叮嚀仔細 The Princess Coaches the Demon
公主見了,十分歡喜。那妖笑道:「渾家,可是變得好麼?」公主道:「變得好,變得好。你這一進朝啊,我父王是親不滅,一定著文武多官留你飲宴。倘吃酒中間,千千仔細,萬萬個小心;卻莫要現出原嘴臉來,露出馬腳,走了風汛,就不斯文了。」老妖道:「不消吩咐,自有道理。」公主见了,十分欢喜。那妖笑道:「浑家,可是变得好么?」公主道:「变得好,变得好。你这一进朝啊,我父王是亲不灭,一定着文武多官留你饮宴。倘吃酒中间,千千仔细,万万个小心;却莫要现出原嘴脸来,露出马脚,走了风汛,就不斯文了。」老妖道:「不消吩咐,自有道理。」
逐句解 Line by line
Seeing this, the princess was greatly pleased.
十分, "fully, entirely." What delights her is how complete the disguise is — which is to say, how thoroughly her husband can stop looking like himself.
The demon laughed: "Well, wife — is the change not well done?"
He wants to be told. 變得好 takes the structural 得 as de; 渾家 is once more the homely everyday "wife."
The princess said: "Well done, well done.
The doubled 變得好 — both instances of 得 read de — is her hurrying to reassure him.
Once you have gone in to court — for a father's kinship is never extinguished — my royal father will surely have the civil and military officials keep you for a feast.
進朝, to go in to court, takes 朝 as cháo. In 一定著文武多官 the causative 著 is zhuó, "will have them do it." 親不滅: the bond of kin is never extinguished. She is briefing him on her own father's likely behaviour, which is a strange thing to be doing.
But in the midst of the drinking, be a thousand times careful and ten thousand times on your guard;
中間 takes 中 as zhōng; 仔細, careful, attentive, takes 仔 as zǐ. The paired 千千 and 萬萬, a thousand thousand and ten thousand ten thousand, pile the caution up.
do not let your true face show, do not let the horse's hoof slip out and give the game away, or all your refinement is undone."
Here is the chapter forecasting its own turn, in the form of wifely advice. 露出馬腳 — "to let the horse's leg show" — is one of the most durable idioms in the language for giving yourself away, and it is still in daily use; the picture behind it is a stage horse with a real foot poking out from under the costume. 走了風汛 is the chapter's leak idiom, back for the second of its three appearances. 斯文 is cultivated refinement. She has just listed, in order, every way the disguise is going to fail.
The old fiend said: "No need to instruct me — I have my own way of it."
不消吩咐: "no need to give me instructions." The last line before a fall usually sounds like this.
The coaching cuts both ways. Out of self-preservation, and some remnant of marital feeling, she helps him perfect the disguise — and her warnings, 現出原嘴臉, 露出馬腳, 走了風汛, catalogue precisely how it will come apart. The chapter's leakage theme returns here disguised as advice.
露出馬腳 is worth knowing on its own account: it is what Chinese still reaches for when somebody's cover slips, and its literal image will be answered with some grimness when the demon, deep in drink, stops being able to hold his shape. His breezy 不消吩咐 is the overconfidence that goes before it.