鐵工場
Saturday, 18th.
星期六,18日。
Precossi came last night to remind me that I was to go and see his workshop, which is down the street, and this morning when I went out with my father, I got him to take me there for a moment. As we approached the shop, Garoffi issued from it on a run, with a package in his hand, and making his big cloak, with which he covers up his merchandise, flutter. Ah! Now I know where he goes to pilfer iron filings, which he sells for old papers, that barterer of a Garoffi! When we arrived in front of the door, we saw Precossi seated on a little pile of bricks, engaged in studying his lesson, with his book resting on his knees. He rose quickly and invited us to enter. It was a large apartment, full of coal-dust, bristling with hammers, pincers, bars, and old iron of every description; and in one corner burned a fire in a small furnace, where puffed a pair of bellows worked by a boy. Precossi, the father, was standing near the anvil, and a young man was holding a bar of iron in the fire.
潑來可西昨晚來約我去看鐵工場,今天,父親就領我到潑來可西父親的工場里去。我們將到工場,見卡洛斐抱了個包從內跑出,衣袋里又藏著許多東西,外面用外套罩著。哦!我知道了,卡洛斐時常用爐屑去換紙,原來是從這里拿去的!走到工場門口,潑來可西正坐在瓦磚堆上,把書擺在膝上用功呢。他一見我們,就立起招呼引導。工場寬大,里面到處都是炭和灰,還有各式各樣的錘子、鑷子、鐵棒及舊鐵等類的東西。屋的一隅燃著小小的爐子,有一少年在抗風箱。潑來可西的父親站在鐵砧面前,一個年輕的漢子正把鐵棒插入爐中。

"Ah! Here he is," said the smith, as soon as he caught sight of us, and he lifted his cap, "the nice boy who gives away railway trains! He has come to see me work a little, has he not? I shall be at your service in a moment." And as he said it, he smiled; and he no longer had the ferocious face, the malevolent eyes of former days. The young man handed him a long bar of iron heated red-hot on one end, and the smith placed it on the anvil. He was making one of those curved bars for the rail of terrace balustrades. He raised a large hammer and began to beat it, pushing the heated part now here, now there, between one point of the anvil and the middle, and turning it about in various ways; and it was a marvel to see how the iron curved beneath the rapid and accurate blows of the hammer, and twisted, and gradually assumed the graceful form of a leaf torn from a flower, like a pipe of dough which he had modelled with his hands. And meanwhile his son watched us with a certain air of pride, as much as to say, "See how my father works!"
用了大大的錘,把鐵各方移動,各方敲打。那鐵匠一見我們,去了帽,微笑著說:“難得請過來,這位就是送小火車的哥兒!想看看我做工吧,就做給你看。”以前他的那種怕人的神氣,兇惡的眼光,已經沒有了。年輕的漢子一將赤紅的鐵棒取出,鐵匠就在砧上敲打起來。所做的是欄桿中的曲子,一瞬間,那鐵棒就彎成花瓣模樣,其手段的純熟,真可佩服。潑來可西很得意似的看著我們,好像是在說:“你們看!我的父親真能干啊!”