I admire her beauty, but I fear her intelligence.
MERIMEE
我赞美她的美貌，但是我害怕她的才智。
梅里美
Had Julien devoted to the consideration of what went on in the drawing-room the time which he spent in exaggerating Mathilde's beauty, or in lashing himself into a fury at the aloofness natural to her family, whom she was forgetting in his company, he would have understood in what her despotic power over everyone round about her consisted. Whenever anyone earned Mademoiselle de La Mole's displeasure, she knew how to punish him by a witticism so calculated, so well chosen, apparently so harmless, so aptly launched, that the wound it left deepened the more he thought of it. In time she became deadly to wounded vanity. As she attached no importance to many things that were the object of serious ambition with the rest of her family, she always appeared cool in their eyes. The drawing-rooms of the nobility are pleasant things to mention after one has left them, but that is all; bare politeness is something in itself only for the first few days. Julien experienced this; after the first enchantment, the first bewilderment.'Politeness,' he said to himself, 'is nothing more than the absence of the irritation which would come from bad manners.' Mathilde was frequently bored, perhaps she would have been bored in any circumstances. At such times to sharpen the point of an epigram was for her a distraction and a real pleasure.
如果于连不是花时间夸大玛蒂尔德的美貌，激烈地反抗她的家人与生俱来的、但是她已为了他而忘记的高傲，而是花时间研究一下客厅里发生的事情，他就会明白她为什么能主宰她周围的一切。有人让她不高兴，她就会用一句玩笑惩罚他，她的玩笑那么有分寸，选得那么好，表面上那么得体，来得那么适时，让人越想越觉得伤口每时每刻都在扩大。渐渐地，它会变得让受伤的自尊心感到残忍。家里其他人真心渴望的许多东西，她都看不上眼，因此在他们眼里她总是冷酷无情的。贵族的客厅，离开以后说说，还是令人愉快的，但也仅此而已；礼貌本身只在开头几天还是回事。于连是有体验的，最初的迷醉过后，跟着来的是最初的惊讶。“礼貌，”于连心想，“不过是举止不雅引起的愤怒暂时缺席罢了。玛蒂尔德常常感到厌倦，也许是因为她无处不感到厌倦。于是，把一句挖苦话磨得尖尖的，就成了她的一种消遣，一种真正的乐趣。”
It was perhaps in order to have victims slightly more amusing than her distinguished relatives, the Academician and the five or six other inferiors who formed their court, that she had given grounds for hope to the Marquis de Croisenois, the Comte de Caylus and two or three other young men of the highest distinction. They were nothing more to her than fresh subjects for epigram.
也许是为了得到比她的长辈、院士和五、六个向她献殷勤的下属稍更有趣的牺牲品，她才把希望给了德·克鲁瓦泽努瓦侯爵、凯吕斯伯爵和其他两、三位最高贵的年轻人。对她来说，他们只是挖苦的新对象。
We confess with sorrow, for we are fond of Mathilde, that she had received letters from several of their number, and had occasionally answered them. We hasten to add that this character in our story forms an exception to the habits of the age. It is not, generally speaking, with want of prudence that one can reproach the pupils of the noble Convent of the Sacre Coeur.
因为我们爱玛蒂尔德，所以我们痛苦地承认，她接到过他们中间几位的信，有几次还写了回信。我们得赶快补充一句，这个人物乃是时代风尚的一个例外。一般地说，人们不能指责高贵的圣心修道院的学生们不谨慎。
One day the Marquis de Croisenois returned to Mathilde a distinctly compromising letter which she had written him the day before. He thought that by this sign of extreme prudence he was greatly strengthening his position. But imprudence was what Mathilde enjoyed in her correspondence. It was her chief pleasure to play with fire. She did not speak to him again for six weeks.
一天，德·克鲁瓦泽努瓦侯爵交还给玛蒂尔德一封相当可能有损名誉的信，那是她头一天写给他的。他相信这种高度慎重的表现会使他的事情大有进展。然而，玛蒂尔德在她的通信中喜欢的恰恰是不谨慎。她的乐趣是拿自己的命运赌博。她一连六个礼拜不理他。
She amused herself with the letters of these young men; but, according to her, they were all alike. It was always the most profound, the most melancholy passion.
她拿这些年轻人的信消磨时间，但是据她看，这些信都是一副腔调，总是最深沉、最忧郁的激情。
'They are all the same perfect gentlemen, ready to set off for Palestine,' she said to her cousin. 'Can you think of anything more insipid? Think that this is the sort of letter that I am going to receive for the rest of my life! These letters can only change every twenty years, according to the kind of occupation that is in fashion. They must have been less colourless in the days of the Empire. Then all these young men in society had seen or performed actions in which there was real greatness. The Due de N——, my uncle, fought at Wagram.'
“他们全都十全十美，就像是一个人，准备好前往巴勒斯坦，”她对一个表姐妹说。“您还知道比这更乏味的事吗？这就是我这一辈子要收到的信。这种信大概每隔二十年，根据当时风行的活动的不同，改变一次。它们在帝国时代一定不这样没有色彩。那时候上流社会的年轻人见过或有过一些确实伟大的行动。我的伯父德·Ｎ·公爵就去过瓦格拉姆。”
'What intelligence is required to wield a sabre? And when that has happened to them, they talk about it so often!' said Mademoiselle de Sainte Heredite, Mathilde's cousin.
“挥舞战刀需要什么样的才智呢？他们一旦干过，就老是说个没完！”玛蒂尔德的表妹德·圣埃雷迪特小姐说。
'Oh, well, those stories amuse me. To have been in a real battle, one of Napoleon's battles, in which ten thousand soldiers were killed, is a proof of courage. Exposing oneself to danger elevates the soul, and saves it from the boredom in which all my poor adorers seem to be plunged; and it is contagious, that boredom. Which of them ever dreams of doing anything out of the common? They seek to win my hand, a fine enterprise! I am rich, and my father will help on his son-in-law. Oh, if only he could find one who was at all amusing!'
“是啊！我喜欢这些故事。参加一次真正的战役，拿破仑的战役，有一万个士兵阵亡，那就证明了一个人的勇敢。身临险境可以提高灵魂，把它从厌倦中解救出来，我的那些崇拜者似乎都已陷入厌倦，面这种厌倦是传染的。他们中间有谁想过要有点儿非凡之举呢？他们都想跟我结婚，想得美！我富有，我父亲又会提拔他的女婿。啊！但愿我父亲能找到一个稍微有趣些的！”
Mathilde's vivid, picturesque point of view affected her speech, as we can see. Often something she said jarred on the refined nerves of her highly polished friends. They would almost have admitted, had she been less in the fashion, that there was something in her language a little too highly coloured for feminine delicacy.
玛蒂尔德种人看事的方式尖锐、鲜明、生动，不免败坏了她的谈吐，正如人们看到的那样。在她那些如此彬彬有礼的朋友看来，她的一句话往往成了一个污点。如果她不是那么走红，他们几乎都会承认，她的言谈的色彩有点儿太浓，缺乏女性的细腻。
She, on her part, was most unjust to the handsome men on horseback who throng the Bois de Boulogne. She looked towards the future, not with terror, that would have been too strong a feeling, but with a disgust very rare at her age.
她呢，她则对充斥着布洛涅森林的那些漂亮骑士太不公正。她瞻望未来并不感到恐俱，那就是一种强烈的情感了，而是感到一种厌恶，这在她那个年纪是很罕见的。
What had she left to desire? Fortune, noble birth, wit, beauty, or so it was said, and she believed, all had been heaped upon her by the hand of chance.
她能够期望什么呢？财富，高贵的出身，才智，姿色，据别人说，她也相信，命运之手已把这一切集于她一身了。
Such were the thoughts of the most envied heiress of the Faubourg Saint Germain, when she began to find pleasure in strolling with Julien.She was amazed at his pride; she admired the cunning of this little plebeian. 'He will manage to get himself made a Bishop like the abbe Maury,' she said to herself.
这就是这位圣日耳曼区最令人羡慕的女继承人开始感到跟于连一起散步很偷快时的种种想法。她对他的骄傲感到惊讶，她欣赏这小小平民的机敏。“他会像莫里神甫那样当上主教的，”她对自己说。
Presently the sincere and unfeigned resistance, with which our hero received a number of her ideas, began to occupy her mind; she thought about him; she reported to her cousin the pettiest details of their conversations, and found that she could never succeed in displaying them in every aspect.
很快，我们的主人公对加的许多想法的那种真诚的、并非假装的抵制，把她吸引住了；她老是在想，她把那些谈话的细枝末节讲给女友听，却发现自己无论如何也不能道出全貌。
Suddenly an idea dawned upon her: 'I have the good fortune to be in love,' she told herself one day, with an indescribable transport of joy. 'I am in love, I am in love, it is quite clear! At my age, a young girl, beautiful, clever, where can she find sensations, if not in love? I may do what I like, I shall never feel any love for Croisenois, Caylus, e tutti quanti. They are perfect, too perfect perhaps; in short, they bore me.'
突然间，她恍然大悟：“我得到了爱的幸福，”一天，她对自己说，不可思议的喜悦让她兴奋不已。“我爱上了，我爱上了，这很清楚！在我这个年纪，一个女孩子，美丽，聪明，如果不是在爱情中，能到哪儿去找到强烈的感觉呢？我没有办法，我永远不会对克鲁瓦泽努瓦、凯吕斯和所有这些人有爱情。他们是完美的，也许过于完美了，反正他们让我厌倦。”
She turned over in her mind all the descriptions of passion which she had read in Manon Lescaut, the Nouvelle Heloise, the Letters of a Portuguese Nun, and so forth. ???? There was no question, of course, of anything but a grand passion; mere fleeting affection was unworthy of a girl of her age and birth. She bestowed the name of love only upon that heroic sentiment which was to be found in France in the days of Henri IV and Bassompierre. That love never basely succumbed to obstacles; far from it, it caused great deeds to be done. 'What a misfortune for me that there is not a real Court like that of Catherine de' Medici or Louis XIII! I feel that I am equal to everything that is most daring and great. What should I not do with a King who was a man of feeling, like Louis XII, sighing at my feet! I should lead him to the Vendee, as Baron de Tolly is always saying, and from there he would reconquer his Kingdom; then no more talk of a Charter … and Julien would aid me. What is it that he lacks? A name and a fortune. He would make a name for himself, he would acquire a fortune.
她把她在《曼饱·莱斯戈》、《新爱洛缔斯》、《葡萄牙修女书信集》等书中读到的所有关于激情的描绘又在脑子里过了一遍。当然，都是伟大的激情，轻浮的爱与她这个年纪、她这样出身的姑娘不配。爱情这名称，她只给予在亨利三世和巴松彼埃尔时代的法国能够遇到的那种壮烈的感情。这种爱情绝不在障碍面前卑劣地退却，甚至远甚于此，它能使人完成伟大的事业。“我多不幸，现在没有卡特琳·德·美第奇和路易十三那样的真正的宫廷了。我觉得我能干出最大胆、最伟大的事情。如果有一位英勇的国王，例如路易十三那样的，拜倒在我脚下，我什么壮举不能让他做出来呢！我会把他带到旺岱，像德·托利男爵常说的那样，他从那儿可重获他的王国；那时候就不会有宪章了……而于连会辅佐我。他欲什么？头衔和财产。他能为自己赢得一个头衔，他能获得财富。
'The Marquis de Croisenois lacks nothing, and all his life long he will be merely a Duke, half Ultra, half Liberal, an undecided creature always holding back from extremes, and consequently finding himself everywhere in the second rank.
“克鲁瓦泽努瓦什么也不缺，但他终其一生不过是个半极端保王党、半自由党的公爵，一个始终远离极端的优柔寡断之人，因此无论在哪里都处于第二位。
'Where is the great action which is not an extreme at the moment in which one undertakes it? It is when it is accomplished that it seems possible to creatures of common clay. Yes, it is love with all its miracles that is going to reign in my heart; I feel it by the fire that is animating me.Heaven owed me this favour. Not in vain will it have heaped every advantage upon a single head. My happiness will be worthy of myself.Each of my days will not coldly resemble the day before. There is already something grand and audacious in daring to love a man placed so far beneath me in social position. Let me see: will he continue to deserve me?At the first sign of weakness that I observe in him, I abandon him. A girl of my birth, and with the chivalrous character which they are so kind as to attribute to me' (this was one of her father's sayings) 'ought not to be have like a fool.
“有哪一个伟大的行动在开始干的时候不是一种极端呢？只是在完成的时候，一般人才认为是可能的。是的，在我的心中占有统治地位的，是爱情及其所产生的一切奇迹；我在激励着我的火焰中感到了它。上天应该给我这个恩惠。它不会白白地把所有的优点集中在一个人身上。我的幸福将是配得上我的。我的每一天将不是冷冰冰地相似于过去的一天。敢于爱一个社会地位距我如此之远的人，这已经有其伟大和勇敢了。让我们看看，他能不能继续配得上我？我只要一看见他身上有弱点，便立刻抛弃他。一个像我这样出身的女孩子，而且具有公认的骑士性格（这是她父亲的话），就不应该像个傻丫头那样行事。
'Is not that the part that I should be playing if I loved the Marquis de Croisenois? It would be simply a repetition of the happiness of my cousins, whom I despise so utterly. I know beforehand everything that the poor Marquis would say to me, all that I should have to say to him in reply. What is the use of a love that makes one yawn? One might as well take to religion. I should have a scene at the signing of my marriage contract like my youngest cousin, with the noble relatives shedding tears, provided they were not made angry by a final condition inserted in the contract the day before by the solicitor to the other party.'
“如果我爱德·克鲁瓦泽努瓦侯爵，那不就是我要扮演的角色吗？我有的将是我那些表姐妹的、我如此彻底地加以蔑视的幸福的新版本。我事先就知道可怜的侯爵会对我说什么，我会怎么回答他。一种让人打呵欠的爱情叫什么爱情？还不如出家当修女呢。我也会像最小的表妹那样签一份婚约，长辈们大为感动，除非他们心里窝火，因为对方的公证人头一天在婚约里又加了最后一个条件。”