【英文原著类】THE ASPERN PAPERS(阿斯本文件).pdf

THE ASPERN PAPERS
THE ASPERN PAPERS
1
THE ASPERN PAPERS
I
I had taken Mrs. Prest into my confidence; in truth without her I
should have made but little advance, for the fruitful idea in the whole
business dropped from her friendly lips. It was she who invented the short
cut, who severed the Gordian knot. It is not supposed to be the nature of
women to rise as a general thing to the largest and most liberal view--I
mean of a practical scheme; but it has struck me that they sometimes
throw off a bold conception-- such as a man would not have risen to--with
singular serenity. "Simply ask them to take you in on the footing of a
lodger"-- I don't think that unaided I should have risen to that. I was
beating about the bush, trying to be ingenious, wondering by what
combination of arts I might e an acquaintance, when she offered
this happy suggestion that the way to e an acquaintance was first to
e an inmate. Her actual knowledge of the Misses Bordereau was
scarcely larger than mine, and indeed I had brought with me from England
some definite facts which were new to her. Their name had been mixed up
ages before with one of the greatest names of the century, and they lived
now in Venice in obscurity, on very small means, unvisited,
unapproachable, in a dilapidated old palace on an out-of-the-way canal:
this was the substance of my friend's impression of them. She herself
had been established in Venice for fifteen years and had done a great deal
of good there; but the circle of her benevolence did not include the two
shy, mysterious and, as it was somehow supposed, scarcely respectable
Americans (they were believed to have lost in their long exile all national
quality, besides having had, as their name implied, some French strain in
their origin), who asked no favors and desired no attention. In the early
years of her residence she had made an attempt to see them, but this had
been essful only as regards the little one, as Mrs. Prest called