《福尔摩斯探案集》开篇：英文原著带中文翻译

To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind. He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen, but as a lover he would have placed himself in a false position. He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer. They were admirable things for the observer—excellent for drawing the veil from men’s motives and actions. But for the trained reasoner to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely adjusted temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which might throw a doubt upon all his mental results. Grit in a sensitive instrument, or a crack in one of his own high-power lenses, would not be more disturbing than a strong emotion in a nature such as his. And yet there was but one woman to him, and that woman was the late Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable memory.

在夏洛克·福尔摩斯看来，她始终是那个女人。我很少听到他用别的名字提起她。在他眼里，她胜过并主宰着整个女性。这并不是说他对艾琳·艾德勒怀有类似爱情的情感。一切情感，尤其是那一种，都令他那种冷静、精确而又令人钦佩的平衡头脑感到厌恶。我认为，他是世上见过的最完美的推理与观察机器，但作为恋人，他会把自己置于一个错误的位置。他从不谈论较温柔的情感，除非带着讥讽和嘲笑。对观察者来说，这些是令人钦佩的东西，极有助于揭开人们动机和行为的帷幕。但对训练有素的推理者来说，允许这类东西侵入自己精细而调校得当的性情，就是引入一个可能使所有智力成果都受到怀疑的干扰因素。敏感仪器中的一粒沙，或他自己高倍透镜上的一道裂纹，都不会比一种强烈情感在像他这样的天性中更令人不安。然而，对他来说只有一个女人，而那个女人就是已故的艾琳·艾德勒，一个名声可疑、令人存疑的人。

I had seen little of Holmes lately. My marriage had drifted us away from each other. My own complete happiness, and the home-centred interests which rise up around the man who first finds himself master of his own establishment, were sufficient to absorb all my attention, while Holmes, who loathed every form of society with his whole Bohemian soul, remained in our lodgings in Baker Street, buried among his old books, and alternating from week to week between cocaine and ambition, the drowsiness of the drug, and the fierce energy of his own keen nature. He was still, as ever, deeply attracted by the study of crime, and occupied his immense faculties and extraordinary powers of observation in following out those clues, and clearing up those mysteries which had been abandoned as hopeless by the official police. From time to time I heard some vague account of his doings: of his summons to Odessa in the case of the Trepoff murder, of his clearing up of the singular tragedy of the Atkinson brothers at Trincomalee, and finally of the mission which he had accomplished so delicately and successfully for the reigning family of Holland. Beyond these signs of his activity, however, which I merely shared with all the readers of the daily press, I knew little of my former friend and companion.

近来我很少见到福尔摩斯。我的婚姻使我们彼此疏远了。我自己的圆满幸福，以及一个初次成为自己家庭主人的人周围兴起的以家为中心的兴趣，足以占据我全部注意力，而福尔摩斯则以他整个波希米亚式的灵魂憎恶一切社交形式，仍留在我们贝克街的住所里，埋首于他的旧书之中，一周又一周地在可卡因和雄心之间交替，在药物的昏沉与他敏锐天性中的猛烈精力之间摇摆。他仍像以往一样深深被犯罪研究吸引，运用他巨大的才能和非凡的观察力去追踪那些线索，澄清那些被官方警察认定无望而放弃的疑案。我时不时听到一些关于他所作所为的模糊传闻：他在特雷波夫谋杀案中被召往敖德萨，他查明了亭可马里阿特金森兄弟的离奇悲剧，最后还有他为荷兰王室 delicate 而成功地完成的那项使命。然而，除了这些我不过与所有日报读者共同知晓的活动迹象之外，我对这位旧友和同伴所知甚少。

One night—it was on the twentieth of March, 1888—I was returning from a journey to a patient (for I had now returned to civil practice), when my way led me through Baker Street. As I passed the well-remembered door, which must always be associated in my mind with my wooing, and with the dark incidents of the Study in Scarlet, I was seized with a keen desire to see Holmes again, and to know how he was employing his extraordinary powers. His rooms were brilliantly lit, and, even as I looked up, I saw his tall, spare figure pass twice in a dark silhouette against the blind. He was pacing the room swiftly, eagerly, with his head sunk upon his chest and his hands clasped behind him. To me, who knew his every mood and habit, his attitude and manner told their own story. He was at work again. He had risen out of his drug-created dreams and was hot upon the scent of some new problem. I rang the bell and was shown up to the chamber which had formerly been in part my own.

一天夜里，那是一八八八年三月二十日，我看完一个病人后回家（因为我现已恢复民事行医），我的路把我带经贝克街。当我经过那扇记忆犹新的门时，它在我心中总与我的求爱以及《血字的研究》中那些阴暗事件联系在一起，我忽然强烈地想再见福尔摩斯，想知道他如何运用他那非凡的能力。他的房间灯火通明，甚至就在我抬头看时，我看见他又高又瘦的身影在窗帘上以黑色剪影掠过两次。他正迅速而急切地在房间里踱步，头垂在胸前，双手在背后紧握。对我这个了解他每一种情绪和习惯的人来说，他的姿态和举止已说明了一切。他又在工作了。他已从药物造成的梦境中醒来，正热切追踪某个新问题。我按响门铃，被领上那间从前部分属于我的房间。