【英文原著类】adieu(告别).pdf

ADIEU
by HONORE DE BALZAC
CHAPTER I
AN OLD MONASTERY
"Come, deputy of the Centre, forward! Quick step! march! if we want
to be in time to dine with the others. Jump, marquis! there, that's right!
why, you can skip across a stubble-field like a deer!"
These words were said by a huntsman peacefully seated at the edge of
the forest of Ile-Adam, who was finishing an Havana cigar while waiting
for panion, who had lost his way in the tangled underbrush of the
wood. At his side four panting dogs were watching, as he did, the
personage he addressed. To understand how sarcastic were these
exhortations, repeated at intervals, we should state that the approaching
huntsman was a stout little man whose protuberant stomach was the
evidence of a truly ministerial "embonpoint." He was struggling painfully
across the furrows of a vast wheat-field recently harvested, the stubble of
which considerably impeded him; while to add to his other miseries the
sun's rays, striking obliquely on his face, collected an abundance of drops
of perspiration. Absorbed in the effort to maintain his equilibrium, he
leaned, now forward, now back, in close imitation of the pitching of a
carriage when violently jolted. The weather looked threatening. Though
several spaces of blue sky still parted the thick black clouds toward the
horizon, a flock of fleecy vapors were advancing with great rapidity and
drawing a light gray curtain from east to west. As the wind was acting
only on the upper region of the air, the atmosphere below it pressed down
the hot vapors of the earth. Surrounded by masses of tall trees, the valley
through which the hunter struggled felt like a furnace. Parched and silent,
the forest seemed thirsty. The birds, even the insects, were voiceless; the
tree-tops scarcely waved. Those persons who may still remember the
summer of 1819 can imagine the woes of the poor deputy, who was
struggling along, drenched in sweat, to regain his mocking friend. The
latter