【英文原著类】THE RECRUIT(新兵).pdf

THE RECRUIT
THE RECRUIT
BY HONORE DE BALZAC
Translated By Katharine Prescott Wormeley
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THE RECRUIT
DEDICATION
To my dear Albert Marchand de la Ribellerie.
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THE RECRUIT
THE RECRUIT
At times they saw him, by a phenomenon of vision or otion,
abolish space in its two forms of Time and Distance; the former being
intellectual space, the other physical space.
Intellectual History of Louis Lambert.
On an evening in the month of November, 1793, the principal persons
of Carentan were assembled in the salon of Madame de Dey, where they
met daily. Several circumstances which would never have attracted
attention in a large town, though they greatly upied the little one,
gave to this habitual rendezvous an unusual interest. For the two preceding
evenings Madame de Dey had closed her doors to the pany, on
the ground that she was ill. Such an event would, in ordinary times, have
produced as much effect as the closing of the theatres in Paris; life under
those circumstances seems merely plete. But in 1793, Madame de
Dey's action was likely to have fatal results. The slightest departure from a
usual custom became, almost invariably for the nobles, a matter of life or
death. To fully understand the eager curiosity and searching inquiry which
animated on this occasion the Norman countenances of all these rejected
visitors, but more especially to enter into Madame de Dey's secret
anxieties, it is necessary to explain the role she played at Carentan. The
critical position in which she stood at this moment being that of many
others during the Revolution the sympathies and recollections of more
than one reader will help to give color to this narrative.
Madame de Dey, widow of a lieutenant-general, chevalier of the
Orders, had left the court at the time of the emigration. Possessing a good
deal of property in the neighborhood of Carentan, she took refuge in that
town, hoping that the influence of the Terror would be little felt there. This
ex