Chapter 24 Conclusion
第二十四章 尾声

After many days, when time sufficed for the people to arrange their thoughts in reference to the foregoing scene, there was more than one account of what had been witnessed on the scaffold.
过了许多天,人们总算有了充分的时间来调整有关那件事的看法,于是对于他们所看到的刑台上的情景就有了多种说法。

Most of the spectators testified to having seen, on the breast of the unhappy minister, a SCARLET LETTER--the very semblance of that worn by Hester Prynne--imprinted in the flesh. As regarded its origin, there were various explanations, all of which must necessarily have been conjectural. Some affirmed that the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, on the very day when Hester Prynne first wore her ignominious badge, had begun a course of penance,--which he afterwards, in so many futile methods, followed out,--by inflicting a hideous torture on himself. Others contended that the stigma had not been produced until a long time subsequent, when old Roger Chillingworth, being a potent necromancer, had caused it to appear, through the agency of magic and poisonous drugs. Others, again,--and those best able to appreciate the minister's peculiar sensibility, and the wonderful operation of his spirit upon the body,--whispered their belief, that the awful symbol was the effect of the ever active tooth of remorse, gnawing from the inmost heart outwardly, and at last manifesting Heaven's dreadful judgment by the visible presence of the letter. The reader may choose among these theories. We have thrown all the light we could acquire upon the portent, and would gladly, now that it has done its office, erase its deep print out of our own brain; where long meditation has fixed it in very undesirable distinctness.
许多在场的人断言,他们在那个不幸的牧师的胸前看到了一个嵌在肉里的红字,与海丝特·白兰所佩戴的十分相似。至于其来源,则有着种种解释,当然都是些臆测。一些人一日咬定,丁梅斯代尔牧师先生自从海丝特·白兰戴上那耻辱的徽记的第一天开始,就进行他的苦修,随后一直用各色各样的劳而无功的方法,对自己施加骇人的折磨。另一些人则争诊说,那烙印是经过很长时间之后,由那个有法力的巫师老罗杰·齐灵渥斯,靠着魔法和毒剂的力量,才把它显示出来的。还有一些人是最能理解牧师的特殊的敏感和他的精神对肉体的奇妙作用的,他们悄悄提出看法,认为那可怕的象征是悔恨的牙齿从内心向外不停地咬啮的结果,最后才由这个有形的字母宣告了上天的可怕的裁决。读者可以从这几种说法中自行选择。关于这件怪事,我们所能掌握的情况已经全都披露了,既然这一任务已经完成,而长时间的思考已在我们的头脑中印下了并非我们所愿的清晰印象,我们倒很高兴把这深深的印记抹掉。

It is singular, nevertheless, that certain persons, who were spectators of the whole scene, and professed never once to have removed their eyes from the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, denied that there was any mark whatever on his breast, more than on a new-born infant's. Neither, by their report, had his dying words acknowledged, nor even remotely implied, any, the slightest connection, on his part, with the guilt for which Hester Prynne had so long worn the scarlet letter. According to these highly respectable witnesses, the minister, conscious that he was dying,--conscious, also, that the reverence of the multitude placed him already among saints and angels,--had desired, by yielding up his breath in the arms of that fallen woman, to express to the world how utterly nugatory is the choicest of man's own righteousness. After exhausting life in his efforts for mankind's spiritual good, he had made the manner of his death a parable, in order to impress on his admirers the mighty and mournful lesson, that, in the view of Infinite Purity, we are sinners all alike. It was to teach them, that the holiest among us has but attained so far above his fellows as to discern more clearly the Mercy which looks down, and repudiate more utterly the phantom of human merit, which would look aspiringly upward. Without disputing a truth so momentous, we must be allowed to consider this version of Mr. Dimmesdale's story as only an instance of that stubborn fidelity with which a man's friends--and especially a clergyman's--will sometimes uphold his character; when proofs, clear as the mid-day sunshine on the scarlet letter, establish him a false and sin-stained creature of the dust.
不过,也有一些从头至尾都在场的人持有异议,他们声明,他们的跟睛始终没离开道丁梅斯代尔牧师先生,但他们否认曾经在他胸脯上看到有任何表记,那上面和新生婴儿的胸脯一样光洁。据他们讲,他的临终致辞,既没有承认,也没有丝毫暗示,他同海丝特·白兰长期以来戴着的红字所代表的罪过有过些微的牵连。按照这些极其值得尊敬的证人的说法,牧师意识到自己形将辞世,也意识到了众人已经把他尊崇到圣者和天使中间,于是便希望能在那堕落的女人的怀抱中咽气,以便向世界表明,一个人类的精英的正直是多么微不足道。他在竭力为人类的精神的美好耗尽了生命之后,又以他自己死的方式作为一种教谕,用这个悲恸有力的教训使他的崇拜者深信:在无比纯洁的上帝的心目中,我们都是相差无几的罪人。他要教育他们:我们当中最神圣的人无非比别人高得能够更清楚地分辨俯视下界的仁慈的上帝,能够更彻底地否定一般人翘首企望的人类功绩的幻影。对这样一个事关重大的真理,我们毋庸争辩,不过,应该允许我们把有关丁梅斯代尔先生的故事的这种说法,仅仅看作是那种墨守忠诚的实例,证明一个人的朋友们——尤其是一个牧师的朋友们,即使在证据确凿得如同正午的阳光照在红字上一般,指明他是尘埃中一个虚伪和沾满罪恶的生物时,有时还要维护他的人格。