The Da Vinci Code《达．芬奇密码》（精讲之三）

Sophie: Unscrambled.

Robert: It’s your key.

Sophie: Funny, I don't even like history. I’ve never seen much good come from looking to the past.

Robert: Moment of truth. My God. I don't believe this. A rose. The rose was a symbol for the Holy Grail.

Andre Vernet: Forgive the intrusion. I’m afraid the police arrived more quickly than I anticipated. You must follow me, please. For your own safety.

Sophie: You knew they were coming?

Andre Vernet: My guard alerted me to your status when you arrived. Yours is one of our oldest and highest-level accounts. It includes a safe-passage clause.

Robert: Safe passage?

Andre Vernet: If you would step inside, please. Time is of the essence.

Robert: In there?

Andre Vernet: Hey, is there a problem?

Fache: (French) Good evening, sir. Police.

Andre Vernet: (French) I just drive from here to Zurich. Not French, English?

Fache: English?

Andre Vernet: Yes.

Fache: OK. We are looking for two criminals.

Andre Vernet: You came to the right place. They're all criminals here.

Fache: Would you mind opening the hold?

Andre Vernet: Please. You think they trust us, the wages I get paid?

Fache: You don't have keys to your own truck?

Andre Vernet: It’s armored. Keys get sent to the destination. You mind? I’m on a schedule here.

Fache: And do all the drivers wear a Rolex?

Andre Vernet: What? This piece of shit. Forty euros in Barbes. Yours for 35.

Fache: No, no, no.

Andre Vernet: Thirty.

Fache: It’s okay, it's okay.

Andre Vernet: Come on, 30, eh?

Fache: I said, no! Move along!

妙语佳句，活学活用

1. How might I recover it?

“我怎样才能找回（密码）？”Recover 有“恢复，收回，取回”的意思，下次当你想说“我怎么能找回……”时不妨试试这句话。

2. Moment of truth

这个片语的意思是“A critical or decisive time, at which one is put to the ultimate test关键性或决定性的时刻”，例如：Now that all the bills are in, we've come to the moment of truth--can we afford to live here or not?

这个表达法来自于西班牙斗牛，本来指的斗牛士杀死公牛的时刻。后来海明威将它用在写作中，逐渐传播开来。

3. Alert to

Alert 作动词有“警告”的意思，当要“警告某人某事”的时候，通常和to 连用，例如：

The doctor alerted me to the dangers of smoking.

4. Piece of Shit

Shit 是个不可数名词，所以通常都是说 a piece of shit 或者 a pile of shit。因为 shit 通常都是废物，没用的东西（其实可以用作肥料的），所以，piece of shit 也常常用来表示“废物，废人，贱人”等等，例如：He's a piece of shit.

如果要另外加上形容词修饰the piece of shit的话，就要加在piece前面：He's a useless piece of shit. 他是个没用的废人。

5. Move along

这个动词短语表示的是“向前移动”的意思，用在祈使语气中，有命令的意味，例如我们常在战争片中听到军官们喊“Move along”，差不多就是“走，行动”的意思。

文化面面观

Holy Grail —— 迷样圣杯

了解一些英美文学的人对“圣杯”都不陌生。《圣经》里提到过它，亚瑟王的传说中也有它。围绕圣杯，有许多的谜团和传说，为它披上神秘的外衣。

A portion of the Arthurian cycle of romance, of late origin, embodying a number of tales dealing with the search for a certain vessel of great sanctity called the "Grail" or "Graal." Versions of the story are numerous, the most celebrated of them being the Conte del Graal, the Grand St. Graal, Sir Percyvalle, Quete del St. Graal, and Guyot, but there are also many others. These overlap in many respects, but the standard form of the story may perhaps be found in the Grand St. Graal, one of the latest versions, which dates from the thirteenth century.

It tells how Joseph of Arimathea employed a dish used at the Last Supper to catch the blood of the Redeemer, which flowed from his body before his burial. The wanderings of Joseph are then described. He leads a band to Britain, where he is cast into prison, but is delivered by Evelach or Mordrains, who is instructed by Christ to assist him. Mordrains builds a monastery where the Grail is housed. Brons, Joseph's brother-in-law, has a son Alain, who is appointed guardian of the Grail. Alain, having caught a great fish with which he feeds the entire household, is called "the Rich Fisher," which becomes the perpetual title of the Grail keepers. Alain places the Grail in the castle of Corbenic and in time, various knights of King Arthur's court come in quest of the holy vessel. Only the purest of the pure could approach it, and in due time the knight Percival manages to see the marvel.

It is probable that the idea of the Grail originated with early medieval legends of the quest for talismans that conferred great boons upon the finder, for example, the shoes of swiftness, the cloak of invisibility, and the ring of Gyges, and that these stories were interpreted in the light and spirit of medieval Christianity and mysticism.

The legends may be divided into two classes: those that are connected with the quest for certain talismans, of which the Grail is only one, and that deal with the personality of the hero who achieves the quest; and second, those that deal with the nature and history of the talismans.

The Damsel of the Sanct Grael by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

A great deal of controversy has raged around the possible Eastern origin of the Grail legend. Much erudition has been employed to show that Guyot, a Provençal poet who flourished in the middle of the twelfth century, found at Toledo, Spain, an Arabian book by an astrologer, Flegitanis, which contained the Grail story. But the name "Flegitanis" can by no means be an Arabian proper name. It could be the Persian felekedâneh, a combined word which signifies "astrology," and in that case it would be the title of an astrological work. Some believed the legend originated in the mind of Guyot himself, but this conclusion was strongly opposed by the folklorist Alfred Nutt. There is, however, some reason to believe that the story might have been brought from the East by the Knights Templar.

The Grail legend has often been held by various ecclesiastical apologists to support theories that either the Church of England or the Roman Catholic Church has existed since the foundation of the world. From early Christian times the genealogy of these churches has been traced back through the patriarchs to numerous apocryphal persons, although it is not stated whether the religions possessed hierophants in neolithic and paleolithic times, or just how they originated. Such theories, which would logically identify Christianity with the grossest forms of paganism, are confined only to a small group.

The Grail legend was readily embraced by those who saw in it a link between Palestine and England and an argument for the special separate foundation of the Anglican Church by direct emissaries from the Holy Land. Glastonbury was fixed as the headquarters of the Grail immigrants, and the finding of a glass dish in the vicinity of the cathedral there some years ago was held to be confirmation of the story by many of the faithful. The exact date of this vessel was not definitely estimated, but there seemed little reason to suppose that it was more than a few hundred years old.

A new conspiratorial interpretation of the Grail legend is offered in the book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (1982), by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln. Their speculation involves suggestions that Jesus did not die on the Cross, but married and had children. His wife, they postulate, fled to the south of France with her family, taking with her the "Royal and Real Blood," the "Sang-real" or Grail of medieval romance. This line will supposedly culminate in a second Messiah, all this being the secret of an order named the Prieure de Sion. Apparently the investigation of this amazing story began with the mystery of Berenger Sauniere, a parish priest at Rennes-le-Château in the Pyrenees, who seemed to have discovered a secret that gave him access to a vast sum of money before his death, under mysterious circumstances, in 1917. That secret involved the history of Rennes-le-Château and its association with the Templars, the Cathars, and the royal bloodline of the Merovingian dynasty. The story has too many jumps in history and logic to ever be researched, and only time will show whether its major claims can be independently substantiated.

Patricia and Lionel Fanthorpe refute the theory of Baigent, Leigh, and Lincoln in their 1982 book The Holy Grail Revealed: The Real Secret of Rennes-le-Château.

考考你

用今日所学将下面的句子译成英语。

1. 我怎样才能找回丢失的钱呢？

2. 警察警告我有危险。

3. 现在到了关键时刻：我们是走还是留？

The Da Vinci Code《达．芬奇密码》（精讲之二）考考你 参考答案

1. Apparently, it was his dying wish that we meet. If you help me understand why, I will get you to your embassy, where we cannot arrest you.

显然，让我们见面，这是他生前的愿望。如果你能帮我搞清楚他的死，我就把你送到你们国家的大使馆，这样我们就不能逮捕你了。

2. Fache was never gonna let me just stroll out of here, was he?

Fache 永远也不会让我从这里溜达出去的，对吧？