Carmilla

Le Fanu, Joseph Sheridan

Published: 1871
Categorie(s): Fiction, Romance, Gothic, Horror
Source: http://gutenberg.org

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About Le Fanu:
Sheridan Le Fanu was born at No. 45 Lower Dominick Steet,
Dublin, into a literary family of Huguenot origins. Both his
grandmother Alicia Sheridan Le Fanu and his great-uncle
Richard Brinsley Sheridan were playwrights. His niece Rhoda
Broughton would become a very successful novelist. Within a
year of his birth his family moved to the Royal Hibernian Milit-
ary School in Phoenix Park, where his father, an Anglican cler-
gyman, was the chaplain of the establishment. Phoenix Park
and the adjacent village and parish church of Chapelizod were
to feature in Le Fanu's later stories. Le Fanu studied law at
Trinity College in Dublin, where he was elected Auditor of the
College Historical Society. He was called to the bar in 1839,
but he never practised and soon abandoned law for journalism.
In 1838 he began contributing stories to the Dublin University
Magazine, including his first ghost story, entitled "A Strange
Event in the Life of Schalken the Painter" (1839). He became
owner of several newspapers from 1840, including the Dublin
Evening Mail and the Warder. In 1844 Le Fanu married
Susanna Bennett, the daughter of a leading Dublin barrister. In
1847 he supported John Mitchell and Thomas Meagher in their
campaign against the indifference of the Government to the
Irish Famine. His support cost him the nomination as Tory MP
for County Carlow in 1852. His personal life also became diffi-
cult at this time, as his wife Susanna suffered from increasing
neurotic symptoms. She died in 1858 in unclear circumstances,
and anguished excerpts from Le Fanu's diaries suggest that he
felt guilt as well as loss. However, it was only after her death
that, becoming something of a recluse, he devoted himself full
time to writing. In 1861 he became the editor and proprietor of
the Dublin University Magazine and he began exploiting
double exposure: serializing in the Dublin University Magazine
and then revising for the English market. The House by the
Churchyard and Wylder's Hand were both published in this
way. After the lukewarm reviews of the former novel, set in the
Phoenix Park area of Dublin, Le Fanu signed a contract with
Richard Bentley, his London publisher, which specified that fu-
ture novels be stories "of an English subject and of modern
times", a step Bentley thought necessary in order for Le Fanu
to satisfy the English audience. Le Fanu succeeded in this aim

2
in 1864, with the publication of Uncle Silas, which he set in
Derbyshire. In his very last short stories, however, Le Fanu re-
turned to Irish folklore as an inspiration and encouraged his
friend Patrick Kennedy to contribute folklore to the D.U.M. Le
Fanu died in his native Dublin on February 7, 1873. Today
there is a road in Ballyfermot, near his childhood home in
south-west Dublin, named after him. Source: Wikipedia

Also available on Feedbooks for Le Fanu:

• A Stable for Nightmares (1896)
• Uncle Silas (1864)
• The Child That Went With The Fairies (1870)
• Ghost Stories of Chapelizod (1851)
• An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier
Street (1853)
• An Authentic Narrative of a Haunted House (1862)
• The House by the Church-Yard (1863)
• The Mysterious Lodger (1850)
• Green Tea (1872)
• The Evil Guest (1851)

Note: This book is brought to you by Feedbooks

http://www.feedbooks.com
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Prologue
Upon a paper attached to the Narrative which follows, Doctor
Hesselius has written a rather elaborate note, which he accom-
panies with a reference to his Essay on the strange subject
which the MS. illuminates.
This mysterious subject he treats, in that Essay, with his usu-
al learning and acumen, and with remarkable directness and
condensation. It will form but one volume of the series of that
extraordinary man's collected papers.
As I publish the case, in this volume, simply to interest the
"laity," I shall forestall the intelligent lady, who relates it, in
nothing; and after due consideration, I have determined, there-
fore, to abstain from presenting any précis of the learned
Doctor's reasoning, or extract from his statement on a subject
which he describes as "involving, not improbably, some of the
profoundest arcana of our dual existence, and its
intermediates."
I was anxious on discovering this paper, to reopen the cor-
respondence commenced by Doctor Hesselius, so many years
before, with a person so clever and careful as his informant
seems to have been. Much to my regret, however, I found that
she had died in the interval.
She, probably, could have added little to the Narrative which
she communicates in the following pages, with, so far as I can
pronounce, such conscientious particularity.

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Chapter 1
An Early Fright
In Styria, we, though by no means magnificent people, inhabit
a castle, or schloss. A small income, in that part of the world,
goes a great way. Eight or nine hundred a year does wonders.
Scantily enough ours would have answered among wealthy
people at home. My father is English, and I bear an English
name, although I never saw England. But here, in this lonely
and primitive place, where everything is so marvelously cheap,
I really don't see how ever so much more money would at all
materially add to our comforts, or even luxuries.
My father was in the Austrian service, and retired upon a
pension and his patrimony, and purchased this feudal resid-
ence, and the small estate on which it stands, a bargain.
Nothing can be more picturesque or solitary. It stands on a
slight eminence in a forest. The road, very old and narrow,
passes in front of its drawbridge, never raised in my time, and
its moat, stocked with perch, and sailed over by many swans,
and floating on its surface white fleets of water lilies.
Over all this the schloss shows its many-windowed front; its
towers, and its Gothic chapel.
The forest opens in an irregular and very picturesque glade
before its gate, and at the right a steep Gothic bridge carries
the road over a stream that winds in deep shadow through the
wood. I have said that this is a very lonely place. Judge wheth-
er I say truth. Looking from the hall door towards the road, the
forest in which our castle stands extends fifteen miles to the
right, and twelve to the left. The nearest inhabited village is
about seven of your English miles to the left. The nearest in-
habited schloss of any historic associations, is that of old Gen-
eral Spielsdorf, nearly twenty miles away to the right.

5
 I have said "the nearest inhabited village," because there is,
only three miles westward, that is to say in the direction of
General Spielsdorf's schloss, a ruined village, with its quaint
little church, now roofless, in the aisle of which are the molder-
ing tombs of the proud family of Karnstein, now extinct, who
once owned the equally desolate chateau which, in the thick of
the forest, overlooks the silent ruins of the town.
Respecting the cause of the desertion of this striking and
melancholy spot, there is a legend which I shall relate to you
another time.
I must tell you now, how very small is the party who consti-
tute the inhabitants of our castle. I don't include servants, or
those dependents who occupy rooms in the buildings attached
to the schloss. Listen, and wonder! My father, who is the kind-
est man on earth, but growing old; and I, at the date of my
story, only nineteen. Eight years have passed since then.
I and my father constituted the family at the schloss. My
mother, a Styrian lady, died in my infancy, but I had a good-
natured governess, who had been with me from, I might almost
say, my infancy. I could not remember the time when her fat,
benignant face was not a familiar picture in my memory.
This was Madame Perrodon, a native of Berne, whose care
and good nature now in part supplied to me the loss of my
mother, whom I do not even remember, so early I lost her. She
made a third at our little dinner party. There was a fourth, Ma-
demoiselle De Lafontaine, a lady such as you term, I believe, a
"finishing governess." She spoke French and German, Madame
Perrodon French and broken English, to which my father and I
added English, which, partly to prevent its becoming a lost lan-
guage among us, and partly from patriotic motives, we spoke
every day. The consequence was a Babel, at which strangers
used to laugh, and which I shall make no attempt to reproduce
in this narrative. And there were two or three young lady
friends besides, pretty nearly of my own age, who were occa-
sional visitors, for longer or shorter terms; and these visits I
sometimes returned.
These were our regular social resources; but of course there
were chance visits from "neighbors" of only five or six leagues
distance. My life was, notwithstanding, rather a solitary one, I
can assure you.

6
 My gouvernantes had just so much control over me as you
might conjecture such sage persons would have in the case of
a rather spoiled girl, whose only parent allowed her pretty
nearly her own way in everything.
The first occurrence in my existence, which produced a ter-
rible impression upon my mind, which, in fact, never has been
effaced, was one of the very earliest incidents of my life which
I can recollect. Some people will think it so trifling that it
should not be recorded here. You will see, however, by-and-by,
why I mention it. The nursery, as it was called, though I had it
all to myself, was a large room in the upper story of the castle,
with a steep oak roof. I can't have been more than six years
old, when one night I awoke, and looking round the room from
my bed, failed to see the nursery maid. Neither was my nurse
there; and I thought myself alone. I was not frightened, for I
was one of those happy children who are studiously kept in ig-
norance of ghost stories, of fairy tales, and of all such lore as
makes us cover up our heads when the door cracks suddenly,
or the flicker of an expiring candle makes the shadow of a bed-
post dance upon the wall, nearer to our faces. I was vexed and
insulted at finding myself, as I conceived, neglected, and I
began to whimper, preparatory to a hearty bout of roaring;
when to my surprise, I saw a solemn, but very pretty face look-
ing at me from the side of the bed. It was that of a young lady
who was kneeling, with her hands under the coverlet. I looked
at her with a kind of pleased wonder, and ceased whimpering.
She caressed me with her hands, and lay down beside me on
the bed, and drew me towards her, smiling; I felt immediately
delightfully soothed, and fell asleep again. I was wakened by a
sensation as if two needles ran into my breast very deep at the
same moment, and I cried loudly. The lady started back, with
her eyes fixed on me, and then slipped down upon the floor,
and, as I thought, hid herself under the bed.
I was now for the first time frightened, and I yelled with all
my might and main. Nurse, nursery maid, housekeeper, all
came running in, and hearing my story, they made light of it,
soothing me all they could meanwhile. But, child as I was, I
could perceive that their faces were pale with an unwonted
look of anxiety, and I saw them look under the bed, and about
the room, and peep under tables and pluck open cupboards;

7
and the housekeeper whispered to the nurse: "Lay your hand
along that hollow in the bed; someone did lie there, so sure as
you did not; the place is still warm."
I remember the nursery maid petting me, and all three ex-
amining my chest, where I told them I felt the puncture, and
pronouncing that there was no sign visible that any such thing
had happened to me.
The housekeeper and the two other servants who were in
charge of the nursery, remained sitting up all night; and from
that time a servant always sat up in the nursery until I was
about fourteen.
I was very nervous for a long time after this. A doctor was
called in, he was pallid and elderly. How well I remember his
long saturnine face, slightly pitted with smallpox, and his
chestnut wig. For a good while, every second day, he came and
gave me medicine, which of course I hated.
The morning after I saw this apparition I was in a state of
terror, and could not bear to be left alone, daylight though it
was, for a moment.
I remember my father coming up and standing at the bed-
side, and talking cheerfully, and asking the nurse a number of
questions, and laughing very heartily at one of the answers;
and patting me on the shoulder, and kissing me, and telling me
not to be frightened, that it was nothing but a dream and could
not hurt me.
But I was not comforted, for I knew the visit of the strange
woman was not a dream; and I was awfully frightened.
I was a little consoled by the nursery maid's assuring me that
it was she who had come and looked at me, and lain down be-
side me in the bed, and that I must have been half-dreaming
not to have known her face. But this, though supported by the
nurse, did not quite satisfy me.
I remembered, in the course of that day, a venerable old
man, in a black cassock, coming into the room with the nurse
and housekeeper, and talking a little to them, and very kindly
to me; his face was very sweet and gentle, and he told me they
were going to pray, and joined my hands together, and desired
me to say, softly, while they were praying, "Lord hear all good
prayers for us, for Jesus' sake." I think these were the very

8
words, for I often repeated them to myself, and my nurse used
for years to make me say them in my prayers.
I remembered so well the thoughtful sweet face of that
white-haired old man, in his black cassock, as he stood in that
rude, lofty, brown room, with the clumsy furniture of a fashion
three hundred years old about him, and the scanty light enter-
ing its shadowy atmosphere through the small lattice. He
kneeled, and the three women with him, and he prayed aloud
with an earnest quavering voice for, what appeared to me, a
long time. I forget all my life preceding that event, and for
some time after it is all obscure also, but the scenes I have just
described stand out vivid as the isolated pictures of the phant-
asmagoria surrounded by darkness.

9
Chapter 2
A Guest
I am now going to tell you something so strange that it will re-
quire all your faith in my veracity to believe my story. It is not
only true, nevertheless, but truth of which I have been an
eyewitness.
It was a sweet summer evening, and my father asked me, as
he sometimes did, to take a little ramble with him along that
beautiful forest vista which I have mentioned as lying in front
of the schloss.
"General Spielsdorf cannot come to us so soon as I had
hoped," said my father, as we pursued our walk.
He was to have paid us a visit of some weeks, and we had ex-
pected his arrival next day. He was to have brought with him a
young lady, his niece and ward, Mademoiselle Rheinfeldt,
whom I had never seen, but whom I had heard described as a
very charming girl, and in whose society I had promised myself
many happy days. I was more disappointed than a young lady
living in a town, or a bustling neighborhood can possibly ima-
gine. This visit, and the new acquaintance it promised, had fur-
nished my day dream for many weeks.
"And how soon does he come?" I asked.
"Not till autumn. Not for two months, I dare say," he
answered. "And I am very glad now, dear, that you never knew
Mademoiselle Rheinfeldt."
"And why?" I asked, both mortified and curious.
"Because the poor young lady is dead," he replied. "I quite
forgot I had not told you, but you were not in the room when I
received the General's letter this evening."
I was very much shocked. General Spielsdorf had mentioned
in his first letter, six or seven weeks before, that she was not

10
so well as he would wish her, but there was nothing to suggest
the remotest suspicion of danger.
"Here is the General's letter," he said, handing it to me. "I am
afraid he is in great affliction; the letter appears to me to have
been written very nearly in distraction."
We sat down on a rude bench, under a group of magnificent
lime trees. The sun was setting with all its melancholy splendor
behind the sylvan horizon, and the stream that flows beside
our home, and passes under the steep old bridge I have men-
tioned, wound through many a group of noble trees, almost at
our feet, reflecting in its current the fading crimson of the sky.
General Spielsdorf's letter was so extraordinary, so vehement,
and in some places so self-contradictory, that I read it twice
over—the second time aloud to my father—and was still unable
to account for it, except by supposing that grief had unsettled
his mind.
It said "I have lost my darling daughter, for as such I loved
her. During the last days of dear Bertha's illness I was not able
to write to you.
"Before then I had no idea of her danger. I have lost her, and
now learn all, too late. She died in the peace of innocence, and
in the glorious hope of a blessed futurity. The fiend who be-
trayed our infatuated hospitality has done it all. I thought I was
receiving into my house innocence, gaiety, a charming compan-
ion for my lost Bertha. Heavens! what a fool have I been!
"I thank God my child died without a suspicion of the cause
of her sufferings. She is gone without so much as conjecturing
the nature of her illness, and the accursed passion of the agent
of all this misery. I devote my remaining days to tracking and
extinguishing a monster. I am told I may hope to accomplish
my righteous and merciful purpose. At present there is
scarcely a gleam of light to guide me. I curse my conceited in-
credulity, my despicable affectation of superiority, my blind-
ness, my obstinacy—all—too late. I cannot write or talk collec-
tedly now. I am distracted. So soon as I shall have a little re-
covered, I mean to devote myself for a time to enquiry, which
may possibly lead me as far as Vienna. Some time in the au-
tumn, two months hence, or earlier if I live, I will see you—that
is, if you permit me; I will then tell you all that I scarce dare
put upon paper now. Farewell. Pray for me, dear friend."

11
 In these terms ended this strange letter. Though I had never
seen Bertha Rheinfeldt my eyes filled with tears at the sudden
intelligence; I was startled, as well as profoundly disappointed.
The sun had now set, and it was twilight by the time I had re-
turned the General's letter to my father.
It was a soft clear evening, and we loitered, speculating upon
the possible meanings of the violent and incoherent sentences
which I had just been reading. We had nearly a mile to walk
before reaching the road that passes the schloss in front, and
by that time the moon was shining brilliantly. At the draw-
bridge we met Madame Perrodon and Mademoiselle De Lafon-
taine, who had come out, without their bonnets, to enjoy the
exquisite moonlight.
We heard their voices gabbling in animated dialogue as we
approached. We joined them at the drawbridge, and turned
about to admire with them the beautiful scene.
The glade through which we had just walked lay before us.
At our left the narrow road wound away under clumps of lordly
trees, and was lost to sight amid the thickening forest. At the
right the same road crosses the steep and picturesque bridge,
near which stands a ruined tower which once guarded that
pass; and beyond the bridge an abrupt eminence rises, covered
with trees, and showing in the shadows some grey ivy-
clustered rocks.
Over the sward and low grounds a thin film of mist was steal-
ing like smoke, marking the distances with a transparent veil;
and here and there we could see the river faintly flashing in
the moonlight.
No softer, sweeter scene could be imagined. The news I had
just heard made it melancholy; but nothing could disturb its
character of profound serenity, and the enchanted glory and
vagueness of the prospect.
My father, who enjoyed the picturesque, and I, stood looking
in silence over the expanse beneath us. The two good gov-
ernesses, standing a little way behind us, discoursed upon the
scene, and were eloquent upon the moon.
Madame Perrodon was fat, middle-aged, and romantic, and
talked and sighed poetically. Mademoiselle De Lafontaine—in
right of her father who was a German, assumed to be psycholo-
gical, metaphysical, and something of a mystic—now declared

12
that when the moon shone with a light so intense it was well
known that it indicated a special spiritual activity. The effect of
the full moon in such a state of brilliancy was manifold. It acted
on dreams, it acted on lunacy, it acted on nervous people, it
had marvelous physical influences connected with life. Ma-
demoiselle related that her cousin, who was mate of a mer-
chant ship, having taken a nap on deck on such a night, lying
on his back, with his face full in the light on the moon, had
wakened, after a dream of an old woman clawing him by the
cheek, with his features horribly drawn to one side; and his
countenance had never quite recovered its equilibrium.
"The moon, this night," she said, "is full of idyllic and mag-
netic influence—and see, when you look behind you at the front
of the schloss how all its windows flash and twinkle with that
silvery splendor, as if unseen hands had lighted up the rooms
to receive fairy guests."
There are indolent styles of the spirits in which, indisposed
to talk ourselves, the talk of others is pleasant to our listless
ears; and I gazed on, pleased with the tinkle of the ladies'
conversation.
"I have got into one of my moping moods tonight," said my
father, after a silence, and quoting Shakespeare, whom, by way
of keeping up our English, he used to read aloud, he said:
"'In truth I know not why I am so sad. It wearies me: you say
it wearies you; But how I got it—came by it.'
"I forget the rest. But I feel as if some great misfortune were
hanging over us. I suppose the poor General's afflicted letter
has had something to do with it."
At this moment the unwonted sound of carriage wheels and
many hoofs upon the road, arrested our attention.
They seemed to be approaching from the high ground over-
looking the bridge, and very soon the equipage emerged from
that point. Two horsemen first crossed the bridge, then came a
carriage drawn by four horses, and two men rode behind.
It seemed to be the traveling carriage of a person of rank;
and we were all immediately absorbed in watching that very
unusual spectacle. It became, in a few moments, greatly more
interesting, for just as the carriage had passed the summit of
the steep bridge, one of the leaders, taking fright, communic-
ated his panic to the rest, and after a plunge or two, the whole

13
team broke into a wild gallop together, and dashing between
the horsemen who rode in front, came thundering along the
road towards us with the speed of a hurricane.
The excitement of the scene was made more painful by the
clear, long-drawn screams of a female voice from the carriage
window.
We all advanced in curiosity and horror; me rather in silence,
the rest with various ejaculations of terror.
Our suspense did not last long. Just before you reach the
castle drawbridge, on the route they were coming, there
stands by the roadside a magnificent lime tree, on the other
stands an ancient stone cross, at sight of which the horses,
now going at a pace that was perfectly frightful, swerved so as
to bring the wheel over the projecting roots of the tree.
I knew what was coming. I covered my eyes, unable to see it
out, and turned my head away; at the same moment I heard a
cry from my lady friends, who had gone on a little.
Curiosity opened my eyes, and I saw a scene of utter confu-
sion. Two of the horses were on the ground, the carriage lay
upon its side with two wheels in the air; the men were busy re-
moving the traces, and a lady with a commanding air and fig-
ure had got out, and stood with clasped hands, raising the
handkerchief that was in them every now and then to her eyes.
Through the carriage door was now lifted a young lady, who
appeared to be lifeless. My dear old father was already beside
the elder lady, with his hat in his hand, evidently tendering his
aid and the resources of his schloss. The lady did not appear to
hear him, or to have eyes for anything but the slender girl who
was being placed against the slope of the bank.
I approached; the young lady was apparently stunned, but
she was certainly not dead. My father, who piqued himself on
being something of a physician, had just had his fingers on her
wrist and assured the lady, who declared herself her mother,
that her pulse, though faint and irregular, was undoubtedly
still distinguishable. The lady clasped her hands and looked up-
ward, as if in a momentary transport of gratitude; but immedi-
ately she broke out again in that theatrical way which is, I be-
lieve, natural to some people.
She was what is called a fine looking woman for her time of
life, and must have been handsome; she was tall, but not thin,

14
and dressed in black velvet, and looked rather pale, but with a
proud and commanding countenance, though now agitated
strangely.
"Who was ever being so born to calamity?" I heard her say,
with clasped hands, as I came up. "Here am I, on a journey of
life and death, in prosecuting which to lose an hour is possibly
to lose all. My child will not have recovered sufficiently to re-
sume her route for who can say how long. I must leave her: I
cannot, dare not, delay. How far on, sir, can you tell, is the
nearest village? I must leave her there; and shall not see my
darling, or even hear of her till my return, three months
hence."
I plucked my father by the coat, and whispered earnestly in
his ear: "Oh! papa, pray ask her to let her stay with us—it
would be so delightful. Do, pray."
"If Madame will entrust her child to the care of my daughter,
and of her good gouvernante, Madame Perrodon, and permit
her to remain as our guest, under my charge, until her return,
it will confer a distinction and an obligation upon us, and we
shall treat her with all the care and devotion which so sacred a
trust deserves."
"I cannot do that, sir, it would be to task your kindness and
chivalry too cruelly," said the lady, distractedly.
"It would, on the contrary, be to confer on us a very great
kindness at the moment when we most need it. My daughter
has just been disappointed by a cruel misfortune, in a visit
from which she had long anticipated a great deal of happiness.
If you confide this young lady to our care it will be her best
consolation. The nearest village on your route is distant, and
affords no such inn as you could think of placing your daughter
at; you cannot allow her to continue her journey for any consid-
erable distance without danger. If, as you say, you cannot sus-
pend your journey, you must part with her tonight, and
nowhere could you do so with more honest assurances of care
and tenderness than here."
There was something in this lady's air and appearance so dis-
tinguished and even imposing, and in her manner so engaging,
as to impress one, quite apart from the dignity of her equipage,
with a conviction that she was a person of consequence.

15
 By this time the carriage was replaced in its upright position,
and the horses, quite tractable, in the traces again.
The lady threw on her daughter a glance which I fancied was
not quite so affectionate as one might have anticipated from
the beginning of the scene; then she beckoned slightly to my
father, and withdrew two or three steps with him out of hear-
ing; and talked to him with a fixed and stern countenance, not
at all like that with which she had hitherto spoken.
I was filled with wonder that my father did not seem to per-
ceive the change, and also unspeakably curious to learn what it
could be that she was speaking, almost in his ear, with so much
earnestness and rapidity.
Two or three minutes at most I think she remained thus em-
ployed, then she turned, and a few steps brought her to where
her daughter lay, supported by Madame Perrodon. She kneeled
beside her for a moment and whispered, as Madame supposed,
a little benediction in her ear; then hastily kissing her she
stepped into her carriage, the door was closed, the footmen in
stately liveries jumped up behind, the outriders spurred on, the
postilions cracked their whips, the horses plunged and broke
suddenly into a furious canter that threatened soon again to
become a gallop, and the carriage whirled away, followed at
the same rapid pace by the two horsemen in the rear.

16
Chapter 3
We Compare Notes
We followed the cortege with our eyes until it was swiftly lost
to sight in the misty wood; and the very sound of the hoofs and
the wheels died away in the silent night air.
Nothing remained to assure us that the adventure had not
been an illusion of a moment but the young lady, who just at
that moment opened her eyes. I could not see, for her face was
turned from me, but she raised her head, evidently looking
about her, and I heard a very sweet voice ask complainingly,
"Where is mamma?"
Our good Madame Perrodon answered tenderly, and added
some comfortable assurances.
I then heard her ask:
"Where am I? What is this place?" and after that she said, "I
don't see the carriage; and Matska, where is she?"
Madame answered all her questions in so far as she under-
stood them; and gradually the young lady remembered how the
misadventure came about, and was glad to hear that no one in,
or in attendance on, the carriage was hurt; and on learning
that her mamma had left her here, till her return in about three
months, she wept.
I was going to add my consolations to those of Madame Per-
rodon when Mademoiselle De Lafontaine placed her hand upon
my arm, saying:
"Don't approach, one at a time is as much as she can at
present converse with; a very little excitement would possibly
overpower her now."
As soon as she is comfortably in bed, I thought, I will run up
to her room and see her.

17
 My father in the meantime had sent a servant on horseback
for the physician, who lived about two leagues away; and a
bedroom was being prepared for the young lady's reception.
The stranger now rose, and leaning on Madame's arm,
walked slowly over the drawbridge and into the castle gate.
In the hall, servants waited to receive her, and she was con-
ducted forthwith to her room. The room we usually sat in as
our drawing room is long, having four windows, that looked
over the moat and drawbridge, upon the forest scene I have
just described.
It is furnished in old carved oak, with large carved cabinets,
and the chairs are cushioned with crimson Utrecht velvet. The
walls are covered with tapestry, and surrounded with great
gold frames, the figures being as large as life, in ancient and
very curious costume, and the subjects represented are hunt-
ing, hawking, and generally festive. It is not too stately to be
extremely comfortable; and here we had our tea, for with his
usual patriotic leanings he insisted that the national beverage
should make its appearance regularly with our coffee and
chocolate.
We sat here this night, and with candles lighted, were talking
over the adventure of the evening.
Madame Perrodon and Mademoiselle De Lafontaine were
both of our party. The young stranger had hardly lain down in
her bed when she sank into a deep sleep; and those ladies had
left her in the care of a servant.
"How do you like our guest?" I asked, as soon as Madame
entered. "Tell me all about her?"
"I like her extremely," answered Madame, "she is, I almost
think, the prettiest creature I ever saw; about your age, and so
gentle and nice."
"She is absolutely beautiful," threw in Mademoiselle, who
had peeped for a moment into the stranger's room.
"And such a sweet voice!" added Madame Perrodon.
"Did you remark a woman in the carriage, after it was set up
again, who did not get out," inquired Mademoiselle, "but only
looked from the window?"
"No, we had not seen her."
Then she described a hideous black woman, with a sort of
colored turban on her head, and who was gazing all the time

18
from the carriage window, nodding and grinning derisively to-
wards the ladies, with gleaming eyes and large white eyeballs,
and her teeth set as if in fury.
"Did you remark what an ill-looking pack of men the servants
were?" asked Madame.
"Yes," said my father, who had just come in, "ugly, hang-dog
looking fellows as ever I beheld in my life. I hope they mayn't
rob the poor lady in the forest. They are clever rogues,
however; they got everything to rights in a minute."
"I dare say they are worn out with too long traveling," said
Madame.
"Besides looking wicked, their faces were so strangely lean,
and dark, and sullen. I am very curious, I own; but I dare say
the young lady will tell you all about it tomorrow, if she is suffi-
ciently recovered."
"I don't think she will," said my father, with a mysterious
smile, and a little nod of his head, as if he knew more about it
than he cared to tell us.
This made us all the more inquisitive as to what had passed
between him and the lady in the black velvet, in the brief but
earnest interview that had immediately preceded her
departure.
We were scarcely alone, when I entreated him to tell me. He
did not need much pressing.
"There is no particular reason why I should not tell you. She
expressed a reluctance to trouble us with the care of her
daughter, saying she was in delicate health, and nervous, but
not subject to any kind of seizure—she volunteered that—nor
to any illusion; being, in fact, perfectly sane."
"How very odd to say all that!" I interpolated. "It was so
unnecessary."
"At all events it was said," he laughed, "and as you wish to
know all that passed, which was indeed very little, I tell you.
She then said, 'I am making a long journey of vital import-
ance—she emphasized the word—rapid and secret; I shall re-
turn for my child in three months; in the meantime, she will be
silent as to who we are, whence we come, and whither we are
traveling.' That is all she said. She spoke very pure French.
When she said the word 'secret,' she paused for a few seconds,
looking sternly, her eyes fixed on mine. I fancy she makes a

19
great point of that. You saw how quickly she was gone. I hope I
have not done a very foolish thing, in taking charge of the
young lady."
For my part, I was delighted. I was longing to see and talk to
her; and only waiting till the doctor should give me leave. You,
who live in towns, can have no idea how great an event the in-
troduction of a new friend is, in such a solitude as surrounded
us.
The doctor did not arrive till nearly one o'clock; but I could
no more have gone to my bed and slept, than I could have over-
taken, on foot, the carriage in which the princess in black vel-
vet had driven away.
When the physician came down to the drawing room, it was
to report very favorably upon his patient. She was now sitting
up, her pulse quite regular, apparently perfectly well. She had
sustained no injury, and the little shock to her nerves had
passed away quite harmlessly. There could be no harm cer-
tainly in my seeing her, if we both wished it; and, with this per-
mission I sent, forthwith, to know whether she would allow me
to visit her for a few minutes in her room.
The servant returned immediately to say that she desired
nothing more.
You may be sure I was not long in availing myself of this
permission.
Our visitor lay in one of the handsomest rooms in the schloss.
It was, perhaps, a little stately. There was a somber piece of
tapestry opposite the foot of the bed, representing Cleopatra
with the asps to her bosom; and other solemn classic scenes
were displayed, a little faded, upon the other walls. But there
was gold carving, and rich and varied color enough in the other
decorations of the room, to more than redeem the gloom of the
old tapestry.
There were candles at the bedside. She was sitting up; her
slender pretty figure enveloped in the soft silk dressing gown,
embroidered with flowers, and lined with thick quilted silk,
which her mother had thrown over her feet as she lay upon the
ground.
What was it that, as I reached the bedside and had just be-
gun my little greeting, struck me dumb in a moment, and made
me recoil a step or two from before her? I will tell you.

20
 I saw the very face which had visited me in my childhood at
night, which remained so fixed in my memory, and on which I
had for so many years so often ruminated with horror, when no
one suspected of what I was thinking.
It was pretty, even beautiful; and when I first beheld it, wore
the same melancholy expression.
But this almost instantly lighted into a strange fixed smile of
recognition.
There was a silence of fully a minute, and then at length she
spoke; I could not.
"How wonderful!" she exclaimed. "Twelve years ago, I saw
your face in a dream, and it has haunted me ever since."
"Wonderful indeed!" I repeated, overcoming with an effort
the horror that had for a time suspended my utterances.
"Twelve years ago, in vision or reality, I certainly saw you. I
could not forget your face. It has remained before my eyes ever
since."
Her smile had softened. Whatever I had fancied strange in it,
was gone, and it and her dimpling cheeks were now delight-
fully pretty and intelligent.
I felt reassured, and continued more in the vein which hospit-
ality indicated, to bid her welcome, and to tell her how much
pleasure her accidental arrival had given us all, and especially
what a happiness it was to me.
I took her hand as I spoke. I was a little shy, as lonely people
are, but the situation made me eloquent, and even bold. She
pressed my hand, she laid hers upon it, and her eyes glowed,
as, looking hastily into mine, she smiled again, and blushed.
She answered my welcome very prettily. I sat down beside
her, still wondering; and she said:
"I must tell you my vision about you; it is so very strange that
you and I should have had, each of the other so vivid a dream,
that each should have seen, I you and you me, looking as we do
now, when of course we both were mere children. I was a
child, about six years old, and I awoke from a confused and
troubled dream, and found myself in a room, unlike my nurs-
ery, wainscoted clumsily in some dark wood, and with cup-
boards and bedsteads, and chairs, and benches placed about it.
The beds were, I thought, all empty, and the room itself
without anyone but myself in it; and I, after looking about me

21
for some time, and admiring especially an iron candlestick with
two branches, which I should certainly know again, crept un-
der one of the beds to reach the window; but as I got from un-
der the bed, I heard someone crying; and looking up, while I
was still upon my knees, I saw you—most assuredly you—as I
see you now; a beautiful young lady, with golden hair and large
blue eyes, and lips—your lips—you as you are here.
"Your looks won me; I climbed on the bed and put my arms
about you, and I think we both fell asleep. I was aroused by a
scream; you were sitting up screaming. I was frightened, and
slipped down upon the ground, and, it seemed to me, lost con-
sciousness for a moment; and when I came to myself, I was
again in my nursery at home. Your face I have never forgotten
since. I could not be misled by mere resemblance. You are the
lady whom I saw then."
It was now my turn to relate my corresponding vision, which
I did, to the undisguised wonder of my new acquaintance.
"I don't know which should be most afraid of the other," she
said, again smiling—"If you were less pretty I think I should be
very much afraid of you, but being as you are, and you and I
both so young, I feel only that I have made your acquaintance
twelve years ago, and have already a right to your intimacy; at
all events it does seem as if we were destined, from our earli-
est childhood, to be friends. I wonder whether you feel as
strangely drawn towards me as I do to you; I have never had a
friend—shall I find one now?" She sighed, and her fine dark
eyes gazed passionately on me.
Now the truth is, I felt rather unaccountably towards the
beautiful stranger. I did feel, as she said, "drawn towards her,"
but there was also something of repulsion. In this ambiguous
feeling, however, the sense of attraction immensely prevailed.
She interested and won me; she was so beautiful and so indes-
cribably engaging.
I perceived now something of languor and exhaustion steal-
ing over her, and hastened to bid her good night.
"The doctor thinks," I added, "that you ought to have a maid
to sit up with you tonight; one of ours is waiting, and you will
find her a very useful and quiet creature."
"How kind of you, but I could not sleep, I never could with an
attendant in the room. I shan't require any assistance—and,

22
shall I confess my weakness, I am haunted with a terror of rob-
bers. Our house was robbed once, and two servants murdered,
so I always lock my door. It has become a habit—and you look
so kind I know you will forgive me. I see there is a key in the
lock."
She held me close in her pretty arms for a moment and
whispered in my ear, "Good night, darling, it is very hard to
part with you, but good night; tomorrow, but not early, I shall
see you again."
She sank back on the pillow with a sigh, and her fine eyes
followed me with a fond and melancholy gaze, and she mur-
mured again "Good night, dear friend."
Young people like, and even love, on impulse. I was flattered
by the evident, though as yet undeserved, fondness she showed
me. I liked the confidence with which she at once received me.
She was determined that we should be very near friends.
Next day came and we met again. I was delighted with my
companion; that is to say, in many respects.
Her looks lost nothing in daylight—she was certainly the
most beautiful creature I had ever seen, and the unpleasant re-
membrance of the face presented in my early dream, had lost
the effect of the first unexpected recognition.
She confessed that she had experienced a similar shock on
seeing me, and precisely the same faint antipathy that had
mingled with my admiration of her. We now laughed together
over our momentary horrors.

23
Chapter 4
Her Habits -- A Saunter
I told you that I was charmed with her in most particulars.
There were some that did not please me so well.
She was above the middle height of women. I shall begin by
describing her.
She was slender, and wonderfully graceful. Except that her
movements were languid—very languid—indeed, there was
nothing in her appearance to indicate an invalid. Her complex-
ion was rich and brilliant; her features were small and beauti-
fully formed; her eyes large, dark, and lustrous; her hair was
quite wonderful, I never saw hair so magnificently thick and
long when it was down about her shoulders; I have often
placed my hands under it, and laughed with wonder at its
weight. It was exquisitely fine and soft, and in color a rich very
dark brown, with something of gold. I loved to let it down, tum-
bling with its own weight, as, in her room, she lay back in her
chair talking in her sweet low voice, I used to fold and braid it,
and spread it out and play with it. Heavens! If I had but known
all!
I said there were particulars which did not please me. I have
told you that her confidence won me the first night I saw her;
but I found that she exercised with respect to herself, her
mother, her history, everything in fact connected with her life,
plans, and people, an ever wakeful reserve. I dare say I was un-
reasonable, perhaps I was wrong; I dare say I ought to have re-
spected the solemn injunction laid upon my father by the
stately lady in black velvet. But curiosity is a restless and un-
scrupulous passion, and no one girl can endure, with patience,
that hers should be baffled by another. What harm could it do
anyone to tell me what I so ardently desired to know? Had she
no trust in my good sense or honor? Why would she not believe

24
me when I assured her, so solemnly, that I would not divulge
one syllable of what she told me to any mortal breathing.
There was a coldness, it seemed to me, beyond her years, in
her smiling melancholy persistent refusal to afford me the least
ray of light.
I cannot say we quarreled upon this point, for she would not
quarrel upon any. It was, of course, very unfair of me to press
her, very ill-bred, but I really could not help it; and I might just
as well have let it alone.
What she did tell me amounted, in my unconscionable estim-
ation—to nothing.
It was all summed up in three very vague disclosures:
First—Her name was Carmilla.
Second—Her family was very ancient and noble.
Third—Her home lay in the direction of the west.
She would not tell me the name of her family, nor their ar-
morial bearings, nor the name of their estate, nor even that of
the country they lived in.
You are not to suppose that I worried her incessantly on
these subjects. I watched opportunity, and rather insinuated
than urged my inquiries. Once or twice, indeed, I did attack
her more directly. But no matter what my tactics, utter failure
was invariably the result. Reproaches and caresses were all
lost upon her. But I must add this, that her evasion was con-
ducted with so pretty a melancholy and deprecation, with so
many, and even passionate declarations of her liking for me,
and trust in my honor, and with so many promises that I should
at last know all, that I could not find it in my heart long to be
offended with her.
She used to place her pretty arms about my neck, draw me to
her, and laying her cheek to mine, murmur with her lips near
my ear, "Dearest, your little heart is wounded; think me not
cruel because I obey the irresistible law of my strength and
weakness; if your dear heart is wounded, my wild heart bleeds
with yours. In the rapture of my enormous humiliation I live in
your warm life, and you shall die—die, sweetly die—into mine. I
cannot help it; as I draw near to you, you, in your turn, will
draw near to others, and learn the rapture of that cruelty,
which yet is love; so, for a while, seek to know no more of me
and mine, but trust me with all your loving spirit."

25
 And when she had spoken such a rhapsody, she would press
me more closely in her trembling embrace, and her lips in soft
kisses gently glow upon my cheek.
Her agitations and her language were unintelligible to me.
From these foolish embraces, which were not of very fre-
quent occurrence, I must allow, I used to wish to extricate my-
self; but my energies seemed to fail me. Her murmured words
sounded like a lullaby in my ear, and soothed my resistance in-
to a trance, from which I only seemed to recover myself when
she withdrew her arms.
In these mysterious moods I did not like her. I experienced a
strange tumultuous excitement that was pleasurable, ever and
anon, mingled with a vague sense of fear and disgust. I had no
distinct thoughts about her while such scenes lasted, but I was
conscious of a love growing into adoration, and also of abhor-
rence. This I know is paradox, but I can make no other attempt
to explain the feeling.
I now write, after an interval of more than ten years, with a
trembling hand, with a confused and horrible recollection of
certain occurrences and situations, in the ordeal through
which I was unconsciously passing; though with a vivid and
very sharp remembrance of the main current of my story.
But, I suspect, in all lives there are certain emotional scenes,
those in which our passions have been most wildly and terribly
roused, that are of all others the most vaguely and dimly
remembered.
Sometimes after an hour of apathy, my strange and beautiful
companion would take my hand and hold it with a fond pres-
sure, renewed again and again; blushing softly, gazing in my
face with languid and burning eyes, and breathing so fast that
her dress rose and fell with the tumultuous respiration. It was
like the ardor of a lover; it embarrassed me; it was hateful and
yet over-powering; and with gloating eyes she drew me to her,
and her hot lips traveled along my cheek in kisses; and she
would whisper, almost in sobs, "You are mine, you shall be
mine, you and I are one for ever." Then she had thrown herself
back in her chair, with her small hands over her eyes, leaving
me trembling.
"Are we related," I used to ask; "what can you mean by all
this? I remind you perhaps of someone whom you love; but you

26
must not, I hate it; I don't know you—I don't know myself when
you look so and talk so."
She used to sigh at my vehemence, then turn away and drop
my hand.
Respecting these very extraordinary manifestations I strove
in vain to form any satisfactory theory—I could not refer them
to affectation or trick. It was unmistakably the momentary
breaking out of suppressed instinct and emotion. Was she, not-
withstanding her mother's volunteered denial, subject to brief
visitations of insanity; or was there here a disguise and a ro-
mance? I had read in old storybooks of such things. What if a
boyish lover had found his way into the house, and sought to
prosecute his suit in masquerade, with the assistance of a clev-
er old adventuress. But there were many things against this hy-
pothesis, highly interesting as it was to my vanity.
I could boast of no little attentions such as masculine gal-
lantry delights to offer. Between these passionate moments
there were long intervals of commonplace, of gaiety, of brood-
ing melancholy, during which, except that I detected her eyes
so full of melancholy fire, following me, at times I might have
been as nothing to her. Except in these brief periods of myster-
ious excitement her ways were girlish; and there was always a
languor about her, quite incompatible with a masculine system
in a state of health.
In some respects her habits were odd. Perhaps not so singu-
lar in the opinion of a town lady like you, as they appeared to
us rustic people. She used to come down very late, generally
not till one o'clock, she would then take a cup of chocolate, but
eat nothing; we then went out for a walk, which was a mere
saunter, and she seemed, almost immediately, exhausted, and
either returned to the schloss or sat on one of the benches that
were placed, here and there, among the trees. This was a bod-
ily languor in which her mind did not sympathize. She was al-
ways an animated talker, and very intelligent.
She sometimes alluded for a moment to her own home, or
mentioned an adventure or situation, or an early recollection,
which indicated a people of strange manners, and described
customs of which we knew nothing. I gathered from these
chance hints that her native country was much more remote
than I had at first fancied.

27
 As we sat thus one afternoon under the trees a funeral
passed us by. It was that of a pretty young girl, whom I had of-
ten seen, the daughter of one of the rangers of the forest. The
poor man was walking behind the coffin of his darling; she was
his only child, and he looked quite heartbroken.
Peasants walking two-and-two came behind, they were
singing a funeral hymn.
I rose to mark my respect as they passed, and joined in the
hymn they were very sweetly singing.
My companion shook me a little roughly, and I turned
surprised.
She said brusquely, "Don't you perceive how discordant that
is?"
"I think it very sweet, on the contrary," I answered, vexed at
the interruption, and very uncomfortable, lest the people who
composed the little procession should observe and resent what
was passing.
I resumed, therefore, instantly, and was again interrupted.
"You pierce my ears," said Carmilla, almost angrily, and stop-
ping her ears with her tiny fingers. "Besides, how can you tell
that your religion and mine are the same; your forms wound
me, and I hate funerals. What a fuss! Why you must
die—everyone must die; and all are happier when they do.
Come home."
"My father has gone on with the clergyman to the church-
yard. I thought you knew she was to be buried today."
"She? I don't trouble my head about peasants. I don't know
who she is," answered Carmilla, with a flash from her fine
eyes.
"She is the poor girl who fancied she saw a ghost a fortnight
ago, and has been dying ever since, till yesterday, when she
expired."
"Tell me nothing about ghosts. I shan't sleep tonight if you
do."
"I hope there is no plague or fever coming; all this looks very
like it," I continued. "The swineherd's young wife died only a
week ago, and she thought something seized her by the throat
as she lay in her bed, and nearly strangled her. Papa says such
horrible fancies do accompany some forms of fever. She was

28
quite well the day before. She sank afterwards, and died before
a week."
"Well, her funeral is over, I hope, and her hymn sung; and
our ears shan't be tortured with that discord and jargon. It has
made me nervous. Sit down here, beside me; sit close; hold my
hand; press it hard-hard-harder."
We had moved a little back, and had come to another seat.
She sat down. Her face underwent a change that alarmed
and even terrified me for a moment. It darkened, and became
horribly livid; her teeth and hands were clenched, and she
frowned and compressed her lips, while she stared down upon
the ground at her feet, and trembled all over with a continued
shudder as irrepressible as ague. All her energies seemed
strained to suppress a fit, with which she was then breathlessly
tugging; and at length a low convulsive cry of suffering broke
from her, and gradually the hysteria subsided. "There! That
comes of strangling people with hymns!" she said at last. "Hold
me, hold me still. It is passing away."
And so gradually it did; and perhaps to dissipate the somber
impression which the spectacle had left upon me, she became
unusually animated and chatty; and so we got home.
This was the first time I had seen her exhibit any definable
symptoms of that delicacy of health which her mother had
spoken of. It was the first time, also, I had seen her exhibit any-
thing like temper.
Both passed away like a summer cloud; and never but once
afterwards did I witness on her part a momentary sign of an-
ger. I will tell you how it happened.
She and I were looking out of one of the long drawing room
windows, when there entered the courtyard, over the draw-
bridge, a figure of a wanderer whom I knew very well. He used
to visit the schloss generally twice a year.
It was the figure of a hunchback, with the sharp lean fea-
tures that generally accompany deformity. He wore a pointed
black beard, and he was smiling from ear to ear, showing his
white fangs. He was dressed in buff, black, and scarlet, and
crossed with more straps and belts than I could count, from
which hung all manner of things. Behind, he carried a magic
lantern, and two boxes, which I well knew, in one of which was
a salamander, and in the other a mandrake. These monsters

29
used to make my father laugh. They were compounded of parts
of monkeys, parrots, squirrels, fish, and hedgehogs, dried and
stitched together with great neatness and startling effect. He
had a fiddle, a box of conjuring apparatus, a pair of foils and
masks attached to his belt, several other mysterious cases
dangling about him, and a black staff with copper ferrules in
his hand. His companion was a rough spare dog, that followed
at his heels, but stopped short, suspiciously at the drawbridge,
and in a little while began to howl dismally.
In the meantime, the mountebank, standing in the midst of
the courtyard, raised his grotesque hat, and made us a very ce-
remonious bow, paying his compliments very volubly in exec-
rable French, and German not much better.
Then, disengaging his fiddle, he began to scrape a lively air
to which he sang with a merry discord, dancing with ludicrous
airs and activity, that made me laugh, in spite of the dog's
howling.
Then he advanced to the window with many smiles and sa-
lutations, and his hat in his left hand, his fiddle under his arm,
and with a fluency that never took breath, he gabbled a long
advertisement of all his accomplishments, and the resources of
the various arts which he placed at our service, and the curios-
ities and entertainments which it was in his power, at our bid-
ding, to display.
"Will your ladyships be pleased to buy an amulet against the
oupire, which is going like the wolf, I hear, through these
woods," he said dropping his hat on the pavement. "They are
dying of it right and left and here is a charm that never fails;
only pinned to the pillow, and you may laugh in his face."
These charms consisted of oblong slips of vellum, with cabal-
istic ciphers and diagrams upon them.
Carmilla instantly purchased one, and so did I.
He was looking up, and we were smiling down upon him,
amused; at least, I can answer for myself. His piercing black
eye, as he looked up in our faces, seemed to detect something
that fixed for a moment his curiosity. In an instant he unrolled
a leather case, full of all manner of odd little steel instruments.
"See here, my lady," he said, displaying it, and addressing
me, "I profess, among other things less useful, the art of
dentistry. Plague take the dog!" he interpolated. "Silence,

30
beast! He howls so that your ladyships can scarcely hear a
word. Your noble friend, the young lady at your right, has the
sharpest tooth,—long, thin, pointed, like an awl, like a needle;
ha, ha! With my sharp and long sight, as I look up, I have seen
it distinctly; now if it happens to hurt the young lady, and I
think it must, here am I, here are my file, my punch, my nip-
pers; I will make it round and blunt, if her ladyship pleases; no
longer the tooth of a fish, but of a beautiful young lady as she
is. Hey? Is the young lady displeased? Have I been too bold?
Have I offended her?"
The young lady, indeed, looked very angry as she drew back
from the window.
"How dares that mountebank insult us so? Where is your
father? I shall demand redress from him. My father would have
had the wretch tied up to the pump, and flogged with a cart
whip, and burnt to the bones with the cattle brand!"
She retired from the window a step or two, and sat down,
and had hardly lost sight of the offender, when her wrath sub-
sided as suddenly as it had risen, and she gradually recovered
her usual tone, and seemed to forget the little hunchback and
his follies.
My father was out of spirits that evening. On coming in he
told us that there had been another case very similar to the
two fatal ones which had lately occurred. The sister of a young
peasant on his estate, only a mile away, was very ill, had been,
as she described it, attacked very nearly in the same way, and
was now slowly but steadily sinking.
"All this," said my father, "is strictly referable to natural
causes. These poor people infect one another with their super-
stitions, and so repeat in imagination the images of terror that
have infested their neighbors."
"But that very circumstance frightens one horribly," said
Carmilla.
"How so?" inquired my father.
"I am so afraid of fancying I see such things; I think it would
be as bad as reality."
"We are in God's hands: nothing can happen without his per-
mission, and all will end well for those who love him. He is our
faithful creator; He has made us all, and will take care of us."

31
 "Creator! Nature!" said the young lady in answer to my
gentle father. "And this disease that invades the country is nat-
ural. Nature. All things proceed from Nature—don't they? All
things in the heaven, in the earth, and under the earth, act and
live as Nature ordains? I think so."
"The doctor said he would come here today," said my father,
after a silence. "I want to know what he thinks about it, and
what he thinks we had better do."
"Doctors never did me any good," said Carmilla.
"Then you have been ill?" I asked.
"More ill than ever you were," she answered.
"Long ago?"
"Yes, a long time. I suffered from this very illness; but I for-
get all but my pain and weakness, and they were not so bad as
are suffered in other diseases."
"You were very young then?"
"I dare say, let us talk no more of it. You would not wound a
friend?"
She looked languidly in my eyes, and passed her arm round
my waist lovingly, and led me out of the room. My father was
busy over some papers near the window.
"Why does your papa like to frighten us?" said the pretty girl
with a sigh and a little shudder.
"He doesn't, dear Carmilla, it is the very furthest thing from
his mind."
"Are you afraid, dearest?"
"I should be very much if I fancied there was any real danger
of my being attacked as those poor people were."
"You are afraid to die?"
"Yes, every one is."
"But to die as lovers may—to die together, so that they may
live together.
"Girls are caterpillars while they live in the world, to be fi-
nally butterflies when the summer comes; but in the meantime
there are grubs and larvae, don't you see—each with their pe-
culiar propensities, necessities and structure. So says Mon-
sieur Buffon, in his big book, in the next room."
Later in the day the doctor came, and was closeted with papa
for some time.

32
 He was a skilful man, of sixty and upwards, he wore powder,
and shaved his pale face as smooth as a pumpkin. He and papa
emerged from the room together, and I heard papa laugh, and
say as they came out:
"Well, I do wonder at a wise man like you. What do you say to
hippogriffs and dragons?"
The doctor was smiling, and made answer, shaking his
head—
"Nevertheless life and death are mysterious states, and we
know little of the resources of either."
And so they walked on, and I heard no more. I did not then
know what the doctor had been broaching, but I think I guess
it now.

33
Chapter 5
A Wonderful Likeness
This evening there arrived from Gratz the grave, dark-faced
son of the picture cleaner, with a horse and cart laden with two
large packing cases, having many pictures in each. It was a
journey of ten leagues, and whenever a messenger arrived at
the schloss from our little capital of Gratz, we used to crowd
about him in the hall, to hear the news.
This arrival created in our secluded quarters quite a sensa-
tion. The cases remained in the hall, and the messenger was
taken charge of by the servants till he had eaten his supper.
Then with assistants, and armed with hammer, ripping chisel,
and turnscrew, he met us in the hall, where we had assembled
to witness the unpacking of the cases.
Carmilla sat looking listlessly on, while one after the other
the old pictures, nearly all portraits, which had undergone the
process of renovation, were brought to light. My mother was of
an old Hungarian family, and most of these pictures, which
were about to be restored to their places, had come to us
through her.
My father had a list in his hand, from which he read, as the
artist rummaged out the corresponding numbers. I don't know
that the pictures were very good, but they were, undoubtedly,
very old, and some of them very curious also. They had, for the
most part, the merit of being now seen by me, I may say, for
the first time; for the smoke and dust of time had all but oblit-
erated them.
"There is a picture that I have not seen yet," said my father.
"In one corner, at the top of it, is the name, as well as I could
read, 'Marcia Karnstein,' and the date '1698'; and I am curious
to see how it has turned out."

34
 I remembered it; it was a small picture, about a foot and a
half high, and nearly square, without a frame; but it was so
blackened by age that I could not make it out.
The artist now produced it, with evident pride. It was quite
beautiful; it was startling; it seemed to live. It was the effigy of
Carmilla!
"Carmilla, dear, here is an absolute miracle. Here you are,
living, smiling, ready to speak, in this picture. Isn't it beautiful,
Papa? And see, even the little mole on her throat."
My father laughed, and said "Certainly it is a wonderful like-
ness," but he looked away, and to my surprise seemed but little
struck by it, and went on talking to the picture cleaner, who
was also something of an artist, and discoursed with intelli-
gence about the portraits or other works, which his art had just
brought into light and color, while I was more and more lost in
wonder the more I looked at the picture.
"Will you let me hang this picture in my room, papa?" I
asked.
"Certainly, dear," said he, smiling, "I'm very glad you think it
so like. It must be prettier even than I thought it, if it is."
The young lady did not acknowledge this pretty speech, did
not seem to hear it. She was leaning back in her seat, her fine
eyes under their long lashes gazing on me in contemplation,
and she smiled in a kind of rapture.
"And now you can read quite plainly the name that is written
in the corner. It is not Marcia; it looks as if it was done in gold.
The name is Mircalla, Countess Karnstein, and this is a little
coronet over and underneath A.D. 1698. I am descended from
the Karnsteins; that is, mamma was."
"Ah!" said the lady, languidly, "so am I, I think, a very long
descent, very ancient. Are there any Karnsteins living now?"
"None who bear the name, I believe. The family were ruined,
I believe, in some civil wars, long ago, but the ruins of the
castle are only about three miles away."
"How interesting!" she said, languidly. "But see what beauti-
ful moonlight!" She glanced through the hall door, which stood
a little open. "Suppose you take a little ramble round the court,
and look down at the road and river."
"It is so like the night you came to us," I said.
She sighed; smiling.

35
 She rose, and each with her arm about the other's waist, we
walked out upon the pavement.
In silence, slowly we walked down to the drawbridge, where
the beautiful landscape opened before us.
"And so you were thinking of the night I came here?" she al-
most whispered.
"Are you glad I came?"
"Delighted, dear Carmilla," I answered.
"And you asked for the picture you think like me, to hang in
your room," she murmured with a sigh, as she drew her arm
closer about my waist, and let her pretty head sink upon my
shoulder. "How romantic you are, Carmilla," I said. "Whenever
you tell me your story, it will be made up chiefly of some one
great romance."
She kissed me silently.
"I am sure, Carmilla, you have been in love; that there is, at
this moment, an affair of the heart going on."
"I have been in love with no one, and never shall," she
whispered, "unless it should be with you."
How beautiful she looked in the moonlight!
Shy and strange was the look with which she quickly hid her
face in my neck and hair, with tumultuous sighs, that seemed
almost to sob, and pressed in mine a hand that trembled.
Her soft cheek was glowing against mine. "Darling, darling,"
she murmured, "I live in you; and you would die for me, I love
you so."
I started from her.
She was gazing on me with eyes from which all fire, all
meaning had flown, and a face colorless and apathetic.
"Is there a chill in the air, dear?" she said drowsily. "I almost
shiver; have I been dreaming? Let us come in. Come; come;
come in."
"You look ill, Carmilla; a little faint. You certainly must take
some wine," I said.
"Yes. I will. I'm better now. I shall be quite well in a few
minutes. Yes, do give me a little wine," answered Carmilla, as
we approached the door.
"Let us look again for a moment; it is the last time, perhaps, I
shall see the moonlight with you."

36
 "How do you feel now, dear Carmilla? Are you really better?"
I asked.
I was beginning to take alarm, lest she should have been
stricken with the strange epidemic that they said had invaded
the country about us.
"Papa would be grieved beyond measure," I added, "if he
thought you were ever so little ill, without immediately letting
us know. We have a very skilful doctor near us, the physician
who was with papa today."
"I'm sure he is. I know how kind you all are; but, dear child, I
am quite well again. There is nothing ever wrong with me, but
a little weakness.
"People say I am languid; I am incapable of exertion; I can
scarcely walk as far as a child of three years old: and every
now and then the little strength I have falters, and I become as
you have just seen me. But after all I am very easily set up
again; in a moment I am perfectly myself. See how I have
recovered."
So, indeed, she had; and she and I talked a great deal, and
very animated she was; and the remainder of that evening
passed without any recurrence of what I called her infatu-
ations. I mean her crazy talk and looks, which embarrassed,
and even frightened me.
But there occurred that night an event which gave my
thoughts quite a new turn, and seemed to startle even
Carmilla's languid nature into momentary energy.

37
Chapter 6
A Very Strange Agony
When we got into the drawing room, and had sat down to our
coffee and chocolate, although Carmilla did not take any, she
seemed quite herself again, and Madame, and Mademoiselle
De Lafontaine, joined us, and made a little card party, in the
course of which papa came in for what he called his "dish of
tea."
When the game was over he sat down beside Carmilla on the
sofa, and asked her, a little anxiously, whether she had heard
from her mother since her arrival.
She answered "No."
He then asked whether she knew where a letter would reach
her at present.
"I cannot tell," she answered ambiguously, "but I have been
thinking of leaving you; you have been already too hospitable
and too kind to me. I have given you an infinity of trouble, and
I should wish to take a carriage tomorrow, and post in pursuit
of her; I know where I shall ultimately find her, although I dare
not yet tell you."
"But you must not dream of any such thing," exclaimed my
father, to my great relief. "We can't afford to lose you so, and I
won't consent to your leaving us, except under the care of your
mother, who was so good as to consent to your remaining with
us till she should herself return. I should be quite happy if I
knew that you heard from her: but this evening the accounts of
the progress of the mysterious disease that has invaded our
neighborhood, grow even more alarming; and my beautiful
guest, I do feel the responsibility, unaided by advice from your
mother, very much. But I shall do my best; and one thing is
certain, that you must not think of leaving us without her

38
distinct direction to that effect. We should suffer too much in
parting from you to consent to it easily."
"Thank you, sir, a thousand times for your hospitality," she
answered, smiling bashfully. "You have all been too kind to me;
I have seldom been so happy in all my life before, as in your
beautiful chateau, under your care, and in the society of your
dear daughter."
So he gallantly, in his old-fashioned way, kissed her hand,
smiling and pleased at her little speech.
I accompanied Carmilla as usual to her room, and sat and
chatted with her while she was preparing for bed.
"Do you think," I said at length, "that you will ever confide
fully in me?"
She turned round smiling, but made no answer, only contin-
ued to smile on me.
"You won't answer that?" I said. "You can't answer pleas-
antly; I ought not to have asked you."
"You were quite right to ask me that, or anything. You do not
know how dear you are to me, or you could not think any con-
fidence too great to look for. But I am under vows, no nun half
so awfully, and I dare not tell my story yet, even to you. The
time is very near when you shall know everything. You will
think me cruel, very selfish, but love is always selfish; the more
ardent the more selfish. How jealous I am you cannot know.
You must come with me, loving me, to death; or else hate me
and still come with me, and hating me through death and after.
There is no such word as indifference in my apathetic nature."
"Now, Carmilla, you are going to talk your wild nonsense
again," I said hastily.
"Not I, silly little fool as I am, and full of whims and fancies;
for your sake I'll talk like a sage. Were you ever at a ball?"
"No; how you do run on. What is it like? How charming it
must be."
"I almost forget, it is years ago."
I laughed.
"You are not so old. Your first ball can hardly be forgotten
yet."
"I remember everything about it—with an effort. I see it all,
as divers see what is going on above them, through a medium,
dense, rippling, but transparent. There occurred that night

39
what has confused the picture, and made its colours faint. I
was all but assassinated in my bed, wounded here," she
touched her breast, "and never was the same since."
"Were you near dying?"
"Yes, very—a cruel love—strange love, that would have taken
my life. Love will have its sacrifices. No sacrifice without
blood. Let us go to sleep now; I feel so lazy. How can I get up
just now and lock my door?"
She was lying with her tiny hands buried in her rich wavy
hair, under her cheek, her little head upon the pillow, and her
glittering eyes followed me wherever I moved, with a kind of
shy smile that I could not decipher.
I bid her good night, and crept from the room with an uncom-
fortable sensation.
I often wondered whether our pretty guest ever said her
prayers. I certainly had never seen her upon her knees. In the
morning she never came down until long after our family pray-
ers were over, and at night she never left the drawing room to
attend our brief evening prayers in the hall.
If it had not been that it had casually come out in one of our
careless talks that she had been baptised, I should have
doubted her being a Christian. Religion was a subject on which
I had never heard her speak a word. If I had known the world
better, this particular neglect or antipathy would not have so
much surprised me.
The precautions of nervous people are infectious, and per-
sons of a like temperament are pretty sure, after a time, to im-
itate them. I had adopted Carmilla's habit of locking her bed-
room door, having taken into my head all her whimsical alarms
about midnight invaders and prowling assassins. I had also ad-
opted her precaution of making a brief search through her
room, to satisfy herself that no lurking assassin or robber was
"ensconced."
These wise measures taken, I got into my bed and fell asleep.
A light was burning in my room. This was an old habit, of very
early date, and which nothing could have tempted me to dis-
pense with.
Thus fortified I might take my rest in peace. But dreams
come through stone walls, light up dark rooms, or darken light

40
ones, and their persons make their exits and their entrances as
they please, and laugh at locksmiths.
I had a dream that night that was the beginning of a very
strange agony.
I cannot call it a nightmare, for I was quite conscious of be-
ing asleep.
But I was equally conscious of being in my room, and lying in
bed, precisely as I actually was. I saw, or fancied I saw, the
room and its furniture just as I had seen it last, except that it
was very dark, and I saw something moving round the foot of
the bed, which at first I could not accurately distinguish. But I
soon saw that it was a sooty-black animal that resembled a
monstrous cat. It appeared to me about four or five feet long
for it measured fully the length of the hearthrug as it passed
over it; and it continued to-ing and fro-ing with the lithe, sinis-
ter restlessness of a beast in a cage. I could not cry out, al-
though as you may suppose, I was terrified. Its pace was grow-
ing faster, and the room rapidly darker and darker, and at
length so dark that I could no longer see anything of it but its
eyes. I felt it spring lightly on the bed. The two broad eyes ap-
proached my face, and suddenly I felt a stinging pain as if two
large needles darted, an inch or two apart, deep into my
breast. I waked with a scream. The room was lighted by the
candle that burnt there all through the night, and I saw a fe-
male figure standing at the foot of the bed, a little at the right
side. It was in a dark loose dress, and its hair was down and
covered its shoulders. A block of stone could not have been
more still. There was not the slightest stir of respiration. As I
stared at it, the figure appeared to have changed its place, and
was now nearer the door; then, close to it, the door opened,
and it passed out.
I was now relieved, and able to breathe and move. My first
thought was that Carmilla had been playing me a trick, and
that I had forgotten to secure my door. I hastened to it, and
found it locked as usual on the inside. I was afraid to open it—I
was horrified. I sprang into my bed and covered my head up in
the bedclothes, and lay there more dead than alive till
morning.

41
Chapter 7
Descending
It would be vain my attempting to tell you the horror with
which, even now, I recall the occurrence of that night. It was
no such transitory terror as a dream leaves behind it. It
seemed to deepen by time, and communicated itself to the
room and the very furniture that had encompassed the
apparition.
I could not bear next day to be alone for a moment. I should
have told papa, but for two opposite reasons. At one time I
thought he would laugh at my story, and I could not bear its
being treated as a jest; and at another I thought he might fancy
that I had been attacked by the mysterious complaint which
had invaded our neighborhood. I had myself no misgiving of
the kind, and as he had been rather an invalid for some time, I
was afraid of alarming him.
I was comfortable enough with my good-natured compan-
ions, Madame Perrodon, and the vivacious Mademoiselle La-
fontaine. They both perceived that I was out of spirits and
nervous, and at length I told them what lay so heavy at my
heart.
Mademoiselle laughed, but I fancied that Madame Perrodon
looked anxious.
"By-the-by," said Mademoiselle, laughing, "the long lime tree
walk, behind Carmilla's bedroom window, is haunted!"
"Nonsense!" exclaimed Madame, who probably thought the
theme rather inopportune, "and who tells that story, my dear?"
"Martin says that he came up twice, when the old yard gate
was being repaired, before sunrise, and twice saw the same fe-
male figure walking down the lime tree avenue."
"So he well might, as long as there are cows to milk in the
river fields," said Madame.

42
 "I daresay; but Martin chooses to be frightened, and never
did I see fool more frightened."
"You must not say a word about it to Carmilla, because she
can see down that walk from her room window," I interposed,
"and she is, if possible, a greater coward than I."
Carmilla came down rather later than usual that day.
"I was so frightened last night," she said, so soon as were to-
gether, "and I am sure I should have seen something dreadful
if it had not been for that charm I bought from the poor little
hunchback whom I called such hard names. I had a dream of
something black coming round my bed, and I awoke in a per-
fect horror, and I really thought, for some seconds, I saw a
dark figure near the chimney-piece, but I felt under my pillow
for my charm, and the moment my fingers touched it, the fig-
ure disappeared, and I felt quite certain, only that I had it by
me, that something frightful would have made its appearance,
and, perhaps, throttled me, as it did those poor people we
heard of.
"Well, listen to me," I began, and recounted my adventure, at
the recital of which she appeared horrified.
"And had you the charm near you?" she asked, earnestly.
"No, I had dropped it into a china vase in the drawing room,
but I shall certainly take it with me tonight, as you have so
much faith in it."
At this distance of time I cannot tell you, or even understand,
how I overcame my horror so effectually as to lie alone in my
room that night. I remember distinctly that I pinned the charm
to my pillow. I fell asleep almost immediately, and slept even
more soundly than usual all night.
Next night I passed as well. My sleep was delightfully deep
and dreamless.
But I wakened with a sense of lassitude and melancholy,
which, however, did not exceed a degree that was almost
luxurious.
"Well, I told you so," said Carmilla, when I described my
quiet sleep, "I had such delightful sleep myself last night; I
pinned the charm to the breast of my nightdress. It was too far
away the night before. I am quite sure it was all fancy, except
the dreams. I used to think that evil spirits made dreams, but
our doctor told me it is no such thing. Only a fever passing by,

43
or some other malady, as they often do, he said, knocks at the
door, and not being able to get in, passes on, with that alarm."
"And what do you think the charm is?" said I.
"It has been fumigated or immersed in some drug, and is an
antidote against the malaria," she answered.
"Then it acts only on the body?"
"Certainly; you don't suppose that evil spirits are frightened
by bits of ribbon, or the perfumes of a druggist's shop? No,
these complaints, wandering in the air, begin by trying the
nerves, and so infect the brain, but before they can seize upon
you, the antidote repels them. That I am sure is what the
charm has done for us. It is nothing magical, it is simply
natural."
I should have been happier if I could have quite agreed with
Carmilla, but I did my best, and the impression was a little los-
ing its force.
For some nights I slept profoundly; but still every morning I
felt the same lassitude, and a languor weighed upon me all
day. I felt myself a changed girl. A strange melancholy was
stealing over me, a melancholy that I would not have interrup-
ted. Dim thoughts of death began to open, and an idea that I
was slowly sinking took gentle, and, somehow, not unwelcome,
possession of me. If it was sad, the tone of mind which this in-
duced was also sweet.
Whatever it might be, my soul acquiesced in it.
I would not admit that I was ill, I would not consent to tell my
papa, or to have the doctor sent for.
Carmilla became more devoted to me than ever, and her
strange paroxysms of languid adoration more frequent. She
used to gloat on me with increasing ardor the more my
strength and spirits waned. This always shocked me like a mo-
mentary glare of insanity.
Without knowing it, I was now in a pretty advanced stage of
the strangest illness under which mortal ever suffered. There
was an unaccountable fascination in its earlier symptoms that
more than reconciled me to the incapacitating effect of that
stage of the malady. This fascination increased for a time, until
it reached a certain point, when gradually a sense of the hor-
rible mingled itself with it, deepening, as you shall hear, until it
discolored and perverted the whole state of my life.

44
 The first change I experienced was rather agreeable. It was
very near the turning point from which began the descent of
Avernus.
Certain vague and strange sensations visited me in my sleep.
The prevailing one was of that pleasant, peculiar cold thrill
which we feel in bathing, when we move against the current of
a river. This was soon accompanied by dreams that seemed in-
terminable, and were so vague that I could never recollect
their scenery and persons, or any one connected portion of
their action. But they left an awful impression, and a sense of
exhaustion, as if I had passed through a long period of great
mental exertion and danger.
After all these dreams there remained on waking a remem-
brance of having been in a place very nearly dark, and of hav-
ing spoken to people whom I could not see; and especially of
one clear voice, of a female's, very deep, that spoke as if at a
distance, slowly, and producing always the same sensation of
indescribable solemnity and fear. Sometimes there came a sen-
sation as if a hand was drawn softly along my cheek and neck.
Sometimes it was as if warm lips kissed me, and longer and
longer and more lovingly as they reached my throat, but there
the caress fixed itself. My heart beat faster, my breathing rose
and fell rapidly and full drawn; a sobbing, that rose into a
sense of strangulation, supervened, and turned into a dreadful
convulsion, in which my senses left me and I became
unconscious.
It was now three weeks since the commencement of this un-
accountable state.
My sufferings had, during the last week, told upon my ap-
pearance. I had grown pale, my eyes were dilated and
darkened underneath, and the languor which I had long felt
began to display itself in my countenance.
My father asked me often whether I was ill; but, with an ob-
stinacy which now seems to me unaccountable, I persisted in
assuring him that I was quite well.
In a sense this was true. I had no pain, I could complain of no
bodily derangement. My complaint seemed to be one of the
imagination, or the nerves, and, horrible as my sufferings
were, I kept them, with a morbid reserve, very nearly to
myself.

45
 It could not be that terrible complaint which the peasants
called the oupire, for I had now been suffering for three weeks,
and they were seldom ill for much more than three days, when
death put an end to their miseries.
Carmilla complained of dreams and feverish sensations, but
by no means of so alarming a kind as mine. I say that mine
were extremely alarming. Had I been capable of comprehend-
ing my condition, I would have invoked aid and advice on my
knees. The narcotic of an unsuspected influence was acting
upon me, and my perceptions were benumbed.
I am going to tell you now of a dream that led immediately to
an odd discovery.
One night, instead of the voice I was accustomed to hear in
the dark, I heard one, sweet and tender, and at the same time
terrible, which said, "Your mother warns you to beware of the
assassin." At the same time a light unexpectedly sprang up,
and I saw Carmilla, standing, near the foot of my bed, in her
white nightdress, bathed, from her chin to her feet, in one
great stain of blood.
I wakened with a shriek, possessed with the one idea that
Carmilla was being murdered. I remember springing from my
bed, and my next recollection is that of standing on the lobby,
crying for help.
Madame and Mademoiselle came scurrying out of their
rooms in alarm; a lamp burned always on the lobby, and seeing
me, they soon learned the cause of my terror.
I insisted on our knocking at Carmilla's door. Our knocking
was unanswered.
It soon became a pounding and an uproar. We shrieked her
name, but all was vain.
We all grew frightened, for the door was locked. We hurried
back, in panic, to my room. There we rang the bell long and
furiously. If my father's room had been at that side of the
house, we would have called him up at once to our aid. But,
alas! he was quite out of hearing, and to reach him involved an
excursion for which we none of us had courage.
Servants, however, soon came running up the stairs; I had
got on my dressing gown and slippers meanwhile, and my com-
panions were already similarly furnished. Recognizing the
voices of the servants on the lobby, we sallied out together;

46
and having renewed, as fruitlessly, our summons at Carmilla's
door, I ordered the men to force the lock. They did so, and we
stood, holding our lights aloft, in the doorway, and so stared in-
to the room.
We called her by name; but there was still no reply. We
looked round the room. Everything was undisturbed. It was ex-
actly in the state in which I had left it on bidding her good
night. But Carmilla was gone.

47
Chapter 8
Search
At sight of the room, perfectly undisturbed except for our viol-
ent entrance, we began to cool a little, and soon recovered our
senses sufficiently to dismiss the men. It had struck Mademois-
elle that possibly Carmilla had been wakened by the uproar at
her door, and in her first panic had jumped from her bed, and
hid herself in a press, or behind a curtain, from which she
could not, of course, emerge until the majordomo and his myr-
midons had withdrawn. We now recommenced our search, and
began to call her name again.
It was all to no purpose. Our perplexity and agitation in-
creased. We examined the windows, but they were secured. I
implored of Carmilla, if she had concealed herself, to play this
cruel trick no longer—to come out and to end our anxieties. It
was all useless. I was by this time convinced that she was not
in the room, nor in the dressing room, the door of which was
still locked on this side. She could not have passed it. I was ut-
terly puzzled. Had Carmilla discovered one of those secret pas-
sages which the old housekeeper said were known to exist in
the schloss, although the tradition of their exact situation had
been lost? A little time would, no doubt, explain all—utterly
perplexed as, for the present, we were.
It was past four o'clock, and I preferred passing the remain-
ing hours of darkness in Madame's room. Daylight brought no
solution of the difficulty.
The whole household, with my father at its head, was in a
state of agitation next morning. Every part of the chateau was
searched. The grounds were explored. No trace of the missing
lady could be discovered. The stream was about to be dragged;
my father was in distraction; what a tale to have to tell the

48
poor girl's mother on her return. I, too, was almost beside my-
self, though my grief was quite of a different kind.
The morning was passed in alarm and excitement. It was
now one o'clock, and still no tidings. I ran up to Carmilla's
room, and found her standing at her dressing table. I was
astounded. I could not believe my eyes. She beckoned me to
her with her pretty finger, in silence. Her face expressed ex-
treme fear.
I ran to her in an ecstasy of joy; I kissed and embraced her
again and again. I ran to the bell and rang it vehemently, to
bring others to the spot who might at once relieve my father's
anxiety.
"Dear Carmilla, what has become of you all this time? We
have been in agonies of anxiety about you," I exclaimed.
"Where have you been? How did you come back?"
"Last night has been a night of wonders," she said.
"For mercy's sake, explain all you can."
"It was past two last night," she said, "when I went to sleep
as usual in my bed, with my doors locked, that of the dressing
room, and that opening upon the gallery. My sleep was unin-
terrupted, and, so far as I know, dreamless; but I woke just
now on the sofa in the dressing room there, and I found the
door between the rooms open, and the other door forced. How
could all this have happened without my being wakened? It
must have been accompanied with a great deal of noise, and I
am particularly easily wakened; and how could I have been car-
ried out of my bed without my sleep having been interrupted, I
whom the slightest stir startles?"
By this time, Madame, Mademoiselle, my father, and a num-
ber of the servants were in the room. Carmilla was, of course,
overwhelmed with inquiries, congratulations, and welcomes.
She had but one story to tell, and seemed the least able of all
the party to suggest any way of accounting for what had
happened.
My father took a turn up and down the room, thinking. I saw
Carmilla's eye follow him for a moment with a sly, dark glance.
When my father had sent the servants away, Mademoiselle
having gone in search of a little bottle of valerian and salvolat-
ile, and there being no one now in the room with Carmilla, ex-
cept my father, Madame, and myself, he came to her

49
thoughtfully, took her hand very kindly, led her to the sofa, and
sat down beside her.
"Will you forgive me, my dear, if I risk a conjecture, and ask
a question?"
"Who can have a better right?" she said. "Ask what you
please, and I will tell you everything. But my story is simply
one of bewilderment and darkness. I know absolutely nothing.
Put any question you please, but you know, of course, the limit-
ations mamma has placed me under."
"Perfectly, my dear child. I need not approach the topics on
which she desires our silence. Now, the marvel of last night
consists in your having been removed from your bed and your
room, without being wakened, and this removal having oc-
curred apparently while the windows were still secured, and
the two doors locked upon the inside. I will tell you my theory
and ask you a question."
Carmilla was leaning on her hand dejectedly; Madame and I
were listening breathlessly.
"Now, my question is this. Have you ever been suspected of
walking in your sleep?"
"Never, since I was very young indeed."
"But you did walk in your sleep when you were young?"
"Yes; I know I did. I have been told so often by my old nurse."
My father smiled and nodded.
"Well, what has happened is this. You got up in your sleep,
unlocked the door, not leaving the key, as usual, in the lock,
but taking it out and locking it on the outside; you again took
the key out, and carried it away with you to some one of the
five-and-twenty rooms on this floor, or perhaps upstairs or
downstairs. There are so many rooms and closets, so much
heavy furniture, and such accumulations of lumber, that it
would require a week to search this old house thoroughly. Do
you see, now, what I mean?"
"I do, but not all," she answered.
"And how, papa, do you account for her finding herself on the
sofa in the dressing room, which we had searched so
carefully?"
"She came there after you had searched it, still in her sleep,
and at last awoke spontaneously, and was as much surprised to
find herself where she was as any one else. I wish all mysteries

50
were as easily and innocently explained as yours, Carmilla," he
said, laughing. "And so we may congratulate ourselves on the
certainty that the most natural explanation of the occurrence is
one that involves no drugging, no tampering with locks, no
burglars, or poisoners, or witches—nothing that need alarm
Carmilla, or anyone else, for our safety."
Carmilla was looking charmingly. Nothing could be more
beautiful than her tints. Her beauty was, I think, enhanced by
that graceful languor that was peculiar to her. I think my fath-
er was silently contrasting her looks with mine, for he said:
"I wish my poor Laura was looking more like herself"; and he
sighed.
So our alarms were happily ended, and Carmilla restored to
her friends.

51
Chapter 9
The Doctor
As Carmilla would not hear of an attendant sleeping in her
room, my father arranged that a servant should sleep outside
her door, so that she would not attempt to make another such
excursion without being arrested at her own door.
That night passed quietly; and next morning early, the doc-
tor, whom my father had sent for without telling me a word
about it, arrived to see me.
Madame accompanied me to the library; and there the grave
little doctor, with white hair and spectacles, whom I mentioned
before, was waiting to receive me.
I told him my story, and as I proceeded he grew graver and
graver.
We were standing, he and I, in the recess of one of the win-
dows, facing one another. When my statement was over, he
leaned with his shoulders against the wall, and with his eyes
fixed on me earnestly, with an interest in which was a dash of
horror.
After a minute's reflection, he asked Madame if he could see
my father.
He was sent for accordingly, and as he entered, smiling, he
said:
"I dare say, doctor, you are going to tell me that I am an old
fool for having brought you here; I hope I am."
But his smile faded into shadow as the doctor, with a very
grave face, beckoned him to him.
He and the doctor talked for some time in the same recess
where I had just conferred with the physician. It seemed an
earnest and argumentative conversation. The room is very
large, and I and Madame stood together, burning with curios-
ity, at the farther end. Not a word could we hear, however, for

52
they spoke in a very low tone, and the deep recess of the win-
dow quite concealed the doctor from view, and very nearly my
father, whose foot, arm, and shoulder only could we see; and
the voices were, I suppose, all the less audible for the sort of
closet which the thick wall and window formed.
After a time my father's face looked into the room; it was
pale, thoughtful, and, I fancied, agitated.
"Laura, dear, come here for a moment. Madame, we shan't
trouble you, the doctor says, at present."
Accordingly I approached, for the first time a little alarmed;
for, although I felt very weak, I did not feel ill; and strength,
one always fancies, is a thing that may be picked up when we
please.
My father held out his hand to me, as I drew near, but he
was looking at the doctor, and he said:
"It certainly is very odd; I don't understand it quite. Laura,
come here, dear; now attend to Doctor Spielsberg, and recol-
lect yourself."
"You mentioned a sensation like that of two needles piercing
the skin, somewhere about your neck, on the night when you
experienced your first horrible dream. Is there still any
soreness?"
"None at all," I answered.
"Can you indicate with your finger about the point at which
you think this occurred?"
"Very little below my throat—here," I answered.
I wore a morning dress, which covered the place I pointed to.
"Now you can satisfy yourself," said the doctor. "You won't
mind your papa's lowering your dress a very little. It is neces-
sary, to detect a symptom of the complaint under which you
have been suffering."
I acquiesced. It was only an inch or two below the edge of my
collar.
"God bless me!—so it is," exclaimed my father, growing pale.
"You see it now with your own eyes," said the doctor, with a
gloomy triumph.
"What is it?" I exclaimed, beginning to be frightened.
"Nothing, my dear young lady, but a small blue spot, about
the size of the tip of your little finger; and now," he continued,
turning to papa, "the question is what is best to be done?"

53
 "Is there any danger?" I urged, in great trepidation.
"I trust not, my dear," answered the doctor. "I don't see why
you should not recover. I don't see why you should not begin
immediately to get better. That is the point at which the sense
of strangulation begins?"
"Yes," I answered.
"And—recollect as well as you can—the same point was a
kind of center of that thrill which you described just now, like
the current of a cold stream running against you?"
"It may have been; I think it was."
"Ay, you see?" he added, turning to my father. "Shall I say a
word to Madame?"
"Certainly," said my father.
He called Madame to him, and said:
"I find my young friend here far from well. It won't be of any
great consequence, I hope; but it will be necessary that some
steps be taken, which I will explain by-and-by; but in the mean-
time, Madame, you will be so good as not to let Miss Laura be
alone for one moment. That is the only direction I need give for
the present. It is indispensable."
"We may rely upon your kindness, Madame, I know," added
my father.
Madame satisfied him eagerly.
"And you, dear Laura, I know you will observe the doctor's
direction."
"I shall have to ask your opinion upon another patient, whose
symptoms slightly resemble those of my daughter, that have
just been detailed to you—very much milder in degree, but I
believe quite of the same sort. She is a young lady—our guest;
but as you say you will be passing this way again this evening,
you can't do better than take your supper here, and you can
then see her. She does not come down till the afternoon."
"I thank you," said the doctor. "I shall be with you, then, at
about seven this evening."
And then they repeated their directions to me and to Ma-
dame, and with this parting charge my father left us, and
walked out with the doctor; and I saw them pacing together up
and down between the road and the moat, on the grassy plat-
form in front of the castle, evidently absorbed in earnest
conversation.

54
 The doctor did not return. I saw him mount his horse there,
take his leave, and ride away eastward through the forest.
Nearly at the same time I saw the man arrive from Dranfield
with the letters, and dismount and hand the bag to my father.
In the meantime, Madame and I were both busy, lost in con-
jecture as to the reasons of the singular and earnest direction
which the doctor and my father had concurred in imposing.
Madame, as she afterwards told me, was afraid the doctor ap-
prehended a sudden seizure, and that, without prompt assist-
ance, I might either lose my life in a fit, or at least be seriously
hurt.
The interpretation did not strike me; and I fancied, perhaps
luckily for my nerves, that the arrangement was prescribed
simply to secure a companion, who would prevent my taking
too much exercise, or eating unripe fruit, or doing any of the
fifty foolish things to which young people are supposed to be
prone.
About half an hour after my father came in—he had a letter
in his hand—and said:
"This letter had been delayed; it is from General Spielsdorf.
He might have been here yesterday, he may not come till to-
morrow or he may be here today."
He put the open letter into my hand; but he did not look
pleased, as he used when a guest, especially one so much loved
as the General, was coming.
On the contrary, he looked as if he wished him at the bottom
of the Red Sea. There was plainly something on his mind which
he did not choose to divulge.
"Papa, darling, will you tell me this?" said I, suddenly laying
my hand on his arm, and looking, I am sure, imploringly in his
face.
"Perhaps," he answered, smoothing my hair caressingly over
my eyes.
"Does the doctor think me very ill?"
"No, dear; he thinks, if right steps are taken, you will be
quite well again, at least, on the high road to a complete recov-
ery, in a day or two," he answered, a little dryly. "I wish our
good friend, the General, had chosen any other time; that is, I
wish you had been perfectly well to receive him."

55
 "But do tell me, papa," I insisted, "what does he think is the
matter with me?"
"Nothing; you must not plague me with questions," he
answered, with more irritation than I ever remember him to
have displayed before; and seeing that I looked wounded, I
suppose, he kissed me, and added, "You shall know all about it
in a day or two; that is, all that I know. In the meantime you
are not to trouble your head about it."
He turned and left the room, but came back before I had
done wondering and puzzling over the oddity of all this; it was
merely to say that he was going to Karnstein, and had ordered
the carriage to be ready at twelve, and that I and Madame
should accompany him; he was going to see the priest who
lived near those picturesque grounds, upon business, and as
Carmilla had never seen them, she could follow, when she
came down, with Mademoiselle, who would bring materials for
what you call a picnic, which might be laid for us in the ruined
castle.
At twelve o'clock, accordingly, I was ready, and not long
after, my father, Madame and I set out upon our projected
drive.
Passing the drawbridge we turn to the right, and follow the
road over the steep Gothic bridge, westward, to reach the
deserted village and ruined castle of Karnstein.
No sylvan drive can be fancied prettier. The ground breaks
into gentle hills and hollows, all clothed with beautiful wood,
totally destitute of the comparative formality which artificial
planting and early culture and pruning impart.
The irregularities of the ground often lead the road out of its
course, and cause it to wind beautifully round the sides of
broken hollows and the steeper sides of the hills, among variet-
ies of ground almost inexhaustible.
Turning one of these points, we suddenly encountered our
old friend, the General, riding towards us, attended by a moun-
ted servant. His portmanteaus were following in a hired wag-
on, such as we term a cart.
The General dismounted as we pulled up, and, after the usual
greetings, was easily persuaded to accept the vacant seat in
the carriage and send his horse on with his servant to the
schloss.

56
Chapter 10
Bereaved
It was about ten months since we had last seen him: but that
time had sufficed to make an alteration of years in his appear-
ance. He had grown thinner; something of gloom and anxiety
had taken the place of that cordial serenity which used to char-
acterize his features. His dark blue eyes, always penetrating,
now gleamed with a sterner light from under his shaggy grey
eyebrows. It was not such a change as grief alone usually in-
duces, and angrier passions seemed to have had their share in
bringing it about.
We had not long resumed our drive, when the General began
to talk, with his usual soldierly directness, of the bereavement,
as he termed it, which he had sustained in the death of his be-
loved niece and ward; and he then broke out in a tone of in-
tense bitterness and fury, inveighing against the "hellish arts"
to which she had fallen a victim, and expressing, with more ex-
asperation than piety, his wonder that Heaven should tolerate
so monstrous an indulgence of the lusts and malignity of hell.
My father, who saw at once that something very extraordin-
ary had befallen, asked him, if not too painful to him, to detail
the circumstances which he thought justified the strong terms
in which he expressed himself.
"I should tell you all with pleasure," said the General, "but
you would not believe me."
"Why should I not?" he asked.
"Because," he answered testily, "you believe in nothing but
what consists with your own prejudices and illusions. I remem-
ber when I was like you, but I have learned better."
"Try me," said my father; "I am not such a dogmatist as you
suppose. Besides which, I very well know that you generally

57
require proof for what you believe, and am, therefore, very
strongly predisposed to respect your conclusions."
"You are right in supposing that I have not been led lightly
into a belief in the marvelous—for what I have experienced is
marvelous—and I have been forced by extraordinary evidence
to credit that which ran counter, diametrically, to all my theor-
ies. I have been made the dupe of a preternatural conspiracy."
Notwithstanding his professions of confidence in the
General's penetration, I saw my father, at this point, glance at
the General, with, as I thought, a marked suspicion of his
sanity.
The General did not see it, luckily. He was looking gloomily
and curiously into the glades and vistas of the woods that were
opening before us.
"You are going to the Ruins of Karnstein?" he said. "Yes, it is
a lucky coincidence; do you know I was going to ask you to
bring me there to inspect them. I have a special object in ex-
ploring. There is a ruined chapel, ain't there, with a great many
tombs of that extinct family?"
"So there are—highly interesting," said my father. "I hope
you are thinking of claiming the title and estates?"
My father said this gaily, but the General did not recollect
the laugh, or even the smile, which courtesy exacts for a
friend's joke; on the contrary, he looked grave and even fierce,
ruminating on a matter that stirred his anger and horror.
"Something very different," he said, gruffly. "I mean to un-
earth some of those fine people. I hope, by God's blessing, to
accomplish a pious sacrilege here, which will relieve our earth
of certain monsters, and enable honest people to sleep in their
beds without being assailed by murderers. I have strange
things to tell you, my dear friend, such as I myself would have
scouted as incredible a few months since."
My father looked at him again, but this time not with a
glance of suspicion—with an eye, rather, of keen intelligence
and alarm.
"The house of Karnstein," he said, "has been long extinct: a
hundred years at least. My dear wife was maternally descen-
ded from the Karnsteins. But the name and title have long
ceased to exist. The castle is a ruin; the very village is

58
deserted; it is fifty years since the smoke of a chimney was
seen there; not a roof left."
"Quite true. I have heard a great deal about that since I last
saw you; a great deal that will astonish you. But I had better
relate everything in the order in which it occurred," said the
General. "You saw my dear ward—my child, I may call her. No
creature could have been more beautiful, and only three
months ago none more blooming."
"Yes, poor thing! when I saw her last she certainly was quite
lovely," said my father. "I was grieved and shocked more than I
can tell you, my dear friend; I knew what a blow it was to you."
He took the General's hand, and they exchanged a kind pres-
sure. Tears gathered in the old soldier's eyes. He did not seek
to conceal them. He said:
"We have been very old friends; I knew you would feel for
me, childless as I am. She had become an object of very near
interest to me, and repaid my care by an affection that cheered
my home and made my life happy. That is all gone. The years
that remain to me on earth may not be very long; but by God's
mercy I hope to accomplish a service to mankind before I die,
and to subserve the vengeance of Heaven upon the fiends who
have murdered my poor child in the spring of her hopes and
beauty!"
"You said, just now, that you intended relating everything as
it occurred," said my father. "Pray do; I assure you that it is not
mere curiosity that prompts me."
By this time we had reached the point at which the Drunstall
road, by which the General had come, diverges from the road
which we were traveling to Karnstein.
"How far is it to the ruins?" inquired the General, looking
anxiously forward.
"About half a league," answered my father. "Pray let us hear
the story you were so good as to promise."

59
Chapter 11
The Story
"With all my heart," said the General, with an effort; and after
a short pause in which to arrange his subject, he commenced
one of the strangest narratives I ever heard.
"My dear child was looking forward with great pleasure to
the visit you had been so good as to arrange for her to your
charming daughter." Here he made me a gallant but melan-
choly bow. "In the meantime we had an invitation to my old
friend the Count Carlsfeld, whose schloss is about six leagues
to the other side of Karnstein. It was to attend the series of
fetes which, you remember, were given by him in honor of his
illustrious visitor, the Grand Duke Charles."
"Yes; and very splendid, I believe, they were," said my father.
"Princely! But then his hospitalities are quite regal. He has
Aladdin's lamp. The night from which my sorrow dates was de-
voted to a magnificent masquerade. The grounds were thrown
open, the trees hung with colored lamps. There was such a dis-
play of fireworks as Paris itself had never witnessed. And such
music—music, you know, is my weakness—such ravishing mu-
sic! The finest instrumental band, perhaps, in the world, and
the finest singers who could be collected from all the great op-
eras in Europe. As you wandered through these fantastically il-
luminated grounds, the moon-lighted chateau throwing a rosy
light from its long rows of windows, you would suddenly hear
these ravishing voices stealing from the silence of some grove,
or rising from boats upon the lake. I felt myself, as I looked and
listened, carried back into the romance and poetry of my early
youth.
"When the fireworks were ended, and the ball beginning, we
returned to the noble suite of rooms that were thrown open to

60
the dancers. A masked ball, you know, is a beautiful sight; but
so brilliant a spectacle of the kind I never saw before.
"It was a very aristocratic assembly. I was myself almost the
only 'nobody' present.
"My dear child was looking quite beautiful. She wore no
mask. Her excitement and delight added an unspeakable
charm to her features, always lovely. I remarked a young lady,
dressed magnificently, but wearing a mask, who appeared to
me to be observing my ward with extraordinary interest. I had
seen her, earlier in the evening, in the great hall, and again,
for a few minutes, walking near us, on the terrace under the
castle windows, similarly employed. A lady, also masked, richly
and gravely dressed, and with a stately air, like a person of
rank, accompanied her as a chaperon.
"Had the young lady not worn a mask, I could, of course,
have been much more certain upon the question whether she
was really watching my poor darling.
"I am now well assured that she was.
"We were now in one of the salons. My poor dear child had
been dancing, and was resting a little in one of the chairs near
the door; I was standing near. The two ladies I have mentioned
had approached and the younger took the chair next my ward;
while her companion stood beside me, and for a little time ad-
dressed herself, in a low tone, to her charge.
"Availing herself of the privilege of her mask, she turned to
me, and in the tone of an old friend, and calling me by my
name, opened a conversation with me, which piqued my curios-
ity a good deal. She referred to many scenes where she had
met me—at Court, and at distinguished houses. She alluded to
little incidents which I had long ceased to think of, but which, I
found, had only lain in abeyance in my memory, for they in-
stantly started into life at her touch.
"I became more and more curious to ascertain who she was,
every moment. She parried my attempts to discover very
adroitly and pleasantly. The knowledge she showed of many
passages in my life seemed to me all but unaccountable; and
she appeared to take a not unnatural pleasure in foiling my
curiosity, and in seeing me flounder in my eager perplexity,
from one conjecture to another.

61
 "In the meantime the young lady, whom her mother called by
the odd name of Millarca, when she once or twice addressed
her, had, with the same ease and grace, got into conversation
with my ward.
"She introduced herself by saying that her mother was a very
old acquaintance of mine. She spoke of the agreeable audacity
which a mask rendered practicable; she talked like a friend;
she admired her dress, and insinuated very prettily her admira-
tion of her beauty. She amused her with laughing criticisms
upon the people who crowded the ballroom, and laughed at my
poor child's fun. She was very witty and lively when she
pleased, and after a time they had grown very good friends,
and the young stranger lowered her mask, displaying a re-
markably beautiful face. I had never seen it before, neither had
my dear child. But though it was new to us, the features were
so engaging, as well as lovely, that it was impossible not to feel
the attraction powerfully. My poor girl did so. I never saw any-
one more taken with another at first sight, unless, indeed, it
was the stranger herself, who seemed quite to have lost her
heart to her.
"In the meantime, availing myself of the license of a mas-
querade, I put not a few questions to the elder lady.
"'You have puzzled me utterly,' I said, laughing. 'Is that not
enough? Won't you, now, consent to stand on equal terms, and
do me the kindness to remove your mask?'
"'Can any request be more unreasonable?' she replied. 'Ask a
lady to yield an advantage! Beside, how do you know you
should recognize me? Years make changes.'
"'As you see,' I said, with a bow, and, I suppose, a rather mel-
ancholy little laugh.
"'As philosophers tell us,' she said; 'and how do you know
that a sight of my face would help you?'
"'I should take chance for that,' I answered. 'It is vain trying
to make yourself out an old woman; your figure betrays you.'
"'Years, nevertheless, have passed since I saw you, rather
since you saw me, for that is what I am considering. Millarca,
there, is my daughter; I cannot then be young, even in the
opinion of people whom time has taught to be indulgent, and I
may not like to be compared with what you remember me. You

62
have no mask to remove. You can offer me nothing in
exchange.'
"'My petition is to your pity, to remove it.'
"'And mine to yours, to let it stay where it is,' she replied.
"'Well, then, at least you will tell me whether you are French
or German; you speak both languages so perfectly.'
"'I don't think I shall tell you that, General; you intend a sur-
prise, and are meditating the particular point of attack.'
"'At all events, you won't deny this,' I said, 'that being
honored by your permission to converse, I ought to know how
to address you. Shall I say Madame la Comtesse?'
"She laughed, and she would, no doubt, have met me with
another evasion—if, indeed, I can treat any occurrence in an
interview every circumstance of which was prearranged, as I
now believe, with the profoundest cunning, as liable to be mod-
ified by accident.
"'As to that,' she began; but she was interrupted, almost as
she opened her lips, by a gentleman, dressed in black, who
looked particularly elegant and distinguished, with this draw-
back, that his face was the most deadly pale I ever saw, except
in death. He was in no masquerade—in the plain evening dress
of a gentleman; and he said, without a smile, but with a courtly
and unusually low bow:—
"'Will Madame la Comtesse permit me to say a very few
words which may interest her?'
"The lady turned quickly to him, and touched her lip in token
of silence; she then said to me, 'Keep my place for me, General;
I shall return when I have said a few words.'
"And with this injunction, playfully given, she walked a little
aside with the gentleman in black, and talked for some
minutes, apparently very earnestly. They then walked away
slowly together in the crowd, and I lost them for some minutes.
"I spent the interval in cudgeling my brains for a conjecture
as to the identity of the lady who seemed to remember me so
kindly, and I was thinking of turning about and joining in the
conversation between my pretty ward and the Countess's
daughter, and trying whether, by the time she returned, I
might not have a surprise in store for her, by having her name,
title, chateau, and estates at my fingers' ends. But at this

63
moment she returned, accompanied by the pale man in black,
who said:
"'I shall return and inform Madame la Comtesse when her
carriage is at the door.'
"He withdrew with a bow."

64
Chapter 12
A Petition
"'Then we are to lose Madame la Comtesse, but I hope only for
a few hours,' I said, with a low bow.
"'It may be that only, or it may be a few weeks. It was very
unlucky his speaking to me just now as he did. Do you now
know me?'
"I assured her I did not.
"'You shall know me,' she said, 'but not at present. We are
older and better friends than, perhaps, you suspect. I cannot
yet declare myself. I shall in three weeks pass your beautiful
schloss, about which I have been making enquiries. I shall then
look in upon you for an hour or two, and renew a friendship
which I never think of without a thousand pleasant recollec-
tions. This moment a piece of news has reached me like a thun-
derbolt. I must set out now, and travel by a devious route,
nearly a hundred miles, with all the dispatch I can possibly
make. My perplexities multiply. I am only deterred by the com-
pulsory reserve I practice as to my name from making a very
singular request of you. My poor child has not quite recovered
her strength. Her horse fell with her, at a hunt which she had
ridden out to witness, her nerves have not yet recovered the
shock, and our physician says that she must on no account ex-
ert herself for some time to come. We came here, in con-
sequence, by very easy stages—hardly six leagues a day. I must
now travel day and night, on a mission of life and death—a mis-
sion the critical and momentous nature of which I shall be able
to explain to you when we meet, as I hope we shall, in a few
weeks, without the necessity of any concealment.'
"She went on to make her petition, and it was in the tone of a
person from whom such a request amounted to conferring,
rather than seeking a favor.

65
 "This was only in manner, and, as it seemed, quite uncon-
sciously. Than the terms in which it was expressed, nothing
could be more deprecatory. It was simply that I would consent
to take charge of her daughter during her absence.
"This was, all things considered, a strange, not to say, an au-
dacious request. She in some sort disarmed me, by stating and
admitting everything that could be urged against it, and throw-
ing herself entirely upon my chivalry. At the same moment, by
a fatality that seems to have predetermined all that happened,
my poor child came to my side, and, in an undertone, besought
me to invite her new friend, Millarca, to pay us a visit. She had
just been sounding her, and thought, if her mamma would al-
low her, she would like it extremely.
"At another time I should have told her to wait a little, until,
at least, we knew who they were. But I had not a moment to
think in. The two ladies assailed me together, and I must con-
fess the refined and beautiful face of the young lady, about
which there was something extremely engaging, as well as the
elegance and fire of high birth, determined me; and, quite
overpowered, I submitted, and undertook, too easily, the care
of the young lady, whom her mother called Millarca.
"The Countess beckoned to her daughter, who listened with
grave attention while she told her, in general terms, how sud-
denly and peremptorily she had been summoned, and also of
the arrangement she had made for her under my care, adding
that I was one of her earliest and most valued friends.
"I made, of course, such speeches as the case seemed to call
for, and found myself, on reflection, in a position which I did
not half like.
"The gentleman in black returned, and very ceremoniously
conducted the lady from the room.
"The demeanor of this gentleman was such as to impress me
with the conviction that the Countess was a lady of very much
more importance than her modest title alone might have led
me to assume.
"Her last charge to me was that no attempt was to be made
to learn more about her than I might have already guessed, un-
til her return. Our distinguished host, whose guest she was,
knew her reasons.

66
 "'But here,' she said, 'neither I nor my daughter could safely
remain for more than a day. I removed my mask imprudently
for a moment, about an hour ago, and, too late, I fancied you
saw me. So I resolved to seek an opportunity of talking a little
to you. Had I found that you had seen me, I would have thrown
myself on your high sense of honor to keep my secret some
weeks. As it is, I am satisfied that you did not see me; but if
you now suspect, or, on reflection, should suspect, who I am, I
commit myself, in like manner, entirely to your honor. My
daughter will observe the same secrecy, and I well know that
you will, from time to time, remind her, lest she should
thoughtlessly disclose it.'
"She whispered a few words to her daughter, kissed her hur-
riedly twice, and went away, accompanied by the pale gentle-
man in black, and disappeared in the crowd.
"'In the next room,' said Millarca, 'there is a window that
looks upon the hall door. I should like to see the last of
mamma, and to kiss my hand to her.'
"We assented, of course, and accompanied her to the win-
dow. We looked out, and saw a handsome old-fashioned car-
riage, with a troop of couriers and footmen. We saw the slim
figure of the pale gentleman in black, as he held a thick velvet
cloak, and placed it about her shoulders and threw the hood
over her head. She nodded to him, and just touched his hand
with hers. He bowed low repeatedly as the door closed, and the
carriage began to move.
"'She is gone,' said Millarca, with a sigh.
"'She is gone,' I repeated to myself, for the first time—in the
hurried moments that had elapsed since my consent—reflect-
ing upon the folly of my act.
"'She did not look up,' said the young lady, plaintively.
"'The Countess had taken off her mask, perhaps, and did not
care to show her face,' I said; 'and she could not know that you
were in the window.'
"She sighed, and looked in my face. She was so beautiful that
I relented. I was sorry I had for a moment repented of my hos-
pitality, and I determined to make her amends for the un-
avowed churlishness of my reception.
"The young lady, replacing her mask, joined my ward in per-
suading me to return to the grounds, where the concert was

67
soon to be renewed. We did so, and walked up and down the
terrace that lies under the castle windows.
"Millarca became very intimate with us, and amused us with
lively descriptions and stories of most of the great people
whom we saw upon the terrace. I liked her more and more
every minute. Her gossip without being ill-natured, was ex-
tremely diverting to me, who had been so long out of the great
world. I thought what life she would give to our sometimes
lonely evenings at home.
"This ball was not over until the morning sun had almost
reached the horizon. It pleased the Grand Duke to dance till
then, so loyal people could not go away, or think of bed.
"We had just got through a crowded saloon, when my ward
asked me what had become of Millarca. I thought she had been
by her side, and she fancied she was by mine. The fact was, we
had lost her.
"All my efforts to find her were vain. I feared that she had
mistaken, in the confusion of a momentary separation from us,
other people for her new friends, and had, possibly, pursued
and lost them in the extensive grounds which were thrown
open to us.
"Now, in its full force, I recognized a new folly in my having
undertaken the charge of a young lady without so much as
knowing her name; and fettered as I was by promises, of the
reasons for imposing which I knew nothing, I could not even
point my inquiries by saying that the missing young lady was
the daughter of the Countess who had taken her departure a
few hours before.
"Morning broke. It was clear daylight before I gave up my
search. It was not till near two o'clock next day that we heard
anything of my missing charge.
"At about that time a servant knocked at my niece's door, to
say that he had been earnestly requested by a young lady, who
appeared to be in great distress, to make out where she could
find the General Baron Spielsdorf and the young lady his
daughter, in whose charge she had been left by her mother.
"There could be no doubt, notwithstanding the slight inaccur-
acy, that our young friend had turned up; and so she had.
Would to heaven we had lost her!

68
 "She told my poor child a story to account for her having
failed to recover us for so long. Very late, she said, she had got
to the housekeeper's bedroom in despair of finding us, and had
then fallen into a deep sleep which, long as it was, had hardly
sufficed to recruit her strength after the fatigues of the ball.
"That day Millarca came home with us. I was only too happy,
after all, to have secured so charming a companion for my dear
girl."

69
Chapter 13
The Woodman
"There soon, however, appeared some drawbacks. In the first
place, Millarca complained of extreme languor—the weakness
that remained after her late illness—and she never emerged
from her room till the afternoon was pretty far advanced. In
the next place, it was accidentally discovered, although she al-
ways locked her door on the inside, and never disturbed the
key from its place till she admitted the maid to assist at her toi-
let, that she was undoubtedly sometimes absent from her room
in the very early morning, and at various times later in the day,
before she wished it to be understood that she was stirring.
She was repeatedly seen from the windows of the schloss, in
the first faint grey of the morning, walking through the trees,
in an easterly direction, and looking like a person in a trance.
This convinced me that she walked in her sleep. But this hypo-
thesis did not solve the puzzle. How did she pass out from her
room, leaving the door locked on the inside? How did she es-
cape from the house without unbarring door or window?
"In the midst of my perplexities, an anxiety of a far more ur-
gent kind presented itself.
"My dear child began to lose her looks and health, and that
in a manner so mysterious, and even horrible, that I became
thoroughly frightened.
"She was at first visited by appalling dreams; then, as she
fancied, by a specter, sometimes resembling Millarca, some-
times in the shape of a beast, indistinctly seen, walking round
the foot of her bed, from side to side.
"Lastly came sensations. One, not unpleasant, but very pecu-
liar, she said, resembled the flow of an icy stream against her
breast. At a later time, she felt something like a pair of large
needles pierce her, a little below the throat, with a very sharp

70
pain. A few nights after, followed a gradual and convulsive
sense of strangulation; then came unconsciousness."
I could hear distinctly every word the kind old General was
saying, because by this time we were driving upon the short
grass that spreads on either side of the road as you approach
the roofless village which had not shown the smoke of a chim-
ney for more than half a century.
You may guess how strangely I felt as I heard my own symp-
toms so exactly described in those which had been experienced
by the poor girl who, but for the catastrophe which followed,
would have been at that moment a visitor at my father's chat-
eau. You may suppose, also, how I felt as I heard him detail
habits and mysterious peculiarities which were, in fact, those
of our beautiful guest, Carmilla!
A vista opened in the forest; we were on a sudden under the
chimneys and gables of the ruined village, and the towers and
battlements of the dismantled castle, round which gigantic
trees are grouped, overhung us from a slight eminence.
In a frightened dream I got down from the carriage, and in
silence, for we had each abundant matter for thinking; we soon
mounted the ascent, and were among the spacious chambers,
winding stairs, and dark corridors of the castle.
"And this was once the palatial residence of the Karnsteins!"
said the old General at length, as from a great window he
looked out across the village, and saw the wide, undulating ex-
panse of forest. "It was a bad family, and here its bloodstained
annals were written," he continued. "It is hard that they
should, after death, continue to plague the human race with
their atrocious lusts. That is the chapel of the Karnsteins, down
there."
He pointed down to the grey walls of the Gothic building
partly visible through the foliage, a little way down the steep.
"And I hear the axe of a woodman," he added, "busy among the
trees that surround it; he possibly may give us the information
of which I am in search, and point out the grave of Mircalla,
Countess of Karnstein. These rustics preserve the local tradi-
tions of great families, whose stories die out among the rich
and titled so soon as the families themselves become extinct."
"We have a portrait, at home, of Mircalla, the Countess Karn-
stein; should you like to see it?" asked my father.

71
 "Time enough, dear friend," replied the General. "I believe
that I have seen the original; and one motive which has led me
to you earlier than I at first intended, was to explore the chapel
which we are now approaching."
"What! see the Countess Mircalla," exclaimed my father;
"why, she has been dead more than a century!"
"Not so dead as you fancy, I am told," answered the General.
"I confess, General, you puzzle me utterly," replied my fath-
er, looking at him, I fancied, for a moment with a return of the
suspicion I detected before. But although there was anger and
detestation, at times, in the old General's manner, there was
nothing flighty.
"There remains to me," he said, as we passed under the
heavy arch of the Gothic church—for its dimensions would
have justified its being so styled—"but one object which can in-
terest me during the few years that remain to me on earth, and
that is to wreak on her the vengeance which, I thank God, may
still be accomplished by a mortal arm."
"What vengeance can you mean?" asked my father, in in-
creasing amazement.
"I mean, to decapitate the monster," he answered, with a
fierce flush, and a stamp that echoed mournfully through the
hollow ruin, and his clenched hand was at the same moment
raised, as if it grasped the handle of an axe, while he shook it
ferociously in the air.
"What?" exclaimed my father, more than ever bewildered.
"To strike her head off."
"Cut her head off!"
"Aye, with a hatchet, with a spade, or with anything that can
cleave through her murderous throat. You shall hear," he
answered, trembling with rage. And hurrying forward he said:
"That beam will answer for a seat; your dear child is fa-
tigued; let her be seated, and I will, in a few sentences, close
my dreadful story."
The squared block of wood, which lay on the grass-grown
pavement of the chapel, formed a bench on which I was very
glad to seat myself, and in the meantime the General called to
the woodman, who had been removing some boughs which
leaned upon the old walls; and, axe in hand, the hardy old fel-
low stood before us.

72
 He could not tell us anything of these monuments; but there
was an old man, he said, a ranger of this forest, at present so-
journing in the house of the priest, about two miles away, who
could point out every monument of the old Karnstein family;
and, for a trifle, he undertook to bring him back with him, if we
would lend him one of our horses, in little more than half an
hour.
"Have you been long employed about this forest?" asked my
father of the old man.
"I have been a woodman here," he answered in his patois,
"under the forester, all my days; so has my father before me,
and so on, as many generations as I can count up. I could show
you the very house in the village here, in which my ancestors
lived."
"How came the village to be deserted?" asked the General.
"It was troubled by revenants, sir; several were tracked to
their graves, there detected by the usual tests, and extin-
guished in the usual way, by decapitation, by the stake, and by
burning; but not until many of the villagers were killed.
"But after all these proceedings according to law," he contin-
ued—"so many graves opened, and so many vampires deprived
of their horrible animation—the village was not relieved. But a
Moravian nobleman, who happened to be traveling this way,
heard how matters were, and being skilled—as many people
are in his country—in such affairs, he offered to deliver the vil-
lage from its tormentor. He did so thus: There being a bright
moon that night, he ascended, shortly after sunset, the towers
of the chapel here, from whence he could distinctly see the
churchyard beneath him; you can see it from that window.
From this point he watched until he saw the vampire come out
of his grave, and place near it the linen clothes in which he had
been folded, and then glide away towards the village to plague
its inhabitants.
"The stranger, having seen all this, came down from the
steeple, took the linen wrappings of the vampire, and carried
them up to the top of the tower, which he again mounted.
When the vampire returned from his prowlings and missed his
clothes, he cried furiously to the Moravian, whom he saw at
the summit of the tower, and who, in reply, beckoned him to
ascend and take them. Whereupon the vampire, accepting his

73
invitation, began to climb the steeple, and so soon as he had
reached the battlements, the Moravian, with a stroke of his
sword, clove his skull in twain, hurling him down to the church-
yard, whither, descending by the winding stairs, the stranger
followed and cut his head off, and next day delivered it and the
body to the villagers, who duly impaled and burnt them.
"This Moravian nobleman had authority from the then head
of the family to remove the tomb of Mircalla, Countess Karn-
stein, which he did effectually, so that in a little while its site
was quite forgotten."
"Can you point out where it stood?" asked the General,
eagerly.
The forester shook his head, and smiled.
"Not a soul living could tell you that now," he said; "besides,
they say her body was removed; but no one is sure of that
either."
Having thus spoken, as time pressed, he dropped his axe and
departed, leaving us to hear the remainder of the General's
strange story.

74
Chapter 14
The Meeting
"My beloved child," he resumed, "was now growing rapidly
worse. The physician who attended her had failed to produce
the slightest impression on her disease, for such I then sup-
posed it to be. He saw my alarm, and suggested a consultation.
I called in an abler physician, from Gratz.
"Several days elapsed before he arrived. He was a good and
pious, as well as a learned man. Having seen my poor ward to-
gether, they withdrew to my library to confer and discuss. I,
from the adjoining room, where I awaited their summons,
heard these two gentlemen's voices raised in something sharp-
er than a strictly philosophical discussion. I knocked at the
door and entered. I found the old physician from Gratz main-
taining his theory. His rival was combating it with undisguised
ridicule, accompanied with bursts of laughter. This unseemly
manifestation subsided and the altercation ended on my
entrance.
"'Sir,' said my first physician, 'my learned brother seems to
think that you want a conjuror, and not a doctor.'
"'Pardon me,' said the old physician from Gratz, looking dis-
pleased, 'I shall state my own view of the case in my own way
another time. I grieve, Monsieur le General, that by my skill
and science I can be of no use. Before I go I shall do myself the
honor to suggest something to you.'
"He seemed thoughtful, and sat down at a table and began to
write.
"Profoundly disappointed, I made my bow, and as I turned to
go, the other doctor pointed over his shoulder to his compan-
ion who was writing, and then, with a shrug, significantly
touched his forehead.

75
 "This consultation, then, left me precisely where I was. I
walked out into the grounds, all but distracted. The doctor
from Gratz, in ten or fifteen minutes, overtook me. He apolo-
gized for having followed me, but said that he could not con-
scientiously take his leave without a few words more. He told
me that he could not be mistaken; no natural disease exhibited
the same symptoms; and that death was already very near.
There remained, however, a day, or possibly two, of life. If the
fatal seizure were at once arrested, with great care and skill
her strength might possibly return. But all hung now upon the
confines of the irrevocable. One more assault might extinguish
the last spark of vitality which is, every moment, ready to die.
"'And what is the nature of the seizure you speak of?' I
entreated.
"'I have stated all fully in this note, which I place in your
hands upon the distinct condition that you send for the nearest
clergyman, and open my letter in his presence, and on no ac-
count read it till he is with you; you would despise it else, and
it is a matter of life and death. Should the priest fail you, then,
indeed, you may read it.'
"He asked me, before taking his leave finally, whether I
would wish to see a man curiously learned upon the very sub-
ject, which, after I had read his letter, would probably interest
me above all others, and he urged me earnestly to invite him to
visit him there; and so took his leave.
"The ecclesiastic was absent, and I read the letter by myself.
At another time, or in another case, it might have excited my
ridicule. But into what quackeries will not people rush for a
last chance, where all accustomed means have failed, and the
life of a beloved object is at stake?
"Nothing, you will say, could be more absurd than the
learned man's letter.
"It was monstrous enough to have consigned him to a mad-
house. He said that the patient was suffering from the visits of
a vampire! The punctures which she described as having oc-
curred near the throat, were, he insisted, the insertion of those
two long, thin, and sharp teeth which, it is well known, are pe-
culiar to vampires; and there could be no doubt, he added, as
to the well-defined presence of the small livid mark which all
concurred in describing as that induced by the demon's lips,

76
and every symptom described by the sufferer was in exact con-
formity with those recorded in every case of a similar
visitation.
"Being myself wholly skeptical as to the existence of any
such portent as the vampire, the supernatural theory of the
good doctor furnished, in my opinion, but another instance of
learning and intelligence oddly associated with some one hallu-
cination. I was so miserable, however, that, rather than try
nothing, I acted upon the instructions of the letter.
"I concealed myself in the dark dressing room, that opened
upon the poor patient's room, in which a candle was burning,
and watched there till she was fast asleep. I stood at the door,
peeping through the small crevice, my sword laid on the table
beside me, as my directions prescribed, until, a little after one,
I saw a large black object, very ill-defined, crawl, as it seemed
to me, over the foot of the bed, and swiftly spread itself up to
the poor girl's throat, where it swelled, in a moment, into a
great, palpitating mass.
"For a few moments I had stood petrified. I now sprang for-
ward, with my sword in my hand. The black creature suddenly
contracted towards the foot of the bed, glided over it, and,
standing on the floor about a yard below the foot of the bed,
with a glare of skulking ferocity and horror fixed on me, I saw
Millarca. Speculating I know not what, I struck at her instantly
with my sword; but I saw her standing near the door, un-
scathed. Horrified, I pursued, and struck again. She was gone;
and my sword flew to shivers against the door.
"I can't describe to you all that passed on that horrible night.
The whole house was up and stirring. The specter Millarca was
gone. But her victim was sinking fast, and before the morning
dawned, she died."
The old General was agitated. We did not speak to him. My
father walked to some little distance, and began reading the in-
scriptions on the tombstones; and thus occupied, he strolled in-
to the door of a side chapel to prosecute his researches. The
General leaned against the wall, dried his eyes, and sighed
heavily. I was relieved on hearing the voices of Carmilla and
Madame, who were at that moment approaching. The voices
died away.

77
 In this solitude, having just listened to so strange a story,
connected, as it was, with the great and titled dead, whose
monuments were moldering among the dust and ivy round us,
and every incident of which bore so awfully upon my own mys-
terious case—in this haunted spot, darkened by the towering
foliage that rose on every side, dense and high above its noise-
less walls—a horror began to steal over me, and my heart sank
as I thought that my friends were, after all, not about to enter
and disturb this triste and ominous scene.
The old General's eyes were fixed on the ground, as he
leaned with his hand upon the basement of a shattered
monument.
Under a narrow, arched doorway, surmounted by one of
those demoniacal grotesques in which the cynical and ghastly
fancy of old Gothic carving delights, I saw very gladly the beau-
tiful face and figure of Carmilla enter the shadowy chapel.
I was just about to rise and speak, and nodded smiling, in an-
swer to her peculiarly engaging smile; when with a cry, the old
man by my side caught up the woodman's hatchet, and started
forward. On seeing him a brutalized change came over her fea-
tures. It was an instantaneous and horrible transformation, as
she made a crouching step backwards. Before I could utter a
scream, he struck at her with all his force, but she dived under
his blow, and unscathed, caught him in her tiny grasp by the
wrist. He struggled for a moment to release his arm, but his
hand opened, the axe fell to the ground, and the girl was gone.
He staggered against the wall. His grey hair stood upon his
head, and a moisture shone over his face, as if he were at the
point of death.
The frightful scene had passed in a moment. The first thing I
recollect after, is Madame standing before me, and impatiently
repeating again and again, the question, "Where is Mademois-
elle Carmilla?"
I answered at length, "I don't know—I can't tell—she went
there," and I pointed to the door through which Madame had
just entered; "only a minute or two since."
"But I have been standing there, in the passage, ever since
Mademoiselle Carmilla entered; and she did not return."
She then began to call "Carmilla," through every door and
passage and from the windows, but no answer came.

78
 "She called herself Carmilla?" asked the General, still
agitated.
"Carmilla, yes," I answered.
"Aye," he said; "that is Millarca. That is the same person who
long ago was called Mircalla, Countess Karnstein. Depart from
this accursed ground, my poor child, as quickly as you can.
Drive to the clergyman's house, and stay there till we come.
Begone! May you never behold Carmilla more; you will not find
her here."

79
Chapter 15
Ordeal and Execution
As he spoke one of the strangest looking men I ever beheld
entered the chapel at the door through which Carmilla had
made her entrance and her exit. He was tall, narrow-chested,
stooping, with high shoulders, and dressed in black. His face
was brown and dried in with deep furrows; he wore an oddly-
shaped hat with a broad leaf. His hair, long and grizzled, hung
on his shoulders. He wore a pair of gold spectacles, and walked
slowly, with an odd shambling gait, with his face sometimes
turned up to the sky, and sometimes bowed down towards the
ground, seemed to wear a perpetual smile; his long thin arms
were swinging, and his lank hands, in old black gloves ever so
much too wide for them, waving and gesticulating in utter
abstraction.
"The very man!" exclaimed the General, advancing with
manifest delight. "My dear Baron, how happy I am to see you, I
had no hope of meeting you so soon." He signed to my father,
who had by this time returned, and leading the fantastic old
gentleman, whom he called the Baron to meet him. He intro-
duced him formally, and they at once entered into earnest con-
versation. The stranger took a roll of paper from his pocket,
and spread it on the worn surface of a tomb that stood by. He
had a pencil case in his fingers, with which he traced imagin-
ary lines from point to point on the paper, which from their of-
ten glancing from it, together, at certain points of the building,
I concluded to be a plan of the chapel. He accompanied, what I
may term, his lecture, with occasional readings from a dirty
little book, whose yellow leaves were closely written over.
They sauntered together down the side aisle, opposite to the
spot where I was standing, conversing as they went; then they
began measuring distances by paces, and finally they all stood

80
together, facing a piece of the sidewall, which they began to
examine with great minuteness; pulling off the ivy that clung
over it, and rapping the plaster with the ends of their sticks,
scraping here, and knocking there. At length they ascertained
the existence of a broad marble tablet, with letters carved in
relief upon it.
With the assistance of the woodman, who soon returned, a
monumental inscription, and carved escutcheon, were dis-
closed. They proved to be those of the long lost monument of
Mircalla, Countess Karnstein.
The old General, though not I fear given to the praying mood,
raised his hands and eyes to heaven, in mute thanksgiving for
some moments.
"Tomorrow," I heard him say; "the commissioner will be
here, and the Inquisition will be held according to law."
Then turning to the old man with the gold spectacles, whom I
have described, he shook him warmly by both hands and said:
"Baron, how can I thank you? How can we all thank you? You
will have delivered this region from a plague that has scourged
its inhabitants for more than a century. The horrible enemy,
thank God, is at last tracked."
My father led the stranger aside, and the General followed. I
know that he had led them out of hearing, that he might relate
my case, and I saw them glance often quickly at me, as the dis-
cussion proceeded.
My father came to me, kissed me again and again, and lead-
ing me from the chapel, said:
"It is time to return, but before we go home, we must add to
our party the good priest, who lives but a little way from this;
and persuade him to accompany us to the schloss."
In this quest we were successful: and I was glad, being un-
speakably fatigued when we reached home. But my satisfaction
was changed to dismay, on discovering that there were no tid-
ings of Carmilla. Of the scene that had occurred in the ruined
chapel, no explanation was offered to me, and it was clear that
it was a secret which my father for the present determined to
keep from me.
The sinister absence of Carmilla made the remembrance of
the scene more horrible to me. The arrangements for the night
were singular. Two servants, and Madame were to sit up in my

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room that night; and the ecclesiastic with my father kept watch
in the adjoining dressing room.
The priest had performed certain solemn rites that night, the
purport of which I did not understand any more than I compre-
hended the reason of this extraordinary precaution taken for
my safety during sleep.
I saw all clearly a few days later.
The disappearance of Carmilla was followed by the discon-
tinuance of my nightly sufferings.
You have heard, no doubt, of the appalling superstition that
prevails in Upper and Lower Styria, in Moravia, Silesia, in
Turkish Serbia, in Poland, even in Russia; the superstition, so
we must call it, of the Vampire.
If human testimony, taken with every care and solemnity, ju-
dicially, before commissions innumerable, each consisting of
many members, all chosen for integrity and intelligence, and
constituting reports more voluminous perhaps than exist upon
any one other class of cases, is worth anything, it is difficult to
deny, or even to doubt the existence of such a phenomenon as
the Vampire.
For my part I have heard no theory by which to explain what
I myself have witnessed and experienced, other than that sup-
plied by the ancient and well-attested belief of the country.
The next day the formal proceedings took place in the Chapel
of Karnstein.
The grave of the Countess Mircalla was opened; and the Gen-
eral and my father recognized each his perfidious and beautiful
guest, in the face now disclosed to view. The features, though a
hundred and fifty years had passed since her funeral, were tin-
ted with the warmth of life. Her eyes were open; no cadaverous
smell exhaled from the coffin. The two medical men, one offi-
cially present, the other on the part of the promoter of the in-
quiry, attested the marvelous fact that there was a faint but ap-
preciable respiration, and a corresponding action of the heart.
The limbs were perfectly flexible, the flesh elastic; and the
leaden coffin floated with blood, in which to a depth of seven
inches, the body lay immersed.
Here then, were all the admitted signs and proofs of vampir-
ism. The body, therefore, in accordance with the ancient prac-
tice, was raised, and a sharp stake driven through the heart of

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the vampire, who uttered a piercing shriek at the moment, in
all respects such as might escape from a living person in the
last agony. Then the head was struck off, and a torrent of blood
flowed from the severed neck. The body and head was next
placed on a pile of wood, and reduced to ashes, which were
thrown upon the river and borne away, and that territory has
never since been plagued by the visits of a vampire.
My father has a copy of the report of the Imperial Commis-
sion, with the signatures of all who were present at these pro-
ceedings, attached in verification of the statement. It is from
this official paper that I have summarized my account of this
last shocking scene.

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Chapter 16
Conclusion
I write all this you suppose with composure. But far from it; I
cannot think of it without agitation. Nothing but your earnest
desire so repeatedly expressed, could have induced me to sit
down to a task that has unstrung my nerves for months to
come, and reinduced a shadow of the unspeakable horror
which years after my deliverance continued to make my days
and nights dreadful, and solitude insupportably terrific.
Let me add a word or two about that quaint Baron Vorden-
burg, to whose curious lore we were indebted for the discovery
of the Countess Mircalla's grave.
He had taken up his abode in Gratz, where, living upon a
mere pittance, which was all that remained to him of the once
princely estates of his family, in Upper Styria, he devoted him-
self to the minute and laborious investigation of the mar-
velously authenticated tradition of Vampirism. He had at his
fingers' ends all the great and little works upon the subject.
"Magia Posthuma," "Phlegon de Mirabilibus," "Augustinus de
cura pro Mortuis," "Philosophicae et Christianae Cogitationes
de Vampiris," by John Christofer Herenberg; and a thousand
others, among which I remember only a few of those which he
lent to my father. He had a voluminous digest of all the judicial
cases, from which he had extracted a system of principles that
appear to govern—some always, and others occasionally
only—the condition of the vampire. I may mention, in passing,
that the deadly pallor attributed to that sort of revenants, is a
mere melodramatic fiction. They present, in the grave, and
when they show themselves in human society, the appearance
of healthy life. When disclosed to light in their coffins, they ex-
hibit all the symptoms that are enumerated as those which
proved the vampire-life of the long-dead Countess Karnstein.

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 How they escape from their graves and return to them for
certain hours every day, without displacing the clay or leaving
any trace of disturbance in the state of the coffin or the cere-
ments, has always been admitted to be utterly inexplicable.
The amphibious existence of the vampire is sustained by daily
renewed slumber in the grave. Its horrible lust for living blood
supplies the vigor of its waking existence. The vampire is
prone to be fascinated with an engrossing vehemence, resem-
bling the passion of love, by particular persons. In pursuit of
these it will exercise inexhaustible patience and stratagem, for
access to a particular object may be obstructed in a hundred
ways. It will never desist until it has satiated its passion, and
drained the very life of its coveted victim. But it will, in these
cases, husband and protract its murderous enjoyment with the
refinement of an epicure, and heighten it by the gradual ap-
proaches of an artful courtship. In these cases it seems to
yearn for something like sympathy and consent. In ordinary
ones it goes direct to its object, overpowers with violence, and
strangles and exhausts often at a single feast.
The vampire is, apparently, subject, in certain situations, to
special conditions. In the particular instance of which I have
given you a relation, Mircalla seemed to be limited to a name
which, if not her real one, should at least reproduce, without
the omission or addition of a single letter, those, as we say,
anagrammatically, which compose it.
Carmilla did this; so did Millarca.
My father related to the Baron Vordenburg, who remained
with us for two or three weeks after the expulsion of Carmilla,
the story about the Moravian nobleman and the vampire at
Karnstein churchyard, and then he asked the Baron how he
had discovered the exact position of the long-concealed tomb
of the Countess Mircalla? The Baron's grotesque features
puckered up into a mysterious smile; he looked down, still smil-
ing on his worn spectacle case and fumbled with it. Then look-
ing up, he said:
"I have many journals, and other papers, written by that re-
markable man; the most curious among them is one treating of
the visit of which you speak, to Karnstein. The tradition, of
course, discolors and distorts a little. He might have been
termed a Moravian nobleman, for he had changed his abode to

85
that territory, and was, beside, a noble. But he was, in truth, a
native of Upper Styria. It is enough to say that in very early
youth he had been a passionate and favored lover of the beauti-
ful Mircalla, Countess Karnstein. Her early death plunged him
into inconsolable grief. It is the nature of vampires to increase
and multiply, but according to an ascertained and ghostly law.
"Assume, at starting, a territory perfectly free from that pest.
How does it begin, and how does it multiply itself? I will tell
you. A person, more or less wicked, puts an end to himself. A
suicide, under certain circumstances, becomes a vampire. That
specter visits living people in their slumbers; they die, and al-
most invariably, in the grave, develop into vampires. This
happened in the case of the beautiful Mircalla, who was
haunted by one of those demons. My ancestor, Vordenburg,
whose title I still bear, soon discovered this, and in the course
of the studies to which he devoted himself, learned a great deal
more.
"Among other things, he concluded that suspicion of vampir-
ism would probably fall, sooner or later, upon the dead Count-
ess, who in life had been his idol. He conceived a horror, be
she what she might, of her remains being profaned by the out-
rage of a posthumous execution. He has left a curious paper to
prove that the vampire, on its expulsion from its amphibious
existence, is projected into a far more horrible life; and he re-
solved to save his once beloved Mircalla from this.
"He adopted the stratagem of a journey here, a pretended re-
moval of her remains, and a real obliteration of her monument.
When age had stolen upon him, and from the vale of years, he
looked back on the scenes he was leaving, he considered, in a
different spirit, what he had done, and a horror took posses-
sion of him. He made the tracings and notes which have guided
me to the very spot, and drew up a confession of the deception
that he had practiced. If he had intended any further action in
this matter, death prevented him; and the hand of a remote
descendant has, too late for many, directed the pursuit to the
lair of the beast."
We talked a little more, and among other things he said was
this:
"One sign of the vampire is the power of the hand. The
slender hand of Mircalla closed like a vice of steel on the

86
General's wrist when he raised the hatchet to strike. But its
power is not confined to its grasp; it leaves a numbness in the
limb it seizes, which is slowly, if ever, recovered from."
The following Spring my father took me a tour through Italy.
We remained away for more than a year. It was long before the
terror of recent events subsided; and to this hour the image of
Carmilla returns to memory with ambiguous alterna-
tions—sometimes the playful, languid, beautiful girl; some-
times the writhing fiend I saw in the ruined church; and often
from a reverie I have started, fancying I heard the light step of
Carmilla at the drawing room door.

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