風中燭 A Candle in the Wind
逐句解 Line by line
"Of three parts of the people, two have starved to death, and the part remaining is like a candle in the wind.
停 is used here as a counter for portions or fractions — three parts, of which two are gone. 風中燭, a candle in the wind, is a stock image for a life about to go out, and one that survived into modern Chinese unchanged. English arrived independently at the same picture, which is why it needs no explaining at all.
"This humble officer put out a notice seeking worthy men far and wide, and by good fortune true monks have come to my country.
真僧, true monks, is a considerable compliment — it distinguishes the genuine article from the freelance rainmakers a notice like this would usually attract. He has known them for one meal.
"If you would grant us but a cùn of rain and relieve the common people, I will gladly offer a thousand in gold to repay so deep a kindness!"
寸 is a cùn, about three centimetres — the smallest length worth naming, used here to mean even the least amount you could manage. 黎民 is the common people, literally the black-haired multitude, an ancient and rather grand way of saying everybody else.
Two thirds of the population dead. The prefect says it in the middle of a poem, in a fixed proportional formula, and then reaches for a candle guttering in a draught to describe the survivors.
Then, having said that, he offers a thousand in gold. The same figure as the notice, and by now it sounds different — not because the sum has changed but because we have just heard what it is supposed to buy. He is a decent man reaching for the only instrument of exchange he understands.
Pilgrim's answer, in the very next passage, is going to take that instrument away from him. It is the turn on which the chapter is built, and the novel has spent this entire lament setting it up.