Chapter 4 Discovering a great secret 第4章 发现“天机”

Mary Shelley

阅读本章节，请思考：“我”起初的工作状态如何？“我”从事的工作与什么有关？“我”发现了一个什么重大秘密？

After two years I had discovered many things and I built a scientific machine that was better than anything in the university. My machine would help me answer the most important question of all. How does life begin？ Is it possible to put life into dead things？ To answer these questions about life I had to learn first about death. I had to watch bodies from the moment when they died and the warm life left them. In the hospital and in the university， I watched the dying and the dead. Day after day， month after month， I followed death. It was a dark and terrible time.

Then one day， the answer came to me. Suddenly I was sure that I knew the secret of life. I knew that I could put life into a body that was not alive.

I worked harder and harder now. I slept for only a short time each night， and I did not eat much food. I wrote to my family less often. But they loved me and did not stop writing to me. They said they understood how busy I was. They did not want me to stop work to write or to see them. They would wait until I had more time. They hoped to see me very soon.

The professors realized that I was doing very important work， and so they gave me my own laboratory. There was a small flat above the laboratory， where I lived， and sometimes I stayed inside the building for a week and did not go out.

Above the laboratory I built a very tall mast（桅桿）. It was 150 metres high， and higher than the tallest building in the city. The mast could catch lightning and could send the electricity down to my machine in the laboratory. I had never forgotten the lightning that had destroyed the tree. There had been so much power in the electricity of that lightning. I believed I could use that electricity to give life to things that were dead.

I will say no more than that. The secret of my machine must die with me. I was a very clever scientist， but I did not realize then what a terrible mistake I was making.

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What secret did I discover in this chapter？（no more than 11 words）