| It certainly operated to prolong, in their case, and to confirm to them, as their only inheritance, those feelings of repugnance and superstitious terror with which the people of the town, even after awakening from their frenzy, continued to regard the memory of the reputed witches. The mantle, or rather the ragged cloak, of old Matthew Maule, had fallen upon his children. | Она, без сомнения, только усиливала в отношении к ним это чувство суеверного страха, с которым горожане продолжали смотреть на все, что напоминало им мнимого колдуна: такое грустное оставил он наследство! |
| They were half believed to inherit mysterious attributes; the family eye was said to possess strange power. | По мнению горожан, потомки Моула наследовали его таинственные качества, и, по убеждению многих, глаза их были наделены странной силой. |
| Among other good-for-nothing properties and privileges, one was especially assigned them: of exercising an influence over people's dreams. | Среди других отличий, им также приписывали дар нарушать сон ближних. |
| The Pyncheons, if all stories were true, haughtily as they bore themselves in the noonday streets of their native town, were no better than bond-servants to those plebeian Maules, on entering the topsy-turvy commonwealth of sleep. Modern psychology, it may be, will endeavour to reduce these alleged necromancies within a system, instead of rejecting them as altogether fabulous. A descriptive paragraph or two, treating of the seven-gabled mansion in its more recent aspect, will bring this preliminary chapter to a close. | Нам остается написать еще немного о Доме с семью шпилями, и введение будет окончено. |
| The street in which it upreared its venerable peaks has long ceased to be a fashionable quarter of the town; so that, though the old edifice was surrounded by habitations of modern date, they were mostly small, built entirely of wood, and typical of the most plodding uniformity of common life. Doubtless, however, the whole story of human existence may be latent in each of them, but with no picturesqueness, externally, that can attract the imagination or sympathy to seek it there. |