目 录 下一节 
我认为只有在深入地研究了人以后，才能创造人物，就像要讲一种语言就得先认真学习这种语言一样。 Since I am not yet of an age to invent, I must make do with telling a tale. 既然我还没到能够创造的年龄，那就只好满足于平铺直叙了。 I therefore invite the reader to believe that this story is true. All the characters who appear in it, with the exception of the heroine, are still living. 因此，我请读者相信这个故事的真实性，故事中所有的人物，除女主人公以外，至今尚在人世。 I would further add that there are reliable witnesses in Paris for most of the particulars which I bring together here, and they could vouch for their accuracy should my word not be enough. By a singular turn of events, I alone was able to write them down since I alone was privy to the very last details without which it would have been quite impossible to piece together a full and satisfying account. 此外，我记录在这里的大部分事实，在巴黎还有其他的见证人；如果光靠我说还不足为凭的话，他们也可以为我出面证实。由于一种特殊的机缘，只有我才能把这个故事写出来列宁指出，“这个结论是马克思主义国家学说中主要的基本的，因为唯独我洞悉这件事情的始末，除了我谁也不可能写出一篇完整、动人的故事来。 It was in this way that these particulars came to my knowledge. 下面就来讲讲我是怎样知道这些详情细节的。 
一八四七年三月十二日，我在拉菲特街看到一张黄色的巨幅广告，广告宣称将拍卖家具和大量珍玩。这次拍卖是在物主死后举行的。广告上没有提到死者的姓名，只是说拍卖将于十六日中午十二点到下午五点在昂坦街九号举行。 The notice also stated that the apartments and contents could be viewed on the 13th and 14th. 广告上还附带通知，大家可以在十三日和十四日两天参观住宅和家具。 I have always been interested in curios. I promised myself I would not miss this opportunity, if not of actually buying, then at least of looking. 我向来是个珍玩爱好者。我心想，这一回可不能坐失良机，即使不买，也要去看看。 The following day, I directed my steps towards 9 rue d'Antin. 第二天，我就到昂坦街九号去了。 It was early, and yet a good crowd of visitors had already gathered in the apartment ? men for the most part, but also a number of ladies who, though dressed in velvet and wearing Indian shawls, and all with their own elegant broughams standing at the door, were examining the riches set out before them with astonished, even admiring eyes. 时间还早，可是房子里已经有参观的人了，甚至还有女人。虽然这些女宾穿的是天鹅绒服装，披的是开司米披肩，大门口还有华丽的四轮轿式马车在恭候，却都带着惊讶、甚至赞赏的眼神注视着展现在她们眼前的豪华陈设。 
不久，我就懂得了她们赞赏和惊讶的原因了。我也向四周打量了一番，很快就看出了我正置身于一个高级妓女①的房间里。然而上流社会的女人--这里正有一些上流社会的女人--想看看的也就是这种女人的闺房。这种女人的穿着打扮往往使这些贵妇人相形见绌；这种女人在大歌剧院和意大利人歌剧院里，也像她们一样，拥有自己的包厢，并且就和她们并肩而坐；这种女人恬不知耻地在巴黎街头卖弄她们的姿色，炫耀她们的珠宝，播扬她们的“风流韵事”。 The woman in whose apartments I now found myself was dead: the most virtuous of ladies were thus able to go everywhere, even into the bedroom. Death had purified the air of this glittering den of iniquity, and in any case they could always say, if they needed the excuse, that they had done no more than come to a sale without knowing whose rooms these were. I had read the notices, they had wanted to view what the notices advertised and mark out their selections in advance. It could not have been simpler ?though this did not prevent them from looking through these splendid things for traces of the secret life of a courtesan of which they had doubtless been given very strange accounts. 这个住宅里的妓女已经死了，因此现在连最最贞洁的女人都可以进入她的卧室。死亡已经净化了这个富丽而淫秽的场所的空气。再说，如果有必要，她们可以推托是为了拍卖才来的，根本不知道这是什么样的人家。她们看到了广告，想来见识一下广告上介绍的东西，预先挑选一番，没有比这更平常的事了；而这并不妨碍她们从这一切精致的陈设里面去探索这个妓女的生活痕迹。她们想必早就听到过一些有关妓女的非常离奇的故事。 Unfortunately, the mysteries had died with the goddess, and in spite of their best endeavours these good ladies found only what had been put up for sale since the time of death, and could detect nothing of what had been sold while the occupant had been alive. 不幸的是，那些神秘的事情已经随着这个绝代佳人一起消逝了。不管这些贵妇人心里的期望有多大，她们也只能对着死者身后要拍卖的东西啧啧称羡，却一点也看不出这个女房客在世时所操的神女生涯的痕迹。 But there was certainly rich booty to be had. The furniture was superb. Rosewood and Buhl-work pieces, Severs vases and blue china porcelain, Dresden figurines, satins, velvet and lace, everything in fact. 不过，可以买的东西还真不少。房间陈设富丽堂皇，布尔雕刻的和玫瑰木的家具、塞弗尔和中国的花瓶、萨克森的小塑像、绸缎、天鹅绒和花边绣品；真是目不暇接，应有尽有。 I wandered from room to room in the wake of these inquisitive aristocratic ladies who had arrived before me. They went into a bedroom hung with Persian fabrics and I was about to go in after them, when they came out again almost immediately, smiling and as it were put to shame by this latest revelation. The effect was to make me even keener to see inside. It was the dressing-room, complete down to the very last details, in which the dead woman's profligacy had seemingly reached its height. 我跟着那些比我先来的好奇的名媛淑女在住宅里漫步溜达。她们走进了一间张挂着波斯帷幕的房间，我正要跟着进去的当儿，她们却几乎马上笑着退了出来，仿佛对这次新的猎奇感到害臊，我倒反而更想进去看个究竟。原来这是一个梳妆间，里面摆满各种精致的梳妆用品，从这些用品里似乎可以看出死者生前的穷奢极侈。 
靠墙放着一张三尺宽、六尺长的大桌子，奥科克和奥迪奥⑤制造的各种各样的珍宝在桌子上闪闪发光，真是琳琅满目，美不胜收。这上千件小玩意儿对于我们来参观的这家女主人来说，是梳妆打扮的必备之物，而且没有一件不是用黄金或者白银制成的。然而这一大堆物品只能是逐件逐件收罗起来的，而且也不可能是某个情夫一人所能办齐的。 I, who was not the least put out by the sight of the dressing-room of a kept woman, spent some time agreeably inspecting its contents, neglecting none of them, and I noticed that all these magnificently wrought implements bore different initials and all manner of coronets. 我看到了一个妓女的梳妆间倒没有厌恶的心情，不管是什么东西，我都饶有兴趣地细细鉴赏一番。我发现所有这些雕刻精湛的用具上都镌刻着各种不同的人名首字母和五花八门的纹章①标记。 As I contemplated all these things, each to my mind standing for a separate prostitution of the poor girl, I reflected that God had been merciful to her since He had not suffered her to live long enough to undergo the usual punishment but had allowed her to die at the height of her wealth and beauty, long before the coming of old age, that first death of courtesans. 我瞧着所有这些东西，每一件都使我联想到那个可怜的姑娘的一次肉体买卖。我心想，天主对她尚算仁慈，没有让她遭受通常的那种惩罚，而是让她在晚年之前，带着她那花容月貌，死在穷奢极侈的豪华生活之中。对这些妓女来说，衰老就是她们的第一次死亡。 Indeed, what sadder sight is there than vice in old age, especially in a woman? It has no dignity and is singularly unattractive. Those everlasting regrets, not for wrong turnings taken but for wrong calculations made and money foolishly spent, are among the most harrowing things that can be heard. I once knew a former woman of easy virtue of whose past life there remained only a daughter who was almost as beautiful as the mother had once been, or so her contemporaries said. This poor child, to whom her mother never said 'You are my daughter' except to order her to keep her now that she was old just as she had been kept when she was young, this wretched creature was called Louise and, in obedience to her mother, she sold herself without inclination or passion or pleasure, rather as she might have followed an honest trade had it ever entered anyone's head to teach her one. 的确，还有什么比放荡生活的晚年--尤其是女人的放荡生活的晚年--更悲惨的呢？这种晚年没有一点点尊严，引不起别人的丝毫同情，这种抱恨终生的心情是我们所能听到的最悲惨的事情，因为她们并不是追悔过去的失足，而是悔恨错打了算盘，滥用了金钱。我认识一位曾经风流一时的老妇人，过去生活遗留给她的只有一个女儿。据她同时代的人说，她女儿几乎同她母亲年轻时长得一样美丽。她母亲从来没对这可怜的孩子说过一句“你是我的女儿”，只是要她养老，就像她自己曾经把她从小养到大一样。这个可怜的小姑娘名叫路易丝。她违心地顺从了母亲的旨意，既无情欲又无乐趣地委身于人，就像是有人想要她去学一种职业，她就去从事这种职业一样。 The continual spectacle of debauchery, at so tender an age, compounded by her continuing ill- health, had extinguished in the girl the knowledge of good and evil which God had perhaps given her but which no one had ever thought to nurture. 长时期来耳濡目染的都是荒淫无耻的堕落生活，而且是从早年就开始了的堕落生活，加上这个女孩子长期来孱弱多病，抑制了她脑子里分辨是非的才智，这种才智天主可能也曾赋予她，但是从来没有人想到过要去让它得到施展。 
我永远也忘不了这个年轻的姑娘，她每天几乎总是在同一时刻走过大街。她的母亲每时每刻都陪着她，就像一个真正的母亲陪伴她真正的女儿那般形影不离。那时候我还年轻，很容易沾染上那个时代道德观念淡薄的社会风尚，但是我还记得，一看到这种丑恶的监视行为，我从心底里感到轻蔑和厌恶。 Add to all this that no virgin's face ever conveyed such a feeling of innocence nor any comparable expression of sadness and suffering. 没有一张处女的脸上会流露出这样一种天真无邪的感情和这样一种忧郁苦恼的表情。
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