听力文本

When we eat our meals we almost always do so indoors, where we can see no one else and no one else can see us. Butthe French often eat outof- doors, on the sidewalk or overlooking the sidewalk, where they can see every one and every one can see them, and that’s where many of their most famous restaurants are placed.

The French drink a great deal of wine with their meals, much as we drink milk or coffee or tea, and there are manygreat farms in different parts of France where they raise grapes from which they make the wine. These farms are vineyards—called “vinyards.”

Cloth is made out of several things—linen, cotton, wool, and silk; linen, cotton, and wool are chiefly for use,but silk is chiefly for beauty. In Ireland cloth is made out of linen, in England cloth is made out of cotton and wool, but in France cloth is made out of silk for beauty’s sake. Linen and cotton are made from plants, woolis made from sheep, but silk is made from a little caterpillar. We call this caterpillar a silkworm, but he is not really a worm at all. A worm is born, lives, and dies always a worm, but a caterpillar turns into a beautifulmoth or butterfly if let alone. Most caterpillars, however, we try to kill, for they eat the leaves of trees and other green things. But silkworms are so valuable that people feed them leaves and raise them as our farmersraise chickens. The silk caterpillar likes a special kind of leaf—the leaves of the mulberry-tree. So in the valley of a river in France called the Rh渀攀 the French people grow mulberry-trees—not for the mulberries butfor the leaves, which they gather and feed to the silkworms.

After the silk caterpillar has eaten, he spins a fine thread of silk almost a quarter of a mile long out of his ownbody, as a spider spins a spider web out of his own body. The silk caterpillar winds himself up in this thread as he spins it round and round and round until he is completely covered up and looks in his cover of silk threadsomething like a peanut. Then he goes to sleep inside, and if he waked up he would come out a moth; but they don’t let him wake up. They boil him while he is asleep, till he is soft, and then they un wind the thread whichhe has wound round himself and use it to make silk cloth, silk stockings, silk ribbons, and all the silk things that women love. On the River Rh渀攀 is the greatest place in Europe for making silk. It is called Lyons.

参考译文

我们就餐几乎总在室内，我们看不到别人，别人也看不到我们。但法国人经常在户外就餐，要么就在人行道上，要么在俯瞰人行道的地方，就餐的人能看到周围的人，周围的人也能看到他们，法国许多最著名的餐馆正是位于这样的地方。

法国人吃饭时喝很多葡萄酒，就像我们喝牛奶、咖啡或茶一样，在法国各地有很多种植葡萄的大农场，人们用葡萄酿造葡萄酒。这些农场叫做葡萄园。

布可以用好几种材料制成——亚麻、棉花、羊毛和蚕丝；亚麻、棉花和羊毛做的布比较实用，但蚕丝做的布主要适用于装饰。在爱尔兰布是用亚麻做的，在英国布是用棉花和羊毛做的，但在法国，为了美观的目的，布是用蚕丝做的。亚麻和棉花都从植物中获得，羊毛来自绵羊，但蚕丝取自一种小毛虫。我们把这种小毛虫叫做蚕，但它并不是真正的虫子。虫子从出生、长大到死始终是个虫子，但是如果让毛虫自然生长，它就会蜕变成一只美丽的飞蛾或者蝴蝶。然而，我们会设法把大多数的毛虫都消灭掉，因为它们吃树叶和其他绿色植物。但是蚕非常宝贵，人们喂树叶给它们吃，照料它们，就像农民养鸡一样。蚕幼虫喜欢一种特殊的树叶——桑树叶。法国一条河，叫罗讷河，在罗讷河山谷，法国人专门种植桑树——不是为了桑葚而是为了桑叶，他们用采摘来的桑叶养蚕。

当蚕幼虫吃了桑叶后，就像蜘蛛从自己体内吐出丝，织网一样，从自己的体内吐出一根很细的丝线，几乎有四分之一英里那么长。蚕幼虫一圈一圈又一圈吐丝的时候，也就把它自己缠绕在丝线里面，直到自己完全被裹住，形成的蚕茧看起来有点像个花生。然后它就在里面开始睡觉了，一觉醒过来，它就会变成一只蛾子，破茧而出；但人们不让它醒过来，在它还在熟睡的时候就把茧放到水里煮，直到变软，然后把缠绕在它身上的丝线解开，用蚕丝做成丝绸、丝袜、丝带以及所有女人喜欢的丝制品。在罗讷河上有一个欧洲最大的丝绸产地，叫做里昂。