Plague - Mar 28

Besides the comforts sent by air or overland, compassionate or admiring comments were lavished on the henceforth isolated town, by way of newspaper articles or broadcast talks. And invariably their epical or prize-speech verbiage ________(使感到不快/使吃惊) the doctor.

Rambert fought to prevent the plague from ________(打败/胜过) him.

Once assured that there was no way of getting out of the town by lawful methods, he decided, as he told Rieux, to have recourse to others. He began by ________(试探[某人的意见或感受]) café waiters.

The truth was that Cottard, who had been beginning to ________(入不敷出), was now involved in smuggling ventures concerned with ________(配给物品). Selling contraband cigarettes and inferior liquor at steadily rising prices, he was on the way to ________(发一笔小财).

On that day he and Rieux had been talking again about his unsuccessful efforts to interest the authorities in his case, and Cottard heard ________(尾声/末尾) of the conversation.

Some days later Cottard met him in the street and greeted him with the ________(非常友好地) manner that he now used on all occasions.

“It’s no good counting on the ________(繁文缛节/官僚习气) merchants. They couldn’t understand if they tried.”

And, as it so happens, what has yet to be recorded before coming to the ________(顶点/高潮), during the period when the plague was ________(聚集全部力量) to ________(猛扑整座市镇) and ________(将它完全摧毁), is the long, heartrendingly monotonous struggle put up by some obstinate people like Rambert to recover their lost happiness and to balk the plague of that part of themselves which they were ready to defend ________([英勇战斗]到最后).

In one of the cafés he visited he was actually taken for a stoolpigeon and curtly ________(被打发去办事). It was not until he happened to meet Cottard at Rieux’s place that he made a little headway.