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Of course once I had put into motion the forces of Society, Society turned on me and said, “Have you been living all this time in defiance of my laws, and do you now appeal to those laws for protection? You shall have those laws exercised to the full. You shall abide by what you have appealed to. ” The result is I am in gaol. And I used to feel bitterly the irony and ignominy of my position when in the course of my three trials, beginning at the Police Court, I used to see your father bustling in and out in the hopes of attracting public attention, as if anyone could fail to note or remember the stableman’s gait and dress, the bowed legs, the twitching hands, the hanging lower lip, the bestial and half-witted grin. Even when he was not there, or was out of sight, I used to feel conscious of his presence, and the blank dreary walls of the great Court-room, the very air itself, seemed to me at times to be hung with multitudinous masks of that apelike face[139a]. Certainly no man ever fell so ignobly, and by such ignoble instruments, as I did. I say, in Dorian Gray somewhere,[139.1] that “a man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.” I little thought that it was by a pariah that I was to be made a pariah myself.
当然,我一旦启动了社会的力量,社会就转过来对我说:“你向来是不是置我的律法于不顾,而现在又要向这些律法求助? 你要让这些律法完整地执行到底。你要遵守你所求助的。” 其结果是我进监狱。在以警察法庭开始的那三次过堂中,我常痛感自己处境的耻辱和讽刺意味,看到你父亲里里外外的东奔西跑,以期引起公众注意,好像有谁还注意不到或记不住那副马夫的步态及装束、那两条罗圈腿、那双哆嗦不停的手、那搭拉着的下唇、那像禽兽一般愚鲁的呲牙咧嘴。即使他不在场,或不在眼前,我也感觉得到他的存在,法庭大厅那光秃秃阴惨惨的四壁,就连空气本身,我也不时觉得好像悬挂着那张如猿似猴的脸庞的各种光怪陆离的面具[139a]。肯定没人像我这样,遭到过如此下流的算计,跌得如此之惨。在《道林?格雷》的哪个地方,我说了“人在选择敌人时再小心也不为过。” 当时真想不到,正是被一个贱人搞得我自己也要成为贱人了。
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