One afternoon of April in the year 1774, Odo Valsecca, riding down thehillside below the church of the Superga, had reined1 in his horse at apoint where a group of Spanish chestnuts2 overhung the way. The air waslight and pure, the shady turf invited him, and dismounting he bid hisservant lead the horses to the wayside inn half way down the slope.
The spot he had chosen, though secluded3 as some nook above the gorge4 ofDonnaz, commanded a view of the Po rolling at his feet like a flood ofyellowish metal, and beyond, outspread in clear spring sunshine, thegreat city in the bosom5 of the plain. The spectacle was fair enough totouch any fancy: brown domes6 and facades7 set in new-leaved gardens andsurrounded by vineyards extending to the nearest acclivities;country-houses glancing through the fresh green of planes and willows;monastery-walls cresting8 the higher ridges9; and westward10 the Po windingin sunlit curves toward the Alps.
Odo had lost none of his sensitiveness to such impressions; but the swayof another mood turned his eye from the outstretched beauty of the cityto the vernal solitude11 about him. It was the season when old memories ofDonnaz worked in his blood; when the banks and hedges of the freshhill-country about Turin cheated him with a breath of buddingbeech-groves and the fragrance12 of crushed fern in the glens of the highPennine valleys. It was a mere13 waft14, perhaps, from some clod of loosenedearth, or the touch of cool elastic15 moss16 as he flung himself facedownward under the trees; but the savour, the contact filled hisnostrils with mountain air and his eyes with dim-branched distances. AtDonnaz the slow motions of the northern spring had endeared to him allthose sweet incipiencies preceding the full choral burst of leaf andflower: the mauve mist over bare woodlands, the wet black gleams infrost-bound hollows, the thrust of fronds17 through withered18 bracken, theprimrose-patches spreading like pale sunshine along wintry lanes. He hadalways felt a sympathy for these delicate unnoted changes; but thefeeling which had formerly19 been like the blind stir of sap in a plantwas now a conscious sensation that groped for speech and understanding.
He had grown up among people to whom such emotions were unknown. The oldMarquess's passion for his fields and woods was the love of theagriculturist and the hunter, not that of the naturalist20 or the poet;and the aristocracy of the cities regarded the country merely as so muchsoil from which to draw their maintenance. The gentlefolk never absentedthemselves from town but for a few weeks of autumn, when they went totheir villas21 for the vintage, transporting thither22 all the diversions ofcity life and venturing no farther afield than the pleasure-grounds thatwere but so many open-air card-rooms, concert-halls and theatres. Odo'stenderness for every sylvan23 function of renewal24 and decay, everyshifting of light and colour on the flying surface of the year, wouldhave been met with the same stare with which a certain enchantingCountess had received the handful of wind-flowers that, fresh from asunrise on the hills, he had laid one morning among her toilet-boxes.
The Countess Clarice had stared and laughed, and every one of hisacquaintance, Alfieri even, would have echoed her laugh; but one man atleast had felt the divine commotion25 of nature's touch, had felt andinterpreted it, in words as fresh as spring verdure, in the pages of avolume that Odo now drew from his pocket.
"I longed to dream, but some unexpected spectacle continually distractedme from my musings. Here immense rocks hung their ruinous masses abovemy head; there the thick mist of roaring waterfalls enveloped26 me; orsome unceasing torrent27 tore open at my very feet an abyss into which thegaze feared to plunge28. Sometimes I was lost in the twilight29 of a thickwood; sometimes, on emerging from a dark ravine, my eyes were charmed bythe sight of an open meadow...Nature seemed to revel30 in unwontedcontrasts; such varieties of aspect had she united in one spot. Here wasan eastern prospect31 bright with spring flowers, while autumn fruitsripened to the south and the northern face of the scene was still lockedin wintry frosts...Add to this the different angles at which the peakstook the light, the chiaroscuro32 of sun and shade, and the variations oflight resulting from it at morning and evening...sum up the impressionsI have tried to describe and you will be able to form an idea of theenchanting situation in which I found myself...The scene has indeed amagical, a supernatural quality, which so ravishes the spirit and sensesthat one seems to lose all exact notion of one's surroundings andidentity."This was a new language to eighteenth-century readers. Already it hadswept through the length and breadth of France, like a spring storm-windbursting open doors and windows, and filling close candle-lit rooms withwet gusts33 and the scent34 of beaten blossoms; but south of the Alps thenew ideas travelled slowly, and the Piedmontese were as yet scarce awareof the man who had written thus of their own mountains. It was truethat, some thirty years earlier, in one of the very monasteries35 on whichOdo now looked down, a Swiss vagrant36 called Rousseau had embraced thetrue faith with the most moving signs of edification; but the rescue ofHelvetian heretics was a favourite occupation of the Turinese nobilityand it is doubtful if any recalled the name of the strange proselyte whohad hastened to signalise his conversion37 by robbing his employers andslandering an innocent maid-servant. Odo in fact owed his firstacquaintance with the French writers to Alfieri, who, in the intervalsof his wandering over Europe, now and then reappeared in Turin ladenwith the latest novelties in Transalpine literature and haberdashery.
What his eccentric friend failed to provide, Odo had little difficultyin obtaining for himself; for though most of the new writers were on theIndex, and the Sardinian censorship was notoriously severe, there wasnever yet a barrier that could keep out books, and Cantapresto was askilled purveyor38 of contraband39 dainties. Odo had thus acquainted himselfwith the lighter40 literature of England and France; and though he hadread but few philosophical41 treatises42, was yet dimly aware of the newstandpoint from which, north of the Alps, men were beginning to test theaccepted forms of thought. The first disturbance43 of his childish faith,and the coincident reading of the Lettres Philosophiques, had beenfollowed by a period of moral perturbation, during which he sufferedfrom that sense of bewilderment, of inability to classify the phenomenaof life, that is one of the keenest trials of inexperience. Youth andnature had their way with him, however, and a wholesome44 reaction ofindifference set in. The invisible world of thought and conduct had beenthe frequent subject of his musings; but the other, tangible45 world wasclose to him too, spreading like a rich populous46 plain between himselfand the distant heights of speculation47. The old doubts, the olddissatisfactions, hung on the edge of consciousness; but he was tooprofoundly Italian not to linger awhile in that atmosphere of carelessacquiescence that is so pleasant a medium for the unhampered enjoymentof life. Some day, no doubt, the intellectual curiosity and the moraldisquietude would revive; but what he wanted now were books whichappealed not to his reason but to his emotions, which reflected as in amirror the rich and varied48 life of the senses: books that were warm tothe touch, like the little volume in his hand.
For it was not only of nature that the book spoke49. Amid scenes of suchrustic freshness were set human passions as fresh and natural: a greatromantic love, subdued50 to duty, yet breaking forth51 again and again asyoung shoots spring from the root of a felled tree. Toeighteenth-century readers such a picture of life was as new as itssetting. Duty, in that day, to people of quality, meant the observanceof certain fixed52 conventions: the correct stepping of a moral minuet; asan inner obligation, as a voluntary tribute to Diderot's "divinity onearth," it had hardly yet drawn53 breath. To depict54 a personal relation somuch purer and more profound than any form of sentiment then in fashion,and then to subordinate it, unflinchingly, to the ideal of those largerrelations that link the individual to the group--this was a stroke oforiginality for which it would be hard to find a parallel in modernfiction. Here at last was an answer to the blind impulses agrope inOdo's breast--the loosening of those springs of emotion that gushedforth in such fresh contrast to the stagnant55 rills of the sentimentalpleasure-garden. To renounce56 a Julie would be more thrilling than--Odo, with a sigh, thrust the book in his pocket and rose to his feet. Itwas the hour of the promenade57 at the Valentino and he had promised theCountess Clarice to attend her. The old high-roofed palace of the Frenchprincess lay below him, in its gardens along the river: he could figure,as he looked down on it, the throng58 of carriages and chairs, themodishly dressed riders, the pedestrians59 crowding the footpath60 to watchthe quality go by. The vision of all that noise and glitter deepened thesweetness of the woodland hush61. He sighed again. Suddenly voices soundedin the road below--a man's speech flecked with girlish laughter. Odohung back listening: the girl's voice rang like a bird-call through hisrustling fancies. Presently she came in sight: a slender black-mantledfigure hung on the arm of an elderly man in the sober dress of one ofthe learned professions--a physician or a lawyer, Odo guessed. Theirbeing afoot, and the style of the man's dress, showed that they were ofthe middle class; their demeanour, that they were father and daughter.
The girl moved with a light forward flowing of her whole body thatseemed the pledge of grace in every limb: of her face Odo had but abright glimpse in the eclipse of her flapping hat-brim. She stood underhis tree unheeded; but as they rose abreast62 of him the girl paused anddropped her companion's arm.
"Look! The cherry flowers!" she cried, and stretched her arms to a whitegush of blossoms above the wall across the road. The movement tiltedback her hat, and Odo caught her small fine profile, wide-browed as thehead on some Sicilian coin, with a little harp-shaped ear bedded in darkripples.
"Oh," she wailed63, straining on tiptoe, "I can't reach them!"Her father smiled. "May temptation," said he philosophically64, "alwayshang as far out of your reach.""Temptation?" she echoed.
"Is it not theft you're bent65 on?""Theft? This is a monk's orchard66, not a peasant's plot.""Confiscation67, then," he humorously conceded.
"Since they pay no taxes on their cherries they might at least," sheargued, "spare a few to us poor taxpayers68.""Ah," said her father, "I want to tax their cherries, not to gatherthem." He slipped a hand through her arm. "Come, child," said he, "doesnot the philosopher tell us that he who enjoys a thing possesses it? Theflowers are yours already!""Oh, are they?" she retorted. "Then why doesn't the loaf in the baker'swindow feed the beggar that looks in at it?""Casuist!" he cried and drew her up the bend of the road.
Odo stood gazing after them. Their words, their aspect, seemed an echoof his reading. The father in his plain broadcloth and square-buckledshoes, the daughter with her unpowdered hair and spreading hat, mighthave stepped from the pages of the romance. What a breath of freshnessthey brought with them! The girl's cheek was clear as thecherry-blossoms, and with what lovely freedom did she move! Thus Juliemight have led Saint Preux through her "Elysium." Odo crossed the roadand, breaking one of the blossoming twigs70, thrust it in the breast ofhis uniform. Then he walked down the hill to the inn where the horseswaited. Half an hour later he rode up to the house where he lodged71 inthe Piazza72 San Carlo.
In the archway Cantapresto, heavy with a nine years' accretion73 of fat,laid an admonishing74 hand on his bridle75.
"Cavaliere, the Countess's black boy--""Well?""Three several times has battered76 the door down with a missive.""Well?""The last time, I shook him off with the message that you would be therebefore him.""Be where?""At the Valentino; but that was an hour ago!"Odo slipped from the saddle.
"I must dress first. Call a chair; or no--write a letter for me first.
Let Antonio carry it."The ex-soprano, wheezing77 under the double burden of flesh andconsequence, had painfully laboured after Odo up the high stone flightsto that young gentleman's modest lodgings78, and they stood together in astudy lined with books and hung with prints and casts from the antique.
Odo threw off his dusty coat and called the servant to remove his boots.
"Will you read the lady's letters, cavaliere?" Cantapresto asked,obsequiously offering them on a lacquered tray.
"No--no: write first. Begin 'My angelic lady'--""You began the last letter in those terms, cavaliere," his scribereminded him with suspended pen.
"The devil! Well, then--wait. 'Throned goddess'--""You ended the last letter with 'throned goddess.'""Curse the last letter! Why did you send it?" Odo sprang up and slippedhis arms into the dress-tunic his servant had brought him. "Writeanything. Say that I am suddenly summoned by--""By the Count Alfieri?" Cantapresto suggested.
"Count Alfieri? Is he here? He has returned?""He arrived an hour ago, cavaliere. He sent you this Moorish79 scimitarwith his compliments. I understand he comes recently from Spain.""Imbecile, not to have told me before! Quick, Antonio--my gloves, mysword." Odo, flushed and animated80, buckled69 his sword-belt with impatienthands. "Write anything--anything to free my evening. Tomorrowmorning--tomorrow morning I shall wait on the lady. Let Antonio carryher a nosegay with my compliments. Did you see him Cantapresto? Was hein good health? Does he sup at home? He left no message? Quick, Antonio,a chair!" he cried with his hand on the door.
Odo had acquired, at twenty-two, a nobility of carriage not incompatiblewith the boyish candour of his gaze, and becomingly set off by thebrilliant dress-uniform of a lieutenant81 in one of the provincialregiments. He was tall and fair, and a certain languor82 of complexion,inherited from his father's house, was corrected in him by the vivacityof the Donnaz blood. This now sparkled in his grey eye, and gave a glowto his cheek, as he stepped across the threshold, treading on a sprig ofcherry-blossom that had dropped unnoticed to the floor.
Cantapresto, looking after him, caught sight of the flowers and kickedthem aside with a contemptuous toe. "I sometimes think he botanises," hemurmured with a shrug83. "The Lord knows what queer notions he gets out ofall these books!"
收听单词发音 |
1
reined
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| 勒缰绳使（马）停步( rein的过去式和过去分词 )； 驾驭； 严格控制； 加强管理 | |
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chestnuts
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| n.栗子( chestnut的名词复数 )；栗色；栗树；栗色马 | |
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secluded
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| adj.与世隔绝的；隐退的；偏僻的v.使隔开，使隐退( seclude的过去式和过去分词) | |
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gorge
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| n.咽喉，胃，暴食，山峡；v.塞饱，狼吞虎咽地吃 | |
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bosom
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| n.胸，胸部；胸怀；内心；adj.亲密的 | |
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domes
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| n.圆屋顶( dome的名词复数 )；像圆屋顶一样的东西；圆顶体育场 | |
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facades
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| n.（房屋的）正面( facade的名词复数 )；假象，外观 | |
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cresting
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| n.顶饰v.到达山顶（或浪峰）( crest的现在分词 )；到达洪峰，达到顶点 | |
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ridges
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| n.脊( ridge的名词复数 )；山脊；脊状突起；大气层的)高压脊 | |
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westward
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| n.西方，西部；adj.西方的，向西的；adv.向西 | |
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solitude
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| n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
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fragrance
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| n.芬芳，香味，香气 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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waft
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| v.飘浮，飘荡；n.一股；一阵微风；飘荡 | |
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elastic
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| n.橡皮圈，松紧带；adj.有弹性的；灵活的 | |
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moss
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| n.苔，藓，地衣 | |
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fronds
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| n.蕨类或棕榈类植物的叶子( frond的名词复数 ) | |
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withered
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| adj. 枯萎的，干瘪的，（人身体的部分器官）因病萎缩的或未发育良好的 动词wither的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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formerly
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| adv.从前，以前 | |
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naturalist
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| n.博物学家(尤指直接观察动植物者) | |
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villas
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| 别墅，公馆( villa的名词复数 )； （城郊）住宅 | |
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thither
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| adv.向那里；adj.在那边的，对岸的 | |
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sylvan
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| adj.森林的 | |
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renewal
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| adj.(契约)延期，续订，更新，复活，重来 | |
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commotion
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| n.骚动，动乱 | |
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enveloped
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| v.包围，笼罩，包住( envelop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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torrent
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| n.激流，洪流；爆发，(话语等的)连发 | |
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plunge
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| v.跳入，(使)投入，(使)陷入；猛冲 | |
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twilight
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| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
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revel
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| vi.狂欢作乐，陶醉；n.作乐，狂欢 | |
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prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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chiaroscuro
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| n.明暗对照法 | |
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gusts
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| 一阵强风( gust的名词复数 )； （怒、笑等的）爆发； （感情的）迸发； 发作 | |
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scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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monasteries
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| 修道院( monastery的名词复数 ) | |
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vagrant
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| n.流浪者，游民；adj.流浪的，漂泊不定的 | |
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conversion
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| n.转化，转换，转变 | |
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purveyor
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| n.承办商，伙食承办商 | |
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contraband
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| n.违禁品，走私品 | |
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lighter
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| n.打火机，点火器；驳船；v.用驳船运送；light的比较级 | |
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philosophical
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| adj.哲学家的，哲学上的，达观的 | |
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treatises
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| n.专题著作，专题论文，专著( treatise的名词复数 ) | |
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disturbance
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| n.动乱，骚动；打扰，干扰；(身心)失调 | |
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wholesome
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| adj.适合；卫生的；有益健康的；显示身心健康的 | |
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tangible
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| adj.有形的，可触摸的，确凿的，实际的 | |
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populous
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| adj.人口稠密的，人口众多的 | |
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speculation
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| n.思索，沉思；猜测；投机 | |
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varied
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| adj.多样的，多变化的 | |
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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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subdued
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| adj. 屈服的，柔和的，减弱的 动词subdue的过去式和过去分词 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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depict
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| vt.描画，描绘；描写，描述 | |
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stagnant
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| adj.不流动的，停滞的，不景气的 | |
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renounce
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| v.放弃；拒绝承认，宣布与…断绝关系 | |
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promenade
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| n./v.散步 | |
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throng
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| n.人群，群众；v.拥挤，群集 | |
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pedestrians
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| n.步行者( pedestrian的名词复数 ) | |
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footpath
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| n.小路，人行道 | |
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hush
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| int.嘘，别出声；n.沉默，静寂；v.使安静 | |
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abreast
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| adv.并排地；跟上(时代)的步伐，与…并进地 | |
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wailed
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| v.哭叫，哀号( wail的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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philosophically
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| adv.哲学上；富有哲理性地；贤明地；冷静地 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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orchard
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| n.果园，果园里的全部果树，(美俚)棒球场 | |
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confiscation
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| n. 没收, 充公, 征收 | |
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taxpayers
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| 纳税人，纳税的机构( taxpayer的名词复数 ) | |
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69
buckled
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| a. 有带扣的 | |
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70
twigs
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| 细枝，嫩枝( twig的名词复数 ) | |
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71
lodged
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| v.存放( lodge的过去式和过去分词 )；暂住；埋入；（权利、权威等）归属 | |
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72
piazza
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| n.广场；走廊 | |
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73
accretion
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| n.自然的增长，增加物 | |
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74
admonishing
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| v.劝告( admonish的现在分词 )；训诫；（温和地）责备；轻责 | |
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75
bridle
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| n.笼头，束缚；vt.抑制，约束；动怒 | |
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76
battered
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| adj.磨损的；v.连续猛击；磨损 | |
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77
wheezing
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| v.喘息，发出呼哧呼哧的喘息声( wheeze的现在分词 )；哮鸣 | |
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78
lodgings
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| n. 出租的房舍, 寄宿舍 | |
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79
moorish
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| adj.沼地的，荒野的，生[住]在沼地的 | |
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80
animated
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| adj.生气勃勃的，活跃的，愉快的 | |
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81
lieutenant
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| n.陆军中尉，海军上尉；代理官员，副职官员 | |
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82
languor
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| n.无精力，倦怠 | |
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83
shrug
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| v.耸肩(表示怀疑、冷漠、不知等) | |
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