道林.格雷的画像 英文版 The Picture of Dorian Gray
奥斯卡.王尔德 Oscar Wilde
CHAPTER IX Page 2
The King of Ceilan rode through his city with a large ruby in hishand, as the ceremony of his coronation. The gates of the palace ofJohn the Priest were "made of sardius, with the horn of the hornedsnake inwrought, so that no man might bring poison within. "Over the gable were "two golden apples, in which were twocarbuncles, " so that the gold might shine by day, and the carbunclesby night. In Lodge's strange romance "A Margarite of America" it wasstated that in the chamber of Margarite were seen "all the chasteladies of the world, inchased out of silver, looking through fairmirrours of chrysolites, carbuncles, sapphires, and greeneemeraults. " Marco Polo had watched the inhabitants of Zipangu placea rose-colored pearl in the mouth of the dead. A sea-monster hadbeen enamoured of the pearl that the diver brought to King Perozes,and had slain the thief, and mourned for seven moons over his loss.When the Huns lured the king into the great pit, he flung it away, --Procopius tells the story, --nor was it ever found again, though theEmperor Anastasius offered five hundred-weight of gold pieces for it.The King of Malabar had shown a Venetian a rosary of one hundred andfour pearls, one for every god that he worshipped.
When the Duke de Valentinois, son of Alexander VI. , visited LouisXII. of France, his horse was loaded with gold leaves, according toBrantôme, and his cap had double rows of rubies that threw out agreat light. Charles of England had ridden in stirrups hung withthree hundred and twenty-one diamonds. Richard II. had a coat,valued at thirty thousand marks, which was covered with balas rubies.Hall described Henry VIII. , on his way to the Tower previous to hiscoronation, as wearing "a jacket of raised gold, the placardembroidered with diamonds and other rich stones, and a greatbauderike about his neck of large balasses. " The favorites of JamesI. wore ear-rings of emeralds set in gold filigrane. Edward II. gaveto Piers Gaveston a suit of red-gold armor studded with jacinths, anda collar of gold roses set with turquoise-stones, and a skull-capparsem?with pearls. Henry II. wore jewelled gloves reaching to theelbow, and had a hawk-glove set with twelve rubies and fifty-twogreat pearls. The ducal hat of Charles the Rash, the last Duke ofBurgundy of his race, was studded with sapphires and hung with pear-shaped pearls.
de lys, birds, and images;veils of lacis worked in Hungary point; Sicilian brocades, and stiffSpanish velvets; Georgian work with its gilt coins, and JapaneseFoukousas with their green-toned golds and their marvellously-plumaged birds.part of his life, and he was also afraid thatduring.
How exquisite life had once been! How gorgeous in its pomp anddecoration! Even to read of the luxury of the dead was wonderful.
Then he turned his attention to embroideries, and to the tapestriesthat performed the office of frescos in the chill rooms of theNorthern nations of Europe. As he investigated the subject, --and healways had an extraordinary faculty of becoming absolutely absorbedfor the moment in whatever he took up, --he was almost saddened by thereflection of the ruin that time brought on beautiful and wonderfulthings. He, at any rate, had escaped that. Summer followed summer,and the yellow jonquils bloomed and died many times, and nights ofhorror repeated the story of their shame, but he was unchanged. Nowinter marred his face or stained his flower-like bloom. Howdifferent it was with material things! Where had they gone to?Where was the great crocus-colored robe, on which the gods foughtagainst the giants, that had been worked for Athena? Where the hugevelarium that Nero had stretched across the Colosseum at Rome, onwhich were represented the starry sky, and Apollo driving a chariotdrawn by white gilt-reined steeds? He longed to see the curioustable-napkins wrought for Elagabalus, on which were displayed all thedainties and viands that could be wanted for a feast; the mortuarycloth of King Chilperic, with its three hundred golden bees; thefantastic robes that excited the indignation of the Bishop of Pontus,and were figured with "lions, panthers, bears, dogs, forests, rocks,hunters, --all, in fact, that a painter can copy from nature;" and thecoat that Charles of Orleans once wore, on the sleeves of which wereembroidered the verses of a song beginning "Madame, je suis toutjoyeux, " the musical accompaniment of the words being wrought in goldthread, and each note, a square shape in those days, formed with fourpearls. He read of the room that was prepared at the palace atRheims for the use of Queen Joan of Burgundy, and was decorated with"thirteen hundred and twenty-one parrots, made in broidery, andblazoned with the king's arms, and five hundred and sixty-onebutterflies, whose wings were similarly ornamented with the arms ofthe queen, the whole worked in gold. " Catherine de Médicis had amourning-bed made for her of black velvet powdered with crescents andsuns. Its curtains were of damask, with leafy wreaths and garlands,figured upon a gold and silver ground, and fringed along the edgeswith broideries of pearls, and it stood in a room hung with rows ofthe queen's devices in cut black velvet upon cloth of silver. LouisXIV. had gold-embroidered caryatides fifteen feet high in hisapartment. The state bed of Sobieski, King of Poland, was made ofSmyrna gold brocade embroidered in turquoises with verses from theKoran. Its supports were of silver gilt, beautifully chased, andprofusely set with enamelled and jewelled medallions. It had beentaken from the Turkish camp before Vienna, and the standard ofMohammed had stood under it.
And so, for a whole year, he sought to accumulate the most exquisitespecimens that he could find of textile and embroidered work, gettingthe dainty Delhi muslins, finely wrought, with gold-threat palmates,and stitched over with iridescent beetles' wings; the Dacca gauzes,that from their transparency are known in the East as "woven air, "and "running water, " and "evening dew;" strange figured cloths fromJava; elaborate yellow Chinese hangings; books bound in tawny satinsor fair blue silks and wrought with fleurs de lys, birds, and images;veils of lacis worked in Hungary point; Sicilian brocades, and stiffSpanish velvets; Georgian work with its gilt coins, and JapaneseFoukousas with their green-toned golds and their marvellously-plumaged birds.
He had a special passion, also, for ecclesiastical vestments, asindeed he had for everything connected with the service of theChurch. In the long cedar chests that lined the west gallery of hishouse he had stored away many rare and beautiful specimens of what isreally the raiment of the Bride of Christ, who must wear purple andjewels and fine linen that she may hide the pallid macerated bodythat is worn by the suffering that she seeks for, and wounded byself-inflicted pain. He had a gorgeous cope of crimson silk andgold-thread damask, figured with a repeating pattern of goldenpomegranates set in six-petalled formal blossoms, beyond which oneither side was the pine- apple device wrought in seed-pearls.The orphreys were divided into panels representing scenes from thelife of the Virgin, and the coronation of the Virgin was figured incolored silks upon the hood. This was Italian work of the fifteenthcentury. Another cope was of green velvet, embroidered with heart-shaped groups of acanthus-leaves, from which spread long-stemmedwhite blossoms, the details of which were picked out with silverthread and colored crystals. The morse bore a seraph's head in gold-thread raised work. The orphreys were woven in a diaper of red andgold silk, and were starred with medallions of many saints andmartyrs, among whom was St. Sebastian. He had chasubles, also, ofamber-colored silk, and blue silk and gold brocade, and yellow silkdamask and cloth of gold, figured with representations of the Passionand Crucifixion of Christ, and embroidered with lions and peacocksand other emblems; dalmatics of white satin and pink silk damask,decorated with tulips and dolphins and fleurs de lys; altar frontalsof crimson velvet and blue linen; and many corporals, chalice-veils,and sudaria. In the mystic offices to which these things were putthere was something that quickened his imagination.
For these things, and everything that he collected in his lovelyhouse, were to be to him means of forgetfulness, modes by which hecould escape, for a season, from the fear that seemed to him at timesto be almost too great to be borne. Upon the walls of the lonelylocked room where he had spent so much of his boyhood, he had hungwith his own hands the terrible portrait whose changing featuresshowed him the real degradation of his life, and had draped thepurple-and-gold pall in front of it as a curtain. For weeks he wouldnot go there, would forget the hideous painted thing, and get backhis light heart, his wonderful joyousness, his passionate pleasure inmere existence. Then, suddenly, some night he would creep out of thehouse, go down to dreadful places near Blue Gate Fields, and staythere, day after day, until he was driven away. On his return hewould sit in front of the picture, sometimes loathing it and himself,but filled, at other times, with that pride of rebellion that is halfthe fascination of sin, and smiling, with secret pleasure, at themisshapen shadow that had to bear the burden that should have beenhis own.
After a few years he could not endure to be long out of England, andgave up the villa that he had shared at Trouville with Lord Henry, aswell as the little white walled-in house at Algiers where he had morethan once spent his winter. He hated to be separated from thepicture that was such a part of his life, and he was also afraid thatduring his absence some one might gain access to the room, in spiteof the elaborate bolts and bars that he had caused to be placed uponthe door.
He was quite conscious that this would tell them nothing. It wastrue that the portrait still preserved, under all the foulness andugliness of the face, its marked likeness to himself; but what couldthey learn from that? He would laugh at any one who tried to taunthim. He had not painted it. What was it to him how vile and full ofshame it looked? Even if he told them, would they believe it?
Yet he was afraid. Sometimes when he was down at his greathouse in Nottinghamshire, entertaining the fashionable young men ofhis own rank who were his chief companions, and astounding the countyby the wanton luxury and gorgeous splendor of his mode of life, hewould suddenly leave his guests and rush back to town to see that thedoor had not been tampered with and that the picture was still there.What if it should be stolen? The mere thought made him cold withhorror. Surely the world would know his secret then. Perhaps theworld already suspected it.
For, while he fascinated many, there were not a few who distrustedhim. He was blackballed at a West End club of which his birth andsocial position fully entitled him to become a member, and on oneoccasion, when he was brought by a friend into the smoking-room ofthe Carlton, the Duke of Berwick and another gentleman got up in amarked manner and went out. Curious stories became current about himafter he had passed his twenty-fifth year. It was said that he hadbeen seen brawling with foreign sailors in a low den in the distantparts of Whitechapel, and that he consorted with thieves and coinersand knew the mysteries of their trade. His extraordinary absencesbecame notorious, and, when he used to reappear again in society, menwould whisper to each other in corners, or pass him with a sneer, orlook at him with cold searching eyes, as if they were determined todiscover his secret.
Of such insolences and attempted slights he, of course, took nonotice, and in the opinion of most people his frank debonair manner,his charming boyish smile, and the infinite grace of that wonderfulyouth that seemed never to leave him, were in themselves a sufficientanswer to the calumnies (for so they called them) that werecirculated about him. It was remarked, however, that those who hadbeen most intimate with him appeared, after a time, to shun him. Ofall his friends, or so-called friends, Lord Henry Wotton was the onlyone who remained loyal to him. Women who had wildly adored him, andfor his sake had braved all social censure and set convention atdefiance, were seen to grow pallid with shame or horror if DorianGray entered the room.
and astounding the countyby the wanton luxury and gorgeous splendor of his mode of life, hewould suddenly leave his guests and rush back to town to see that thedoor had not been tampered with and that the picture was still there.What if it should be stolen? The mere thought made him cold withhorror. Surely the world would know his secret then?
Such, at any rate, was Dorian Gray's opinion. He used to wonder atthe shallow psychology of those who conceive the Ego in man as athing simple, permanent, reliable, and of one essence. To him, manwas a being with myriad lives and myriad sensations, a complexmultiform creature that bore within itself strange legacies ofthought and passion, and whose very flesh was tainted with themonstrous maladies of the dead. He loved to stroll through the gauntcold picture-gallery of his country-house and look at the variousportraits of those whose blood flowed in his veins. Here was PhilipHerbert, described by Francis Osborne, in his "Memoires on the Reignsof Queen Elizabeth and King James, " as one who was "caressed by thecourt for his handsome face, which kept him not long company. " Wasit young Herbert's life that he sometimes led? Had some strangepoisonous germ crept from body to body till it had reached his own?Was it some dim sense of that ruined grace that had made him sosuddenly, and almost without cause, give utterance, in BasilHallward's studio, to that mad prayer that had so changed his life?Here, in gold-embroidered red doublet, jewelled surcoat, and gilt-edged ruff and wrist-bands, stood Sir Anthony Sherard, with hissilver-and-black armor piled at his feet. What had this man's legacybeen? Had the lover of Giovanna of Naples bequeathed him someinheritance of sin and shame? Were his own actions merely the dreamsthat the dead man had not dared to realize? Here, from the fadingcanvas, smiled Lady Elizabeth Devereux, in her gauze hood, pearlstomacher, and pink slashed sleeves. A flower was in her right hand,and her left clasped an enamelled collar of white and damask roses.On a table by her side lay a mandolin and an apple. There were largegreen rosettes upon her little pointed shoes. He knew her life, andthe strange stories that were told about her lovers. Had hesomething of her temperament in him? Those oval heavy-lidded eyesseemed to look curiously at him. What of George Willoughby, with hispowdered hair and fantastic patches? How evil he looked! The facewas saturnine and swarthy, and the sensual lips seemed to be twistedwith disdain. Delicate lace ruffles fell over the lean yellow handsthat were so overladen with rings. He had been a macaroni of theeighteenth century, and the friend, in his youth, of Lord Ferrars.What of the second Lord Sherard, the companion of the Prince Regentin his wildest days, and one of the witnesses at the secret marriagewith Mrs. Fitzherbert? How proud and handsome he was, with hischestnut curls and insolent pose! What passions had he bequeathed?The world had looked upon him as infamous. He had led the orgies atCarlton House. The star of the Garter glittered upon his breast.Beside him hung the portrait of his wife, a pallid, thin-lipped womanin black. Her blood, also, stirred within him. How curious it allseemed!
Yet one had ancestors in literature, as well as in one's own race,nearer perhaps in type and temperament, many of them, and certainlywith an influence of which one was more absolutely conscious. Therewere times when it seemed to Dorian Gray that the whole ofhistory was merely the record of his own life, not as he had lived itin act and circumstance, but as his imagination had created it forhim, as it had been in his brain and in his passions. He felt thathe had known them all, those strange terrible figures that had passedacross the stage of the world and made sin so marvellous and evil sofull of wonder. It seemed to him that in some mysterious way theirlives had been his own.
The hero of the dangerous novel that had so influenced his life hadhimself had this curious fancy. In a chapter of the book he tellshow, crowned with laurel, lest lightning might strike him, he hadsat, as Tiberius, in a garden at Capri, reading the shameful books ofElephantis, while dwarfs and peacocks strutted round him and theflute-player mocked the swinger of the censer; and, as Caligula, hadcaroused with the green-shirted jockeys in their stables, and suppedin an ivory manger with a jewel-frontleted horse; and, as Domitian,had wandered through a corridor lined with marble mirrors, lookinground with haggard eyes for the reflection of the dagger that was toend his days, and sick with that ennui, that taedium vitae, thatcomes on those to whom life denies nothing; and had peered through aclear emerald at the red shambles of the Circus, and then, in alitter of pearl and purple drawn by silver-shod mules, been carriedthrough the Street of Pomegranates to a House of Gold, and heard mencry on Nero Caesar as he passed by; and, as Elagabalus, had paintedhis face with colors, and plied the distaff among the women, andbrought the Moon from Carthage, and given her in mystic marriage tothe Sun.
Over and over again Dorian used to read this fantastic chapter, andthe chapter immediately following, in which the hero describes thecurious tapestries that he had had woven for him from GustaveMoreau's designs, and on which were pictured the awful and beautifulforms of those whom Vice and Blood and Weariness had made monstrousor mad: Filippo, Duke of Milan, who slew his wife, and painted herlips with a scarlet poison; Pietro Barbi, the Venetian, known as Paulthe Second, who sought in his vanity to assume the title of Formosus,and whose tiara, valued at two hundred thousand florins, was boughtat the price of a terrible sin; Gian Maria Visconti, who used houndsto chase living men, and whose murdered body was covered with rosesby a harlot who had loved him; the Borgia on his white horse, withFratricide riding beside him, and his mantle stained with the bloodof Perotto; Pietro Riario, the young Cardinal Archbishop of Florence,child and minion of Sixtus IV. , whose beauty was equalled only by hisdebauchery, and who received Leonora of Aragon in a pavilion of whiteand crimson silk, filled with nymphs and centaurs, and gilded a boythat he might serve her at the feast as Ganymede or Hylas; Ezzelin,whose melancholy could be cured only by the spectacle of death, andwho had a passion for red blood, as other men have for red wine, --theson of the Fiend, as was reported, and one who had cheated his fatherat dice when gambling with him for his own soul; Giambattista Cibo,who in mockery took the name of Innocent, and into whose torpid veinsthe blood of three lads was infused by a Jewish doctor;Sigismondo Malatesta, the lover of Isotta, and the lord of Rimini,whose effigy was burned at Rome as the enemy of God and man, whostrangled Polyssena with a napkin, and gave poison to Ginevra d'Estein a cup of emerald, and in honor of a shameful passion built a paganchurch for Christian worship; Charles VI. , who had so wildly adoredhis brother's wife that a leper had warned him of the insanity thatwas coming on him, and who could only be soothed by Saracen cardspainted with the images of Love and Death and Madness; and, in histrimmed jerkin and jewelled cap and acanthus-like curls, GrifonettoBaglioni, who slew Astorre with his bride, and Simonetto with hispage, and whose comeliness was such that, as he lay dying in theyellow piazza of Perugia, those who had hated him could not choosebut weep, and Atalanta, who had cursed him, blessed him.
There was a horrible fascination in them all. He saw them at night,and they troubled his imagination in the day. The Renaissance knewof strange manners of poisoning, --poisoning by a helmet and a lightedtorch, by an embroidered glove and a jewelled fan, by a gildedpomander and by an amber chain. Dorian Gray had been poisoned by abook. There were moments when he looked on evil simply as a modethrough which he could realize his conception of the beautiful.