Plague - May 08

All else ________(降到次要的地位); that daily there were new victims counted for little ________(与...相比) that staggering fact: the weekly total showed a decrease.

Other surprises were ________(将要发生在某人身上/就要出现在某人身上) for him. About the same time there was brought to the hospital a girl whose case Rieux diagnosed as hopeless, and he had her sent immediately to the isolation ward.

One of the signs that a return to the golden age of health was secretly awaited was that our fellow citizens, careful though they were not to voice their hope, now began to talk – in, it is true, ________(若无其事的语调) – of the new order of life that would set in after the plague.

________(表示转折，尽管如此), this new development was ________(成了镇上的热门话题), and people began to nurse hopes none the less heartfelt for being ________(不便明言的).

It was as if the plague had been ________(追围堵截), and its sudden weakness lent new strength to the blunted weapons so far used against it.

Rieux remarked to Tarrou that her recovery was “against all the rules!” But in the course of the next week four similar cases ________(引起了他的注意)

But in reality behind these mild aspirations lurked wild, extravagant hopes, and often one of us, becoming aware of this, would hastily add that, even ________(从最乐观的角度看), you couldn’t expect the plague to stop from one day to another.

And in frost-cleansed air the epidemic seemed to lose its virulence, and in each of three consecutive weeks a big drop in the ________(死亡名册) was announced.

Thus over a relatively brief period the disease lost practically all the ________(增加) piled up over many months.

Only at rare moments did the disease ________(振作起来) and make as it were a blind and fatal leap at three of four patients whose recovery had been expected—a truly ill-starred few, killed off when ________(希望处于最大).