我们比过去更不容易轻信了。
We are less credulous than we used to be.
在19世纪，小说家们习惯于用一连串的巧合来为故事收尾——而这些巧合大多都极不可能发生。
In the nineteenth century, a novelist would bring his story to a conclusion by presenting his readers with a series of coincidences--most of them wildly improbable.
读者们欣然接受这样的事实：一个默默无闻的女仆原来竟是英雄的母亲。
Readers happily accepted the fact that an obscure maidservant was really the hero's mother.
一个失散已久、被认为早已死亡的兄弟，原来一直活着，并且正在阴险地密谋陷害男主角。如此等等。
A long-lost brother, who was presumed dead, was really alive all the time and wickedly plotting to bring about the hero's downfall. And so on.
现代读者会觉得这类幼稚的解决方式完全无法接受。
Modern readers would find such naive solutions totally unacceptable.
然而，在现实生活中，各种情况有时确实会共同作用，造成一些除了19世纪小说家之外任何人都难以置信的巧合。
Yet, in real life, circumstances do sometimes conspire to bring about coincidences which anyone but a nineteenth century novelist would find incredible.
我小时候，祖父曾告诉我，一个德国出租车司机弗朗茨·布斯曼是如何找到一个被认为在二十年前已经战死的兄弟的。
When I was a boy, my grandfather told me how a German taxi driver, Franz Bussman, found a brother who was thought to have been killed twenty years before.
他带着妻子步行游览时，停下来和一个工人攀谈。
While on a walking tour with his wife, he stopped to talk to a workman.
他们继续上路之后，布斯曼太太谈到了那个工人与她丈夫的惊人相似之处，甚至提出那工人可能就是他的兄弟。
After they had gone on, Mrs. Bussman commented on the workman's close resemblance to her husband and even suggested that he might be his brother.
弗朗茨嗤之以鼻，指出他的兄弟已经在战争中阵亡了。
Franz poured scorn on the idea, pointing out that his brother had been killed in action during the war.
尽管布斯曼太太对这段经历了如指掌，她还是觉得自己也许有百万分之一的可能是对的。
Though Mrs. Bussman was fully acquainted with this story, she thought that there was a chance in a million that she might be right.
几天后，她派了一个男孩去找那个工人，问他是否叫汉斯·布斯曼。
A few days later, she sent a boy to the workman to ask him if his name was Hans Bussman.
不用说，那个人的名字果然叫汉斯·布斯曼，他真的是弗朗茨失散多年的兄弟。
Needless to say, the man's name was Hans Bussman and he really was Franz's long-lost brother.
兄弟俩重逢之后，汉斯解释了他何以还活着的原委。
When the brothers were reunited, Hans explained how it was that he was still alive.
在战争接近尾声时负伤之后，他被送进了医院，与所在部队失去了联系。
After having been wounded towards the end of the war, he had been sent to hospital and was separated from his unit.
医院遭到了轰炸，汉斯徒步走回了西德。
The hospital had been bombed and Hans had made his way back into Western Germany on foot.
与此同时，他所在的部队失踪了，关于他的一切记录也都被销毁了。
Meanwhile, his unit was lost and all records of him had been destroyed.
汉斯回到了他家原来的地方，但那所房子已经被炸毁了，附近没有人知道原来的住户后来都去了哪里。
Hans returned to his family home, but the house had been bombed and no one in the neighbourhood knew what had become of the inhabitants.
汉斯以为自己的家人在一次空袭中已经罹难，便在离家五十英里的一个村子里安顿了下来，从此就一直待在那里。
Assuming that his family had been killed during an air raid, Hans settled down in a village fifty miles away where he had remained ever since.