章节正文
Fearing at last that he was rude, he turned them away; and, behold,
he was in a room that was for beauty marvellous! The lofty ceiling
was all a golden vine, Whose great clusters of carbuncles, rubies,
and chrysoberyls hung down like the bosses of groined arches, and
in its centre hung the most glorious lamp that human eyes ever saw
- the Silver Moon itself, a globe of silver, as it seemed, with a
heart of light so wondrouspotent that it rendered the mass
translucent, and altogether radiant.
The room was so large that, looking back, he could scarcely see the
end at which he entered; but the other was only a few yards from
him - and there he saw another wonder: on a huge hearth a great
fire was burning, and the fire was a huge heap of roses, and yet it
was fire. The smell of the roses filled the air, and the heat of
the flames of them glowed upon his face. He turned an inquiring
look upon the lady, and saw that she was now seated in an ancient
chair, the legs of which were crusted with gems, but the upper part
like a nest of daisies and moss and green grass.
'Curdie,' she said in answer to his eyes, 'you have stood more than
one trial already, and have stood them well: now I am going to put
you to a harder. Do you think you are prepared for it?'
'How can I tell, ma'am,' he returned, 'seeing I do not know what it
is, or what preparation it needs? Judge me yourself, ma'am.'
'It needs only trust and obedience,' answered the lady.
'I dare not say anything, ma'am. If you think me fit, command me.'
'it will hurt you terribly, Curdie, but that will be all; no real
hurt but much good will come to you from it.'
Curdie made no answer but stood gazing with parted lips in the
lady's face.
'Go and thrust both your hands into that fire,' she said quickly,
almost hurriedly.
Curdie dared not stop to think. It was much too terrible to think
about. He rushed to the fire, and thrust both of his hands right
into the middle of the heap of flaming roses, and his arms halfway
up to the elbows. And it did hurt! But he did not draw them back.
He held the pain as if it were a thing that would kill him if he
let it go - as indeed it would have done. He was in terrible fear
lest it should conquer him.
But when it had risen to the pitch that he thought he could bear it
no longer, it began to fall again, and went on growing less and
less until by contrast with its former severity it had become
rather pleasant. At last it ceased altogether, and Curdie thought
his hands must be burned to cinders if not ashes, for he did not
feel them at all. The princess told him to take them out and look
at them. He did so, and found that all that was gone of them was
the rough, hard skin; they were white and smooth like the
princess's.
'Come to me,' she said.
He obeyed and saw, to his surprise, that her face looked as if she
had been weeping.
'Oh, Princess! What is the matter?' he cried. 'Did I make a noise
and vex you?'
'No, Curdie, she answered; 'but it was very bad.'
'Did you feel it too then?'
'Of course I did. But now it is over, and all is well. Would you
like to know why I made You put your hands in the fire?'
Curdie looked at them again - then said:
'To take the marks of the work off them and make them fit for the
king's court, I suppose.'
'No, Curdie,' answered the princess, shaking her head, for she was
not pleased with the answer. 'It would be a poor way of making
your hands fit for the king's court to take off them signs of his
service. There is a far greater difference on them than that. Do
you feel none?'
'No, ma'am.'
'You will, though, by and by, when the time comes. But perhaps
even then you might not know what had been given you, therefore I
will tell you. Have you ever heard what some philosophers say -
that men were all animals once?'
'No, ma'am.'
'it is of no consequence. But there is another thing that is of
the greatest consequence - this: that all men, if they do not take
care, go down the hill to the animals' country; that many men are
actually, all their lives, going to be beasts. People knew it
once, but it is long since they forgot it.'
'I am not surprised to hear it, ma'am, when I think of some of our
miners.'
'Ah! But you must beware, Curdie, how you say of this man or that
man that he is travelling beastward. There are not nearly so many
going that way as at first sight you might think. When you met
your father on the hill tonight, you stood and spoke together on
the same spot; and although one of you was going up and the other
coming down, at a little distance no one could have told which was
bound in the one direction and which in the other. just so two
people may be at the same spot in manners and behaviour, and yet
one may be getting better and the other worse, which is just the
greatest of all differences that could possibly exist between
them.'
'But ma'am,' said Curdie, 'where is the good of knowing that there
is such a difference, if you can never know where it is?'
'Now, Curdie, you must mind exactly what words I use, because
although the right words cannot do exactly what I want them to do,
the wrong words will certainly do what I do not want them to do.
I did not say you can never know. When there is a necessity for
your knowing, when you have to do important business with this or
that man, there is always a way of knowing enough to keep you from
any great blunder. And as you will have important business to do
by and by, and that with people of whom you yet know nothing, it
will be necessary that you should have some better means than usual
of learning the nature of them.
'Now listen. Since it is always what they do, whether in their
minds or their bodies, that makes men go down to be less than men,
that is, beasts, the change always comes first in their hands - and
first of all in the inside hands, to which the outside ones are but
as the gloves. They do not know it of course; for a beast does not
know that he is a beast, and the nearer a man gets to being a beast
the less he knows it. Neither can their best friends, or their
worst enemies indeed, see any difference in their hands, for they
see only the living gloves of them. But there are not a few who
feel a vague something repulsive in the hand of a man who is
growing a beast.
'Now here is what the rose-fire has done for you: it has made your
hands so knowing and wise, it has brought your real hands so near
the outside of your flesh gloves, that you will henceforth be able
to know at once the hand of a man who is growing into a beast; nay,
more - you will at once feel the foot of the beast he is growing,
just as if there were no glove made like a man's hand between you
and it.
'Hence of course it follows that you will be able often, and with
further education in zoology, will be able always to tell, not only
when a man is growing a beast, but what beast he is growing to, for
you will know the foot - what it is and what beast's it is.
According, then, to your knowledge of that beast will be your
knowledge of the man you have to do with. Only there is one
beautiful and awful thing about it, that if any one gifted with
this perception once uses it for his own ends, it is taken from
him, and then, not knowing that it is gone, he is in a far worse
condition than before, for he trusts to what he has not got.'
'How dreadful!' Said Curdie. 'I must mind what I am about.'
'Yes, indeed, Curdie.'
'But may not one sometimes make a mistake without being able to
help it?'
'Yes. But so long as he is not after his own ends, he will never
make a serious mistake.'
'I suppose you want me, ma'am, to warn every one whose hand tells
me that he is growing a beast - because, as you say, he does not
know it himself.'
The princess smiled.
'Much good that would do, Curdie! I don't say there are no cases
in which it would be of use, but they are very rare and peculiar
cases, and if such come you will know them. To such a person there
is in general no insult like the truth. He cannot endure it, not
because he is growing a beast, but because he is ceasing to be a
man. It is the dying man in him that it makes uncomfortable, and
he trots, or creeps, or swims, or flutters out of its way - calls
it a foolish feeling, a whim, an old wives' fable, a bit of
priests' humbug, an effete superstition, and so on.'
'And is there no hope for him? Can nothing be done? It's so awful
to think of going down, down, down like that!'
'Even when it's with his own will?'
'That's what seems to me to make it worst of all,' said Curdie.
'You are right,' answered the princess, nodding her head; 'but
there is this amount of excuse to make for all such, remember -
that they do not know what or how horrid their coming fate is.
Many a lady, so delicate and nice that she can bear nothing coarser
than the finest linen to touch her body, if she had a mirror that
could show her the animal she is growing to, as it lies waiting
within the fair skin and the fine linen and the silk and the
jewels, would receive a shock that might possibly wake her up.'
'Why then, ma'am, shouldn't she have it?'
The princess held her peace.
'Come here, Lina,' she said after a long pause.
From somewhere behind Curdie, crept forward the same hideous animal
which had fawned at his feet at the door, and which, without his
knowing it, had followed him every step up the dove tower. She ran
to the princess, and lay down flat at her feet, looking up at her
with an expression so pitiful that in Curdie's heart it overcame
all the ludicrousness of her horrible mass of incongruities. She
had a very short body, and very long legs made like an elephant's,
so that in lying down she kneeled with both pairs. Her tail, which
dragged on the floor behind her, was twice as long and quite as
thick as her body. Her head was something between that of a polar
bear and a snake. Her eyes were dark green, with a yellow light in
them. Her under teeth came up like a fringe of icicles, only very
white, outside of her upper lip. Her throat looked as if the hair
had been plucked off. it showed a skin white and smooth.
'Give Curdie a paw, Lina,' said the princess.
The creature rose, and, lifting a long foreleg, held up a great
doglike paw to Curdie. He took it gently. But what a shudder, as
of terrified delight, ran through him, when, instead of the paw of
a dog, such as it seemed to his eyes, he clasped in his great
mining fist the soft, neat little hand of a child! He took it in
both of his, and held it as if he could not let it go. The green
eyes stared at him with their yellow light, and the mouth was
turned up toward him with its constant half grin; but here was the
child's hand! If he could but pull the child out of the beast!
His eyes sought the princess. She was watching him with evident
satisfaction.
'Ma'am, here is a child's hand!' said Curdie.
'Your gift does more for you than it promised. It is yet better to
perceive a hidden good than a hidden evil.'
'But,' began Curdie.
'I am not going to answer any more questions this evening,'
interrupted the princess. 'You have not half got to the bottom of
the answers I have already given you. That paw in your hand now
might almost teach you the whole science of natural history - the
heavenly sort, I mean.'
'I will think,' said Curdie. 'But oh! please! one word more: may
I tell my father and mother all about it?'
'Certainly - though perhaps now it may be their turn to find it a
little difficult to believe that things went just as you must tell
them.'
he was in a room that was for beauty marvellous! The lofty ceiling
was all a golden vine, Whose great clusters of carbuncles, rubies,
and chrysoberyls hung down like the bosses of groined arches, and
in its centre hung the most glorious lamp that human eyes ever saw
- the Silver Moon itself, a globe of silver, as it seemed, with a
heart of light so wondrouspotent that it rendered the mass
translucent, and altogether radiant.
The room was so large that, looking back, he could scarcely see the
end at which he entered; but the other was only a few yards from
him - and there he saw another wonder: on a huge hearth a great
fire was burning, and the fire was a huge heap of roses, and yet it
was fire. The smell of the roses filled the air, and the heat of
the flames of them glowed upon his face. He turned an inquiring
look upon the lady, and saw that she was now seated in an ancient
chair, the legs of which were crusted with gems, but the upper part
like a nest of daisies and moss and green grass.
'Curdie,' she said in answer to his eyes, 'you have stood more than
one trial already, and have stood them well: now I am going to put
you to a harder. Do you think you are prepared for it?'
'How can I tell, ma'am,' he returned, 'seeing I do not know what it
is, or what preparation it needs? Judge me yourself, ma'am.'
'It needs only trust and obedience,' answered the lady.
'I dare not say anything, ma'am. If you think me fit, command me.'
'it will hurt you terribly, Curdie, but that will be all; no real
hurt but much good will come to you from it.'
Curdie made no answer but stood gazing with parted lips in the
lady's face.
'Go and thrust both your hands into that fire,' she said quickly,
almost hurriedly.
Curdie dared not stop to think. It was much too terrible to think
about. He rushed to the fire, and thrust both of his hands right
into the middle of the heap of flaming roses, and his arms halfway
up to the elbows. And it did hurt! But he did not draw them back.
He held the pain as if it were a thing that would kill him if he
let it go - as indeed it would have done. He was in terrible fear
lest it should conquer him.
But when it had risen to the pitch that he thought he could bear it
no longer, it began to fall again, and went on growing less and
less until by contrast with its former severity it had become
rather pleasant. At last it ceased altogether, and Curdie thought
his hands must be burned to cinders if not ashes, for he did not
feel them at all. The princess told him to take them out and look
at them. He did so, and found that all that was gone of them was
the rough, hard skin; they were white and smooth like the
princess's.
'Come to me,' she said.
He obeyed and saw, to his surprise, that her face looked as if she
had been weeping.
'Oh, Princess! What is the matter?' he cried. 'Did I make a noise
and vex you?'
'No, Curdie, she answered; 'but it was very bad.'
'Did you feel it too then?'
'Of course I did. But now it is over, and all is well. Would you
like to know why I made You put your hands in the fire?'
Curdie looked at them again - then said:
'To take the marks of the work off them and make them fit for the
king's court, I suppose.'
'No, Curdie,' answered the princess, shaking her head, for she was
not pleased with the answer. 'It would be a poor way of making
your hands fit for the king's court to take off them signs of his
service. There is a far greater difference on them than that. Do
you feel none?'
'No, ma'am.'
'You will, though, by and by, when the time comes. But perhaps
even then you might not know what had been given you, therefore I
will tell you. Have you ever heard what some philosophers say -
that men were all animals once?'
'No, ma'am.'
'it is of no consequence. But there is another thing that is of
the greatest consequence - this: that all men, if they do not take
care, go down the hill to the animals' country; that many men are
actually, all their lives, going to be beasts. People knew it
once, but it is long since they forgot it.'
'I am not surprised to hear it, ma'am, when I think of some of our
miners.'
'Ah! But you must beware, Curdie, how you say of this man or that
man that he is travelling beastward. There are not nearly so many
going that way as at first sight you might think. When you met
your father on the hill tonight, you stood and spoke together on
the same spot; and although one of you was going up and the other
coming down, at a little distance no one could have told which was
bound in the one direction and which in the other. just so two
people may be at the same spot in manners and behaviour, and yet
one may be getting better and the other worse, which is just the
greatest of all differences that could possibly exist between
them.'
'But ma'am,' said Curdie, 'where is the good of knowing that there
is such a difference, if you can never know where it is?'
'Now, Curdie, you must mind exactly what words I use, because
although the right words cannot do exactly what I want them to do,
the wrong words will certainly do what I do not want them to do.
I did not say you can never know. When there is a necessity for
your knowing, when you have to do important business with this or
that man, there is always a way of knowing enough to keep you from
any great blunder. And as you will have important business to do
by and by, and that with people of whom you yet know nothing, it
will be necessary that you should have some better means than usual
of learning the nature of them.
'Now listen. Since it is always what they do, whether in their
minds or their bodies, that makes men go down to be less than men,
that is, beasts, the change always comes first in their hands - and
first of all in the inside hands, to which the outside ones are but
as the gloves. They do not know it of course; for a beast does not
know that he is a beast, and the nearer a man gets to being a beast
the less he knows it. Neither can their best friends, or their
worst enemies indeed, see any difference in their hands, for they
see only the living gloves of them. But there are not a few who
feel a vague something repulsive in the hand of a man who is
growing a beast.
'Now here is what the rose-fire has done for you: it has made your
hands so knowing and wise, it has brought your real hands so near
the outside of your flesh gloves, that you will henceforth be able
to know at once the hand of a man who is growing into a beast; nay,
more - you will at once feel the foot of the beast he is growing,
just as if there were no glove made like a man's hand between you
and it.
'Hence of course it follows that you will be able often, and with
further education in zoology, will be able always to tell, not only
when a man is growing a beast, but what beast he is growing to, for
you will know the foot - what it is and what beast's it is.
According, then, to your knowledge of that beast will be your
knowledge of the man you have to do with. Only there is one
beautiful and awful thing about it, that if any one gifted with
this perception once uses it for his own ends, it is taken from
him, and then, not knowing that it is gone, he is in a far worse
condition than before, for he trusts to what he has not got.'
'How dreadful!' Said Curdie. 'I must mind what I am about.'
'Yes, indeed, Curdie.'
'But may not one sometimes make a mistake without being able to
help it?'
'Yes. But so long as he is not after his own ends, he will never
make a serious mistake.'
'I suppose you want me, ma'am, to warn every one whose hand tells
me that he is growing a beast - because, as you say, he does not
know it himself.'
The princess smiled.
'Much good that would do, Curdie! I don't say there are no cases
in which it would be of use, but they are very rare and peculiar
cases, and if such come you will know them. To such a person there
is in general no insult like the truth. He cannot endure it, not
because he is growing a beast, but because he is ceasing to be a
man. It is the dying man in him that it makes uncomfortable, and
he trots, or creeps, or swims, or flutters out of its way - calls
it a foolish feeling, a whim, an old wives' fable, a bit of
priests' humbug, an effete superstition, and so on.'
'And is there no hope for him? Can nothing be done? It's so awful
to think of going down, down, down like that!'
'Even when it's with his own will?'
'That's what seems to me to make it worst of all,' said Curdie.
'You are right,' answered the princess, nodding her head; 'but
there is this amount of excuse to make for all such, remember -
that they do not know what or how horrid their coming fate is.
Many a lady, so delicate and nice that she can bear nothing coarser
than the finest linen to touch her body, if she had a mirror that
could show her the animal she is growing to, as it lies waiting
within the fair skin and the fine linen and the silk and the
jewels, would receive a shock that might possibly wake her up.'
'Why then, ma'am, shouldn't she have it?'
The princess held her peace.
'Come here, Lina,' she said after a long pause.
From somewhere behind Curdie, crept forward the same hideous animal
which had fawned at his feet at the door, and which, without his
knowing it, had followed him every step up the dove tower. She ran
to the princess, and lay down flat at her feet, looking up at her
with an expression so pitiful that in Curdie's heart it overcame
all the ludicrousness of her horrible mass of incongruities. She
had a very short body, and very long legs made like an elephant's,
so that in lying down she kneeled with both pairs. Her tail, which
dragged on the floor behind her, was twice as long and quite as
thick as her body. Her head was something between that of a polar
bear and a snake. Her eyes were dark green, with a yellow light in
them. Her under teeth came up like a fringe of icicles, only very
white, outside of her upper lip. Her throat looked as if the hair
had been plucked off. it showed a skin white and smooth.
'Give Curdie a paw, Lina,' said the princess.
The creature rose, and, lifting a long foreleg, held up a great
doglike paw to Curdie. He took it gently. But what a shudder, as
of terrified delight, ran through him, when, instead of the paw of
a dog, such as it seemed to his eyes, he clasped in his great
mining fist the soft, neat little hand of a child! He took it in
both of his, and held it as if he could not let it go. The green
eyes stared at him with their yellow light, and the mouth was
turned up toward him with its constant half grin; but here was the
child's hand! If he could but pull the child out of the beast!
His eyes sought the princess. She was watching him with evident
satisfaction.
'Ma'am, here is a child's hand!' said Curdie.
'Your gift does more for you than it promised. It is yet better to
perceive a hidden good than a hidden evil.'
'But,' began Curdie.
'I am not going to answer any more questions this evening,'
interrupted the princess. 'You have not half got to the bottom of
the answers I have already given you. That paw in your hand now
might almost teach you the whole science of natural history - the
heavenly sort, I mean.'
'I will think,' said Curdie. 'But oh! please! one word more: may
I tell my father and mother all about it?'
'Certainly - though perhaps now it may be their turn to find it a
little difficult to believe that things went just as you must tell
them.'
- glorious [´glɔ:riəs]
a.光荣的；辉煌的 (初中英语单词) - altogether [,ɔ:ltə´geðə] ad.完全；总而言之 (初中英语单词)
- preparation [,prepə´reiʃən] n.准备；预习(时间) (初中英语单词)
- terribly [´terəbli] ad.可怕地 (初中英语单词)
- thrust [θrʌst] v.&n.猛推；冲；刺；挤进 (初中英语单词)
- conquer [´kɔŋkə] v.征服；克服；抑制 (初中英语单词)
- contrast [´kɔntrɑ:st] n.对比 v.使对比(照) (初中英语单词)
- princess [,prin´ses] n.公主；王妃；亲王夫人 (初中英语单词)
- therefore [´ðeəfɔ:] ad.&conj.因此；所以 (初中英语单词)
- consequence [´kɔnsikwəns] n.结果；后果；推断 (初中英语单词)
- knowing [´nəuiŋ] a.会意的，心照不宣的 (初中英语单词)
- learning [´lə:niŋ] n.学习；学问；知识 (初中英语单词)
- henceforth [´hens´fɔ:θ] ad.今后；从今以后 (初中英语单词)
- insult [in´sʌlt, ´insʌlt] n.&vt.侮辱；损害 (初中英语单词)
- endure [in´djuə] vt.忍耐，忍受；坚持 (初中英语单词)
- amount [ə´maunt] n.总数；数量 v.合计 (初中英语单词)
- delicate [´delikət] a.精美的；微妙的 (初中英语单词)
- horrible [´hɔrəbəl] a.可怕的；恐怖的 (初中英语单词)
- throat [θrəut] n.咽喉；嗓子；出入口 (初中英语单词)
- gently [´dʒentli] ad.温和地；静静地 (初中英语单词)
- constant [´kɔnstənt] a.坚定的；坚贞的 (初中英语单词)
- hidden [´hid(ə)n] hide 的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
- hearth [hɑ:θ] n.炉边；家庭(生活) (高中英语单词)
- beware [bi´weə] v.(用于祈使句)谨防 (高中英语单词)
- blunder [´blʌndə] n.&v.(犯)大错；疏忽 (高中英语单词)
- uncomfortable [ʌn´kʌmftəbəl] a.不舒服的，不自在的 (高中英语单词)
- superstition [,su:pə´stiʃən, ,sju:-] n.迷信(行为) (高中英语单词)
- horrid [´hɔrid] a.令人讨厌的；极糟的 (高中英语单词)
- hideous [´hidiəs] a.丑陋的，可怕的 (高中英语单词)
- pitiful [´pitifəl] a.可怜的；慈悲的 (高中英语单词)
- fringe [´frindʒ] n.穗；边缘；刘海 (高中英语单词)
- shudder [´ʃʌdə] n.&vi.震颤；发抖 (高中英语单词)
- wondrous [´wʌndrəs] a.极好的 ad.惊人地 (英语四级单词)
- potent [´pəutənt] a.有(势)力的；烈性的 (英语四级单词)
- flaming [´fleimiŋ] a.熊熊燃烧的；热情的 (英语四级单词)
- severity [si´veriti] n.严厉；严重；苛刻 (英语四级单词)
- gifted [´giftid] a.有天赋的，有才华的 (英语四级单词)
- perception [pə´sepʃən] n.感觉；概念；理解力 (英语四级单词)
文章标签:名著
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