大学英语精读三课文翻译答案

大学英语精读三课文翻译

It was a dark autumn night. The old banker was walking up and down his study and remembering how, fifteen years before, he had given a party one autumn evening. There had been many clever men there, and there had been interesting conversations. Among other things they had talked of capital punishment. The majority of the guests, however, had contended that capital punishment was unnecessary, that imprisonment for life was sufficient.

No, said the banker; he had not seen a more beautiful place than his, and he would not exchange it for all the riches of the world.

Then they betted with him for two million dollars that he could not remain in solitary confinement for five years. The banker remembered the millions; it was one of the most severe of sentences ever inflicted for a crime. Death was an easier penalty. And the banker consented to the bet.

The agreement specified that he was to live in a lodge in the banker's garden. He was free to have any books, music, wine, or other comforts that he wished; also pen and paper, and materials for writing. During the period he was not allowed to cross the threshold of the lodge, to see human beings, to hear the human voice, or to receive letters and newspapers. He was allowed to have a musical instrument and to write letters, to drink wine, and to smoke. By the terms of the agreement, the only relations he could have with the outer world were by a little window made so that he could see into the banker's garden.

The conditions of the bet were fully explained to him. With a lawyer and witnesses, he signed the deed. Then he began to live in the lodge.

In the first year the books he sent for were principally of a light character; novels with a complicated love interest, or which touched on crime, or were sensational, took up most of his time. He did not read literature, philosophy, or religion. He threw himself eagerly into these studies, reading for many hours a day.

The banker was quite pleased to see him so cheerful and sympathetic. It was more than a year since he had spoken to him. He had begun to think of the bet as a joke.

But now he felt irritated, annoyed, and nervous. If only the man would take himself off! If only he would write something!

On the last day of the fifth year the man lay on his bed looking through the window at the trees, the sky, and the sun. He listened to the birds singing, and saw that the flowers were on the trees. It was all so beautiful, so beautiful, he thought; and then he smiled to himself, and sat up on his bed.

The banker came into the room and gave a cry of horror. The man was sitting up in his bed, smiling at him, and holding a knife in his hand. A week later the banker put the lodge up for sale. The man was found dead in his bed, with his head cut off.

In a little district west of Washington Square the streets have run crazy and broken themselves into small strips called "places." These "places" make strange angles and curves. One street crosses itself a time or two. An artist once discovered a valuable possibility in this street. Suppose a collector with a bill for paints, paper, and canvas should, in traversing this route, suddenly meet himself coming back, without a cent having been paid on account!

So, to quaint old Greenwich Village the art people soon came prowling, hunting for north windows and eighteenthcentury gables and Dutch attics and low rents. Then they imported some pewter mugs and a chafing dish or two from Sixth Avenue, and became a "colony."

At the top of a squatty, threestory brick Sue and Johnsy had their studio. "Johnsy" was familiar for Joanna. One was from Maine; the other from California. They had met at the table d'hôte of an Eighth Street "Delmonico's," and found their tastes in art, chicory salad, and bishop sleeves so congenial that the joint studio resulted.

That was in May. In November a cold, unseen stranger, whom the doctors called Pneumonia, stalked about the colony, touching one here and there with his icy fingers. Over on the east side this ravager strode boldly, smiting his victims by scores, but his feet trod slowly through the maze of the narrow and mossgrown "places."

Mr. Pneumonia was not what you would call a chivalric old gentleman. A mite of a little woman with blood thinned by California zephyrs was hardly fair game for the redfisted, shortbreathed old duffer. But Johnsy he smote; and she lay, scarcely moving, on her painted iron bedstead, looking through the small Dutch windowpanes at the blank side of the next brick house.

One morning the busy doctor invited Sue into the hallway with a shaggy, gray eyebrow.

"She has one chance in – let us say ten," he said, as he shook down the mercury in his clinical thermometer. "And that chance is for her to want to live. This way people have of lining up on the side of the undertaker makes the entire pharmacopoeia look silly. Your little lady has made up her mind that she's not going to get well. Has she anything on her mind?"

"She wanted to paint the Bay of Naples some day," said Sue.

"Paint? – bosh! Has she anything on her mind worth thinking twice – a man for instance?"

"A man?" said Sue, with a jew'sharp twang in her voice. "Is a man worth – but, no, doctor; there is nothing of the kind."

"Well, it is the weakness, then," said the doctor. "I will do all that science, so far as it may filter through my efforts, can accomplish. But whenever my patient begins to count the carriages in her funeral procession I subtract 50 per cent from the curative power of medicines. If you will get her to ask one question about the new winter styles in cloak sleeves I will promise you a oneinfive chance for her, instead of one in ten."

After the doctor had gone, Sue went into the workroom and cried. She cried for Johnsy, and she cried for herself. Then she wiped her eyes and went over to the bed where Johnsy lay, hardly making a ripple under the bedclothes, with her face toward the window. Sue stopped whistling, thinking she was asleep. She arranged her board and began a penandink drawing to illustrate a magazine story.

Young artists must pave their way to Art by drawing pictures for magazine stories that young authors write to pave their way to Literature. As Sue was sketching a pair of elegant horseshow riding trousers and a monocle of

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