Just a month from this day, on September 20, 1850, I shall be sitting in this chair, in this study, at ten o’clock at night, longing8 to die, weary of incessant9 insight and foresight10, without delusions12 and without hope. Just as I am watching a tongue of blue flame rising in the fire, and my lamp is burning low, the horrible contraction13 will begin at my chest. I shall only have time to reach the bell, and pull it violently, before the sense of suffocation14 will come. No one will answer my bell. I know why. My two servants are lovers, and will have quarrelled. My housekeeper15 will have rushed out of the house in a fury, two hours before, hoping that Perry will believe she has gone to drown herself. Perry is alarmed at last, and is gone out after her. The little scullery-maid is asleep on a bench: she never answers the bell; it does not wake her. The sense of suffocation increases: my lamp goes out with a horrible stench: I make a great effort, and snatch at the bell again. I long for life, and there is no help. I thirsted for the unknown: the thirst is gone. O God, let me stay with the known, and be weary of it: I am content. Agony of pain and suffocation—and all the while the earth, the fields, the pebbly16 brook17 at the bottom of the rookery, the fresh scent18 after the rain, the light of the morning through my chamber-window, the warmth of the hearth19 after the frosty air—will darkness close over them for ever?
Darkness—darkness—no pain—nothing but darkness: but I am passing on and on through the darkness: my thought stays in the darkness, but always with a sense of moving onward20 . . .
Before that time comes, I wish to use my last hours of ease and strength in telling the strange story of my experience. I have never fully21 unbosomed myself to any human being; I have never been encouraged to trust much in the sympathy of my fellow-men. But we have all a chance of meeting with some pity, some tenderness, some charity, when we are dead: it is the living only who cannot be forgiven—the living only from whom men’s indulgence and reverence24 are held off, like the rain by the hard east wind. While the heart beats, bruise25 it—it is your only opportunity; while the eye can still turn towards you with moist, timid entreaty27, freeze it with an icy unanswering gaze; while the ear, that delicate messenger to the inmost sanctuary28 of the soul, can still take in the tones of kindness, put it off with hard civility, or sneering29 compliment, or envious30 affectation of indifference31; while the creative brain can still throb32 with the sense of injustice33, with the yearning34 for brotherly recognition—make haste—oppress it with your ill-considered judgements, your trivial comparisons, your careless misrepresentations. The heart will by and by be still—“ubi saeva indignatio ulterius cor lacerare nequit”; the eye will cease to entreat26; the ear will be deaf; the brain will have ceased from all wants as well as from all work. Then your charitable speeches may find vent35; then you may remember and pity the toil36 and the struggle and the failure; then you may give due honour to the work achieved; then you may find extenuation37 for errors, and may consent to bury them.
That is a trivial schoolboy text; why do I dwell on it? It has little reference to me, for I shall leave no works behind me for men to honour. I have no near relatives who will make up, by weeping over my grave, for the wounds they inflicted38 on me when I was among them. It is only the story of my life that will perhaps win a little more sympathy from strangers when I am dead, than I ever believed it would obtain from my friends while I was living.
My childhood perhaps seems happier to me than it really was, by contrast with all the after-years. For then the curtain of the future was as impenetrable to me as to other children: I had all their delight in the present hour, their sweet indefinite hopes for the morrow; and I had a tender mother: even now, after the dreary39 lapse40 of long years, a slight trace of sensation accompanies the remembrance of her caress41 as she held me on her knee—her arms round my little body, her cheek pressed on mine. I had a complaint of the eyes that made me blind for a little while, and she kept me on her knee from morning till night. That unequalled love soon vanished out of my life, and even to my childish consciousness it was as if that life had become more chill I rode my little white pony42 with the groom43 by my side as before, but there were no loving eyes looking at me as I mounted, no glad arms opened to me when I came back. Perhaps I missed my mother’s love more than most children of seven or eight would have done, to whom the other pleasures of life remained as before; for I was certainly a very sensitive child. I remember still the mingled45 trepidation46 and delicious excitement with which I was affected47 by the tramping of the horses on the pavement in the echoing stables, by the loud resonance48 of the groom’s voices, by the booming bark of the dogs as my father’s carriage thundered under the archway of the courtyard, by the din1 of the gong as it gave notice of luncheon49 and dinner. The measured tramp of soldiery which I sometimes heard—for my father’s house lay near a county town where there were large barracks—made me sob50 and tremble; and yet when they were gone past, I longed for them to come back again.
I fancy my father thought me an odd child, and had little fondness for me; though he was very careful in fulfilling what he regarded as a parent’s duties. But he was already past the middle of life, and I was not his only son. My mother had been his second wife, and he was five-and-forty when he married her. He was a firm, unbending, intensely orderly man, in root and stem a banker, but with a flourishing graft51 of the active landholder, aspiring52 to county influence: one of those people who are always like themselves from day to day, who are uninfluenced by the weather, and neither know melancholy53 nor high spirits. I held him in great awe54, and appeared more timid and sensitive in his presence than at other times; a circumstance which, perhaps, helped to confirm him in the intention to educate me on a different plan from the prescriptive one with which he had complied in the case of my elder brother, already a tall youth at Eton. My brother was to be his representative and successor; he must go to Eton and Oxford55, for the sake of making connexions, of course: my father was not a man to underrate the bearing of Latin satirists or Greek dramatists on the attainment56 of an aristocratic position. But, intrinsically, he had slight esteem57 for “those dead but sceptred spirits”; having qualified58 himself for forming an independent opinion by reading Potter’s Æschylus, and dipping into Francis’s Horace. To this negative view he added a positive one, derived59 from a recent connexion with mining speculations60; namely, that a scientific education was the really useful training for a younger son. Moreover, it was clear that a shy, sensitive boy like me was not fit to encounter the rough experience of a public school. Mr. Letherall had said so very decidedly. Mr. Letherall was a large man in spectacles, who one day took my small head between his large hands, and pressed it here and there in an exploratory, auspicious62 manner—then placed each of his great thumbs on my temples, and pushed me a little way from him, and stared at me with glittering spectacles. The contemplation appeared to displease63 him, for he frowned sternly, and said to my father, drawing his thumbs across my eyebrows—
“The deficiency is there, sir—there; and here,” he added, touching64 the upper sides of my head, “here is the excess. That must be brought out, sir, and this must be laid to sleep.”
I was in a state of tremor65, partly at the vague idea that I was the object of reprobation66, partly in the agitation67 of my first hatred68—hatred of this big, spectacled man, who pulled my head about as if he wanted to buy and cheapen it.
I am not aware how much Mr. Letherall had to do with the system afterwards adopted towards me, but it was presently clear that private tutors, natural history, science, and the modern languages, were the appliances by which the defects of my organization were to be remedied. I was very stupid about machines, so I was to be greatly occupied with them; I had no memory for classification, so it was particularly necessary that I should study systematic69 zoology70 and botany; I was hungry for human deeds and humane71 motions, so I was to be plentifully72 crammed73 with the mechanical powers, the elementary bodies, and the phenomena74 of electricity and magnetism75. A better-constituted boy would certainly have profited under my intelligent tutors, with their scientific apparatus76; and would, doubtless, have found the phenomena of electricity and magnetism as fascinating as I was, every Thursday, assured they were. As it was, I could have paired off, for ignorance of whatever was taught me, with the worst Latin scholar that was ever turned out of a classical academy. I read Plutarch, and Shakespeare, and Don Quixote by the sly, and supplied myself in that way with wandering thoughts, while my tutor was assuring me that “an improved man, as distinguished77 from an ignorant one, was a man who knew the reason why water ran downhill.” I had no desire to be this improved man; I was glad of the running water; I could watch it and listen to it gurgling among the pebbles78, and bathing the bright green water-plants, by the hour together. I did not want to know why it ran; I had perfect confidence that there were good reasons for what was so very beautiful.
There is no need to dwell on this part of my life. I have said enough to indicate that my nature was of the sensitive, unpractical order, and that it grew up in an uncongenial medium, which could never foster it into happy, healthy development. When I was sixteen I was sent to Geneva to complete my course of education; and the change was a very happy one to me, for the first sight of the Alps, with the setting sun on them, as we descended79 the Jura, seemed to me like an entrance into heaven; and the three years of my life there were spent in a perpetual sense of exaltation, as if from a draught80 of delicious wine, at the presence of Nature in all her awful loveliness. You will think, perhaps, that I must have been a poet, from this early sensibility to Nature. But my lot was not so happy as that. A poet pours forth81 his song and believes in the listening ear and answering soul, to which his song will be floated sooner or later. But the poet’s sensibility without his voice—the poet’s sensibility that finds no vent but in silent tears on the sunny bank, when the noonday light sparkles on the water, or in an inward shudder82 at the sound of harsh human tones, the sight of a cold human eye—this dumb passion brings with it a fatal solitude83 of soul in the society of one’s fellow-men. My least solitary84 moments were those in which I pushed off in my boat, at evening, towards the centre of the lake; it seemed to me that the sky, and the glowing mountain-tops, and the wide blue water, surrounded me with a cherishing love such as no human face had shed on me since my mother’s love had vanished out of my life. I used to do as Jean Jacques did—lie down in my boat and let it glide85 where it would, while I looked up at the departing glow leaving one mountain-top after the other, as if the prophet’s chariot of fire were passing over them on its way to the home of light. Then, when the white summits were all sad and corpse-like, I had to push homeward, for I was under careful surveillance, and was allowed no late wanderings. This disposition86 of mine was not favourable87 to the formation of intimate friendships among the numerous youths of my own age who are always to be found studying at Geneva. Yet I made one such friendship; and, singularly enough, it was with a youth whose intellectual tendencies were the very reverse of my own. I shall call him Charles Meunier; his real surname—an English one, for he was of English extraction—having since become celebrated88. He was an orphan89, who lived on a miserable90 pittance91 while he pursued the medical studies for which he had a special genius. Strange! that with my vague mind, susceptible92 and unobservant, hating inquiry93 and given up to contemplation, I should have been drawn94 towards a youth whose strongest passion was science. But the bond was not an intellectual one; it came from a source that can happily blend the stupid with the brilliant, the dreamy with the practical: it came from community of feeling. Charles was poor and ugly, derided95 by Genevese gamins, and not acceptable in drawing-rooms. I saw that he was isolated96, as I was, though from a different cause, and, stimulated98 by a sympathetic resentment99, I made timid advances towards him. It is enough to say that there sprang up as much comradeship between us as our different habits would allow; and in Charles’s rare holidays we went up the Salève together, or took the boat to Vevay, while I listened dreamily to the monologues100 in which he unfolded his bold conceptions of future experiment and discovery. I mingled them confusedly in my thought with glimpses of blue water and delicate floating cloud, with the notes of birds and the distant glitter of the glacier101. He knew quite well that my mind was half absent, yet he liked to talk to me in this way; for don’t we talk of our hopes and our projects even to dogs and birds, when they love us? I have mentioned this one friendship because of its connexion with a strange and terrible scene which I shall have to narrate102 in my subsequent life.
This happier life at Geneva was put an end to by a severe illness, which is partly a blank to me, partly a time of dimly-remembered suffering, with the presence of my father by my bed from time to time. Then came the languid monotony of convalescence103, the days gradually breaking into variety and distinctness as my strength enabled me to take longer and longer drives. On one of these more vividly104 remembered days, my father said to me, as he sat beside my sofa—
“When you are quite well enough to travel, Latimer, I shall take you home with me. The journey will amuse you and do you good, for I shall go through the Tyrol and Austria, and you will see many new places. Our neighbours, the Filmores, are come; Alfred will join us at Basle, and we shall all go together to Vienna, and back by Prague” . . .
My father was called away before he had finished his sentence, and he left my mind resting on the word Prague, with a strange sense that a new and wondrous105 scene was breaking upon me: a city under the broad sunshine, that seemed to me as if it were the summer sunshine of a long-past century arrested in its course—unrefreshed for ages by dews of night, or the rushing rain-cloud; scorching106 the dusty, weary, time-eaten grandeur107 of a people doomed109 to live on in the stale repetition of memories, like deposed110 and superannuated111 kings in their regal gold-inwoven tatters. The city looked so thirsty that the broad river seemed to me a sheet of metal; and the blackened statues, as I passed under their blank gaze, along the unending bridge, with their ancient garments and their saintly crowns, seemed to me the real inhabitants and owners of this place, while the busy, trivial men and women, hurrying to and fro, were a swarm112 of ephemeral visitants infesting113 it for a day. It is such grim, stony114 beings as these, I thought, who are the fathers of ancient faded children, in those tanned time-fretted dwellings115 that crowd the steep before me; who pay their court in the worn and crumbling116 pomp of the palace which stretches its monotonous117 length on the height; who worship wearily in the stifling118 air of the churches, urged by no fear or hope, but compelled by their doom108 to be ever old and undying, to live on in the rigidity120 of habit, as they live on in perpetual midday, without the repose121 of night or the new birth of morning.
A stunning122 clang of metal suddenly thrilled through me, and I became conscious of the objects in my room again: one of the fire-irons had fallen as Pierre opened the door to bring me my draught. My heart was palpitating violently, and I begged Pierre to leave my draught beside me; I would take it presently.
As soon as I was alone again, I began to ask myself whether I had been sleeping. Was this a dream—this wonderfully distinct vision—minute in its distinctness down to a patch of rainbow light on the pavement, transmitted through a coloured lamp in the shape of a star—of a strange city, quite unfamiliar123 to my imagination? I had seen no picture of Prague: it lay in my mind as a mere124 name, with vaguely125-remembered historical associations—ill-defined memories of imperial grandeur and religious wars.
Nothing of this sort had ever occurred in my dreaming experience before, for I had often been humiliated126 because my dreams were only saved from being utterly127 disjointed and commonplace by the frequent terrors of nightmare. But I could not believe that I had been asleep, for I remembered distinctly the gradual breaking-in of the vision upon me, like the new images in a dissolving view, or the growing distinctness of the landscape as the sun lifts up the veil of the morning mist. And while I was conscious of this incipient128 vision, I was also conscious that Pierre came to tell my father Mr. Filmore was waiting for him, and that my father hurried out of the room. No, it was not a dream; was it—the thought was full of tremulous exultation—was it the poet’s nature in me, hitherto only a troubled yearning sensibility, now manifesting itself suddenly as spontaneous creation? Surely it was in this way that Homer saw the plain of Troy, that Dante saw the abodes129 of the departed, that Milton saw the earthward flight of the Tempter. Was it that my illness had wrought130 some happy change in my organization—given a firmer tension to my nerves—carried off some dull obstruction131? I had often read of such effects—in works of fiction at least. Nay132; in genuine biographies I had read of the subtilizing or exalting133 influence of some diseases on the mental powers. Did not Novalis feel his inspiration intensified134 under the progress of consumption?
When my mind had dwelt for some time on this blissful idea, it seemed to me that I might perhaps test it by an exertion136 of my will. The vision had begun when my father was speaking of our going to Prague. I did not for a moment believe it was really a representation of that city; I believed—I hoped it was a picture that my newly liberated137 genius had painted in fiery138 haste, with the colours snatched from lazy memory. Suppose I were to fix my mind on some other place—Venice, for example, which was far more familiar to my imagination than Prague: perhaps the same sort of result would follow. I concentrated my thoughts on Venice; I stimulated my imagination with poetic139 memories, and strove to feel myself present in Venice, as I had felt myself present in Prague. But in vain. I was only colouring the Canaletto engravings that hung in my old bedroom at home; the picture was a shifting one, my mind wandering uncertainly in search of more vivid images; I could see no accident of form or shadow without conscious labour after the necessary conditions. It was all prosaic140 effort, not rapt passivity, such as I had experienced half an hour before. I was discouraged; but I remembered that inspiration was fitful.
For several days I was in a state of excited expectation, watching for a recurrence141 of my new gift. I sent my thoughts ranging over my world of knowledge, in the hope that they would find some object which would send a reawakening vibration142 through my slumbering143 genius. But no; my world remained as dim as ever, and that flash of strange light refused to come again, though I watched for it with palpitating eagerness.
My father accompanied me every day in a drive, and a gradually lengthening144 walk as my powers of walking increased; and one evening he had agreed to come and fetch me at twelve the next day, that we might go together to select a musical box, and other purchases rigorously demanded of a rich Englishman visiting Geneva. He was one of the most punctual of men and bankers, and I was always nervously145 anxious to be quite ready for him at the appointed time. But, to my surprise, at a quarter past twelve he had not appeared. I felt all the impatience146 of a convalescent who has nothing particular to do, and who has just taken a tonic147 in the prospect148 of immediate149 exercise that would carry off the stimulus150.
Unable to sit still and reserve my strength, I walked up and down the room, looking out on the current of the Rhone, just where it leaves the dark-blue lake; but thinking all the while of the possible causes that could detain my father.
Suddenly I was conscious that my father was in the room, but not alone: there were two persons with him. Strange! I had heard no footstep, I had not seen the door open; but I saw my father, and at his right hand our neighbour Mrs. Filmore, whom I remembered very well, though I had not seen her for five years. She was a commonplace middle-aged23 woman, in silk and cashmere; but the lady on the left of my father was not more than twenty, a tall, slim, willowy figure, with luxuriant blond hair, arranged in cunning braids and folds that looked almost too massive for the slight figure and the small-featured, thin-lipped face they crowned. But the face had not a girlish expression: the features were sharp, the pale grey eyes at once acute, restless, and sarcastic152. They were fixed153 on me in half-smiling curiosity, and I felt a painful sensation as if a sharp wind were cutting me. The pale-green dress, and the green leaves that seemed to form a border about her pale blond hair, made me think of a Water-Nixie—for my mind was full of German lyrics154, and this pale, fatal-eyed woman, with the green weeds, looked like a birth from some cold sedgy stream, the daughter of an aged river.
“Well, Latimer, you thought me long,” my father said . . .
But while the last word was in my ears, the whole group vanished, and there was nothing between me and the Chinese printed folding-screen that stood before the door. I was cold and trembling; I could only totter155 forward and throw myself on the sofa. This strange new power had manifested itself again . . . But was it a power? Might it not rather be a disease—a sort of intermittent156 delirium157, concentrating my energy of brain into moments of unhealthy activity, and leaving my saner158 hours all the more barren? I felt a dizzy sense of unreality in what my eye rested on; I grasped the bell convulsively, like one trying to free himself from nightmare, and rang it twice. Pierre came with a look of alarm in his face.
“Monsieur ne se trouve pas bien?” he said anxiously.
“I’m tired of waiting, Pierre,” I said, as distinctly and emphatically as I could, like a man determined159 to be sober in spite of wine; “I’m afraid something has happened to my father—he’s usually so punctual. Run to the Hôtel des Bergues and see if he is there.”
Pierre left the room at once, with a soothing160 “Bien, Monsieur”; and I felt the better for this scene of simple, waking prose. Seeking to calm myself still further, I went into my bedroom, adjoining the salon161, and opened a case of eau-de-Cologne; took out a bottle; went through the process of taking out the cork162 very neatly163, and then rubbed the reviving spirit over my hands and forehead, and under my nostrils164, drawing a new delight from the scent because I had procured165 it by slow details of labour, and by no strange sudden madness. Already I had begun to taste something of the horror that belongs to the lot of a human being whose nature is not adjusted to simple human conditions.
Still enjoying the scent, I returned to the salon, but it was not unoccupied, as it had been before I left it. In front of the Chinese folding-screen there was my father, with Mrs. Filmore on his right hand, and on his left—the slim, blond-haired girl, with the keen face and the keen eyes fixed on me in half-smiling curiosity.
“Well, Latimer, you thought me long,” my father said . . .
I heard no more, felt no more, till I became conscious that I was lying with my head low on the sofa, Pierre, and my father by my side. As soon as I was thoroughly166 revived, my father left the room, and presently returned, saying—
“I’ve been to tell the ladies how you are, Latimer. They were waiting in the next room. We shall put off our shopping expedition to-day.”
Presently he said, “That young lady is Bertha Grant, Mrs. Filmore’s orphan niece. Filmore has adopted her, and she lives with them, so you will have her for a neighbour when we go home—perhaps for a near relation; for there is a tenderness between her and Alfred, I suspect, and I should be gratified by the match, since Filmore means to provide for her in every way as if she were his daughter. It had not occurred to me that you knew nothing about her living with the Filmores.”
He made no further allusion167 to the fact of my having fainted at the moment of seeing her, and I would not for the world have told him the reason: I shrank from the idea of disclosing to any one what might be regarded as a pitiable peculiarity169, most of all from betraying it to my father, who would have suspected my sanity170 ever after.
I do not mean to dwell with particularity on the details of my experience. I have described these two cases at length, because they had definite, clearly traceable results in my after-lot.
Shortly after this last occurrence—I think the very next day—I began to be aware of a phase in my abnormal sensibility, to which, from the languid and slight nature of my intercourse171 with others since my illness, I had not been alive before. This was the obtrusion172 on my mind of the mental process going forward in first one person, and then another, with whom I happened to be in contact: the vagrant173, frivolous174 ideas and emotions of some uninteresting acquaintance—Mrs. Filmore, for example—would force themselves on my consciousness like an importunate175, ill-played musical instrument, or the loud activity of an imprisoned176 insect. But this unpleasant sensibility was fitful, and left me moments of rest, when the souls of my companions were once more shut out from me, and I felt a relief such as silence brings to wearied nerves. I might have believed this importunate insight to be merely a diseased activity of the imagination, but that my prevision of incalculable words and actions proved it to have a fixed relation to the mental process in other minds. But this superadded consciousness, wearying and annoying enough when it urged on me the trivial experience of indifferent people, became an intense pain and grief when it seemed to be opening to me the souls of those who were in a close relation to me—when the rational talk, the graceful177 attentions, the wittily-turned phrases, and the kindly178 deeds, which used to make the web of their characters, were seen as if thrust asunder179 by a microscopic180 vision, that showed all the intermediate frivolities, all the suppressed egoism, all the struggling chaos181 of puerilities, meanness, vague capricious memories, and indolent make-shift thoughts, from which human words and deeds emerge like leaflets covering a fermenting182 heap.
At Basle we were joined by my brother Alfred, now a handsome, self-confident man of six-and-twenty—a thorough contrast to my fragile, nervous, ineffectual self. I believe I was held to have a sort of half-womanish, half-ghostly beauty; for the portrait-painters, who are thick as weeds at Geneva, had often asked me to sit to them, and I had been the model of a dying minstrel in a fancy picture. But I thoroughly disliked my own physique and nothing but the belief that it was a condition of poetic genius would have reconciled me to it. That brief hope was quite fled, and I saw in my face now nothing but the stamp of a morbid183 organization, framed for passive suffering—too feeble for the sublime184 resistance of poetic production. Alfred, from whom I had been almost constantly separated, and who, in his present stage of character and appearance, came before me as a perfect stranger, was bent185 on being extremely friendly and brother-like to me. He had the superficial kindness of a good-humoured, self-satisfied nature, that fears no rivalry186, and has encountered no contrarieties. I am not sure that my disposition was good enough for me to have been quite free from envy towards him, even if our desires had not clashed, and if I had been in the healthy human condition which admits of generous confidence and charitable construction. There must always have been an antipathy187 between our natures. As it was, he became in a few weeks an object of intense hatred to me; and when he entered the room, still more when he spoke188, it was as if a sensation of grating metal had set my teeth on edge. My diseased consciousness was more intensely and continually occupied with his thoughts and emotions, than with those of any other person who came in my way. I was perpetually exasperated189 with the petty promptings of his conceit190 and his love of patronage191, with his self-complacent belief in Bertha Grant’s passion for him, with his half-pitying contempt for me—seen not in the ordinary indications of intonation192 and phrase and slight action, which an acute and suspicious mind is on the watch for, but in all their naked skinless complication.
For we were rivals, and our desires clashed, though he was not aware of it. I have said nothing yet of the effect Bertha Grant produced in me on a nearer acquaintance. That effect was chiefly determined by the fact that she made the only exception, among all the human beings about me, to my unhappy gift of insight. About Bertha I was always in a state of uncertainty193: I could watch the expression of her face, and speculate on its meaning; I could ask for her opinion with the real interest of ignorance; I could listen for her words and watch for her smile with hope and fear: she had for me the fascination194 of an unravelled195 destiny. I say it was this fact that chiefly determined the strong effect she produced on me: for, in the abstract, no womanly character could seem to have less affinity196 for that of a shrinking, romantic, passionate197 youth than Bertha’s. She was keen, sarcastic, unimaginative, prematurely198 cynical199, remaining critical and unmoved in the most impressive scenes, inclined to dissect200 all my favourite poems, and especially contemptous towards the German lyrics which were my pet literature at that time. To this moment I am unable to define my feeling towards her: it was not ordinary boyish admiration202, for she was the very opposite, even to the colour of her hair, of the ideal woman who still remained to me the type of loveliness; and she was without that enthusiasm for the great and good, which, even at the moment of her strongest dominion203 over me, I should have declared to be the highest element of character. But there is no tyranny more complete than that which a self-centred negative nature exercises over a morbidly204 sensitive nature perpetually craving205 sympathy and support. The most independent people feel the effect of a man’s silence in heightening their value for his opinion—feel an additional triumph in conquering the reverence of a critic habitually206 captious207 and satirical: no wonder, then, that an enthusiastic self-distrusting youth should watch and wait before the closed secret of a sarcastic woman’s face, as if it were the shrine209 of the doubtfully benignant deity210 who ruled his destiny. For a young enthusiast208 is unable to imagine the total negation211 in another mind of the emotions which are stirring his own: they may be feeble, latent, inactive, he thinks, but they are there—they may be called forth; sometimes, in moments of happy hallucination, he believes they may be there in all the greater strength because he sees no outward sign of them. And this effect, as I have intimated, was heightened to its utmost intensity212 in me, because Bertha was the only being who remained for me in the mysterious seclusion213 of soul that renders such youthful delusion11 possible. Doubtless there was another sort of fascination at work—that subtle physical attraction which delights in cheating our psychological predictions, and in compelling the men who paint sylphs, to fall in love with some bonne et brave femme, heavy-heeled and freckled214.
Bertha’s behaviour towards me was such as to encourage all my illusions, to heighten my boyish passion, and make me more and more dependent on her smiles. Looking back with my present wretched knowledge, I conclude that her vanity and love of power were intensely gratified by the belief that I had fainted on first seeing her purely215 from the strong impression her person had produced on me. The most prosaic woman likes to believe herself the object of a violent, a poetic passion; and without a grain of romance in her, Bertha had that spirit of intrigue216 which gave piquancy217 to the idea that the brother of the man she meant to marry was dying with love and jealousy218 for her sake. That she meant to marry my brother, was what at that time I did not believe; for though he was assiduous in his attentions to her, and I knew well enough that both he and my father had made up their minds to this result, there was not yet an understood engagement—there had been no explicit219 declaration; and Bertha habitually, while she flirted220 with my brother, and accepted his homage221 in a way that implied to him a thorough recognition of its intention, made me believe, by the subtlest looks and phrases—feminine nothings which could never be quoted against her—that he was really the object of her secret ridicule222; that she thought him, as I did, a coxcomb223, whom she would have pleasure in disappointing. Me she openly petted in my brother’s presence, as if I were too young and sickly ever to be thought of as a lover; and that was the view he took of me. But I believe she must inwardly have delighted in the tremors224 into which she threw me by the coaxing225 way in which she patted my curls, while she laughed at my quotations226. Such caresses227 were always given in the presence of our friends; for when we were alone together, she affected a much greater distance towards me, and now and then took the opportunity, by words or slight actions, to stimulate97 my foolish timid hope that she really preferred me. And why should she not follow her inclination228? I was not in so advantageous229 a position as my brother, but I had fortune, I was not a year younger than she was, and she was an heiress, who would soon be of age to decide for herself.
The fluctuations230 of hope and fear, confined to this one channel, made each day in her presence a delicious torment231. There was one deliberate act of hers which especially helped to intoxicate232 me. When we were at Vienna her twentieth birthday occurred, and as she was very fond of ornaments233, we all took the opportunity of the splendid jewellers’ shops in that Teutonic Paris to purchase her a birthday present of jewellery. Mine, naturally, was the least expensive; it was an opal ring—the opal was my favourite stone, because it seems to blush and turn pale as if it had a soul. I told Bertha so when I gave it her, and said that it was an emblem234 of the poetic nature, changing with the changing light of heaven and of woman’s eyes. In the evening she appeared elegantly dressed, and wearing conspicuously235 all the birthday presents except mine. I looked eagerly at her fingers, but saw no opal. I had no opportunity of noticing this to her during the evening; but the next day, when I found her seated near the window alone, after breakfast, I said, “You scorn to wear my poor opal. I should have remembered that you despised poetic natures, and should have given you coral, or turquoise236, or some other opaque237 unresponsive stone.” “Do I despise it?” she answered, taking hold of a delicate gold chain which she always wore round her neck and drawing out the end from her bosom22 with my ring hanging to it; “it hurts me a little, I can tell you,” she said, with her usual dubious238 smile, “to wear it in that secret place; and since your poetical239 nature is so stupid as to prefer a more public position, I shall not endure the pain any longer.”
She took off the ring from the chain and put it on her finger, smiling still, while the blood rushed to my cheeks, and I could not trust myself to say a word of entreaty that she would keep the ring where it was before.
I was completely fooled by this, and for two days shut myself up in my own room whenever Bertha was absent, that I might intoxicate myself afresh with the thought of this scene and all it implied.
I should mention that during these two months—which seemed a long life to me from the novelty and intensity of the pleasures and pains I underwent—my diseased anticipation240 in other people’s consciousness continued to torment me; now it was my father, and now my brother, now Mrs. Filmore or her husband, and now our German courier, whose stream of thought rushed upon me like a ringing in the ears not to be got rid of, though it allowed my own impulses and ideas to continue their uninterrupted course. It was like a preternaturally heightened sense of hearing, making audible to one a roar of sound where others find perfect stillness. The weariness and disgust of this involuntary intrusion into other souls was counteracted241 only by my ignorance of Bertha, and my growing passion for her; a passion enormously stimulated, if not produced, by that ignorance. She was my oasis242 of mystery in the dreary desert of knowledge. I had never allowed my diseased condition to betray itself, or to drive me into any unusual speech or action, except once, when, in a moment of peculiar168 bitterness against my brother, I had forestalled243 some words which I knew he was going to utter—a clever observation, which he had prepared beforehand. He had occasionally a slightly affected hesitation244 in his speech, and when he paused an instant after the second word, my impatience and jealousy impelled245 me to continue the speech for him, as if it were something we had both learned by rote246. He coloured and looked astonished, as well as annoyed; and the words had no sooner escaped my lips than I felt a shock of alarm lest such an anticipation of words—very far from being words of course, easy to divine—should have betrayed me as an exceptional being, a sort of quiet energumen, whom every one, Bertha above all, would shudder at and avoid. But I magnified, as usual, the impression any word or deed of mine could produce on others; for no one gave any sign of having noticed my interruption as more than a rudeness, to be forgiven me on the score of my feeble nervous condition.
While this superadded consciousness of the actual was almost constant with me, I had never had a recurrence of that distinct prevision which I have described in relation to my first interview with Bertha; and I was waiting with eager curiosity to know whether or not my vision of Prague would prove to have been an instance of the same kind. A few days after the incident of the opal ring, we were paying one of our frequent visits to the Lichtenberg Palace. I could never look at many pictures in succession; for pictures, when they are at all powerful, affect me so strongly that one or two exhaust all my capability247 of contemplation. This morning I had been looking at Giorgione’s picture of the cruel-eyed woman, said to be a likeness248 of Lucrezia Borgia. I had stood long alone before it, fascinated by the terrible reality of that cunning, relentless249 face, till I felt a strange poisoned sensation, as if I had long been inhaling250 a fatal odour, and was just beginning to be conscious of its effects. Perhaps even then I should not have moved away, if the rest of the party had not returned to this room, and announced that they were going to the Belvedere Gallery to settle a bet which had arisen between my brother and Mr. Filmore about a portrait. I followed them dreamily, and was hardly alive to what occurred till they had all gone up to the gallery, leaving me below; for I refused to come within sight of another picture that day. I made my way to the Grand Terrace, since it was agreed that we should saunter in the gardens when the dispute had been decided61. I had been sitting here a short space, vaguely conscious of trim gardens, with a city and green hills in the distance, when, wishing to avoid the proximity251 of the sentinel, I rose and walked down the broad stone steps, intending to seat myself farther on in the gardens. Just as I reached the gravel-walk, I felt an arm slipped within mine, and a light hand gently pressing my wrist. In the same instant a strange intoxicating252 numbness253 passed over me, like the continuance or climax254 of the sensation I was still feeling from the gaze of Lucrezia Borgia. The gardens, the summer sky, the consciousness of Bertha’s arm being within mine, all vanished, and I seemed to be suddenly in darkness, out of which there gradually broke a dim firelight, and I felt myself sitting in my father’s leather chair in the library at home. I knew the fireplace—the dogs for the wood-fire—the black marble chimney-piece with the white marble medallion of the dying Cleopatra in the centre. Intense and hopeless misery255 was pressing on my soul; the light became stronger, for Bertha was entering with a candle in her hand—Bertha, my wife—with cruel eyes, with green jewels and green leaves on her white ball-dress; every hateful thought within her present to me . . . “Madman, idiot! why don’t you kill yourself, then?” It was a moment of hell. I saw into her pitiless soul—saw its barren worldliness, its scorching hate—and felt it clothe me round like an air I was obliged to breathe. She came with her candle and stood over me with a bitter smile of contempt; I saw the great emerald brooch on her bosom, a studded serpent with diamond eyes. I shuddered256—I despised this woman with the barren soul and mean thoughts; but I felt helpless before her, as if she clutched my bleeding heart, and would clutch it till the last drop of life-blood ebbed257 away. She was my wife, and we hated each other. Gradually the hearth, the dim library, the candle-light disappeared—seemed to melt away into a background of light, the green serpent with the diamond eyes remaining a dark image on the retina. Then I had a sense of my eyelids258 quivering, and the living daylight broke in upon me; I saw gardens, and heard voices; I was seated on the steps of the Belvedere Terrace, and my friends were round me.
The tumult259 of mind into which I was thrown by this hideous260 vision made me ill for several days, and prolonged our stay at Vienna. I shuddered with horror as the scene recurred261 to me; and it recurred constantly, with all its minutiæ, as if they had been burnt into my memory; and yet, such is the madness of the human heart under the influence of its immediate desires, I felt a wild hell-braving joy that Bertha was to be mine; for the fulfilment of my former prevision concerning her first appearance before me, left me little hope that this last hideous glimpse of the future was the mere diseased play of my own mind, and had no relation to external realities. One thing alone I looked towards as a possible means of casting doubt on my terrible conviction—the discovery that my vision of Prague had been false—and Prague was the next city on our route.
Meanwhile, I was no sooner in Bertha’s society again than I was as completely under her sway as before. What if I saw into the heart of Bertha, the matured woman—Bertha, my wife? Bertha, the girl, was a fascinating secret to me still: I trembled under her touch; I felt the witchery of her presence; I yearned262 to be assured of her love. The fear of poison is feeble against the sense of thirst. Nay, I was just as jealous of my brother as before—just as much irritated by his small patronizing ways; for my pride, my diseased sensibility, were there as they had always been, and winced263 as inevitably264 under every offence as my eye winced from an intruding265 mote266. The future, even when brought within the compass of feeling by a vision that made me shudder, had still no more than the force of an idea, compared with the force of present emotion—of my love for Bertha, of my dislike and jealousy towards my brother.
It is an old story, that men sell themselves to the tempter, and sign a bond with their blood, because it is only to take effect at a distant day; then rush on to snatch the cup their souls thirst after with an impulse not the less savage267 because there is a dark shadow beside them for evermore. There is no short cut, no patent tram-road, to wisdom: after all the centuries of invention, the soul’s path lies through the thorny268 wilderness269 which must be still trodden in solitude, with bleeding feet, with sobs270 for help, as it was trodden by them of old time.
My mind speculated eagerly on the means by which I should become my brother’s successful rival, for I was still too timid, in my ignorance of Bertha’s actual feeling, to venture on any step that would urge from her an avowal271 of it. I thought I should gain confidence even for this, if my vision of Prague proved to have been veracious272; and yet, the horror of that certitude! Behind the slim girl Bertha, whose words and looks I watched for, whose touch was bliss135, there stood continually that Bertha with the fuller form, the harder eyes, the more rigid119 mouth—with the barren, selfish soul laid bare; no longer a fascinating secret, but a measured fact, urging itself perpetually on my unwilling273 sight. Are you unable to give me your sympathy—you who react this? Are you unable to imagine this double consciousness at work within me, flowing on like two parallel streams which never mingle44 their waters and blend into a common hue274? Yet you must have known something of the presentiments275 that spring from an insight at war with passion; and my visions were only like presentiments intensified to horror. You have known the powerlessness of ideas before the might of impulse; and my visions, when once they had passed into memory, were mere ideas—pale shadows that beckoned276 in vain, while my hand was grasped by the living and the loved.
In after-days I thought with bitter regret that if I had foreseen something more or something different—if instead of that hideous vision which poisoned the passion it could not destroy, or if even along with it I could have had a foreshadowing of that moment when I looked on my brother’s face for the last time, some softening277 influence would have been shed over my feeling towards him: pride and hatred would surely have been subdued278 into pity, and the record of those hidden sins would have been shortened. But this is one of the vain thoughts with which we men flatter ourselves. We try to believe that the egoism within us would have easily been melted, and that it was only the narrowness of our knowledge which hemmed279 in our generosity280, our awe, our human piety281, and hindered them from submerging our hard indifference to the sensations and emotions of our fellows. Our tenderness and self-renunciation seem strong when our egoism has had its day—when, after our mean striving for a triumph that is to be another’s loss, the triumph comes suddenly, and we shudder at it, because it is held out by the chill hand of death.
Our arrival in Prague happened at night, and I was glad of this, for it seemed like a deferring282 of a terribly decisive moment, to be in the city for hours without seeing it. As we were not to remain long in Prague, but to go on speedily to Dresden, it was proposed that we should drive out the next morning and take a general view of the place, as well as visit some of its specially201 interesting spots, before the heat became oppressive—for we were in August, and the season was hot and dry. But it happened that the ladies were rather late at their morning toilet, and to my father’s politely-repressed but perceptible annoyance283, we were not in the carriage till the morning was far advanced. I thought with a sense of relief, as we entered the Jews’ quarter, where we were to visit the old synagogue, that we should be kept in this flat, shut-up part of the city, until we should all be too tired and too warm to go farther, and so we should return without seeing more than the streets through which we had already passed. That would give me another day’s suspense284—suspense, the only form in which a fearful spirit knows the solace285 of hope. But, as I stood under the blackened, groined arches of that old synagogue, made dimly visible by the seven thin candles in the sacred lamp, while our Jewish cicerone reached down the Book of the Law, and read to us in its ancient tongue—I felt a shuddering286 impression that this strange building, with its shrunken lights, this surviving withered287 remnant of medieval Judaism, was of a piece with my vision. Those darkened dusty Christian288 saints, with their loftier arches and their larger candles, needed the consolatory289 scorn with which they might point to a more shrivelled death-in-life than their own.
As I expected, when we left the Jews’ quarter the elders of our party wished to return to the hotel. But now, instead of rejoicing in this, as I had done beforehand, I felt a sudden overpowering impulse to go on at once to the bridge, and put an end to the suspense I had been wishing to protract3. I declared, with unusual decision, that I would get out of the carriage and walk on alone; they might return without me. My father, thinking this merely a sample of my usual “poetic nonsense,” objected that I should only do myself harm by walking in the heat; but when I persisted, he said angrily that I might follow my own absurd devices, but that Schmidt (our courier) must go with me. I assented290 to this, and set off with Schmidt towards the bridge. I had no sooner passed from under the archway of the grand old gate leading an to the bridge, than a trembling seized me, and I turned cold under the midday sun; yet I went on; I was in search of something—a small detail which I remembered with special intensity as part of my vision. There it was—the patch of rainbow light on the pavement transmitted through a lamp in the shape of a star.
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1
din
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| n.喧闹声，嘈杂声 | |
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protracted
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| adj.拖延的；延长的v.拖延“protract”的过去式和过去分词 | |
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protract
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| v.延长，拖长 | |
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groan
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| vi./n.呻吟，抱怨；(发出)呻吟般的声音 | |
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miseries
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| n.痛苦( misery的名词复数 )；痛苦的事；穷困；常发牢骚的人 | |
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delusive
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| adj.欺骗的，妄想的 | |
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outweigh
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| vt.比...更重，...更重要 | |
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longing
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| n.（for）渴望 | |
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incessant
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| adj.不停的，连续的 | |
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foresight
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| n.先见之明，深谋远虑 | |
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delusion
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| n.谬见，欺骗，幻觉，迷惑 | |
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delusions
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| n.欺骗( delusion的名词复数 )；谬见；错觉；妄想 | |
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contraction
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| n.缩略词，缩写式，害病 | |
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suffocation
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| n.窒息 | |
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housekeeper
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| n.管理家务的主妇，女管家 | |
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pebbly
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| 多卵石的，有卵石花纹的 | |
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brook
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| n.小河，溪；v.忍受，容让 | |
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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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hearth
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| n.壁炉炉床，壁炉地面 | |
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onward
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| adj.向前的，前进的；adv.向前，前进，在先 | |
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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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bosom
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| n.胸，胸部；胸怀；内心；adj.亲密的 | |
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aged
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| adj.年老的，陈年的 | |
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reverence
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| n.敬畏，尊敬，尊严；Reverence:对某些基督教神职人员的尊称；v.尊敬，敬畏，崇敬 | |
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bruise
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| n.青肿，挫伤；伤痕；vt.打青；挫伤 | |
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entreat
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| v.恳求，恳请 | |
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entreaty
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| n.恳求，哀求 | |
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sanctuary
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| n.圣所，圣堂，寺庙；禁猎区，保护区 | |
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sneering
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| 嘲笑的，轻蔑的 | |
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envious
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| adj.嫉妒的，羡慕的 | |
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indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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throb
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| v.震颤，颤动；(急速强烈地)跳动，搏动 | |
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injustice
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| n.非正义，不公正，不公平，侵犯（别人的）权利 | |
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yearning
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| a.渴望的；向往的；怀念的 | |
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vent
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| n.通风口，排放口；开衩；vt.表达，发泄 | |
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toil
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| vi.辛劳工作，艰难地行动；n.苦工，难事 | |
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extenuation
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| n.减轻罪孽的借口；酌情减轻；细 | |
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inflicted
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| 把…强加给，使承受，遭受( inflict的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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dreary
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| adj.令人沮丧的，沉闷的，单调乏味的 | |
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lapse
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| n.过失，流逝，失效，抛弃信仰，间隔；vi.堕落，停止，失效，流逝；vt.使失效 | |
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caress
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| vt./n.爱抚，抚摸 | |
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pony
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| adj.小型的；n.小马 | |
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groom
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| vt.给（马、狗等）梳毛，照料，使...整洁 | |
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mingle
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| vt.使混合，使相混；vi.混合起来；相交往 | |
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mingled
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| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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46
trepidation
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| n.惊恐，惶恐 | |
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affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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resonance
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| n.洪亮；共鸣；共振 | |
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luncheon
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| n.午宴，午餐，便宴 | |
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sob
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| n.空间轨道的轰炸机；呜咽，哭泣 | |
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graft
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| n.移植，嫁接，艰苦工作，贪污；v.移植，嫁接 | |
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52
aspiring
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| adj.有志气的；有抱负的；高耸的v.渴望；追求 | |
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melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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awe
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| n.敬畏，惊惧；vt.使敬畏，使惊惧 | |
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Oxford
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| n.牛津（英国城市） | |
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56
attainment
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| n.达到，到达；［常pl.］成就，造诣 | |
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57
esteem
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| n.尊敬，尊重；vt.尊重，敬重；把…看作 | |
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58
qualified
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| adj.合格的，有资格的，胜任的，有限制的 | |
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59
derived
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| vi.起源；由来；衍生；导出v.得到( derive的过去式和过去分词 )；（从…中）得到获得；源于；（从…中）提取 | |
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60
speculations
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| n.投机买卖( speculation的名词复数 )；思考；投机活动；推断 | |
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61
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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62
auspicious
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| adj.吉利的；幸运的，吉兆的 | |
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63
displease
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| vt.使不高兴，惹怒；n.不悦，不满，生气 | |
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64
touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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65
tremor
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| n.震动，颤动，战栗，兴奋，地震 | |
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66
reprobation
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| n.斥责 | |
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67
agitation
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| n.搅动；搅拌；鼓动，煽动 | |
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68
hatred
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| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
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69
systematic
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| adj.有系统的，有计划的，有方法的 | |
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70
zoology
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| n.动物学，生态 | |
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71
humane
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| adj.人道的，富有同情心的 | |
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72
plentifully
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| adv. 许多地，丰饶地 | |
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73
crammed
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| adj.塞满的，挤满的；大口地吃；快速贪婪地吃v.把…塞满；填入；临时抱佛脚( cram的过去式) | |
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74
phenomena
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| n.现象 | |
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75
magnetism
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| n.磁性，吸引力，磁学 | |
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76
apparatus
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| n.装置，器械；器具，设备 | |
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77
distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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78
pebbles
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| [复数]鹅卵石； 沙砾； 卵石，小圆石( pebble的名词复数 ) | |
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79
descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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80
draught
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|
| n.拉，牵引，拖；一网（饮，吸，阵)；顿服药量，通风；v.起草，设计 | |
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81
forth
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|
| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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82
shudder
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| v.战粟，震动，剧烈地摇晃；n.战粟，抖动 | |
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83
solitude
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| n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
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84
solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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85
glide
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| n./v.溜，滑行；(时间)消逝 | |
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86
disposition
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| n.性情，性格；意向，倾向；排列，部署 | |
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87
favourable
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| adj.赞成的，称赞的，有利的，良好的，顺利的 | |
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88
celebrated
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|
| adj.有名的，声誉卓著的 | |
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89
orphan
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|
| n.孤儿；adj.无父母的 | |
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90
miserable
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|
| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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91
pittance
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| n.微薄的薪水，少量 | |
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92
susceptible
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| adj.过敏的，敏感的；易动感情的，易受感动的 | |
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93
inquiry
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| n.打听，询问，调查，查问 | |
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94
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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95
derided
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| v.取笑，嘲笑( deride的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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96
isolated
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| adj.与世隔绝的 | |
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97
stimulate
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| vt.刺激，使兴奋；激励，使…振奋 | |
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98
stimulated
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| a.刺激的 | |
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99
resentment
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| n.怨愤，忿恨 | |
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100
monologues
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| n.（戏剧）长篇独白( monologue的名词复数 )；滔滔不绝的讲话；独角戏 | |
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101
glacier
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| n.冰川，冰河 | |
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102
narrate
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| v.讲，叙述 | |
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103
convalescence
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| n.病后康复期 | |
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104
vividly
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| adv.清楚地，鲜明地，生动地 | |
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105
wondrous
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|
| adj.令人惊奇的，奇妙的；adv.惊人地；异乎寻常地；令人惊叹地 | |
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106
scorching
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|
| adj. 灼热的 | |
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107
grandeur
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| n.伟大，崇高，宏伟，庄严，豪华 | |
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108
doom
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| n.厄运，劫数；v.注定，命定 | |
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109
doomed
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| 命定的 | |
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110
deposed
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| v.罢免( depose的过去式和过去分词 )；（在法庭上）宣誓作证 | |
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111
superannuated
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|
| adj.老朽的，退休的；v.因落后于时代而废除，勒令退学 | |
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112
swarm
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| n.(昆虫)等一大群；vi.成群飞舞；蜂拥而入 | |
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113
infesting
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| v.害虫、野兽大批出没于( infest的现在分词 )；遍布于 | |
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114
stony
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| adj.石头的，多石头的，冷酷的，无情的 | |
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115
dwellings
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| n.住处，处所( dwelling的名词复数 ) | |
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116
crumbling
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| adj.摇摇欲坠的 | |
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117
monotonous
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|
| adj.单调的，一成不变的，使人厌倦的 | |
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118
stifling
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| a.令人窒息的 | |
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119
rigid
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| adj.严格的，死板的；刚硬的，僵硬的 | |
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120
rigidity
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| adj.钢性，坚硬 | |
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121
repose
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| v.(使)休息；n.安息 | |
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122
stunning
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| adj.极好的；使人晕倒的 | |
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123
unfamiliar
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| adj.陌生的，不熟悉的 | |
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124
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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125
vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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126
humiliated
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| 感到羞愧的 | |
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127
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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128
incipient
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| adj.起初的，发端的，初期的 | |
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129
abodes
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| 住所( abode的名词复数 )； 公寓； （在某地的）暂住； 逗留 | |
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130
wrought
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| v.引起；以…原料制作；运转；adj.制造的 | |
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131
obstruction
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| n.阻塞，堵塞；障碍物 | |
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132
nay
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| adv.不；n.反对票，投反对票者 | |
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133
exalting
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| a.令人激动的，令人喜悦的 | |
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134
intensified
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| v.（使）增强， （使）加剧( intensify的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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135
bliss
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| n.狂喜，福佑，天赐的福 | |
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136
exertion
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| n.尽力，努力 | |
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137
liberated
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| a.无拘束的，放纵的 | |
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138
fiery
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| adj.燃烧着的，火红的；暴躁的；激烈的 | |
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139
poetic
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| adj.富有诗意的，有诗人气质的，善于抒情的 | |
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140
prosaic
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| adj.单调的，无趣的 | |
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141
recurrence
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| n.复发，反复，重现 | |
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142
vibration
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| n.颤动，振动；摆动 | |
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143
slumbering
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| 微睡，睡眠（slumber的现在分词形式） | |
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144
lengthening
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| （时间或空间）延长，伸长( lengthen的现在分词 )； 加长 | |
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145
nervously
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| adv.神情激动地，不安地 | |
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146
impatience
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| n.不耐烦，急躁 | |
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147
tonic
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| n./adj.滋补品，补药，强身的，健体的 | |
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148
prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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149
immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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150
stimulus
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| n.刺激，刺激物，促进因素，引起兴奋的事物 | |
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151
middle-aged
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| adj.中年的 | |
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152
sarcastic
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| adj.讥讽的，讽刺的，嘲弄的 | |
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153
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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154
lyrics
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| n.歌词 | |
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155
totter
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| v.蹒跚， 摇摇欲坠；n.蹒跚的步子 | |
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156
intermittent
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| adj.间歇的，断断续续的 | |
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157
delirium
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| n. 神智昏迷,说胡话;极度兴奋 | |
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158
saner
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| adj.心智健全的( sane的比较级 )；神志正常的；明智的；稳健的 | |
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159
determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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160
soothing
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| adj.慰藉的；使人宽心的；镇静的 | |
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161
salon
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| n.[法]沙龙；客厅；营业性的高级服务室 | |
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162
cork
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| n.软木，软木塞 | |
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163
neatly
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| adv.整洁地，干净地，灵巧地，熟练地 | |
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164
nostrils
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| 鼻孔( nostril的名词复数 ) | |
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165
procured
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| v.（努力）取得， （设法）获得( procure的过去式和过去分词 )；拉皮条 | |
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166
thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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167
allusion
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| n.暗示，间接提示 | |
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168
peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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169
peculiarity
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| n.独特性，特色；特殊的东西；怪癖 | |
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170
sanity
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| n.心智健全，神智正常，判断正确 | |
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171
intercourse
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| n.性交；交流，交往，交际 | |
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172
obtrusion
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| n.强制，莽撞 | |
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173
vagrant
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| n.流浪者，游民；adj.流浪的，漂泊不定的 | |
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174
frivolous
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| adj.轻薄的；轻率的 | |
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175
importunate
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| adj.强求的；纠缠不休的 | |
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176
imprisoned
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| 下狱，监禁( imprison的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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177
graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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178
kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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179
asunder
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| adj.分离的，化为碎片 | |
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180
microscopic
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| adj.微小的，细微的，极小的，显微的 | |
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181
chaos
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| n.混乱，无秩序 | |
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182
fermenting
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| v.（使）发酵( ferment的现在分词 )；（使）激动；骚动；骚扰 | |
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183
morbid
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|
| adj.病的；致病的；病态的；可怕的 | |
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184
sublime
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| adj.崇高的，伟大的；极度的，不顾后果的 | |
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185
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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186
rivalry
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| n.竞争，竞赛，对抗 | |
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187
antipathy
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| n.憎恶；反感，引起反感的人或事物 | |
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188
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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189
exasperated
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| adj.恼怒的 | |
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190
conceit
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| n.自负，自高自大 | |
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191
patronage
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| n.赞助，支援，援助；光顾，捧场 | |
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192
intonation
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| n.语调，声调；发声 | |
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193
uncertainty
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| n.易变，靠不住，不确知，不确定的事物 | |
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194
fascination
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| n.令人着迷的事物，魅力，迷恋 | |
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195
unravelled
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| 解开，拆散，散开( unravel的过去式和过去分词 )； 阐明； 澄清； 弄清楚 | |
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196
affinity
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| n.亲和力，密切关系 | |
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197
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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198
prematurely
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| adv.过早地，贸然地 | |
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199
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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200
dissect
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| v.分割；解剖 | |
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201
specially
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| adv.特定地；特殊地；明确地 | |
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202
admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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203
dominion
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| n.统治，管辖，支配权；领土，版图 | |
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204
morbidly
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| adv.病态地 | |
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205
craving
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| n.渴望,热望 | |
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206
habitually
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| ad.习惯地，通常地 | |
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207
captious
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| adj.难讨好的，吹毛求疵的 | |
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208
enthusiast
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| n.热心人，热衷者 | |
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209
shrine
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| n.圣地，神龛，庙；v.将...置于神龛内，把...奉为神圣 | |
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210
deity
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| n.神，神性；被奉若神明的人(或物) | |
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211
negation
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| n.否定；否认 | |
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212
intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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213
seclusion
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| n.隐遁，隔离 | |
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214
freckled
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| adj.雀斑；斑点；晒斑；（使）生雀斑v.雀斑，斑点( freckle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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215
purely
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| adv.纯粹地，完全地 | |
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216
intrigue
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| vt.激起兴趣，迷住；vi.耍阴谋；n.阴谋，密谋 | |
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217
piquancy
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| n.辛辣，辣味，痛快 | |
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218
jealousy
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| n.妒忌，嫉妒，猜忌 | |
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219
explicit
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| adj.详述的，明确的；坦率的；显然的 | |
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220
flirted
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| v.调情，打情骂俏( flirt的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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221
homage
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| n.尊敬，敬意，崇敬 | |
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222
ridicule
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| v.讥讽，挖苦；n.嘲弄 | |
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223
coxcomb
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| n.花花公子 | |
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224
tremors
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| 震颤( tremor的名词复数 )； 战栗； 震颤声； 大地的轻微震动 | |
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225
coaxing
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| v.哄，用好话劝说( coax的现在分词 )；巧言骗取；哄劝，劝诱；“锻炼”效应 | |
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226
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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227
caresses
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| 爱抚，抚摸( caress的名词复数 ) | |
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228
inclination
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| n.倾斜；点头；弯腰；斜坡；倾度；倾向；爱好 | |
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229
advantageous
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| adj.有利的；有帮助的 | |
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230
fluctuations
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| 波动，涨落，起伏( fluctuation的名词复数 ) | |
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231
torment
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| n.折磨；令人痛苦的东西(人)；vt.折磨；纠缠 | |
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232
intoxicate
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| vt.使喝醉，使陶醉，使欣喜若狂 | |
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233
ornaments
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| n.装饰( ornament的名词复数 )；点缀；装饰品；首饰v.装饰，点缀，美化( ornament的第三人称单数 ) | |
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234
emblem
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| n.象征，标志；徽章 | |
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235
conspicuously
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| ad.明显地，惹人注目地 | |
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236
turquoise
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| n.绿宝石；adj.蓝绿色的 | |
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237
opaque
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| adj.不透光的；不反光的，不传导的；晦涩的 | |
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238
dubious
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| adj.怀疑的，无把握的；有问题的，靠不住的 | |
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239
poetical
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| adj.似诗人的；诗一般的；韵文的；富有诗意的 | |
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240
anticipation
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| n.预期，预料，期望 | |
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241
counteracted
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| 对抗，抵消( counteract的过去式 ) | |
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242
oasis
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| n.（沙漠中的）绿洲，宜人的地方 | |
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243
forestalled
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| v.先发制人，预先阻止( forestall的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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244
hesitation
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| n.犹豫，踌躇 | |
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245
impelled
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| v.推动、推进或敦促某人做某事( impel的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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246
rote
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| n.死记硬背，生搬硬套 | |
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247
capability
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| n.能力；才能；(pl)可发展的能力或特性等 | |
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248
likeness
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| n.相像，相似（之处） | |
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249
relentless
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| adj.残酷的，不留情的，无怜悯心的 | |
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250
inhaling
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| v.吸入( inhale的现在分词 ) | |
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251
proximity
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| n.接近，邻近 | |
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252
intoxicating
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| a. 醉人的,使人兴奋的 | |
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253
numbness
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| n.无感觉，麻木，惊呆 | |
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254
climax
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| n.顶点；高潮；v.(使)达到顶点 | |
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255
misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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256
shuddered
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| v.战栗( shudder的过去式和过去分词 )；发抖；（机器、车辆等）突然震动；颤动 | |
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257
ebbed
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| （指潮水）退( ebb的过去式和过去分词 )； 落； 减少； 衰落 | |
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258
eyelids
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| n.眼睑( eyelid的名词复数 )；眼睛也不眨一下；不露声色；面不改色 | |
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259
tumult
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| n.喧哗；激动，混乱；吵闹 | |
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260
hideous
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| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
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261
recurred
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| 再发生，复发( recur的过去式和过去分词 )； 治愈 | |
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262
yearned
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| 渴望，切盼，向往( yearn的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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263
winced
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| 赶紧避开，畏缩( wince的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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264
inevitably
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| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
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265
intruding
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| v.侵入，侵扰，打扰( intrude的现在分词)；把…强加于 | |
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266
mote
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| n.微粒；斑点 | |
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267
savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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268
thorny
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| adj.多刺的，棘手的 | |
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269
wilderness
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| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
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270
sobs
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| 啜泣（声），呜咽（声）( sob的名词复数 ) | |
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271
avowal
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| n.公开宣称，坦白承认 | |
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272
veracious
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| adj.诚实可靠的 | |
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273
unwilling
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| adj.不情愿的 | |
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274
hue
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| n.色度；色调；样子 | |
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275
presentiments
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| n.（对不祥事物的）预感( presentiment的名词复数 ) | |
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276
beckoned
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| v.（用头或手的动作）示意，召唤( beckon的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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277
softening
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| 变软，软化 | |
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278
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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279
hemmed
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| 缝…的褶边( hem的过去式和过去分词 )； 包围 | |
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280
generosity
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| n.大度，慷慨，慷慨的行为 | |
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281
piety
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| n.虔诚，虔敬 | |
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282
deferring
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| v.拖延，延缓，推迟( defer的现在分词 )；服从某人的意愿，遵从 | |
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283
annoyance
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| n.恼怒，生气，烦恼 | |
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284
suspense
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| n.（对可能发生的事）紧张感，担心，挂虑 | |
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285
solace
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| n.安慰；v.使快乐；vt.安慰(物)，缓和 | |
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286
shuddering
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| v.战栗( shudder的现在分词 )；发抖；（机器、车辆等）突然震动；颤动 | |
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287
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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288
Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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289
consolatory
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| adj.慰问的，可藉慰的 | |
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290
assented
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| 同意，赞成( assent的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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