differently from other men as if he had come out of that dark hole walking on his hands.
If we apply this parable of Our Lady's Tumbler to the case, we shall come very near to the point of it. Now it really is a fact that any scene such as a landscape can sometimes be more clearly and freshly seen if it is seen upside down. There have been landscape-painters who adopted the most startling and pantomimic postures38 in order to look at it for a moment in that fashion. Thus that inverted39 vision, so much more bright and quaint40 and arresting, does bear a certain resemblance {80}to the world which a mystic like St. Francis sees every day. But herein is the essential part of the parable. Our Lady's Tumbler did not stand on his head in order to see flowers and trees as a clearer or quainter41 vision. He did not do so; and it would never have occurred to him to do so. Our Lady's Tumbler stood on his head to please Our Lady. If St. Francis had done the same thing, as he was quite capable of doing, it would originally have been from the same motive42; a motive of a purely43 supernatural thought. It would be after this that his enthusiasm would extend itself and give a sort of halo to the edges of all earthly things. This is why it is not true to represent St. Francis as a mere44 romantic forerunner45 of the Renaissance46 and a revival47 of natural pleasures for their own sake. The whole point of him was that the secret of recovering the natural pleasures lay in regarding them in the light of a supernatural pleasure. In other words, he repeated in his own person that historic process noted in the introductory chapter; the vigil of asceticism48 which ends in the vision of a natural world made new. But in the personal case there was even more than this; there were elements that make the parallel of the Jongleur or Tumbler even more appropriate than this.
It may be suspected that in that black cell or cave Francis passed the blackest hours of his life. By nature he was the sort of man who has that {81}vanity which is the opposite of pride; that vanity which is very near to humility49. He never despised his fellow creatures and therefore he never despised the opinion of his fellow creatures; including the admiration50 of his fellow creatures. All that part of his human nature had suffered the heaviest and most crushing blows. It is possible that after his humiliating return from his frustrated51 military campaign he was called a coward. It is certain that after his quarrel with his father about the bales of cloth he was called a thief. And even those who had sympathised most with him, the priest whose church he had restored, the bishop52 whose blessing53 he had received, had evidently treated him with an almost humorous amiability54 which left only too clear the ultimate conclusion of the matter. He had made a fool of himself. Any man who has been young, who has ridden horses or thought himself ready for a fight, who has fancied himself as a troubadour and accepted the conventions of comradeship, will appreciate the ponderous55 and crushing weight of that simple phrase. The conversion56 of St. Francis, like the conversion of St. Paul, involved his being in some sense flung suddenly from a horse; but in a sense it was an even worse fall; for it was a war-horse. Anyhow, there was not a rag of him left that was not ridiculous. Everybody knew that at the best he had made a fool of himself. It was a solid objective fact, like the stones in the road, {82}that he had made a fool of himself. He saw himself as an object, very small and distinct like a fly walking on a clear window pane57; and it was unmistakably a fool. And as he stared at the word "fool" written in luminous58 letters before him, the word itself began to shine and change.
We used to be told in the nursery that if a man were to bore a hole through the centre of the earth and climb continually down and down, there would come a moment at the centre when he would seem to be climbing up and up. I do not know whether this is true. The reason I do not know whether it is true is that I never happened to bore a hole through the centre of the earth, still less to crawl through it. If I do not know what this reversal or inversion59 feels like, it is because I have never been there. And this also is an allegory. It is certain that the writer, it is even possible that the reader, is an ordinary person who has never been there. We cannot follow St. Francis to that final spiritual overturn in which complete humiliation60 becomes complete holiness or happiness, because we have never been there. I for one do not profess61 to follow it any further than that first breaking down of the romantic barricades62 of boyish vanity, which I have suggested in the last paragraph. And even that paragraph, of course, is merely conjectural63, an individual guess at what he may have felt; but he may have felt something quite different. But {83}whatever else it was, it was so far analogous64 to the story of the man making a tunnel through the earth that it did mean a man going down and down until at some mysterious moment he begins to go up and up. We have never gone up like that because we have never gone down like that; we are obviously incapable65 of saying that it does not happen; and the more candidly66 and calmly we read human history, and especially the history of the wisest men, the more we shall come to the conclusion that it does happen. Of the intrinsic internal essence of the experience I make no pretence67 of writing at all. But the external effect of it, for the purpose of this narrative68, may be expressed by saying that when Francis came forth69 from his cave of vision, he was wearing the same word "fool" as a feather in his cap; as a crest70 or even a crown. He would go on being a fool; he would become more and more of a fool; he would be the court fool of the King of Paradise.
This state can only be represented in symbol; but the symbol of inversion is true in another way. If a man saw the world upside down, with all the trees and towers hanging head downwards71 as in a pool, one effect would be to emphasise72 the idea of dependence73. There is a Latin and literal connection; for the very word dependence only means hanging. It would make vivid the Scriptural text which says that God has hanged the world upon nothing. If St. Francis had seen, in one of {84}his strange dreams, the town of Assisi upside down, it need not have differed in a single detail from itself except in being entirely74 the other way round. But the point is this: that whereas to the normal eye the large masonry75 of its walls or the massive foundations of its watchtowers and its high citadel76 would make it seem safer and more permanent, the moment it was turned over the very same weight would make it seem more helpless and more in peril77. It is but a symbol; but it happens to fit the psychological fact. St. Francis might love his little town as much as before, or more than before; but the nature of the love would be altered even in being increased. He might see and love every tile on the steep roofs or every bird on the battlements; but he would see them all in a new and divine light of eternal danger and dependence. Instead of being merely proud of his strong city because it could not be moved, he would be thankful to God Almighty78 that it had not been dropped; he would be thankful to God for not dropping the whole cosmos79 like a vast crystal to be shattered into falling stars. Perhaps St. Peter saw the world so, when he was crucified head-downwards.
It is commonly in a somewhat cynical80 sense that men have said, "Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, for he shall not be disappointed." It was in a wholly happy and enthusiastic sense that St. Francis said, "Blessed is he who expecteth {85}nothing, for he shall enjoy everything." It was by this deliberate idea of starting from zero, from the dark nothingness of his own deserts, that he did come to enjoy even earthly things as few people have enjoyed them; and they are in themselves the best working example of the idea. For there is no way in which a man can earn a star or deserve a sunset. But there is more than this involved, and more indeed than is easily to be expressed in words. It is not only true that the less a man thinks of himself, the more he thinks of his good luck and of all the gifts of God. It is also true that he sees more of the things themselves when he sees more of their origin; for their origin is a part of them and indeed the most important part of them. Thus they become more extraordinary by being explained. He has more wonder at them but less fear of them; for a thing is really wonderful when it is significant and not when it is insignificant81; and a monster, shapeless or dumb or merely destructive, may be larger than the mountains, but is still in a literal sense insignificant. For a mystic like St. Francis the monsters had a meaning; that is, they had delivered their message. They spoke82 no longer in an unknown tongue. That is the meaning of all those stories, whether legendary83 or historical, in which he appears as a magician speaking the language of beasts and birds. The mystic will have nothing to do with mere {86}mystery; mere mystery is generally a mystery of iniquity84.
The transition from the good man to the saint is a sort of revolution; by which one for whom all things illustrate18 and illuminate85 God becomes one for whom God illustrates and illuminates86 all things. It is rather like the reversal whereby a lover might say at first sight that a lady looked like a flower, and say afterwards that all flowers reminded him of his lady. A saint and a poet standing87 by the same flower might seem to say the same thing; but indeed though they would both be telling the truth, they would be telling different truths. For one the joy of life is a cause of faith, for the other rather a result of faith. But one effect of the difference is that the sense of a divine dependence, which for the artist is like the brilliant levin-blaze, for the saint is like the broad daylight. Being in some mystical sense on the other side of things, he sees things go forth from the divine as children going forth from a familiar and accepted home, instead of meeting them as they come out, as most of us do, upon the roads of the world. And it is the paradox88 that by this privilege he is more familiar, more free and fraternal, more carelessly hospitable89 than we. For us the elements are like heralds90 who tell us with trumpet91 and tabard that we are drawing near the city of a great king; but he hails them with an old familiarity that is almost an old {87}frivolity. He calls them his Brother Fire and his Sister Water.
So arises out of this almost nihilistic abyss the noble thing that is called Praise; which no one will ever understand while he identifies it with nature-worship or pantheistic optimism. When we say that a poet praises the whole creation, we commonly mean only that he praises the whole cosmos. But this sort of poet does really praise creation, in the sense of the act of creation. He praises the passage or transition from nonentity92 to entity93; there falls here also the shadow of that archetypal image of the bridge, which has given to the priest his archaic94 and mysterious name. The mystic who passes through the moment when there is nothing but God does in some sense behold95 the beginningless beginnings in which there was really nothing else. He not only appreciates everything but the nothing of which everything was made. In a fashion he endures and answers even the earthquake irony96 of the Book of Job; in some sense he is there when the foundations of the world are laid, with the morning stars singing together and the sons of God shouting for joy. That is but a distant adumbration97 of the reason why the Franciscan, ragged98, penniless, homeless and apparently hopeless, did indeed come forth singing such songs as might come from the stars of morning; and shouting, a son of God.
This sense of the great gratitude99 and the sublime100 {88}dependence was not a phrase or even a sentiment; it is the whole point that this was the very rock of reality. It was not a fancy but a fact; rather it is true that beside it all facts are fancies. That we all depend in every detail, at every instant, as a Christian101 would say upon God, as even an agnostic would say upon existence and the nature of things, is not an illusion of imagination; on the contrary, it is the fundamental fact which we cover up, as with curtains, with the illusion of ordinary life. That ordinary life is an admirable thing in itself, just as imagination is an admirable thing in itself. But it is much more the ordinary life that is made of imagination than the contemplative life. He who has seen the whole world hanging on a hair of the mercy of God has seen the truth; we might almost say the cold truth. He who has seen the vision of his city upside down has seen it the right way up.
Rossetti makes the remark somewhere, bitterly but with great truth, that the worst moment for the atheist102 is when he is really thankful and has nobody to thank. The converse103 of this proposition is also true; and it is certain that this gratitude produced, in such men as we are here considering, the most purely joyful104 moments that have been known to man. The great painter boasted that he mixed all his colours with brains, and the great saint may be said to mix all his thoughts with thanks. All goods look better {89}when they look like gifts. In this sense it is certain that the mystical method establishes a very healthy external relation to everything else. But it must always be remembered that everything else has for ever fallen into a second place, in comparison with this simple fact of dependence on the divine reality. In so far as ordinary social relations have in them something that seems solid and self-supporting, some sense of being at once buttressed105 and cushioned; in so far as they establish sanity106 in the sense of security and security in the sense of self-sufficiency, the man who has seen the world hanging on a hair does have some difficulty in taking them so seriously as that. In so far as even the secular authorities and hierarchies107, even the most natural superiorities and the most necessary subordinations, tend at once to put a man in his place, and to make him sure of his position, the man who has seen the human hierarchy108 upside down will always have something of a smile for its superiorities. In this sense the direct vision of divine reality does disturb solemnities that are sane109 enough in themselves. The mystic may have added a cubit to his stature110; but he generally loses something of his status. He can no longer take himself for granted, merely because he can verify his own existence in a parish register or a family Bible. Such a man may have something of the appearance of the lunatic who has lost his name while preserving {90}his nature; who straightway forgets what manner of man he was. "Hitherto I have called Pietro Bernardone father; but now I am the servant of God."
All these profound matters must be suggested in short and imperfect phrases; and the shortest statement of one aspect of this illumination is to say that it is the discovery of an infinite debt. It may seem a paradox to say that a man may be transported with joy to discover that he is in debt. But this is only because in commercial cases the creditor111 does not generally share the transports of joy; especially when the debt is by hypothesis infinite and therefore unrecoverable. But here again the parallel of a natural love-story of the nobler sort disposes of the difficulty in a flash. There the infinite creditor does share the joy of the infinite debtor112; for indeed they are both debtors113 and both creditors114. In other words debt and dependence do become pleasures in the presence of unspoilt love; the word is used too loosely and luxuriously115 in popular simplifications like the present; but here the word is really the key. It is the key of all the problems of Franciscan morality which puzzle the merely modern mind; but above all it is the key of asceticism. It is the highest and holiest of the paradoxes116 that the man who really knows he cannot pay his debt will be for ever paying it. He will be for ever giving back what he cannot give back, and cannot be expected {91}to give back. He will be always throwing things away into a bottomless pit of unfathomable thanks. Men who think they are too modern to understand this are in fact too mean to understand it; we are most of us too mean to practise it. We are not generous enough to be ascetics117; one might almost say not genial118 enough to be ascetics. A man must have magnanimity of surrender, of which he commonly only catches a glimpse in first love, like a glimpse of our lost Eden. But whether he sees it or not, the truth is in that riddle119; that the whole world has, or is, only one good thing; and it is a bad debt.
If ever that rarer sort of romantic love, which was the truth that sustained the Troubadours, falls out of fashion and is treated as fiction, we may see some such misunderstanding as that of the modern world about asceticism. For it seems conceivable that some barbarians120 might try to destroy chivalry121 in love, as the barbarians ruling in Berlin destroyed chivalry in war. If that were ever so, we should have the same sort of unintelligent sneers122 and unimaginative questions. Men will ask what selfish sort of woman it must have been who ruthlessly exacted tribute in the form of flowers, or what an avaricious123 creature she can have been to demand solid gold in the form of a ring; just as they ask what cruel kind of God can have demanded sacrifice and self-denial. They will have lost the clue to all that lovers have meant {92}by love; and will not understand that it was because the thing was not demanded that it was done. But whether or no any such lesser124 things will throw a light on the greater, it is utterly125 useless to study a great thing like the Franciscan movement while remaining in the modern mood that murmurs126 against gloomy asceticism. The whole point about St. Francis of Assisi is that he certainly was ascetical and he certainly was not gloomy. As soon as ever he had been unhorsed by the glorious humiliation of his vision of dependence on the divine love, he flung himself into fasting and vigil exactly as he had flung himself furiously into battle. He had wheeled his charger clean round, but there was no halt or check in the thundering impetuosity of his charge. There was nothing negative about it; it was not a regimen or a stoical simplicity127 of life. It was not self-denial merely in the sense of self-control. It was as positive as a passion; it had all the air of being as positive as a pleasure. He devoured128 fasting as a man devours129 food. He plunged130 after poverty as men have dug madly for gold. And it is precisely131 the positive and passionate quality of this part of his personality that is a challenge to the modern mind in the whole problem of the pursuit of pleasure. There undeniably is the historical fact; and there attached to it is another moral fact almost as undeniable. It is certain that he held on this heroic or unnatural132 {93}course from the moment when he went forth in his hair-shirt into the winter woods to the moment when he desired even in his death agony to lie bare upon the bare ground, to prove that he had and that he was nothing. And we can say, with almost as deep a certainty, that the stars which passed above that gaunt and wasted corpse133 stark134 upon the rocky floor had for once, in all their shining cycles round the world of labouring humanity, looked down upon a happy man.
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1
adumbrated
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| v.约略显示，勾画出…的轮廓( adumbrate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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secular
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| n.牧师，凡人；adj.世俗的，现世的，不朽的 | |
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pageant
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| n.壮观的游行；露天历史剧 | |
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summarise
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| vt.概括，总结 | |
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civilisation
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| n.文明，文化，开化，教化 | |
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picturesque
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| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
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posture
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| n.姿势，姿态，心态，态度；v.作出某种姿势 | |
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allied
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| adj.协约国的；同盟国的 | |
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decorative
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| adj.装饰的，可作装饰的 | |
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flirtation
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| n.调情，调戏，挑逗 | |
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philandering
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| v.调戏，玩弄女性( philander的现在分词 ) | |
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pedantry
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| n.迂腐，卖弄学问 | |
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pessimist
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| n.悲观者；悲观主义者；厌世 | |
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heresy
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| n.异端邪说；异教 | |
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muse
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| n.缪斯（希腊神话中的女神），创作灵感 | |
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illustrates
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| 给…加插图( illustrate的第三人称单数 )； 说明； 表明； （用示例、图画等）说明 | |
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illustrate
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| v.举例说明，阐明；图解，加插图 | |
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scholastic
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| adj.学校的，学院的，学术上的 | |
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passionate
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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juggler
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| n. 变戏法者, 行骗者 | |
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acrobat
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| n.特技演员，杂技演员 | |
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virgin
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| n.处女，未婚女子；adj.未经使用的；未经开发的 | |
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exalt
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| v.赞扬，歌颂，晋升，提升 | |
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remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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followers
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| 追随者( follower的名词复数 )； 用户； 契据的附面； 从动件 | |
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parable
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| n.寓言，比喻 | |
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frivolity
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| n.轻松的乐事，兴高采烈；轻浮的举止 | |
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knight
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| n.骑士，武士；爵士 | |
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rigid
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| adj.严格的，死板的；刚硬的，僵硬的 | |
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insufficiently
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| adv.不够地，不能胜任地 | |
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penetrate
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| v.透(渗)入；刺入，刺穿；洞察，了解 | |
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cavern
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| n.洞穴，大山洞 | |
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grotesque
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| adj.怪诞的，丑陋的；n.怪诞的图案，怪人（物） | |
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simile
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| n.直喻，明喻 | |
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extravagant
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| adj.奢侈的；过分的；(言行等)放肆的 | |
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38
postures
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| 姿势( posture的名词复数 )； 看法； 态度； 立场 | |
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39
inverted
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| adj.反向的，倒转的v.使倒置，使反转( invert的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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40
quaint
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| adj.古雅的，离奇有趣的，奇怪的 | |
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41
quainter
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| adj.古色古香的( quaint的比较级 )；少见的，古怪的 | |
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42
motive
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| n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的 | |
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43
purely
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| adv.纯粹地，完全地 | |
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44
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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45
forerunner
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| n.前身，先驱（者），预兆，祖先 | |
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46
renaissance
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| n.复活，复兴，文艺复兴 | |
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47
revival
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| n.复兴，复苏，（精力、活力等的）重振 | |
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48
asceticism
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| n.禁欲主义 | |
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49
humility
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| n.谦逊，谦恭 | |
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50
admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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51
frustrated
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| adj.挫败的，失意的，泄气的v.使不成功( frustrate的过去式和过去分词 )；挫败；使受挫折；令人沮丧 | |
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52
bishop
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| n.主教，（国际象棋）象 | |
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53
blessing
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| n.祈神赐福；祷告；祝福，祝愿 | |
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54
amiability
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| n.和蔼可亲的，亲切的，友善的 | |
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55
ponderous
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| adj.沉重的，笨重的，(文章)冗长的 | |
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56
conversion
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| n.转化，转换，转变 | |
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57
pane
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| n.窗格玻璃，长方块 | |
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58
luminous
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| adj.发光的，发亮的；光明的；明白易懂的；有启发的 | |
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59
inversion
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| n.反向，倒转，倒置 | |
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60
humiliation
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| n.羞辱 | |
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61
profess
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| v.声称，冒称，以...为业，正式接受入教，表明信仰 | |
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62
barricades
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| 路障，障碍物( barricade的名词复数 ) | |
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63
conjectural
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| adj.推测的 | |
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64
analogous
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| adj.相似的；类似的 | |
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65
incapable
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| adj.无能力的，不能做某事的 | |
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66
candidly
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| adv.坦率地，直率而诚恳地 | |
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67
pretence
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| n.假装，作假；借口，口实；虚伪；虚饰 | |
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68
narrative
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| n.叙述，故事；adj.叙事的，故事体的 | |
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69
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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70
crest
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| n.顶点；饰章；羽冠；vt.达到顶点；vi.形成浪尖 | |
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71
downwards
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| adj./adv.向下的（地），下行的（地） | |
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72
emphasise
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| vt.加强...的语气，强调，着重 | |
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73
dependence
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| n.依靠，依赖；信任，信赖；隶属 | |
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74
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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75
masonry
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| n.砖土建筑；砖石 | |
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76
citadel
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| n.城堡；堡垒；避难所 | |
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77
peril
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| n.(严重的)危险；危险的事物 | |
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78
almighty
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| adj.全能的，万能的；很大的，很强的 | |
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79
cosmos
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| n.宇宙；秩序，和谐 | |
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80
cynical
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| adj.(对人性或动机)怀疑的，不信世道向善的 | |
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81
insignificant
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| adj.无关紧要的，可忽略的，无意义的 | |
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82
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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83
legendary
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| adj.传奇（中）的，闻名遐迩的；n.传奇（文学） | |
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84
iniquity
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| n.邪恶；不公正 | |
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85
illuminate
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| vt.照亮，照明；用灯光装饰；说明，阐释 | |
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86
illuminates
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| v.使明亮( illuminate的第三人称单数 )；照亮；装饰；说明 | |
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87
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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paradox
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| n.似乎矛盾却正确的说法；自相矛盾的人(物) | |
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89
hospitable
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| adj.好客的；宽容的；有利的，适宜的 | |
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90
heralds
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| n.使者( herald的名词复数 )；预报者；预兆；传令官v.预示( herald的第三人称单数 )；宣布（好或重要） | |
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91
trumpet
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| n.喇叭，喇叭声；v.吹喇叭，吹嘘 | |
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92
nonentity
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| n.无足轻重的人 | |
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93
entity
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| n.实体，独立存在体，实际存在物 | |
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94
archaic
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| adj.(语言、词汇等)古代的，已不通用的 | |
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95
behold
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| v.看，注视，看到 | |
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96
irony
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| n.反语，冷嘲；具有讽刺意味的事，嘲弄 | |
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97
adumbration
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| n.预示，预兆 | |
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98
ragged
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| adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的 | |
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99
gratitude
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| adj.感激，感谢 | |
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100
sublime
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| adj.崇高的，伟大的；极度的，不顾后果的 | |
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101
Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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102
atheist
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| n.无神论者 | |
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103
converse
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| vi.谈话，谈天，闲聊；adv.相反的，相反 | |
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104
joyful
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| adj.欢乐的，令人欢欣的 | |
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105
buttressed
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| v.用扶壁支撑，加固( buttress的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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106
sanity
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| n.心智健全，神智正常，判断正确 | |
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107
hierarchies
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| 等级制度( hierarchy的名词复数 )； 统治集团； 领导层； 层次体系 | |
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108
hierarchy
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| n.等级制度；统治集团，领导层 | |
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109
sane
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| adj.心智健全的，神志清醒的，明智的，稳健的 | |
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110
stature
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| n.（高度）水平，（高度）境界，身高，身材 | |
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111
creditor
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| n.债仅人，债主，贷方 | |
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112
debtor
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| n.借方，债务人 | |
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113
debtors
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| n.债务人，借方( debtor的名词复数 ) | |
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114
creditors
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| n.债权人，债主( creditor的名词复数 ) | |
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115
luxuriously
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| adv.奢侈地，豪华地 | |
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116
paradoxes
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| n.似非而是的隽语，看似矛盾而实际却可能正确的说法( paradox的名词复数 )；用于语言文学中的上述隽语；有矛盾特点的人[事物，情况] | |
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117
ascetics
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| n.苦行者，禁欲者，禁欲主义者( ascetic的名词复数 ) | |
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118
genial
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| adj.亲切的，和蔼的，愉快的，脾气好的 | |
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119
riddle
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| n.谜，谜语，粗筛；vt.解谜，给…出谜，筛，检查，鉴定，非难，充满于；vi.出谜 | |
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120
barbarians
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| n.野蛮人( barbarian的名词复数 )；外国人；粗野的人；无教养的人 | |
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121
chivalry
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| n.骑士气概，侠义；（男人）对女人彬彬有礼，献殷勤 | |
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122
sneers
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| 讥笑的表情（言语）( sneer的名词复数 ) | |
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123
avaricious
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| adj.贪婪的，贪心的 | |
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124
lesser
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| adj.次要的，较小的；adv.较小地，较少地 | |
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125
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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126
murmurs
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| n.低沉、连续而不清的声音( murmur的名词复数 )；低语声；怨言；嘀咕 | |
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127
simplicity
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| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
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128
devoured
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| 吞没( devour的过去式和过去分词 )； 耗尽； 津津有味地看； 狼吞虎咽地吃光 | |
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129
devours
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| 吞没( devour的第三人称单数 )； 耗尽； 津津有味地看； 狼吞虎咽地吃光 | |
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130
plunged
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| v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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131
precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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132
unnatural
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| adj.不自然的；反常的 | |
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133
corpse
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| n.尸体，死尸 | |
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134
stark
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| adj.荒凉的；严酷的；完全的；adv.完全地 | |
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