"Mistress Hibbins says my father is the Prince of the Air!" cried Pearl, with a naughty smile. "If thou callest me that ill name, I shall tell him of thee; and he will chase thy ship with a tempest!"
“西賓斯太太說，我爸爸是‘空中王子’！”珠兒帶著調(diào)皮的微笑大聲說?！耙悄憬形疫@么難聽的名字，我就跟他告你的狀，他就會用暴風(fēng)雨追你的船！”

Pursuing a zigzag course across the market-place, the child returned to her mother, and communicated what the mariner had said. Hester's strong, calm, steadfastly enduring spirit almost sank, at last, on beholding this dark and grim countenance of an inevitable doom, which- at the moment when a passage seemed to open for the minister and herself out of their labyrinth of misery- showed itself, with an unrelenting smile, right in the midst of their path.
孩子沿著一條彎彎曲曲的路線穿過市場，回到她母親身邊，把船長的話轉(zhuǎn)告給她。海絲特那種堅強、鎮(zhèn)定、持久不變的精神，在終于看到那不可避免的命運的陰森面目之后，幾乎垮了；就在牧師和她自己掙出悲慘的迷宮，眼前似乎有一條通路向他們敞開的時候，這副帶著無情微笑的陰森面孔卻出現(xiàn)在他們通路的中間。

With her mind harassed by the terrible perplexity in which the shipmaster's intelligence involved her, she was also subjected to another trial. There were many people present, from the country round about, who had often heard scarlet letter, and to whom it had been made terrific by a hundred false or exaggerated rumours, but who had never beheld it with their own bodily eyes. These, after exhausting other modes of amusement, now thronged about Hester Prynne with rude and boorish intrusiveness. Unscrupulous as it was, however, it could not bring them nearer than a circuit of several yards. At that distance they accordingly stood, fixed there by the centrifugal force of the repugnance which the mystic symbol inspired. The whole gang of sailors, likewise, observing the press of spectators, and learning the purport of the scarlet letter, came and thrust their sunburnt and desperado-looking faces into the ring. Even the Indians were affected by a sort of cold shadow of the white man's curiosity, and, gliding through the crowd, fastened their snake-like black eyes on Hester's bosom; conceiving, perhaps, that the wearer of this brilliantly embroidered badge must needs be a personage of high dignity among her people. Lastly the inhabitants of the town (their own interest in this worn-out subject languidly reviving itself, by sympathy with what they saw others feel) lounged idly to the same quarter, and tormented Hester Prynne, perhaps more than all the rest, with their cool, well-acquainted gaze at her familiar shame. Hester saw and recognised the self-same faces of that group of matrons, who had awaited her forthcoming from the prison-door, seven years ago; all save one, the youngest and only compassionate among them, whose burial-robe she had since made. At the final hour, when she was so soon to fling aside the burning letter, it had strangely become the centre of more remark and excitement, and was thus made to sear her breast more painfully, than at any time since the first day she put it on.
船長的這一通知將她投入了可怕的困惑之中，折磨得她心煩意亂，可這時她還要面對另一個考驗。市場上有許多從附近鄉(xiāng)下來的人，他們時常聽人談起紅字，而且由于數(shù)以百計的虛構(gòu)和夸張的謠傳，紅字對他們已經(jīng)駭人聽聞，但他們誰也沒有親眼目睹過。這伙人在看膩了諸色開心事之后，此時已粗魯無禮地圍在海絲特·白蘭的身邊。然而，他們盡管毫無顧忌地擠過來，卻只停在數(shù)步之遙的圈子以外。他們就這樣站在那個距離處，被那神秘的符號所激起的反感離心力釘住了。那幫水手們也注意到了人群擁到了一處，并且弄明白了紅字的涵義，便也湊近來，把讓太陽曬得黑黑的亡命徒的面孔伸進了圈子。連那些印第安人都受到了白人的好奇心的無聲的影響，也瞇起他們那蛇一般的黑眼睛，把目光穿過人群，斜腕著海絲特的胸前；他們或許以為佩戴這個光彩動人的絲繡徽記的人準(zhǔn)是她那一伙人中德高望重的人士。最后，鎮(zhèn)上的居民們(他們自己對這個陳舊的題目的興趣，由于看到了別人的反應(yīng)，也無精打采地恢復(fù)了)也慢吞吞地挪到這一角落，用他們那冰冷而慣見的目光凝視著海絲特·白蘭的熟悉的恥辱標(biāo)記，這或許比別人對她折磨尤甚。海絲特看見并認出了七年前等著她走出獄門的那伙人的同一副女監(jiān)督式的面孔；其中只缺少一人，就是她們當(dāng)中最年輕又是唯一有同情心的姑娘，海絲特后來給她做了葬服。就在她即將甩掉那灼人的字母之前的最后時刻，它居然莫名其妙地成為更令人矚目和激動的中心，因而也使她自從第一天佩戴它以來，此時最為痛苦地感到它在燙燒著她的胸。

While Hester stood in that magic circle of ignominy, where the cunning cruelty of her sentence seemed to have fixed her for ever, the admirable preacher was looking down from the sacred pulpit upon an audience, whose very inmost spirits had yielded to his control. The sainted minister in the church! The woman of the scarlet letter in the market-place! What imagination would have been irreverent enough to surmise that the same scorching stigma was on them both!
就在海絲特站在那恥辱的魔圈中，似乎被對她作出的狡詐而殘忍的判決永遠釘住了的時候，那位令人贊美的牧師正在從那神圣的祭壇上俯視他的聽眾，他們最內(nèi)在的精神已經(jīng)完全被他攫住了。那位教堂中神圣的牧師！那位市場中佩戴紅字的女人！誰能夠竟然大不敬地猜想出，他倆身上會有著同樣的灼熱的恥辱烙印呢！?

③居住在斯堪地那維亞半島和科技半島北部的拉普人。