In point of fact, I met Strickland before I had been a fortnight in Paris.
事实上，我在巴黎呆了不到两周就遇见了斯特里克兰。

I quickly found myself a tiny apartment on the fifth floor of a house in the Rue des Dames, and for a couple of hundred francs bought at a second-hand dealer’s enough furniture to make it habitable. —
我很快在德姆街的一栋房子的五楼找到了一间小公寓，花了几百法郎在一家二手家具店买了足够的家具让它适于居住。 —

I arranged with the concierge to make my coffee in the morning and to keep the place clean. —
我和门卫商量每天早上给我冲咖啡并保持房间干净。 —

Then I went to see my friend Dirk Stroeve.
然后我去看望了我的朋友德克·斯特罗夫。

Dirk Stroeve was one of those persons whom, according to your character, you cannot think of without derisive laughter or an embarrassed shrug of the shoulders. —
德克·斯特罗夫是一种你无法不联想到嘲笑或尴尬耸肩的人。 —

Nature had made him a buffoon. He was a painter, but a very bad one, whom I had met in Rome, and I still remembered his pictures. —
他天生是一个丑角。他是个画家，但是一个很糟糕的画家，我在罗马时认识了他，至今还记得他的画作。 —

He had a genuine enthusiasm for the commonplace. —
他对平凡事物有着真挚的热爱。 —

His soul palpitating with love of art, he painted the models who hung about the stairway of Bernini in the Piazza de Spagna, undaunted by their obvious picturesqueness; —
在贝尔尼尼广场的楼梯上悠闲晃动的模特们，他毫不犹豫地拍下他们的风景； —

and his studio was full of canvases on which were portrayed moustachioed, large-eyed peasants in peaked hats, urchins in becoming rags, and women in bright petticoats. —
他的画室里堆满了画布，上面描绘着留着小胡子、大眼睛的农民戴着尖帽子、身穿鲜艳裙子的女人。 —

Sometimes they lounged at the steps of a church, and sometimes dallied among cypresses against a cloudless sky; —
有时他们在教堂门口慵懒地倚靠，有时在没有一丝云彩的天空下瞎逛； —

sometimes they made love by a Renaissance well-head, and sometimes they wandered through the Campagna by the side of an ox-waggon. —
有时他们在文艺复兴式的井边谈情说爱，有时在牛车旁边漫步在乡间。 —

They were carefully drawn and carefully painted. A photograph could not have been more exact. —
他们画得细致精确，就像照片一样。 —

One of the painters at the Villa Medici had called him Le Maitre de la Boite a Chocoloats. —
维拉·梅迪奇的一位画家称他为“朱古力盒子大师”。 —

To look at his pictures you would have thought that Monet, Manet, and the rest of the Impressionists had never been.
看看他的画作，你会以为莫奈、马奈以及其他印象派画家从未存在过。

“I don’t pretend to be a great painter, ” he said, “I’m not a Michael Angelo, no, but I have something. —
“我并不自诩为伟大的画家，”他说，“我不是米开朗基罗，不，但我有一些天赋。” —

I sell. I bring romance into the homes of all sorts of people. —
我销售。我把浪漫带进各种人家。 —

Do you know, they buy my pictures not only in Holland, but in Norway and Sweden and Denmark? —
你知道吗，他们不仅在荷兰购买我的图片，还在挪威、瑞典和丹麦购买？ —

It’s mostly merchants who buy them, and rich tradesmen. —
大部分是商人购买，还有富有的商人。 —

You can’t imagine what the winters are like in those countries, so long and dark and cold. —
你无法想象那些国家的冬天是怎样的，如此漫长、黑暗和寒冷。 —

They like to think that Italy is like my pictures. That’s what they expect. —
他们希望意大利就像我的画中所展示的那样。这就是他们的期望。 —

That’s what I expected Italy to be before I came here. “
这也是我来到这里之前对意大利的期待。

And I think that was the vision that had remained with him always, dazzling his eyes so that he could not see the truth; —
我觉得那个幻想一直留在他的心里，这使他无法看清事实； —

and notwithstanding the brutality of fact, he continued to see with the eyes of the spirit an Italy of romantic brigands and picturesque ruins. —
尽管如此残酷，他依然用心灵的眼睛看到了一个充满浪漫山贼和风景如画遗迹的意大利。 —

It was an ideal that he painted – a poor one, common and shop-soiled, but still it was an ideal; —
他描绘的是一个理想 – 一个贫穷的、平凡的、陈旧的理想，但仍是一个理想； —

and it gave his character a peculiar charm.
这赋予了他的性格一种特殊的魅力。

It was because I felt this that Dirk Stroeve was not to me, as to others, merely an object of ridicule. —
因为我感受到这一点，所以对我来说杜克·斯楚夫不像对其他人一样，只是一个可笑的对象。 —

His fellow-painters made no secret of their contempt for his work, but he earned a fair amount of money, and they did not hesitate to make free use of his purse. —
他的画友们毫不掩饰对他作品的蔑视，但他挣了不少钱，他们毫不犹豫地动用他的钱包。 —

He was generous, and the needy, laughing at him because he believed so naively their stories of distress, borrowed from him with effrontery. —
他慷慨，但那些因为他如此天真地相信他们的困苦故事而笑话他的贫穷人们，却厚颜无耻地向他借钱。 —

He was very emotional, yet his feeling, so easily aroused, had in it something absurd, so that you accepted his kindness, but felt no gratitude. —
他非常感性，然而他那么容易被激起的情感中却有些荒谬，让你接受了他的善意，却没有感激之情。 —

To take money from him was like robbing a child, and you despised him because he was so foolish. —
从他那里拿钱就像抢孩子一样，你因为他太愚蠢而看不起他。 —

I imagine that a pickpocket, proud of his light fingers, must feel a sort of indignation with the careless woman who leaves in a cab a vanity-bag with all her jewels in it. —
我想象一个惯于偷窃的小偷，对那个在出租车上留下装着所有珠宝的化妆包的不慎的女人一定感到愤慨。 —

Nature had made him a butt, but had denied him insensibility. —
大自然造就他成为被人取笑的对象，但却没有赐予他麻木不仁的能力。 —

He writhed under the jokes, practical and otherwise, which were perpetually made at his expense, and yet never ceased, it seemed wilfully, to expose himself to them. —
他对于那些不断拿他开玩笑的笑话，无论是实际上的还是其他的，都感到痛苦，却似乎故意暴露自己让别人取笑。 —

He was constantly wounded, and yet his good- nature was such that he could not bear malice: —
他不断受伤，但他的善良使他无法存恶意：蝰蛇可能会叮他，但他却从来没有因此吸取教训，伤愈后便再次怜爱地将其放回自己怀中。 —

the viper might sting him, but he never learned by experience, and had no sooner recovered from his pain than he tenderly placed it once more in his bosom. —
他的生活是一场以闹剧形式书写的悲剧。 —

His life was a tragedy written in the terms of knockabout farce. —
因为我没有嘲笑他，他对我感激，常向我倾诉他的不幸。 —

Because I did not laugh at him he was grateful to me, and he used to pour into my sympathetic ear the long list of his troubles. —
他们最令人伤感的地方是荒谬可笑，而且越是悲惨，你就越想笑。 —

The saddest thing about them was that they were grotesque, and the more pathetic they were, the more you wanted to laugh.
不过，尽管他画得不好，他对艺术有非常敏感的感觉，和他一起去画廊是一件难得的享受。

But though so bad a painter, he had a very delicate feeling for art, and to go with him to picture-galleries was a rare treat. —
他的热情是真诚的，他的批评是敏锐的。他是包罗万象的。 —

His enthusiasm was sincere and his criticism acute. He was catholic. —
他不仅对古老大师有真正的欣赏，而且对现代艺术家有同情心。 —

He had not only a true appreciation of the old masters, but sympathy with the moderns. —
他很快就能发现天赋，他的赞美是慷慨的。 —

He was quick to discover talent, and his praise was generous. —
我想我从未遇到过一个判断力如此准确的人。 —

I think I have never known a man whose judgment was surer. —
他的教育程度比大多数画家都要好。 —

And he was better educated than most painters. —
与大多数画家不同，他对同类艺术并非一窍不通，他对音乐和文学的品味为他对绘画的理解增添了深度和多样性。 —

He was not, like most of them, ignorant of kindred arts, and his taste for music and literature gave depth and variety to his comprehension of painting. —
他并不仅仅局限于绘画，对音乐和文学也有深刻的理解。 —

To a young man like myself his advice and guidance were of incomparable value.
对于像我这样的年轻人，他的建议和指导是无与伦比的宝贵。

When I left Rome I corresponded with him, and about once in two months received from him long letters in queer English, which brought before me vividly his spluttering, enthusiastic, gesticulating conversation. —
当我离开罗马时，我与他通信，大约每两个月收到他用古怪的英语写的长信，这些信使我生动地想起他那令人兴奋、热情、手势激烈的谈话。 —

Some time before I went to Paris he had married an Englishwoman, and was now settled in a studio in Montmartre. —
在我去巴黎之前，他已经娶了一位英国女士，现在在蒙马特地区的一间工作室安家。 —

I had not seen him for four years, and had never met his wife.
我已经四年没有见到他了，也从未见过他的妻子。