Plague - Mar 03

Indeed, it needed several days for us to realize that we were completely ________(被逼入绝境/困住); that words like “special arrangements,” “favor,” and “priority” had lost all effective meaning.

The Prefect sent instructions to Rieux, through Richard, asking him to draw up a ________(备忘录) to be transmitted for orders to the central administration of the colony. Rieux included in it a clinical diagnosis and statistics of the epidemic.

Thousands of roses wilted in the flower-vender’s baskets in the marketplaces and along the streets, and the air was ________(充满/满载) their cloying perfume.

Moreover, the epidemic seemed to be ________(正在减弱).

And since, ________(实际上), the phrases one can use in a telegram are quickly ________(用尽/用完), long lives passed side by side, or passionate yearnings, soon declined to the exchange of such trite formulas as: “Am well. Always thinking of you. Love.”

Thus, for example, a feeling normally as individual as the ache of separation from those one loves suddenly became a feeling in which all shared alike and—together with fear—the greatest affliction of the long period of exile that ________(即将来临).

Later on, when these same sentries had had ________(事态的严重性) ________(灌输到他们体内), they flatly refused to take responsibilities whose possible after-effects they could not foresee.

The telegram ________(写道): Proclaim a state of plague stop close the town.

So we had to ________(退到/求助于) telegrams. People linked together by friendship, affection, or physical love found themselves reduced to hunting for tokens of their past communion ________(在...的范围内) a ten-word telegram.

In the evening the usual crowd ________(涌上街头) and the lines lengthened outside the picture-houses. Moreover, the epidemic seemed to be on the wane; on some days only ten or so deaths were notified.

Cottard ________(仍然过着他那散漫的生活), and M. Othon, the magistrate, continued to parade his menagerie.