The sum-total contained by all heads put together consists of a certain quantity of antiquated notions; a few new inflections brewed in company of an evening being added from time to time to the common stock. Like sea-water in a little creek, the phrases which represent these ideas surge up daily, punctually obeying the tidal laws of conversation in their flow and ebb; you hear the hollow echo of yesterday, to-day, to-morrow, a year hence, and for evermore. On all things here below they pass immutable judgments, which go to make up a body of tradition into which no power of mortal man can infuse one drop of wit or sense. The lives of these persons revolve with the regularity of clockwork in an orbit of use and wont which admits of no more deviation or change than their opinions on matters religious, political, moral, or literary.
这些头脑中所堆砌起来的全部思想都是由一定数量的迂腐观念组成的；其中也掺杂着一些新思想，这些思想是在晚上的集会中被不时地添加到这一普通思想库中的。代表这些观念的语句，正如小海湾中的海水一样每日汹涌澎湃，谈话中严格遵守潮涨潮落的自然法则；你会一直听到空洞的回声，昨天、今天、明天、一年后、永远。他们对世事的看法永远不变，这些看法已经形成一套传统，任何人都无权往里注入一丁点儿新思想和新见地。这些人的生活在习惯的轨道上规律运转着，正如他们对宗教、政治、道德和文学观念一样，这都是无法背离或变更的。
If a stranger is admitted to the cenacle, every member of it in turn will say (not without a trace of irony), “You will not find the brilliancy of your Parisian society here,” and proceed forthwith to criticise the life led by his neighbors, as if he himself were an exception who had striven, and vainly striven, to enlighten the rest. But any stranger so ill advised as to concur in any of their freely expressed criticism of each other, is pronounced at once to be an ill-natured person, a heathen, an outlaw, a reprobate Parisian “as Parisians mostly are.”
如果一个外地人被允许进入这个小团体，这里的每个成员就会轮番对他讲（带着嘲讽的意味）：“在这儿你可找不到巴黎社会的光彩。”然后他们便斥责起邻里们的生活方式，似乎他们自己是曾徒劳设法开导大众的例外。可一个新来的人如果没想到对他们互相之间的任何自由抨击予以随声附和，那么他就会被马上看成一个坏心眼的人，一个异教徒，一个歹徒，一个堕落的巴黎人——“跟大多数巴黎人一样”。
Before Gaston de Nueil made his appearance in this little world of strictly observed etiquette, where every detail of life is an integrant part of a whole, and everything is known; where the values of personalty and real estate is quoted like stocks on the vast sheet of the newspaper—before his arrival he had been weighed in the unerring scales of Bayeusaine judgment.
加斯东·德纽埃尔在这个小小的世界里露面之前，就已经被巴约那不会出错的天平称过斤两了。在这个小小的世界里一切都遵循礼节，生活中每个细节都是必不可少的一部分，任何事都一目了然；所有的动产和不动产都像报纸大幅刊登的债券一样报价。
His cousin, Mme. de Sainte-Severe, had already given out the amount of his fortune, and the sum of his expectations, had produced the family tree, and expatiated on the talents, breeding, and modesty of this particular branch. So he received the precise amount of attentions to which he was entitled; he was accepted as a worthy scion of a good stock; and, for he was but twenty-three, was made welcome without ceremony, though certain young ladies and mothers of daughters looked not unkindly upon him.
他的表姐——圣赛韦尔夫人，已经公布了他的财产数字、他的期望所得，也出示了他的家谱，还阐述了他这一生的才干、教养以及谦逊。因此他受到了他理应得到的众多关注；他被认为是优秀贵族的好苗子；尽管一些少女和几个有女儿的母亲对他钟爱有加，但因为他只有23岁，就没有为他准备欢迎仪式。
He had an income of eighteen thousand livres from land in the valley of the Auge; and sooner or later his father, as in duty bound, would leave him the chateau of Manerville, with the lands thereunto belonging. As for his education, political career, personal qualities, and qualifications—no one so much as thought of raising the questions. His land was undeniable, his rentals steady; excellent plantations had been made; the tenants paid for repairs, rates, and taxes; the apple-trees were thirty-eight years old; and, to crown all, his father was in treaty for two hundred acres of woodland just outside the paternal park, which he intended to enclose with walls. No hopes of a political career, no fame on earth, can compare with such advantages as these.
他在奥日谷地有着一万八千里弗赫的年地租收入；他的父亲早晚得遗留给他玛奈维尔古堡以及那里其他的附属田地。至于他所受的教育、政治生涯、个人品行以及才能——没有人会对此提出任何异议。他的土地肥沃，租金收入稳定；已开拓出优良的农场，佃户承担其维修、费用和捐税；苹果树已种植了38年；尤其是他的父亲还在谈一笔生意，他打算买下同他所继承的庭园相连的那两百英亩森林，并圈起围墙。这样的优势是任何政治前途、任何在人间的名望都无法与之媲美的。
Whether out of malice or design, Mme. de Sainte-Severe omitted to mention that Gaston had an elder brother; nor did Gaston himself say a word about him. But, at the same time, it is true that the brother was consumptive, and to all appearance would shortly be laid in earth, lamented and forgotten.
不知是出于恶意还是另有图谋，圣赛韦尔夫人避而不谈加斯东有个哥哥的事；加斯东自己对此也只字不提。可虽说如此，这位哥哥的确是患了肺病，似乎不久就要被埋葬、哀悼和遗忘了。
At first Gaston de Nueil amused himself at the expense of the circle. He drew, as it were, for his mental album, a series of portraits of these folk, with their angular, wrinkled faces, and hooked noses, their crotchets and ludicrous eccentricities of dress, portraits which possessed all the racy flavor of truth. He delighted in their “Normanisms,” in the primitive quaintness of their ideas and characters. For a short time he flung himself into their squirrel's life of busy gyrations in a cage. Then he began to feel the want of variety, and grew tired of it. It was like the life of the cloister, cut short before it had well begun. He drifted on till he reached a crisis, which is neither spleen nor disgust, but combines all the symptoms of both.
When a human being is transplanted into an uncongenial soil, to lead a starved, stunted existence, there is always a little discomfort over the transition. Then, gradually, if nothing removes him from his surroundings, he grows accustomed to them, and adapts himself to the vacuity which grows upon him and renders him powerless. Even now, Gaston's lungs were accustomed to the air; and he was willing to discern a kind of vegetable happiness in days that brought no mental exertion and no responsibilities. The constant stirring of the sap of life, the fertilizing influences of mind on mind, after which he had sought so eagerly in Paris, were beginning to fade from his memory, and he was in a fair way of becoming a fossil with these fossils, and ending his days among them, content, like the companions of Ulysses, in his gross envelope.
加斯东·德纽埃尔拿这个圈子当消遣。可以说，他在脑子里都给这些家伙画了一系列肖像：棱角分明、布满皱纹的脸，鹰钩鼻、胸针、滑稽古怪的装束。这些肖像真是惟妙惟肖。他喜欢这些人的“诺曼底式”表达，非常喜欢他们守旧的观念和粗野的性格。他很快就习惯了这种像松鼠在笼子中不停打转似的生活。不久，他又感到这生活缺少变化，于是慢慢厌烦起来。这就好比修道院里的生活，还没好好开始便已经中断了。他就这么一天天过着，直到发现自己陷入危机，这危机既非怨恨也非厌恶，但兼具两者的症状。
当一个人被移植到一块与其志趣不投的土壤中，去过一种挨饿、成长受阻的生活时，这种转变总会带来点儿轻微的痛苦。然后，慢慢地，如果没有什么东西将他从周围环境中拉走，他就会变得习惯这样的生活，适应这样的空虚，而这种空虚会侵蚀他，使他变得无力。尽管这样，加斯东的肺部已经习惯了这种空气；他在这种无所用心和无所事事的日子里欣然领悟到了一种单调呆板的幸福。他在巴黎热切追寻的那种生命活力的不停骚动，像肥料一样助他成长的思想碰撞的东西，开始在他记忆里慢慢褪色了，他很有可能会变成这堆化石中的一块，然后像尤利塞斯的同伴们一样，被臃肿的皮囊包裹着，心满意足地死在这堆人中间。
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