🔊 Adam Verver, at Fawns, that autumn Sunday, might have been observed to open the door of the billiard-room with a certain freedom-might have been observed, that is, had there been a spectator in the field. The justification of the push he had applied, however, and of the push, equally sharp, that, to shut himself in, he again applied-the ground of this energy was precisely that he might here, however briefly, find himself alone, alone with the handful of letters, newspapers and other unopened missives, to which, during and since breakfast, he had lacked opportunity to give an eye. The vast, square, clean apartment was empty, and its large clear windows looked out into spaces of terrace and garden, of park and woodland and shining artificial lake, of richly-condensed horizon, all dark blue upland and church-towered village and strong cloudshadow, which were, together, a thing to create the sense, with everyone else at church, of one’s having the world to one’s self. We share this world, none the less, for the hour, with Mr. Verver; the very fact of his striking, as he would have said, for solitude, the fact of his quiet flight, almost on tiptoe, through tortuous corridors, investing him with an interest that makes our attention-tender indeed almost to compassion-qualify his achieved isolation. For it may immediately be mentioned that this amiable man bethought himself of his personal advantage, in general, only when it might appear to him that other advantages, those of other persons, had successfully put in their claim. It may be mentioned also that he always figured other persons-such was the law of his nature-as a numerous array, and that, though conscious of but a single near tie, one affection, one duty deepest-rooted in his life, it had never, for many minutes together, been his portion not to feel himself surrounded and committed, never quite been his refreshment to make out where the many-coloured human appeal, represented by gradations of tint, diminishing concentric zones of intensity, of importunity, really faded to the blessed impersonal whiteness for which his vision sometimes ached. It shaded off, the appeal-he would have admitted that; but he had as yet noted no point at which it positively stopped.

那年秋日的星期天,在福恩斯,或许有人注意到亚当·弗维尔以一种相当随意的姿态推开了台球室的门--当然,前提是当时那院子里得有个旁观者。然而,他施加的那一推,以及为了把自己关在里面而同样用力地再推一下,其正当理由恰恰在于:他或许可以在此处,哪怕片刻,独处一会儿,独自面对那一叠早餐期间及之后一直无暇过目的信件、报纸和其他未启封的邮件。这间宽敞、方正、整洁的房间空无一人,它那大而明亮的窗户望出去,是露台与花园、公园与林地、闪闪发光的人工湖,以及色彩浓郁的天际线--全是深蓝的高地、教堂尖塔的村庄、厚重的云影--这些共同营造出一种感觉,仿佛其他所有人都去了教堂,自己拥有整个世界。然而,在这个时辰,我们仍与弗维尔先生共享这个世界；恰恰是他那追求孤独的举动（用他自己的话说）,他那近乎踮着脚尖穿过曲折走廊的悄然逃离,赋予他一种趣味,使我们的关注--几近温柔,甚至怜悯--为他的独处增添色彩。因为可以立刻提及的是,这位和蔼可亲的人通常只有在意识到他人的利益--那些他人的利益--已经成功提出要求时,才会想到自己的个人好处。还可以提及的是,他总把他人（这是他天性的法则）想象为一个庞大的阵列,尽管他意识到自己只有一条亲近的纽带、一份感情、一种根植于生命最深处的义务,但鲜有哪个短暂的时刻他不感到被包围和牵累,也极少能享受到那种清爽:辨明那多彩的人性诉求--以色调的渐变、强度与紧迫性递减的同心圆来呈现--究竟在哪里真正褪去为那他所渴望的、有福的、无个性的空白。这诉求逐渐淡出--他会承认这一点；但至今他尚未注意到它在何处完全停止。

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spectator /spɛkˈteɪtər/

n. 观众；旁观者➕

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opportunity /ˌɒpəˈtjuːnɪti/

n. 机会➕

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compassion /kəmˈpæʃən/

n. 同情；怜悯➕

🔊 Thus had grown in him a little habit-his innermost secret, not confided even to Maggie, though he felt she understood it, as she understood, to his view, everything-thus had shaped itself the innocent trick of occasionally making believe that he had no conscience, or at least that blankness, in the field of duty, did reign for an hour; a small game to which the few persons near enough to have caught him playing it, and of whom Mrs. Assingham, for instance, was one, attached indulgently that idea of quaintness, quite in fact that charm of the pathetic, involved in the preservation by an adult of one of childhood’s toys. When he took a rare moment “off,” he did so with the touching, confessing eyes of a man of forty-seven caught in the act of handling a relic of infancy-sticking on the head of a broken soldier or trying the lock of a wooden gun. It was essentially, in him, the imitation of depravity-which, for amusement, as might have been, he practised “keeping up.” In spite of practice he was still imperfect, for these so artlessly-artful interludes were condemned, by the nature of the case, to brevity. He had fatally stamped himself-it was his own fault-a man who could be interrupted with impunity. The greatest of wonders, moreover, was exactly in this, that so interrupted a man should ever have got, as the phrase was, should above all have got so early, to where he was. It argued a special genius; he was clearly a case of that. The spark of fire, the point of light, sat somewhere in his inward vagueness as a lamp before a shrine twinkles in the dark perspective of a church; and while youth and early middle-age, while the stiff American breeze of example and opportunity were blowing upon it hard, had made of the chamber of his brain a strange workshop of fortune. This establishment, mysterious and almost anonymous, the windows of which, at hours of highest pressure, never seemed, for starers and wonderers, perceptibly to glow, must in fact have been during certain years the scene of an unprecedented, a miraculous white-heat, the receipt for producing which it was practically felt that the master of the forge could not have communicated even with the best intentions.

于是他心中养成了一种小习惯--他内心深处最隐秘的秘密,甚至连玛吉都不曾透露,尽管他觉得她理解这一点,正如在他看来她理解一切--于是便形成了那个天真的小把戏:偶尔假装自己没有良心,或者至少假装在责任领域里,空白确实统治了一个小时；这是一种小游戏,少数几个足够接近曾撞见他玩这游戏的人（比如阿辛厄姆太太便是其中之一）纵容地赋予了它古怪的想法,实际上还带有一丝悲怆的魅力,那是一个成年人保留了一件童年玩具所蕴含的东西。当他难得地“休息”片刻时,他带着一种令人感动的、坦白眼神,就像一个四十七岁的男人被当场抓住在摆弄一件婴儿时期的遗物--给一个断腿的士兵粘上脑袋,或者试着打开一把木枪的锁。本质上,这是一种对堕落的模仿--他为了取乐,可能一直在“坚持”练习。尽管练习,他仍然不完美,因为这些看似天真却实为巧妙的插曲,由于事情的性质,注定是短暂的。他已经注定留下了印记--这是他自己的错--他是个可以随意被打断的人。此外,最大的奇迹恰恰在于:这样一个经常被打断的人,居然能--用俗话说--尤其是居然能这么早就达到他现在的地位。这需要特殊的天赋；显然他便是这样一个例子。那点火花,那点亮光,坐落在他内心的模糊之处,就像圣坛前的灯盏在教堂的幽深暗影中闪烁；而青年和中年初期,当美国那种严峻的榜样式机会之风吹拂着它时,已将他脑海中的房间变成了一座奇特的命运工坊。这个机构神秘而近乎无名,即使在压力最大的时刻,它的窗户也从未让旁观者和好奇者察觉到明显的光芒,但在某些年里,这里必定是前所未有的、奇迹般的白热化场所；人们实际感到,这位锻炉的主人即使出于最好的意图,也无法将其配方传授给他人。

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conscience /ˈkɒnʃəns/

n. 良心➕

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depravity /dɪˈprævɪti/

n. 堕落；邪恶➕

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genius /ˈdʒiːniəs/

n. 天才➕

🔊 The essential pulse of the flame, the very action of the cerebral temperature, brought to the highest point, yet extraordinarily contained-these facts themselves were the immensity of the result; they were one with perfection of machinery, they had constituted the kind of acquisitive power engendered and applied, the necessary triumph of all operations. A dim explanation of phenomena once vivid must at all events for the moment suffice us; it being obviously no account of the matter to throw on our friend’s amiability alone the weight of the demonstration of his economic history. Amiability, of a truth, is an aid to success; it has even been known to be the principle of large accumulations; but the link, for the mind, is none the less fatally missing between proof, on such a scale, of continuity, if of nothing more insolent, in one field, and accessibility to distraction in every other. Variety of imagination-what is that but fatal, in the world of affairs, unless so disciplined as not to be distinguished from monotony? Mr. Verver then, for a fresh, full period, a period betraying, extraordinarily, no wasted year, had been inscrutably monotonous behind an iridescent cloud. The cloud was his native envelope-the soft looseness, so to say, of his temper and tone, not directly expressive enough, no doubt, to figure an amplitude of folds, but of a quality unmistakable for sensitive feelers.

火焰的本质脉动,大脑温度的真正作用,被推至最高点却又异常克制--这些事实本身就是结果的巨大性；它们与机器的完美性融为一体,构成了所产生和应用的获取力,以及所有操作的必然胜利。无论如何,对于曾生动过的现象,一个模糊的解释此刻必须满足我们；因为把我们朋友经济历史的证明仅仅归因于他的和蔼可亲,显然不是对事情的正确说明。诚然,和蔼可亲是成功的一个辅助因素；它甚至曾被认定为巨额积累的原则；但对于心智而言,在一个领域里如此持续的证明（即使没有更傲慢的东西）,与在其它所有领域里容易分心之间,致命地缺少联系。想象的多样性--在事务世界里,除非被约束到与单调无异,否则岂不是致命的？因此,弗维尔先生在一个全新的、完整时期--一个异常地没有浪费任何年份的时期--曾在一道彩虹色的云后面,不可思议地单调。那云是他的原生外衣--可以说就是他性情和语调的柔和松散,虽然不够直接表达,不足以形成大量褶皱,但其质地对于敏锐的触觉而言是无可置疑的。

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cerebral /səˈriːbrəl/

adj. 大脑的；理智的➕

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immensity /ɪˈmɛnsɪti/

n. 巨大；无限➕

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monotony /məˈnɒtəni/

n. 单调；乏味➕

🔊 He was still reduced, in fine, to getting his rare moments with himself by feigning a cynicism. His real inability to maintain the pretence, however, had perhaps not often been better instanced than by his acceptance of the inevitable today-his acceptance of it on the arrival, at the end of a quarter-of-an hour, of that element of obligation with which he had all the while known he must reckon. A quarter-of-an hour of egoism was about as much as he, taking one situation with another, usually got. Mrs. Rance opened the door-more tentatively indeed than he himself had just done; but on the other hand, as if to make up for this, she pushed forward even more briskly on seeing him than he had been moved to do on seeing nobody. Then, with force, it came home to him that he had, definitely, a week before, established a precedent. He did her at least that justice-it was a kind of justice he was always doing someone. He had on the previous Sunday liked to stop at home, and he had exposed himself thereby to be caught in the act. To make this possible, that is, Mrs. Rance had only had to like to do the same-the trick was so easily played. It had not occurred to him to plan in any way for her absence-which would have destroyed, somehow, in principle, the propriety of his own presence. If persons under his roof hadn’t a right not to go to church, what became, for a fair mind, of his own right? His subtlest manoeuvre had been simply to change from the library to the billiard-room, it being in the library that his guest, or his daughter’s, or the guest of the Miss Lutches-he scarce knew in which light to regard her-had then, and not unnaturally, of course, joined him. It was urged on him by his memory of the duration of the visit she had that time, as it were, paid him, that the law of recurrence would already have got itself enacted. She had spent the whole morning with him, was still there, in the library, when the others came back-thanks to her having been tepid about their taking, Mr. Verver and she, a turn outside. It had been as if she looked on that as a kind of subterfuge-almost as a form of disloyalty. Yet what was it she had in mind, what did she wish to make of him beyond what she had already made, a patient, punctilious host, mindful that she had originally arrived much as a stranger, arrived not at all deliberately or yearningly invited?-so that one positively had her possible susceptibilities the more on one’s conscience. The Miss Lutches, the sisters from the middle West, were there as friends of Maggie’s, friends of the earlier time; but Mrs. Rance was there-or at least had primarily appeared-only as a friend of the Miss Lutches.

他最终仍然只能通过假装玩世不恭来获得难得的独处时刻。然而,他真正无法维持这种假装的情况,或许从未像今天这样明显--当一刻钟结束时,他接受了他一直知道必须考虑的义务元素。而论各种情况,他通常每次只得到一刻钟的自私时间。兰斯太太推开了门--她比他刚才更犹豫；但另一方面,仿佛要弥补这一点,她一看见他就比他刚才看见没人时更轻快地走了进来。然后,他强烈地意识到,在一周前,他确实建立了一个先例。他至少为她做到了公正--他总是为某人做这种公正。上周日他喜欢待在家里,结果被当场抓住。为了使这成为可能,兰斯太太只需同样喜欢呆在家里--这招很容易玩。他从未想过任何让她缺席的计划--这会在原则上破坏他自己在场的正当性。如果他屋顶下的人没有权利不去教堂,那么对他这样一个公正的人来说,他自己的权利又成什么了？他最巧妙的策略仅仅是从书房换到台球室,因为他正是在书房里,他的客人,或他女儿的客人,或卢奇姐妹的客人--他几乎不知道该如何看待她--那时,理所当然地,加入了他。他回忆起那次她待在他身边的时间长短,这促使他相信重复的法则已经自动生效。她整个上午都和他待在一起,当其他人回来时,她还在书房里--因为她对他们（弗维尔先生和她）出去转转的态度冷淡。似乎她把那看作一种借口--甚至是一种不忠。然而,她心里到底在想什么？除了她已造成的--一个耐心、一丝不苟的主人,记得她最初几乎是作为陌生人到来,并非故意或渴望地受邀--她还希望把他变成什么？因此,他更觉得有责任照顾她可能的敏感。卢奇姐妹,那对来自中西部姐妹,是玛吉的朋友,是更早时期的朋友；但兰斯太太是--或至少最初出现时--仅仅是卢奇姐妹的朋友。

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cynicism /ˈsɪnɪsɪzəm/

n. 愤世嫉俗；冷嘲热讽➕

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inevitable /ɪnˈɛvɪtəbəl/

adj. 不可避免的➕

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obligation /ˌɒblɪˈɡeɪʃən/

n. 义务；责任➕

🔊 This lady herself was not of the middle West-she rather insisted on it-but of New Jersey, Rhode Island or Delaware, one of the smallest and most intimate States: he couldn’t remember which, though she insisted too on that. It was not in him-we may say it for him-to go so far as to wonder if their group were next to be recruited by some friend of her own; and this partly because she had struck him, verily, rather as wanting to get the Miss Lutches themselves away than to extend the actual circle, and partly, as well as more essentially, because such connection as he enjoyed with the ironic question in general resided substantially less in a personal use of it than in the habit of seeing it as easy to others. He was so framed by nature as to be able to keep his inconveniences separate from his resentments; though indeed if the sum of these latter had at the most always been small, that was doubtless in some degree a consequence of the fewness of the former. His greatest inconvenience, he would have admitted, had he analyzed, was in finding it so taken for granted that, as he had money, he had force. It pressed upon him hard, and all round, assuredly, this attribution of power. Everyone had need of one’s power, whereas one’s own need, at the best, would have seemed to be but some trick for not communicating it. The effect of a reserve so merely, so meanly defensive would in most cases, beyond question, sufficiently discredit the cause; wherefore, though it was complicating to be perpetually treated as an infinite agent, the outrage was not the greatest of which a brave man might complain. Complaint, besides, was a luxury, and he dreaded the imputation of greed. The other, the constant imputation, that of being able to “do,” would have no ground if he hadn’t been, to start with-this was the point-provably luxurious. His lips, somehow, were closed-and by a spring connected moreover with the action of his eyes themselves. The latter showed him what he had done, showed him where he had come out; quite at the top of his hill of difficulty, the tall sharp spiral round which he had begun to wind his ascent at the age of twenty, and the apex of which was a platform looking down, if one would, on the kingdoms of the earth and with standing-room for but half-a-dozen others.

这位女士本人并非来自中西部--她坚持这一点--而是来自新泽西、罗德岛或特拉华,那些最小最亲密的州之一:他记不清是哪一个,尽管她也坚持这一点。他并非--我们可以代他说--会想到他们的圈子是否接下来会被她自己的某个朋友补充；这 partly 因为她给他的印象实际上是更想把卢奇姐妹自己带走,而不是扩大现有的圈子,而 partly 更本质的原因在于,他与讽刺性问题的联系,大体上不在于个人使用它,而在于习惯看到它对别人来说很容易。他天生如此,能够将他的不便与他的怨恨分开；不过,如果后者总和始终很小,那大概在某种程度上是前者数量少的后果。他最大的不便,他承认,如果他分析的话,是发现人们理所当然地认为,因为他有钱,他就有力量。这压在他身上,四面八方,这种力量的归因。每个人都需要一个人的力量,而一个人自己的需要,最好的情况下,似乎只是一种不传达它的技巧。这种仅仅、卑鄙地防御性的保留,在大多数情况下,无疑足以使理由丧失信誉；因此,虽然被永远当作一个无限代理人很复杂,但这种侮辱并非一个勇敢的人所能抱怨的最大之事。此外,抱怨是奢侈,他害怕贪婪的指责。另一种不断被指责--即能够“做事”--如果没有一开始就--这是关键--证明是奢侈的,就没有根据。他的嘴唇不知何故被封住了--而且是由一个还与他自己眼睛的活动相关联的弹簧。眼睛向他展示了他做了什么,向他展示了他达到了何处；正位于他困难之山的顶端,那又高又尖的螺旋,他二十岁时开始攀登,其顶点是一个平台,可以俯瞰（如果愿意的话）地上的万国,但只够站半打其他人。

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ironic /aɪˈrɒnɪk/

adj. 讽刺的；反讽的➕

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analyzed /ˈænəlaɪzd/

v. (过去分词). 分析➕

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discredit /dɪsˈkrɛdɪt/

v. 使怀疑；败坏名声➕

🔊 His eyes, in any case, now saw Mrs. Rance approach with an instant failure to attach to the fact any grossness of avidity of Mrs. Rance’s own-or at least to descry any triumphant use even for the luridest impression of her intensity. What was virtually supreme would be her vision of his having attempted, by his desertion of the library, to mislead her-which in point of fact barely escaped being what he had designed. It was not easy for him, in spite of accumulations fondly and funnily regarded as of systematic practice, not now to be ashamed; the one thing comparatively easy would be to gloss over his course. The billiard-room was not, at the particular crisis, either a natural or a graceful place for the nominally main occupant of so large a house to retire to-and this without prejudice, either, to the fact that his visitor wouldn’t, as he apprehended, explicitly make him a scene. Should she frankly denounce him for a sneak he would simply go to pieces; but he was, after an instant, not afraid of that. Wouldn’t she rather, as emphasising their communion, accept and in a manner exploit the anomaly, treat it perhaps as romantic or possibly even as comic?-show at least that they needn’t mind even though the vast table, draped in brown holland, thrust itself between them as an expanse of desert sand. She couldn’t cross the desert, but she could, and did, beautifully get round it; so that for him to convert it into an obstacle he would have had to cause himself, as in some childish game or unbecoming romp, to be pursued, to be genially hunted. This last was a turn he was well aware the occasion should on no account take; and there loomed before him-for the mere moment-the prospect of her fairly proposing that they should knock about the balls. That danger certainly, it struck him, he should manage in some way to deal with. Why too, for that matter, had he need of defences, material or other?-how was it a question of dangers really to be called such? The deep danger, the only one that made him, as an idea, positively turn cold, would have been the possibility of her seeking him in marriage, of her bringing up between them that terrible issue. Here, fortunately, she was powerless, it being apparently so provable against her that she had a husband in undiminished existence.

无论如何,他的眼睛现在看到兰斯太太走近,他立刻无法将任何贪婪的粗俗归因于兰斯太太本人--至少无法发现她强度的任何胜利用途,即使是最令人听闻的印象。实际上至高无上的将是她的看法:他试图通过离开书房来误导她--而这恰恰几乎正是他的意图。尽管他有趣地认为积累了系统的实践,但对他来说现在不感到羞愧并不容易；唯一相对容易的事情是掩盖他的行为。台球室在这个特定的危机时刻,对于一个名义上占据如此大房子主人的人来说,既不是一个自然也不是一个优雅的退居之所--这也不妨碍他预料到他的访客不会公开对他发火。如果她坦率地指责他卑鄙,那他就会崩溃；但片刻之后,他并不害怕这一点。她难道不会--为了强调他们的交流--接受并在某种程度上利用这种反常,或许把它视为浪漫甚至滑稽？--至少表明他们不必在意,即使宽大的桌子,盖着棕色亚麻布,像一片沙漠的沙子一样横在他们之间。她无法穿越沙漠,但她可以,而且确实巧妙地绕过了它；所以如果他要把它变成障碍,他必须像在某种儿童游戏或不体面的嬉闹中那样,被追逐,被亲切地追赶。他清楚这最后一种转折是场合绝对不应采取的；他面前隐约出现--仅仅片刻--她可能会提议他们打两杆台球的前景。他意识到,这种危险他应该设法处理。再说,他为什么需要防御,物质或其他？--这怎么能算得上是真正的危险呢？深刻的危险,唯一让他作为想法而真正感到冰冷的,是她可能向他求婚的可能性,是他们之间可能提出那个可怕的问题。幸运的是,在这方面她无能为力,因为显然可以证明她有一个仍然健在的丈夫。

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virtually /ˈvɜːtʃuəli/

adv. 几乎；实质上➕

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desertion /dɪˈzɜːʃən/

n. 抛弃；遗弃➕

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explicitly /ɪkˈsplɪsɪtli/

adv. 明确地；直接地➕

🔊 She had him, it was true, only in America, only in Texas, in Nebraska, in Arizona or somewhere-somewhere that, at old Fawns House, in the county of Kent, scarcely counted as a definite place at all; it showed somehow, from afar, as so lost, so indistinct and illusory, in the great alkali desert of cheap Divorce. She had him even in bondage, poor man, had him in contempt, had him in remembrance so imperfect as barely to assert itself, but she had him, none the less, in existence unimpeached: the Miss Lutches had seen him in the flesh-as they had appeared eager to mention; though when they were separately questioned their descriptions failed to tally. He would be at the worst, should it come to the worst, Mrs. Rance’s difficulty, and he served therefore quite enough as the stout bulwark of anyone else. This was in truth logic without a flaw, yet it gave Mr. Verver less comfort than it ought. He feared not only danger-he feared the idea of danger, or in other words feared, hauntedly, himself. It was above all as a symbol that Mrs. Rance actually rose before him-a symbol of the supreme effort that he should have sooner or later, as he felt, to make. This effort would be to say No-he lived in terror of having to. He should be proposed to at a given moment-it was only a question of time-and then he should have to do a thing that would be extremely disagreeable. He almost wished, on occasion, that he wasn’t so sure he would do it. He knew himself, however, well enough not to doubt: he knew coldly, quite bleakly, where he would, at the crisis, draw the line. It was Maggie’s marriage and Maggie’s finer happiness-happy as he had supposed her before-that had made the difference; he hadn’t in the other time, it now seemed to him, had to think of such things. They hadn’t come up for him, and it was as if she, positively, had herself kept them down. She had only been his child-which she was indeed as much as ever; but there were sides on which she had protected him as if she were more than a daughter. She had done for him more than he knew-much, and blissfully, as he always had known. If she did at present more than ever, through having what she called the change in his life to make up to him for, his situation still, all the same, kept pace with her activity-his situation being simply that there was more than ever to be done.

确实,她有他,但只在美洲,在德克萨斯,在内布拉斯加,在亚利桑那或某处--在肯特郡古老的福恩斯庄园,那地方几乎算不上一处确切的地点；从远处看,它仿佛迷失在廉价离婚的巨大碱沙漠中,模糊而虚幻。她甚至奴役着他,可怜的人,鄙视他,对他的记忆如此不完整以至于几乎难以确认,但她仍然拥有他,一个无可指责的存在:卢奇姐妹亲眼见过他本人--她们似乎急于提到；但当她们分别被询问时,描述却对不上。最坏的情况下,如果到了最坏的地步,他将成为兰斯太太的难题,因此他足够充当任何其他人的坚实壁垒。这在逻辑上无懈可击,但给弗维尔先生带来的安慰却不如应有的多。他不仅害怕危险--他害怕危险的想法,换句话说,他恐惧地害怕自己。兰斯太太实际上在他面前浮现,首先是一种象征--他感到迟早必须做出的最大努力的象征。这种努力将是说“不”--他生活在必须如此的恐惧中。在某个时刻,他会被人求婚--这只是时间问题--然后他必须做一件极其不愉快的事。他有时几乎希望,自己不那么确定会这么做。然而,他对自己足够了解,并不怀疑:他冷酷、相当凄凉地知道,在危机时刻,他会划下界限。是玛吉的婚姻和玛吉更精致的幸福--他之前认为她幸福--造成了不同；如今在他看来,在另一个时期,他不必考虑这些事情。它们没有出现在他面前,而且仿佛是她在主动将它们压制下去。她只是他的孩子--这一点她一如既往；但有些方面,她保护了他,仿佛她不止是一个女儿。她为他做的比他知道的更多--虽然他向来知道很多,而且很幸福。如果她现在比以往做得更多,因为她所谓的他生活中的变化需要补偿他,那么他的处境仍然与她的活动同步--他的处境仅仅是:有更多的事情要做。

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scarcely /ˈskɛəsli/

adv. 几乎不；几乎没有➕

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bondage /ˈbɒndɪdʒ/

n. 奴役；束缚➕

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bulwark /ˈbʊlwək/

n. 壁垒；堡垒➕

🔊 There had not yet been quite so much, on all the showing, as since their return from their twenty months in America, as since their settlement again in England, experimental though it was, and the consequent sense, now quite established for him, of a domestic air that had cleared and lightened, producing the effect, for their common personal life, of wider perspectives and large waiting spaces. It was as if his son-in-law’s presence, even from before his becoming his son-in-law, had somehow filled the scene and blocked the future-very richly and handsomely, when all was said, not at all inconveniently or in ways not to have been desired: inasmuch as though the Prince, his measure now practically taken, was still pretty much the same “big fact,” the sky had lifted, the horizon receded, the very foreground itself expanded, quite to match him, quite to keep everything in comfortable scale. At first, certainly, their decent little old-time union, Maggie’s and his own, had resembled a good deal some pleasant public square, in the heart of an old city, into which a great Palladian church, say-something with a grand architectural front-had suddenly been dropped; so that the rest of the place, the space in front, the way round, outside, to the east end, the margin of street and passage, the quantity of overarching heaven, had been temporarily compromised. Not even then, of a truth, in a manner disconcerting-given, that is, for the critical, or at least the intelligent, eye, the great style of the façade and its high place in its class. The phenomenon that had since occurred, whether originally to have been pronounced calculable or not, had not, naturally, been the miracle of a night, but had taken place so gradually, quietly, easily, that from this vantage of wide, wooded Fawns, with its eighty rooms, as they said, with its spreading park, with its acres and acres of garden and its majesty of artificial lake-though that, for a person so familiar with the “great” ones, might be rather ridiculous-no visibility of transition showed, no violence of adjustment, in retrospect, emerged. The Palladian church was always there, but the piazza took care of itself. The sun stared down in his fullness, the air circulated, and the public not less; the limit stood off, the way round was easy, the east end was as fine, in its fashion, as the west, and there were also side doors for entrance, between the two-large, monumental, ornamental, in their style-as for all proper great churches. By some such process, in fine, had the Prince, for his father-in-law, while remaining solidly a feature, ceased to be, at all ominously, a block.

从各方面来看,自从他们从美国二十个月的旅行回来,自从他们再次在英格兰定居（尽管是试验性的）,以及由此产生的、对他而言已相当确立的家庭气息--清澈而轻盈,为他们共同的个人生活带来了更广阔的视野和广阔的等待空间--以来,还没有这么多的事情。仿佛他女婿的存在,甚至在他成为他女婿之前,就已经以某种方式填满了场景,阻塞了未来--非常丰富而体面,说到底,一点也不不便,也不以不愿的方式出现:因为尽管王子（他的尺度实际上已被衡量）仍然几乎是同样的“大事实”,但天空已抬升,地平线已退后,连前景本身也已扩展,恰好与他匹配,使一切保持舒适的尺度。起初,他们那体面的老式小联盟--玛吉和他的--确实很像一座古城心脏里某个宜人的公共广场,一座巨大的帕拉第奥式教堂--比如说带有宏伟建筑正面的东西--突然被扔了进来；因此广场的其余部分:前面的空间、绕到东端的路、街道和小巷的边缘、头顶天空的数量,都暂时受到了损害。即使那时,坦白说,也并非以令人不安的方式--考虑到,即对于批评的或至少明智的眼睛,那正面的伟大风格及其在同类中的崇高地位。此后发生的现象,无论最初是否可预测,自然不是一夜之间的奇迹,而是如此逐渐、安静、容易地发生,以至于从这个广阔的、树木繁茂的福恩斯--有八十个房间,如他们所说,有广阔的公园,有大片的花园和宏伟的人工湖--尽管对于一个熟悉“大”湖的人来说,这可能相当可笑--的角度看,没有过渡的可见性,调整的剧烈性在回顾中也没有显现。帕拉第奥教堂一直存在,但广场自己照顾自己。太阳完全照耀,空气流通,公众也不少；界限退后,绕路容易,东端和西端一样好（在其风格上）,而且在两者之间还有侧门可以进入,像所有适当的大教堂一样--巨大、纪念性、装饰性。总之,通过某种这样的过程,王子,对于他的岳父来说,在保持为一个坚实特征的同时,不再是一个不祥的阻碍。

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experimental /ɪkˌspɛrɪˈmɛntl/

adj. 实验的；试验性的➕

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façade /fəˈsɑːd/

n. 正面；外表➕

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retrospect /ˈrɛtrəspɛkt/

n. 回顾；追溯➕

🔊 Mr. Verver, it may further be mentioned, had taken at no moment sufficient alarm to have kept in detail the record of his reassurance; but he would none the less not have been unable, not really have been indisposed, to impart in confidence to the right person his notion of the history of the matter. The right person-it is equally distinct-had not, for this illumination, been wanting, but had been encountered in the form of Fanny Assingham, not for the first time indeed admitted to his counsels, and who would have doubtless at present, in any case, from plenitude of interest and with equal guarantees, repeated his secret. It all came then, the great clearance, from the one prime fact that the Prince, by good fortune, hadn’t proved angular. He clung to that description of his daughter’s husband as he often did to terms and phrases, in the human, the social connection, that he had found for himself: it was his way to have times of using these constantly, as if they just then lighted the world, or his own path in it, for him-even when for some of his interlocutors they covered less ground. It was true that with Mrs. Assingham he never felt quite sure of the ground anything covered; she disputed with him so little, agreed with him so much, surrounded him with such systematic consideration, such predetermined tenderness, that it was almost-which he had once told her in irritation as if she were nursing a sick baby. He had accused her of not taking him seriously, and she had replied-as from her it couldn’t frighten him-that she took him religiously, adoringly. She had laughed again, as she had laughed before, on his producing for her that good right word about the happy issue of his connection with the Prince-with an effect the more odd perhaps as she had not contested its value. She couldn’t of course, however, be, at the best, as much in love with his discovery as he was himself. He was so much so that he fairly worked it-to his own comfort; came in fact sometimes near publicly pointing the moral of what might have occurred if friction, so to speak, had occurred. He pointed it frankly one day to the personage in question, mentioned to the Prince the particular justice he did him, was even explicit as to the danger that, in their remarkable relation, they had thus escaped. Oh, if he had been angular!-who could say what might then have happened? He spoke-and it was the way he had spoken to Mrs. Assingham too-as if he grasped the facts, without exception, for which angularity stood. It figured for him, clearly, as a final idea, a conception of the last vividness. He might have been signifying by it the sharp corners and hard edges, all the stony pointedness, the grand right geometry of his spreading Palladian church.

进一步可以提及的是,弗维尔先生从未感到足够的警觉,以至于详细记录他恢复信心的过程；但他仍然能够,也确实不反对向合适的人私下透露他对这件事历史的想法。合适的人--同样明确--并不缺乏这种启示,而是以范妮·阿辛厄姆的形式遇到了她,她确实不是第一次被接纳到他的议事中,而且现在无论如何,由于兴趣的丰富和同等的保证,大概会重复他的秘密。那么,这一切--巨大的清理--都源于一个首要事实:王子,幸运地,没有证明是有棱角的。他紧紧抓住这个对他女婿的描述,就像他经常抓住自己在人类和社会关系中发现的术语和短语一样:他的方式是在一段时间内不断使用这些词,仿佛它们刚刚为他照亮了世界,或他自己在其中的道路--即使对于他的一些对话者来说,这些词覆盖的范围较小。的确,对于阿辛厄姆太太,他从不完全确定任何东西覆盖了什么范围；她很少与他争论,非常赞同他,用这样系统的考量和预先注定的温柔包围着他,以至于几乎--他曾恼怒地告诉她--就像她在照顾一个生病的婴儿。他指责她不把他当回事,她回答说--因为从她那里,这不会吓到他--她把他当作宗教崇拜的对象。她再次笑了,就像她以前笑过一样,当他向她提出那个关于他与王子关系幸福结局的恰当词语时--效果也许更奇怪,因为她没有质疑它的价值。当然,她毕竟不能像他自己那样爱上他的发现。他如此沉浸其中,以至于他相当努力地工作--为了自己的安慰；实际上有时几乎公开指出如果摩擦（可以这么说）发生的话可能产生的教训。有一天,他向相关人物坦率地指出了这一点,向王子提到了他对他所做的特别公正,甚至明确指出了在他们非凡的关系中他们因而避免的危险。哦,如果他有棱角！--谁敢说那时会发生什么？他说话时--就像他对阿辛厄姆太太说的那样--仿佛他抓住了所有棱角所代表的事实,无一例外。显然,对他来说,棱角象征着一种终极观念,一种最后生动的概念。他可能用这个词来表示尖锐的角落和坚硬的边缘,所有石头般的尖角,他扩展的帕拉第奥教堂的宏伟正几何。

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illumination /ɪˌluːmɪˈneɪʃən/

n. 照明；启发；阐明➕

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angular /ˈæŋɡjʊlə/

adj. 有角的；尖角的➕

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friction /ˈfrɪkʃən/

n. 摩擦；冲突➕

🔊 Just so, he was insensible to no feature of the felicity of a contact that, beguilingly, almost confoundingly, was a contact but with practically yielding lines and curved surfaces. “You’re round, my boy,” he had said- “you’re all, you’re variously and inexhaustibly round, when you might, by all the chances, have been abominably square. I’m not sure, for that matter,” he had added, “that you’re not square in the general mass-whether abominably or not. The abomination isn’t a question, for you’re inveterately round-that’s what I mean-in the detail. It’s the sort of thing, in you, that one feels-or at least I do-with one’s hand. Say you had been formed, all over, in a lot of little pyramidal lozenges like that wonderful side of the Ducal Palace in Venice-so lovely in a building, but so damnable, for rubbing against, in a man, and especially in a near relation. I can see them all from here-each of them sticking out by itself-all the architectural cut diamonds that would have scratched one’s softer sides. One would have been scratched by diamonds-doubtless the neatest way if one was to be scratched at all-but one would have been more or less reduced to a hash. As it is, for living with, you’re a pure and perfect crystal. I give you my idea-I think you ought to have it-just as it has come to me.” The Prince had taken the idea, in his way, for he was well accustomed, by this time, to taking; and nothing perhaps even could more have confirmed Mr. Verver’s account of his surface than the manner in which these golden drops evenly flowed over it. They caught in no interstice, they gathered in no concavity; the uniform smoothness betrayed the dew but by showing for the moment a richer tone. The young man, in other words, unconfusedly smiled-though indeed as if assenting, from principle and habit, to more than he understood. He liked all signs that things were well, but he cared rather less why they were.

同样,他对那种接触的幸福特征并非无感,这种接触迷惑地、几乎令人困惑地,仅仅是接触实际上顺从的线条和弯曲的表面。“你是圆的,我的孩子,”他说,“你完全是、多样而无穷无尽的圆的,而根据所有可能性,你本可以是可憎的方的。就这一点来说,”他补充道,“我不确定你在整体上是不是方的--不管是不是可憎的。可憎不是问题,因为你根深蒂固地是圆的--这就是我的意思--在细节上。这是你身上的一种东西,人们能感觉到--至少我感觉到了--用手触摸。比方说,你全身都是由许多小金字塔形状的菱形构成的,就像威尼斯公爵宫那美妙的一侧--在建筑上如此可爱,但在一个人身上,尤其是近亲身上,摩擦起来却如此该死。我从这里就能看到它们--每一个都自己突出--所有建筑式的切割钻石,会划伤一个人较柔软的一面。如果一个人终究要被划伤,被钻石划伤无疑是最干净的方式--但一个人或多或少会被切成碎片。而实际上,就相处而言,你是纯粹完美的水晶。我把我的想法给你--我想你应该拥有它--就像它刚出现在我脑海里一样。”亲王以他的方式接受了这个想法,因为他此时已很习惯于接受；甚至没有比这些金色水滴均匀地流过他表面的方式更能证实弗维尔先生对他表面的描述了。它们没有卡在任何缝隙里,没有聚集在任何凹陷中；均匀的光滑只是通过暂时显示更丰富的色调来揭示露水。换句话说,年轻人毫不困惑地微笑着--尽管确实像是在原则和习惯上同意超越他理解的东西。他喜欢所有表明事情良好的迹象,但他不太关心它们为什么良好。

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insensible /ɪnˈsɛnsɪbəl/

adj. 无感觉的；未察觉的➕

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felicity /fɪˈlɪsɪti/

n. 幸福；恰当➕

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interstice /ɪnˈtɜːstɪs/

n. 空隙；裂缝➕

🔊 In regard to the people among whom he had since his marriage been living, the reasons they so frequently gave-so much oftener than he had ever heard reasons given before-remained on the whole the element by which he most differed from them; and his father-in-law and his wife were, after all, only first among the people among whom he had been living. He was never even yet sure of how, at this, that or the other point, he would strike them; they felt remarkably, so often, things he hadn’t meant, and missed not less remarkably, and not less often, things he had. He had fallen back on his general explanation-“We haven’t the same values;” by which he understood the same measure of importance. His “curves” apparently were important because they had been unexpected, or, still more, unconceived; whereas when one had always, as in his relegated old world, taken curves, and in much greater quantities too, for granted, one was no more surprised at the resulting feasibility of intercourse than one was surprised at being upstairs in a house that had a staircase. He had in fact on this occasion disposed alertly enough of the subject of Mr. Verver’s approbation. The promptitude of his answer, we may in fact well surmise, had sprung not a little from a particular kindled remembrance; this had given his acknowledgment its easiest turn. “Oh, if I’m a crystal I’m delighted that I’m a perfect one, for I believe that they sometimes have cracks and flaws-in which case they’re to be had very cheap!” He had stopped short of the emphasis it would have given his joke to add that there had been certainly no having him cheap; and it was doubtless a mark of the good taste practically reigning between them that Mr. Verver had not, on his side either, taken up the opportunity. It is the latter’s relation to such aspects, however, that now most concerns us, and the bearing of his pleased view of this absence of friction upon Amerigo’s character as a representative precious object. Representative precious objects, great ancient pictures and other works of art, fine eminent “pieces” in gold, in silver, in enamel, majolica, ivory, bronze, had for a number of years so multiplied themselves round him and, as a general challenge to acquisition and appreciation, so engaged all the faculties of his mind, that the instinct, the particular sharpened appetite of the collector, had fairly served as a basis for his acceptance of the Prince’s suit. Over and above the signal fact of the impression made on Maggie herself, the aspirant to his daughter’s hand showed somehow the great marks and signs, stood before him with the high authenticities, he had learned to look for in pieces of the first order.

对于他婚后生活周围的人,他们如此频繁地给出的理由--比他以前听过的理由多得多--总体上仍然是他在其中与他们最不同的元素；而他的岳父和妻子,毕竟,只是他生活于其间的那些人中的首要人物。他仍然不确定自己会在这一点或那一点上如何打动他们；他们常常惊人地感觉到他本没有意思的东西,也同样惊人地（而且同样频繁地）错过了他本有意思的东西。他退回到他的笼统解释--“我们有着不同的价值观”；他理解为衡量重要性的标准不同。他的“曲线”显然很重要,因为它们出乎意料,或更甚,是未曾构想过的；而当他一直（像在他那已被遗弃的旧世界那样）视曲线为当然,并且数量更大时,他对由此产生的交流可行性并不比他在有楼梯的房子里上楼时更惊讶。事实上,他这次足够机敏地处理了弗维尔先生赞许的话题。我们完全可以猜测,他回答的迅速很大程度上源于一种特定的被点燃的回忆；这使他的承认转向了最容易的方面。“哦,如果我是水晶,我很高兴我是完美的,因为我相信它们有时会有裂缝和瑕疵--那样的话它们很便宜！”他没有加上一句会使他的玩笑更强调的话--即他肯定没有被便宜地得到；这大概是实际在他们之间盛行的良好品味的标志,弗维尔先生方面也没有抓住这个机会。然而,现在更关心的是后者与这些方面的关系,以及他对这种缺乏摩擦的愉悦看法对亚美利哥作为代表珍贵物品的性格的承载。代表珍贵物品--伟大的古代绘画和其他艺术品,精美的金、银、珐琅、彩陶、象牙、青铜的“名作”--多年来在他周围如此增多,并且作为获取和欣赏的普遍挑战,如此占据了他头脑的所有官能,以至于收藏家的本能--那特别敏锐的嗜好--已经相当作为他接受王子的求婚的基础。除了玛吉本人所受感动这一显著事实外,这位追求他女儿手的人不知何故显示出伟大标记和迹象,站在他面前带着他在一流作品中学会寻找的高度真实性。

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feasibility /ˌfiːzɪˈbɪlɪti/

n. 可行性➕

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approbation /ˌæprəˈbeɪʃən/

n. 认可；赞成➕

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aspirant /əˈspaɪərənt/

n. 有抱负的人；追求者➕

🔊 Adam Verver knew, by this time, knew thoroughly; no man in Europe or in America, he privately believed, was less capable, in such estimates, of vulgar mistakes. He had never spoken of himself as infallible-it was not his way; but, apart from the natural affections, he had acquainted himself with no greater joy, of the intimately personal type, than the joy of his originally coming to feel, and all so unexpectedly, that he had in him the spirit of the connoisseur.

亚当·弗维尔此时已经知道,完全知道；他私下相信,在欧洲或美洲,没有人在这种估价中更少犯低级错误。他从未自称无误--那不是他的风格；但是,除了自然情感之外,他没有体会到比最初--而且如此意外地--感觉自己内心有鉴赏家的精神所带来的、更伟大的、亲密个人类型的喜悦。

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thoroughly /ˈθʌrəli/

adv. 彻底地；完全地➕

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vulgar /ˈvʌlɡə/

adj. 粗俗的；庸俗的➕

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connoisseur /ˌkɒnəˈsɜː/

n. 鉴赏家；行家➕

🔊 He had, like many other persons, in the course of his reading, been struck with Keats’s sonnet about stout Cortez in the presence of the Pacific; but few persons, probably, had so devoutly fitted the poet’s grand image to a fact of experience. It consorted so with Mr. Verver’s consciousness of the way in which, at a given moment, he had stared at his Pacific, that a couple of perusals of the immortal lines had sufficed to stamp them in his memory. His “peak in Darien” was the sudden hour that had transformed his life, the hour of his perceiving with a mute inward gasp akin to the low moan of apprehensive passion, that a world was left him to conquer and that he might conquer it if he tried. It had been a turning of the page of the book of life-as if a leaf long inert had moved at a touch and, eagerly reversed, had made such a stir of the air as sent up into his face the very breath of the Golden Isles. To rifle the Golden Isles had, on the spot, become the business of his future, and with the sweetness of it-what was most wondrous of all-still more even in the thought than in the act. The thought was that of the affinity of Genius, or at least of Taste, with something in himself-with the dormant intelligence of which he had thus almost violently become aware and that affected him as changing by a mere revolution of the screw his whole intellectual plane. He was equal, somehow, with the great seers, the invokers and encouragers of beauty-and he didn’t after all perhaps dangle so far below the great producers and creators. He had been nothing of that kind before-too decidedly, too dreadfully not; but now he saw why he had been what he had, why he had failed and fallen short even in huge success; now he read into his career, in one single magnificent night, the immense meaning it had waited for.

和许多其他人一样,他在阅读过程中曾被济慈关于 stout 科尔特斯面对太平洋的十四行诗所打动；但或许很少有人如此虔诚地将诗人的宏伟意象运用到经验事实上。这与弗维尔先生的意识如此一致--他在某个特定时刻如何凝视自己的太平洋--以至于两遍阅读不朽的诗行就足以将它们印在他的记忆里。他的“达里恩高峰”就是那个改变了他生命的突然时刻,那个他默默倒吸一口凉气、如同忧虑激情低吟的时刻,他意识到有一个世界留给他去征服,而他如果尝试就可能征服它。那就像是翻开了生命之书的一页--仿佛一片长久静止的叶子因触碰而移动,急切地翻转,在空中激起如此骚动,使得黄金群岛的气息扑面而来。抢夺黄金群岛当场成为他将来的事业,而它的甜美--最不可思议的是--在思想中甚至比在行为中更甚。那思想是天才,或至少鉴赏力,与他自身中某些东西的亲和力--与他如此激烈地意识到并影响着他、仿佛通过螺丝的一次转动改变了他整个智力层次的休眠智力。他与伟大的先知、美的召唤者和鼓励者平起平坐--而且他毕竟也许并没有在伟大的生产者与创造者之下悬挂得太远。在那之前,他根本不是那种人--太明显、太可怕地不是；但现在他明白了为什么他曾经是那样,为什么他甚至在巨大成功中也失败和不足；现在他读进了他的职业生涯,在一个宏伟的夜晚,它等待着的巨大意义。

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sonnet /ˈsɒnɪt/

n. 十四行诗➕

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immortal /ɪˈmɔːtl/

adj. 不朽的；永生的➕

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transformed /trænsˈfɔːmd/

v. (过去分词). 转变；改造➕

🔊 It was during his first visit to Europe after the death of his wife, when his daughter was ten years old, that the light, in his mind, had so broken-and he had even made out at that time why, on an earlier occasion, the journey of his honeymoon year, it had still been closely covered. He had “bought” then, so far as he had been able, but he had bought almost wholly for the frail, fluttered creature at his side, who had had her fancies, decidedly, but all for the art, then wonderful to both of them, of the Rue de la Paix, the costly authenticities of dressmakers and jewellers. Her flutter-pale disconcerted ghost as she actually was, a broken white flower tied round, almost grotesquely for his present sense, with a huge satin “bow” of the Boulevard-her flutter had been mainly that of ribbons, frills and fine fabrics; all funny, pathetic evidence, for memory, of the bewilderments overtaking them as a bridal pair confronted with opportunity. He could wince, fairly, still, as he remembered the sense in which the poor girl’s pressure had, under his fond encouragement indeed, been exerted in favour of purchase and curiosity. These were wandering images, out of the earlier dusk, that threw her back, for his pity, into a past more remote than he liked their common past, their young affection, to appear. It would have had to be admitted, to an insistent criticism, that Maggie’s mother, all too strangely, had not so much failed of faith as of the right application of it; since she had exercised it eagerly and restlessly, made it a pretext for innocent perversities in respect to which philosophic time was at last to reduce all groans to gentleness. And they had loved each other so that his own intelligence, on the higher line, had temporarily paid for it. The futilities, the enormities, the depravities, of decoration and ingenuity, that, before his sense was unsealed, she had made him think lovely! Musing, reconsidering little man that he was, and addicted to silent pleasures-as he was accessible to silent pains-he even sometimes wondered what would have become of his intelligence, in the sphere in which it was to learn more and more exclusively to play, if his wife’s influence upon it had not been, in the strange scheme of things, so promptly removed. Would she have led him altogether, attached as he was to her, into the wilderness of mere mistakes? Would she have prevented him from ever scaling his vertiginous Peak?-or would she, otherwise, have been able to accompany him to that eminence, where he might have pointed out to her, as Cortez to his companions, the revelation vouchsafed? No companion of Cortez had presumably been a real lady: Mr. Verver allowed that historic fact to determine his inference.

这是他妻子去世后第一次访问欧洲,当时他女儿十岁,那光在他心中如此破晓--而且他甚至在那个时候就明白了为什么更早一次,他蜜月年的旅行,它仍然被紧密遮蔽。他那时尽可能地“购买”了,但他几乎完全是为身边那位脆弱、惊惶的造物购买的,她有自己的幻想,确实,但全是关于和平街的艺术--那时对他们俩来说都奇妙--关于服装师和珠宝商的昂贵真品。她的惊惶--实际上她是苍白不安的鬼魂,一朵折断的白花,被他现在看来几乎怪异地用一条巨大的林荫大道缎带“蝴蝶结”系着--她的惊惶主要是缎带、褶边和精美织物；这些记忆中的滑稽、可悲证据,展示了他们作为新婚夫妇面对机会时遇到的困惑。他仍然会畏缩,真真切切,当他想起那个可怜女孩的压力,在他慈爱的鼓励下,确实被用于促成购买和好奇。这些是来自早期暮色的飘荡意象,将她抛回,令他同情,进入一个比他希望他们共同过去、他们年轻爱情所显示的更遥远的过去。对于坚持的批评,必须承认的是,玛吉的母亲,太过奇怪地,并非缺乏信仰,而是缺乏正确的运用；因为她急切而不安地行使它,把它当作天真反常行为的借口--关于这些,哲学的时间最终会将所有呻吟化为温和。他们如此相爱,以至于他自己的智力,在更高的路线上,暂时为此付出了代价。在他感官被打开之前,她让他觉得那些装饰和巧妙的无用、过分、堕落是可爱的！他是个爱沉思、反思的小个子男人,沉迷于无声的快乐--正如他容易感受无声的痛苦--他甚至有时会想,如果他妻子的影响没有在事物的奇怪安排中如此迅速地被移除,他的智力会变成什么样--在他将越来越专一玩耍的领域中。她会不会完全把他--因为他依恋她--引入纯粹错误的荒野？她会不会阻止他攀登他的眩晕高峰？--或者,否则,她能否陪伴他到那个高处,在那里他可以向她指出,如同科尔特斯向他的同伴,那恩准的启示？科尔特斯的同伴中大概没有一位是真正的淑女:弗维尔先生允许那个历史事实决定他的推断。

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frail /freɪl/

adj. 脆弱的；虚弱的➕

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vertiginous /vɜːˈtɪdʒɪnəs/

adj. 令人眩晕的；旋转的➕

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vouchsafed /vaʊtʃˈseɪft/

v. (过去分词). 赐予；给予➕

Part Second – Chapter seven (第七章)