Plague - May 03

Needless to say, I knew that we, too, ________(有时), ________(裁决死刑).

I learned that I had ________(促成了某件事) the deaths of thousands of people; that I’d even brought about their deaths by approving of acts and principles which could only end that way.

But I was different; what I’d come to know struck in my ________(喉咙).

I ________(与...共事/联手/合作) a group of people I then liked, and indeed have never ceased to like.

That also was true ________(某种程度上) – and maybe I’m not capable of standing fast where that order of truths is concerned.

It seems to me that history has ________(证实我的想法); today there’s a sort of competition who will kill the most.

“I tried all sorts of jobs, and I didn’t do too badly. But my real interest in life was the death penalty; I wanted to ________(跟某人算账) that poor blind owl in the dock. So I became an agitator, as they say.

The result is that you’ve gleaned your ideas about it from books and pictures. A ________(绑在柱子上的), a blindfolded man, some soilders ________(在附近). But the real thing isn’t a bit like that.

Do you know that, ________(在这么近的距离), the soilders concentrate their fire on the region of the heart and their bullets make a hole into which you could thrust your fist?

Really it would be shockingly ________(一种不好的体验) to linger on such details, that’s common knowledge.

To which they retorted that the surest way of ________(认同/遵守/服从法律条文/规章制度) of the red robes was to leave to them the monopoly of the death penalty.

“I’ve had to ________(细想/回忆/长时间思考) my start in life, since for me it really was the start of everything. I’ll get on more quickly now. I came to grips with poverty when I was eighteen, after an easy life till then.

“Have you ever seen a man shot by a firing-squad? No, of course not; the spectators are ________(精选的/用手挑选的) and it’s like a private party, you need an invitation. The result is that you’ve gleaned your ideas about it from books and pictures.