It is my considered view that no one can invent fictional characters without first having made a lengthy study of people, just as it is impossible for anyone to speak a language that has not been properly mastered.

我认为，没有人可以在对人进行深入的研究之前就能创造出虚构的人物，这就像人们不可能讲一门还没有掌握的语言一样。

Since I am not yet of an age to invent, I must make do with telling a tale.

既然还没到能够创造人物的年纪，我就必须满足于讲故事了。

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.

所以，我恳请读者相信这个故事是真实的。所有在里面出现的人物，除了女主角，现在都还活着。

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.

此外我要补充的是，我在这里记录的大部分详细事实在巴黎还有可靠的证人；他们可以为我作证，如果我自己还不足以让人信服的话。由于某种特殊的机遇，只有我能把这个故事记录下来，因为只有我知道这个故事的所有细节，不然是不可能拼凑出一篇完整、令人满意的文章的。

It was in this way that these particulars came to my knowledge.

我是这样知道这些详细情节的。

On the 12th day of March 1847, in the rue Laffitte, I happened upon a large yellow notice announcing a sale of furniture and valuable curios. An estate was to be disposed of, the owner having died. The notice did not name the dead person, but the sale was to be held at 9 rue d'Antin on the 16th, between noon and five o' clock.

一八四七年三月十二日，我碰巧在拉菲特街上看到一张关于家具和值钱古董拍卖的巨幅海报。这笔财产是因为主人去世而被拍卖的。海报上没有写出死者的名字，只是说拍卖将在十六号中午十二点到下午五点在安坦街九号举行。

The notice also stated that the apartments and contents could be viewed on the 13th and 14th.

海报上还说可以在十三号和十四号参观房子和将被拍卖的物品。

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.

我一直对古董很感兴趣。所以，我向自己保证一定不能错过这个机会，就算不买，至少也要去看看。

The following day, I directed my steps towards 9 rue d' Antin.

第二天，我就去了安坦街九号。

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，但是房子里已经聚集了一大群人，大多数是男士，但是也有相当一部分女人。她们虽然穿着天鹅绒衣服，披着开司米披肩，大门口还都有自己华丽的四轮马车候着，但是都用惊异甚至羡慕的眼神打量着眼前的豪华布置。

After a while, I quite saw the reason for their admiration and astonishment, for having begun myself to look around I had no difficulty in recognizing that I was in the apartment of a kept woman. Now if there is one thing that ladies of fashion desire to see above all else—and there were society ladies present—it is the rooms occupied by those women who have carriages which spatter their own with mud every day of the week, who have their boxes at the Opera or the Th tre-Italien just as they do, and indeed next to theirs, and who display for all Paris to see the insolent opulence of their beauty, diamonds and shameless conduct.

没多久，我就很清楚她们羡慕和惊叹的原因了，因为当我也开始打量四周时，很容易就认出自己正站在一个高级妓女的房子里。要是这些时髦的上流社会女性有一件最想看的东西——这里正好有一些这样的女人在场——那就是那种女人的闺房了。那种女人每天有马车代步，让她们双脚不会沾上泥土；那种女人和上流社会的女人们一样在大歌剧院和意大利歌剧院里面有自己的包厢，而且就和她们的包厢挨着；那种女人不知羞耻地向整个巴黎展示着她们的姿色、宝石和风流韵事。

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. They 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.

这所房子里的妓女已经死了，所以现在连最有美德的女士们也可以到处走来走去，甚至进入她的卧室。死亡净化了这间华丽而邪恶的房子里的空气，再说如果她们需要借口，就会推脱说只是来参加一场拍卖，而根本不知道这是谁的房子。她们看到了告示，想来看一看上面介绍的东西，顺便预先挑选一番。这再简单不过了，但这并没能阻止她们通过这些精美的陈设去寻找一个妓女私密生活的痕迹，毫无疑问她们以前就听过类似的奇特故事。

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，这些秘密都随着这位如女神般美丽的小姐一起消逝了。尽管这些贵妇人费尽心思，却也只能了解到死者身后将被拍卖的东西，而无法看出女主人身前身为高级妓女的痕迹。

But there was certainly rich booty to be had. The furniture was superb. Rosewood and Buhl-work pieces, S vres vases and blue china porcelain, Dresden figurines, satins, velvet and lace, everything in fact.

不过，这里确实有很多东西可以买。家具真是漂亮、华丽极了。布尔雕刻的和玫瑰木的家具、塞夫尔花瓶和中国青瓷、德累斯顿小塑像、绸缎、天鹅绒还有蕾丝花边，真是应有尽有。

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 dressingroom, complete down to the very last details, in which the dead woman's profligacy had seemingly reached its height.

我跟着那些比我先到的充满好奇的上流社会淑女们一间一间地溜达。她们走进了一件挂着波斯帷幕的卧室，正当我准备跟着进去的时候，她们却立刻笑着退了出来，似乎对新发现很不好意思。这反而让我更想进去看看。这是一个化妆间，摆满了各种精致的梳妆用品，可以从中看出，这个死去的妓女生前的铺张浪费已经到了一个境界。

On a large table standing against one wall—it measured a good six feet by three—shone the finest treasures of Aucoc and Odiot. It was a magnificent collection, and among the countless objects each so essential to the appearance of the kind of woman in whose home we had gathered, there was not one that was not made of gold or silver. But it was a collection that could only have been assembled piece by piece, and clearly more than one love had gone into its making.

在靠墙的一张足有六尺长、三尺宽的大桌子上，奥科克和奥迪奥的精美珠宝闪闪发光。这真是一批惊人的收藏啊！而且房子女主人化妆必备的这大批物件中，没有一件不是用金银做的。然而，这应该是一件一件收藏起来的，显然不是一个情人可以办到的。

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.

看到妓女的化妆间，我却没有一分一毫的厌恶之情，还用了相当长的一段时间细细欣赏了房间里的东西，一件也没漏掉。我注意到所有这些精致的用具上都刻着不同名字的缩写和各种徽章图案。

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.

我注视着这些东西，它们每一件对我来说都代表着这个可怜姑娘的一次肉体买卖。我心想，上帝对她还算仁慈，没有让她活得够长，遭受她这种人通常会有的惩罚，而是让她早在年老色衰之前，在美貌和财富都达到高峰的时候死去——对妓女来说，年老色衰便是第一次死亡。

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，还有什么景象比放荡生活的晚年，特别是女人放荡生活的晚年更加凄凉呢？这种晚年生活没有一丝尊严，也引不起别人的丝毫同情。那些长久的悔恨——不是因为错误的决定，而是因为错打了算盘，挥霍了钱财——是人们能听到的最悲惨的事情之一。我认识一个曾经生活放荡的女人，过去的生活遗留给她的只有一个女儿。据她同时代的人说，她女儿几乎同她年轻时长得一样美丽。这个可怜孩子，她的妈妈从来没对她说过“你是我的女儿”，除了要求这个孩子在如今她年老的时候赡养她外，就像这孩子小时候被她照顾一样。这个不幸的孩子叫做路易丝，她遵循母亲的意愿，心甘情愿地、毫无激情和乐趣地出卖了自己的肉体，就像是有人想到要教她做一种诚实的买卖，她就顺从地去做了。

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.

长期看到听到的都是荒淫无耻的堕落生活，特别又是从这么小的年纪就开始，加上她一直身体不好，这些都导致这个女孩分辨不出是非。也许上帝曾经赐给她这样的品质，但是从来没有人想过要对此进行培育。

I shall always remember that young girl who walked along the boulevards almost every day at the same hour. Her mother was always with her, escorting her as assiduously as a true mother might have accompanied her daughter. I was very young in those days and ready enough to fall in with the easy morality of the times. Yet I recall that the sight of such scandalous chaperoning filled me with contempt and disgust.

我永远记得那个年轻的姑娘，她几乎每天同一时间都沿着林阴大道走过。         她的妈妈总是和她在一起，像一个真正的母亲陪伴自己的女儿一样紧紧地跟着她。那时候我还非常年轻，很容易沾染上当时社会的放浪风气。但是回想起那丑恶的陪娼景象，我从心底感到轻蔑和恶心。

Add to all this that no virgin's face ever conveyed such a feeling of innocence nor any comparable expression of sadness and suffering.

再说没有一张处女的脸上会流露出这样一种天真纯洁的感情或者这样一种充满悲伤和苦恼的表情。

You would have said it was the image of Resignation itself.

也许你会说这分明就是委屈女郎的形象。

And then one day, the young girl's face lit up. In the midst of the debauches which her mother organized for her, it suddenly seemed to this sinful creature that God had granted her one happiness. And after all why should God, who had made her weak and helpless, abandon her without consolation to struggle on beneath the oppressive burden of her life? One day, then, she perceived that she was with child, and that part of her which remained pure trembled with joy. The soul finds refuge in the strangest sanctuaries. Louise ran to her mother to tell her the news that had filled her with such happiness. It is shameful thing to have to say—but we do not write gratuitously of immorality here, we relate a true incident and one perhaps which we would be better advised to leave untold if we did not believe that it is essential from time to time to make public the martyrdom of these creatures who are ordinarily condemned without a hearing and despised without trial— it is, we say, a matter for shame, but the mother answered her daughter saying that as things stood they scarcely had enough for two, and that they would certainly not have enough for three; that such children serve no useful purpose; and that a pregnancy is so much time wasted.

突然有一天，这个年轻姑娘的脸上散发出了光彩。在她母亲一手替她安排的堕落生活中，好像上帝突然赐给了这个女罪人一点儿幸福。毕竟上帝已经让她生得软弱无助，那么当她在生活重压下苦苦挣扎的时候，怎么会一点儿安慰都不给就抛弃她呢？有一天，她发现自己有孩子了，她身上还仅存的纯洁的思想使她兴奋得全身发抖。她的灵魂在最不可思议的避难所找到了庇护。路易丝急忙跑到她妈妈那儿，讲述了这个让她快乐的消息。这是一件说起来令人感到羞耻的事情。但我们不会在这里无缘无故就编造什么风流韵事，只是在讲述一件真实的事情。这种事，如果我们认为没有必要经常把这些女人的苦难告诉大家，那也许还是不要讲了最好。人们谴责这种女人而又不听她们的申诉，人们蔑视她们而又不公正地评价她们。这的确是件可耻的事。可是那位母亲答复女儿说，她们两个人生活已经不容易了，肯定是不能养活第三个人了；再说，这样的孩子是没有好处的，而且大着肚子不做买卖也是浪费时间。

The very next day, a midwife (of whom we shall say no more than that she was a friend of the mother) called to see Louise, who remained for a few days in her bed from which she rose paler and weaker than before.

第二天，一个接生婆——我们最多能说她是那位母亲的一个朋友——来探望路易丝。路易丝在床上躺了好些天，后来下床了，脸色比以前更苍白，身体也比以前更虚弱。

Three months later, some man took pity on her and undertook her moral and physical salvation. But this latest blow had been too great and Louise died of the after effects of the miscarriage she had suffered.

三个月后，某位男士出于同情，设法医治她身心的创伤。但最近的那次打击实在太大了，路易斯最终还是死于流产的后遗症。

The mother still lives. How? God alone knows.

但是她的妈妈仍然活着。她过得怎么样？只有上帝知道。

This story had come back to me as I stood examining the sets of silver toilet accessories, and I must have been lost in thought for quite some time. For by now the apartment was empty save for myself and a porter who, from the doorway, was eyeing me carefully lest I should try to steal anything.

在我站着仔细看着一套套银质的卫生间装饰物的时候，这个故事浮现在我的脑海里。我一定深陷在回忆中好长一段时间了。因为现在房子已经空了，只剩下我和一个看门人，他正从门口密切地注意着我，以防我试图偷走任何东西。

I went up to this good man in whom I inspired such grave anxieties.

我走到这位好心的看门人跟前，他已被我弄得心神不定了。

'Excuse me,' I said, 'I wonder if you could tell me the name of the person who lived here?'

“劳驾，”我说，“您可以把之前住在这里的人的名字告诉我吗？”

Mademoiselle Marguerite Gautier.'

“玛格丽特·戈蒂埃小姐。”

I knew this young woman by name and by sight.

我知道这位姑娘的名字，还见过她。

'What!' I said to the porter. Marguerite Gautier is dead?'

“什么！”我问看门人。“玛格丽特·戈蒂埃死了？”

'Yes, sir.'

“是的，先生。”

'When did it happen?'

“这是什么时候的事？”

'Three weeks ago, I think.'

“我想是三个星期前。”

'But why are people being allowed to view her apartment?'

“那为什么人们可以来参观她的房子呢？”

'The creditors thought it would be good for trade. People can get the effect of the hangings and the furniture in advance. Encourages people to buy, you understand.'

“债主们觉得这样会对生意有帮助。大家可以提前来看看悬挂的织物和家具。这样便于招揽生意，您明白的。”

'So she had debts, then?'

“这么说她还欠着债？”

'Oh yes, sir! Lots of 'em.'

“是的，先生！欠了很多。”

'But I imagine the sale will cover them?'

“但我猜这笔买卖可以还清了吧？”

'Over and above.'

“够了，还能多出一些。”

'And who stands to get the balance?'

“然后谁能拿到剩下的钱呢？”

'The family.'

“她的家人。”

'She had a family?'

“她还有家人？”

'Seems she did.'

“看来是的。”

'Thank you very much.'

“非常感谢。”

The porter, now reassured as to my intentions, touched his cap and I left.

那个看门人对我的来意放心之后，行了一个礼，我就离开了。

Poor girl,' I said to myself as I returned home, 'she must have died a sad death, for in her world, people only keep their friends as long as they stay fit and well.' And in spite of myself, I lamented the fate of Marguerite Gautier.

“可怜的姑娘，”我回家的时候想着，“她一定死得很悲惨，因为在她的世界里，只有身体健康的人才会有朋友。”因而，我不由自主地为玛格丽特的命运感到惋惜。

All this will perhaps seem absurd to many people, but I have a boundless forbearance towards courtesans which I shall not even trouble to enlarge upon here.

所有这些对很多人来说可能很荒唐，但我对妓女总是有着无限的宽容，对此我不想费心在此详述。

One day, as I was on my way to collect a passport from the pr fecture, I saw, down one of the adjacent streets, a young woman being taken away by two policemen. Now I have no idea what she had done. All I can say is that she was weeping bitterly and clasping to her a child only a few months old from which she was about to be separated by her arrest. From that day until this, I have been incapable of spurning any woman on sight.

有一天，在去警察局领护照的路上，我看见旁边那条街上有一个年轻女人正要被两个警察带走。我不知道她犯了什么罪。我只知道她伤心地哭着，怀里紧紧抱着她那只有几个月大、就要因她被捕而被强迫分离的孩子。从那一天起，我就再也没有轻易看低任何一个女人。 xlacd2FQU6u8a82bsVhLsvbWdjCw5C9yt7niuki+9oIVkjEWNS5tB3wsATA0XCtd