The Oval Portrait

爱伦 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.

我受了重伤，我的随从不忍心让我在外面过夜，就领我闯进了一座城堡。这是座巍峨地耸立在亚平宁山区多年的一座阴森而雄壮的城堡，决不亚于拉德克利夫夫人在她的小说中所幻想的那种。从各种迹象来看，城堡的主人离去的时间不会太久。我们主仆两人在一间最狭小、陈设最美的屋子里住下来。它位于这座城堡边上的一个塔楼里。看得出室内原来的装饰相当富丽，但现在已破旧不堪了。四壁悬挂着花毯和各种各样的战利品，此外还挂着许多惟妙惟肖的绘画，画框都是金色花纹的，连墙角都挂着画。也许是伤势过重，我的神志不甚清醒，只是呆呆地望着这些画出神。这时天色已晚，我吩咐彼德罗把百叶窗全都关上。把屋里的蜡烛统统点亮，然后拉开床前的黑天鹅绒帷慢。这样。即使我不能入睡，至少也可以安静地欣赏一番这些画，也可以读一读枕头上放着的一本小书，那是对这些画进行解释和评价的书。