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How clearly I saw it then, as now, I need not tell you. But I said to myself: “At all costs I must keep Love in my heart. If I go into prison without Love what will become of my Soul?” The letters I wrote to you at that time from Holloway were my efforts to keep Love as the dominant note of my own nature. I could if I had chosen have torn you to pieces with bitter reproaches[40a]. I could have rent you with maledictions. I could have held up a mirror to you, and shown you such an image of yourself that you would not have recognised it as your own till you found it mimicking back your gestures of horror, and then you would have known whose shape it was, and hated it and yourself for ever. More than that indeed. The sins of another were being placed to my account. Had I so chosen, I could on either trial have saved myself at his expense, not from shame indeed but from imprisonment. Had I cared to show that the Crown witnesses—the three most important — had been carefully coached by your father and his solicitors, not in reticences merely, but in assertions, in the absolute transference, deliberate, plotted, and rehearsed, of the actions and doings of someone else on to me[40b], I could have had each one of them dismissed from the box by the Judge, more summarily[40c] than even wretched perjured Atkins was.[40.1] I could have walked out of Court with my tongue in my cheek, and my hands in my pockets, a free man[40d]. The strongest pressure was put upon me to do so. I was earnestly advised, begged, entreated to do so by people whose sole interest was my welfare, and the welfare of my house[40e]. But I refused. I did not choose to do so. I have never regretted my decision for a single moment, even in the most bitter periods of my imprisonment. Such a course of action would have been beneath me. Sins of the flesh are nothing. They are maladies for physicians to cure, if they should be cured[40f]. Sins of the soul alone are shameful. To have secured my acquittal by such means would have been a life-long torture to me. But do you really think that you were worthy of the love I was showing you then, or that for a single moment I thought you were? Do you really think that at any period in our friendship you were worthy of the love I showed you, or that for a single moment I thought you were? I knew you were not. But Love does not traffic in a marketplace, nor use a huckster’s scales. Its joy, like the joy of the intellect, is to feel itself alive[40g]. The aim of Love is to love: no more, and no less[40h]. You were my enemy: such an enemy as no man ever had. I had given you my life, and to gratify the lowest and most contemptible of all human passions, Hatred and Vanity and Greed, you had thrown it away. In less than three years you had entirely ruined me from every point of view. For my own sake there was nothing for me to do but to love you. I knew, if I allowed myself to hate you, that in the dry desert of existence over which I had to travel, and am travelling still, every rock would lose its shadow, every palm tree be withered, every well of water prove poisoned at its source. Are you beginning now to understand a little? Is your imagination wakening from the long lethargy in which it has lain? You know already what Hate is. Is it beginning to dawn on you what Love is, and what is the nature of Love? It is not too late for you to learn, though to teach it to you I may have had to go to a convict’s cell.
我当时，如同现在一样看得有多清楚，就不必跟你说了。但我对自己说：“不管怎样，我必须心中存着爱。要是不带着爱进监狱，那我的灵魂该怎么办？”那时从荷洛威给你写了那些信，就是努力要存住爱，让它成为我自己心性的主旨。要是我真想这么做的话，本可以将你痛骂得体无完肤[40a]，本可以用诅咒鞭挞你。我本可以擎起一面镜子，让你看到那样一副你自己都认不出来的嘴脸，看到它在学你那可怕的样子时，才知道那就是你，于是对它、对你自己，一恨到底。还不止于此呢。另一个人的罪孽正算在我的帐上。如果我想这么做的话，本来可以在两场中的哪一场审讯里把那个人推出来而免自己一难，当然不是免于羞辱了，而是免于牢狱之苦。如果我高兴的话，大可以披露原告证人——最重要的那三个——是经过你父亲和他的律师们精心调教过的，不止是如何以守为攻，更是如何以攻为守，处心积虑地、诡计多端地经过排练预演，绝对要把另一个人的所作所为安到我头上[40b]。我本可以使法官当堂把他们一个个赶出证人席的，甚至比裁定那个作假证的卑鄙的阿特金斯更为即决[40c]。我本可以风凉话挂在嘴边，两只手插在兜里，无罪一身轻地走出法庭的[40d]。要我这么做的压力太大了。有人真心地劝我、央求我、哀求我这么做，他们唯一关心的是我的祸福，是我家门的存亡[40e]。但我拒绝了。我不想这么做。对这个决定我从来没有后悔过，即便在监牢里那些最痛苦的时候。那样的举动我不屑为之。肉体之罪算不了什么。如果该治的话，也是留给医生诊治的疾患[40f]。只有灵魂之罪才是可耻的。假使通过这种手段使自己获判无罪，对于我将是永生的折磨。但是你真的就认为自己配得上我那时对你表示的爱吗？真的就认为我有哪一刻觉得你配得上吗？你真的就认为在我们的友谊之中，有哪一段时期你配得上我对你表示的爱吗？真的就认为我有哪一刻觉得你配得上吗？我知道你配不上的。但爱不在市场上交易，也不用小贩的秤来称量。爱的欢乐，一如心智的欢乐，在于感受自身的存活[40g]。爱的目的是去爱，不多，也不少[40h]。你是我的敌人，从来没有谁有过像这样的敌人。我曾把自己的生命给了你，然而为了满足一己私欲，那人情人性中最低下最可鄙的欲望——仇恨、虚荣还有贪婪——你把它丢弃了。在不到三年时间里，你把我完完全全给毁了。为了我自己的缘故，我别无选择，唯有爱你。我知道，假如让自己恨你的话，那在“活着”这一片我过去要、现在仍然在跋涉的沙漠之中，每一块岩石都将失去它的荫影，每一株棕榈都会枯萎，每一眼清泉都将从源头变为毒水。你现在是不是开始明白一些了？你的想象力是不是在从它那漫长的昏睡中苏醒过来？你已经知道恨是什么个样子了。你是不是也开始悟出爱是什么个样子，爱的本质又是什么呢？你要学还不太晚，虽然为了教你，我可能非得这么坐牢不可。
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