英语阅读最后一周.docx

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Precious Dust
I cannot remember how I came to hear the story of Jean Chamette, the Paris dustman who earned
his living by sweeping the shops of the artisans of his quarter.
Konstantin Paustovsky
Chamette lived in a shanty on the outskirts of the city. To d escribe his neighborhood at length
would lead the reader away from the main trend of the story. I would point out, however, that to
this day the outskirts of Paris are surrounded by fortifications which, at the time this story
unfolds, teemed with birds an d were covered with honeysuckle and hawthorn. Chamette’s shanty
lay at the foot of a northern rampart, in a row with the shacks of tinkers, cobblers, garbage
pickers and beggars.
If Maupassant had shown an interest in the inhabitants of these shacks I sure he would have
written many more splendid stories. Perhaps he would have added more laurels to his immortal
crown. But outsiders rarely peered into these places — that is, except detectives, and these only
when in search of stolen goods.
His neighbors nicknamed Chamette Woodpecker, from which it may be supposed that he was a
lean, hatchet- faced fellow, perhaps with a tuft of hair, like a bird’b, protruding from under
his hat.
As a private in the army of Napoleon le Petit during the Mexican War, Jean C hamette had
known better days. He had been lucky then, too; for at Vera Cru