日语
韩语
法语
德语
西班牙语
意大利语
阿拉伯语
葡萄牙语
越南语
俄语
芬兰语
泰语
CHAPTER I
The time of my end approaches. I have lately been subject to attacks
of angina pectoris; and in the ordinary course of things, my physician tells
me, I may fairly hope that my life will not be protracted many months.
Unless, then, I am cursed with an exceptional physical constitution, as I
am cursed with an exceptional mental character, I shall not much longer
groan under the wearisome burthen of this earthly existence. If it were to
be otherwise--if I were to live on to the age most men desire and provide
for--I should for once have known whether the miseries of delusive
expectation can outweigh the miseries of true provision. For I foresee
when I shall die, and everything that will happen in my last moments.
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, longing to die, weary of
incessant insight and foresight, without delusions 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 contraction will begin at my chest. I shall only
have time to reach the bell, and pull it violently, before the sense of
suffocation will come. No one will answer my bell. I know why. My
two servants are lovers, and will have quarrelled. My housekeeper 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 pebbly brook at the
bottom of the rookery, the fresh scent after the rain, the light of the
morning through my chamber-window, the warmth of the hearth after the
frosty air--will darkness close over them for ever?
The time of my end approaches. I have lately been subject to attacks
of angina pectoris; and in the ordinary course of things, my physician tells
me, I may fairly hope that my life will not be protracted many months.
Unless, then, I am cursed with an exceptional physical constitution, as I
am cursed with an exceptional mental character, I shall not much longer
groan under the wearisome burthen of this earthly existence. If it were to
be otherwise--if I were to live on to the age most men desire and provide
for--I should for once have known whether the miseries of delusive
expectation can outweigh the miseries of true provision. For I foresee
when I shall die, and everything that will happen in my last moments.
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, longing to die, weary of
incessant insight and foresight, without delusions 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 contraction will begin at my chest. I shall only
have time to reach the bell, and pull it violently, before the sense of
suffocation will come. No one will answer my bell. I know why. My
two servants are lovers, and will have quarrelled. My housekeeper 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 pebbly brook at the
bottom of the rookery, the fresh scent after the rain, the light of the
morning through my chamber-window, the warmth of the hearth after the
frosty air--will darkness close over them for ever?
