Plague - Feb 23

Ten thousand dead ________(等于/合计为) about five times the audience in a biggish cinema.

But, again, in the Canton epidemic there was no reliable way of counting up the rats. A very rough estimate was all that could be made, with, obviously, ________(很容易出差错).

He ________(让自己停止) sharply. He was letting his imagination ________(恶作剧，引申为任凭自己天马行空地想象)—the last thing wanted just now. A few cases, he told himself, don’t make an epidemic; they merely call for serious precautions.

And, gazing in the direction of the bay, Dr. Rieux ________(使回忆起某事) the plague-fires of which Lucremoutius tells, which the Anthenians kindled on the seashore.

Rieux ________(重新振作起来).

And since a dead man ________(无足轻重) unless one has actually seen him dead, a hundred million corposes broadcast through history are no more than ________(一缕青烟) in the imagination.

Yes, in conclusion, the patient’s life ________(命悬一线), and three people out of four (he remembered the exact figures) were too impatient not to make the very slight movement that ________(啪地一声折断).

The doctor was still looking out of the window. Beyond it lay ________(凉爽的春天天空的宁静光辉); inside the room a word was echoing still, the word “plague.”

Only the sea, murmurous behind the dingy checkerboard of houses, ________(述说着) the unrest, the precariousness, of all things in this world.

But these extravagant forebodings dwindled in the light of reason. True, the word “plague” had been uttered; true, at this very moment one or two victims were being seized and ________(倒下/平卧) by the disease.

Then the plague would come to an end, because it was unthinkable, or, rather, because one ________(在误导人的基础上进行思考).

There lay certitude; there, in the daily round. All the rest hung on mere threads and trivial contingencies; you couldn’t waste your time on it. The thing was to do your job as it should be done.