The Oval Portrait

愛倫 坡 著

< 1 > THE CHATEAU into which my valet had ventured to make forcible entrance, rather than permit me, in my desperately wounded condition, to pass a night in the open air, was oneof those piles of commingled gloom and grandeur which have so long frowned among the Appennines, not less in fact than in the fancy of Mrs. Radcliffe. To all appearance it hadbeen temporarily and very lately abandoned. We established ourselves in one of the smallest and least sumptuously furnished apartments. It lay in a remote turret of the building.Its decorations were rich, yet tattered and antique. Its walls were hung with tapestry and bedecked with manifold and multiform armorial trophies, together with an unusually greatnumber of very spirited modern paintings in frames of rich golden arabesque. In these paintings, which depended from the walls not only in their main surfaces, but in very manynooks which the bizarre architecture of the chateau rendered necessary- in these paintings my incipient delirium, perhaps, had caused me to take deep interest; so that I bade Pedro to close the heavy shutters of the room- since it was already night- to light the tongues of a tall candelabrum which stood by the head of my bed- and to throw open far and wide the fringed curtains of black velvet which enveloped the bed itself. I wished all this done that I might resign myself, if not to sleep, at least alternately to the contemplation of these pictures, and the perusal of a small volume which had been found upon the pillow, and which purported to criticise and describe them.

我受了重傷，我的隨從不忍心讓我在外面過夜，就領我闖進了一座城堡。這是座巍峨地聳立在亞平寧山區多年的一座陰森而雄壯的城堡，決不亞于拉德克利夫夫人在她的小說中所幻想的那種。從各種跡象來看，城堡的主人離去的時間不會太久。我們主仆兩人在一間最狹小、陳設最美的屋子里住下來。它位于這座城堡邊上的一個塔樓里。看得出室內原來的裝飾相當富麗，但現在已破舊不堪了。四壁懸掛著花毯和各種各樣的戰利品，此外還掛著許多惟妙惟肖的繪畫，畫框都是金色花紋的，連墻角都掛著畫。也許是傷勢過重，我的神志不甚清醒，只是呆呆地望著這些畫出神。這時天色已晚，我吩咐彼德羅把百葉窗全都關上。把屋里的蠟燭統統點亮，然后拉開床前的黑天鵝絨帷慢。這樣。即使我不能入睡，至少也可以安靜地欣賞一番這些畫，也可以讀一讀枕頭上放著的一本小書，那是對這些畫進行解釋和評價的書。