C ARMILLA

by

Sheridan Le Fanu
A n acknowledged inspiration for Carl Th. Dreyer’s
Vampyr (1932), Le Fanu’s short story appeared in four
successive issues of The Dark Blue, vols 2–3: Chapters 1–3
(December 1871); 4–6 (January 1872); 7–10 (February
1872); 11–16 (March 1872). It was published in its entirety
in the Le Fanu collection In a Glass Darkly.

P resented here as a pdf on The Masters of Cinema Series 2008

DVD edition of Carl Th. Dreyer’s Vampyr (1932)

www.mastersofcinema.org
www.eurekavideo.co.uk/moc

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 Table of Contents

Prologue ............................................ 4
Chapter 1. An Early Fright ................ 5
Chapter 2. A Guest .......................... 12
Chapter 3. We Compare Notes ............ 22
Chapter 4. Her Habits –  A Saunter ... 33
Chapter 5. A Wonderful Likeness ....... 48
Chapter 6. A Very Strange Agony ....... 54
Chapter 7. Descending ....................... 60
Chapter 8. Search ............................. 68
Chapter 9. The Doctor ...................... 74
Chapter 10. Bereaved .......................... 83
Chapter 11. The Story ......................... 88
Chapter 12. A Petition ....................... 95
Chapter 13. The Wood-man ................ 102
Chapter 14. The Meeting ................... 109
Chapter 15. Ordeal and Execution ..... 116
Chapter 16. Conclusion .................... 121

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 PROLOGUE

U pon a paper attached to the Narrative which follows, Doctor

Hesselius has written a rather elaborate note, which he
accompanies with a reference to his Essay on the strange subject
which the MS illuminates.

This mysterious subject he treats, in that Essay, with his

usual 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 these volumes, simply to interest

the ‘laity’, I shall forestall the intelligent lady, who relates it,
in nothing; and, after due consideration, I have determined,
therefore, 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 re-open the

correspondence 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 a conscientious particularity.

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 Chapter 1

AN EARLY FRIGHT

I n 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 marvellously 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 residence,
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.

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 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 whether 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 inhabited schloss of
any historic associations, is that of old General Spielsdorf, nearly
twenty miles away to the right.

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 mouldering
tombs of the proud family of Karnstein, now extinct, who once
owned the equally desolate château 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
constitute the inhabitants of our castle. I don’t include servants,
or those dependants who occupy rooms in the buildings attached
to the schloss. Listen, and wonder! My father, who is the kindest
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

6
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 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 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, Mademoiselle 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
language 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 occasional 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 ‘neighbours’ of only five or six leagues
distance. My life was, notwithstanding, rather a solitary one, I can
assure you.

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

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terrible 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 storey 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 ignorance 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 looking 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

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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; and the housekeeper
whispered to the nurse: ‘Lay your hand along that hollow in the
bed; some one did lie there, so sure as you did not; the place is
still warm.’

I remember the nursery-maid petting me, and all three

examining 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 small-pox, 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 bedside,

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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 beside
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 remember, 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 words, for I often
repeated them to myself, and my nurse used for years to make me
say them in my prayers.

I remember 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 entering its
shadowy atmosphere through the small lattice. He kneeled, and
the three women with him, and he prayed aloud with an earnest

10
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 phantasmagoria surrounded by
darkness.

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 Chapter 2

A GUEST

I am now going to tell you something so strange that it will

require all your faith in my veracity to believe my story. It is not
only true, nevertheless, but truth of which I have been an eye-
witness.

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

expected 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 neighbourhood can possibly imagine. This
visit, and the new acquaintance it promised, had furnished my day
dream for many weeks.

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 ‘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 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 splendour
behind the sylvan horizon, and the stream that flows beside our
home, and passes under the steep old bridge I have mentioned,
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,

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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 betrayed
our infatuated hospitality has done it all. I thought I was receiving
into my house innocence, gaiety, a charming companion 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 incredulity, my despicable affectation of superiority,
my blindness, my obstinacy – all – too late. I cannot write or talk
collectedly now. I am distracted. So soon as I shall have a little
recovered, I mean to devote myself for a time to enquiry, which
may possibly lead me as far as Vienna. Some time in the autumn,
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.’

In these terms ended this strange letter. Though I had never

14
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
returned 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 drawbridge
we met Madame Perrodon and Mademoiselle De Lafontaine,
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
stealing, like smoke, marking the distances with a transparent veil;
and here and there we could see the river faintly flashing in the

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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 governesses,
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
psychological, metaphysical, and something of a mystic – now
declared 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
marvellous physical influences connected with life. Mademoiselle
related that her cousin, who was mate of a merchant ship, having
taken a nap on deck on such a night, lying on his back, with his
face full in the light of 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 odylic and
magnetic influence – and see, when you look behind you at the

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front of the schloss, how all its windows flash and twinkle with
that silvery splendour, as if unseen hands had lighted up the rooms
to receive fairy guests.’

There are indolent states 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 to-night,’ 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

overlooking 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.

17
 It seemed to be the travelling 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, communicated his
panic to the rest, and after a plunge or two, the whole 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; my father 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 side 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

confusion. Two of the horses were on the ground, the carriage

18
lay upon its side with two wheels in the air; the men were busy
removing the traces, and a lady, with a commanding air and
figure, 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 to 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 upward, as if in a
momentary transport of gratitude; but immediately she broke out
again in that theatrical way which is, I believe, 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, and
dressed in black velvet, and looked rather pale, but with a proud
and commanding countenance, though now agitated strangely.

‘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 resume her route

19
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 considerable distance without
danger. If, as you say, you cannot suspend your journey, you must
part with her to-night, and nowhere could you do so with more
honest assurances of care and tenderness than here.’

20
 There was something in this lady’s air and appearance so
distinguished, 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.

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 hearing; 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

perceive 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

employed, 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 postillions 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.

21
 Chapter 3

WE COMPARE NOTES

W e followed the cortège 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

understood them; and gradually the young lady remembered how
the misadventure came about, and was glad to hear that no one

22
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

Perrodon 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.

My father in the meantime had sent a servant on horseback

for the physician, who lived about two leagues away; and a bed-
room 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

conducted 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,

23
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 hunting,
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 my father 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

24
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

coloured turban on her head, who was gazing all the time from
the carriage window, nodding and grinning derisively towards the
ladies, with gleaming eyes and large white eye-balls, 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 travelling,’ 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 us all about it to-morrow, if she is
sufficiently 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 me all the more inquisitive as to what had passed

25
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 importance” – she
emphasized the word – “rapid and secret; I shall return 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 travelling.”
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 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

26
introduction 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
overtaken, on foot, the carriage in which the princess in black
velvet had driven away.

When the physician came down to the drawing-room, it was

to report very favourably 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 certainly in my
seeing her, if we both wished it; and, with this permission, 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 sombre 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 colour enough in the other
decorations of the room, to more than redeem the gloom of the

27
old tapestry.

There were candles at the bed-side. 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 bed-side and had just begun
my little greeting, struck me dumb in a moment, and made me
recoil a step or two from before her? I will tell you.

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

28
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 delightfully
pretty and intelligent.

I felt reassured, and continued more in the vein which

hospitality 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 nursery, wainscoted
clumsily in some dark wood, and with cupboards 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 for some time, and admiring especially

29
an iron candlestick, with two branches, which I should certainly
know again, crept under one of the beds to reach the window; but
as I got from under the bed, I heard some one 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 consciousness 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 then saw.’

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 earliest 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

30
feeling, however, the sense of attraction immensely prevailed. She
interested and won me; she was so beautiful and so indescribably
engaging.

I perceived now something of languor and exhaustion stealing

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 to-night; 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, shall I confess my weakness, I am haunted with a terror of
robbers. 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; to-morrow, 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 murmured
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.

31
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
remembrance 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.

32
 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
complexion was rich and brilliant; her features were small and
beautifully 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 colour a rich very dark brown,
with something of gold. I loved to let it down, tumbling 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

33
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 unreasonable,
perhaps I was wrong; I dare say I ought to have respected the
solemn injunction laid upon my father by the stately lady in black
velvet. But curiosity is a restless and unscrupulous passion, and
no one girl can endure, with patience, that her’s 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
honour? Why would she not believe 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 quarrelled 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

estimation – 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.

34
 Third. – Her home lay in the direction of the west.

She would not tell me the name of her family, nor their
armorial 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 conducted
with so pretty a melancholy and deprecation, with so many, and
even passionate declarations of her liking for me, and trust in my
honour, 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.’

And when she had spoken such a rhapsody, she would press

35
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

frequent occurrence, I must allow, I used to wish to extricate
myself; but my energies seemed to fail me. Her murmured words
sounded like a lullaby in my ear, and soothed my resistance into
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
abhorrence. 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

36
companion would take my hand and hold it with a fond pressure,
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 ardour of
a lover; it embarrassed me; it was hateful and yet overpowering;
and with gloating eyes she drew me to her, and her hot lips
travelled 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 has 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 some one whom you love; but you
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, notwithstanding
her mother’s volunteered denial, subject to brief visitations of
insanity; or was there here a disguise and a romance? I had read
in old story books 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 clever old adventuress? But
there were many things against this hypothesis, highly interesting
as it was to my vanity.

37
 I could boast of no little attentions such as masculine
gallantry delights to offer. Between these passionate moments
there were long intervals of common-place, of gaiety, of brooding
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 mysterious
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 singular

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 bodily
languor in which her mind did not sympathize. She was always 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.

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 often seen,

38
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 stopping
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

churchyard. I thought you knew she was to be buried to-day.’

‘She? I don’t trouble my head about peasants. I don’t know

39
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 to-night 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 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

40
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 sombre

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 anything like
temper.

Both passed away like a summer cloud; and never but once
afterwards did I witness on her part a momentary sign of anger. 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 court-yard, over the
drawbridge, 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 features

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 used to make my father

41
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 court-yard, raised his grotesque hat, and made us a very
ceremonious bow, paying his compliments very volubly in
execrable 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

salutations, 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 curiosities
and entertainments which it was in his power, at our bidding, 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

42
the pillow, and you may laugh in his face.’

These charms consisted of oblong slips of vellum, with

cabalistic 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, 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 nippers; 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.

43
 ‘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 castle brand!’

She retired from the window a step or two, and sat down,
and had hardly lost sight of the offender, when her wrath subsided
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
superstitions, and so repeat in imagination the images of terror
that have infested their neighbours.’

‘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.’

44
 ‘We are in God’s hands; nothing can happen without His
permission, 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.’

‘Creator! Nature!’ said the young lady in answer to my

gentle father. ‘And this disease that invades the country is natural.
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 to-day,’ 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 forget
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

45
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 finally butterflies when the summer comes; but in the
meantime there are grubs and larvae, don’t you see – each with
their peculiar propensities, necessities and structure. So says
Monsieur Buffon, in his big book, in the next room.’

Later in the day the doctor came, and was closeted with papa
for some time. 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:

46
 ‘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 the 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.

47
 Chapter 5

A WONDERFUL LIKENESS

T his 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

sensation. 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

48
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 obliterated
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.’

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

likeness,’ 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 intelligence about
the portraits or other works, which his art had just brought into
light and colour, while I was more and more lost in wonder the

49
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 it, and underneath AD 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 beautiful

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.’

50
 ‘It is so like the night you came to us,’ I said.

She sighed, smiling.

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

almost 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.’

51
 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 colourless 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.’

‘How do you feel now, dear Carmilla? Are you really better?’
I asked.

52
 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 this, the physician who
was with papa to-day.’

‘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 infatuations. 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.

53
 Chapter 6

A VERY STRANGE AGONY

W hen 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 to-morrow, and post in pursuit of
her; I know where I shall ultimately find her, although I dare not

54
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
neighbourhood, 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 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 château, 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?’

55
 She turned round smiling, but made no answer, only
continued to smile on me.

‘You won’t answer that?’ I said. ‘You can’t answer pleasantly;

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
confidence 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.

56
 ‘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 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

uncomfortable 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 prayers
were over, and at night she never left the drawing-room to attend
our brief evening prayers in the hall.

57
 If it had not been that it had casually come out in one of our
careless talks that she had been baptized, 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

persons of a like temperament are pretty sure, after a time, to
imitate 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 adopted
her precaution of making a brief search through her from, 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 dispense
with.

Thus fortified I might take my rest in peace. But dreams

come through stone walls, light up dark rooms, or darken light
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 being

asleep. But I was equally conscious of being in my room, and

58
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
toing and froing with the lithe sinister restlessness of a beast
in a cage. I could not cry out, although as you may suppose, I
was terrified. Its pace was growing 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 approached 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 female
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
bed-clothes, and lay there more dead than alive till morning.

59
 Chapter 7

DESCENDING

I t 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 encompass 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
neighbourhood. 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

companions, Madame Perrodon, and the vivacious Mademoiselle
Lafontaine. 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

60
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 female
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.

‘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

together, ‘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 perfect
horror, and I really thought, for some seconds, I saw a dark figure

61
near the chimney-piece, but I felt under my pillow for my charm,
and the moment my fingers touched it, the figure 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 to-night, 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 night-dress. It was too far away the
night before. I am quite sure it was all fancy, except the dreams.

62
I used to think that evil spirits made dreams, but our doctor told
me it is no such thing. Only a fever passing by, 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 losing
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 interrupted. 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 induced was also sweet. Whatever

63
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 ardour the more my strength and
spirits waned. This always shocked me like a momentary 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 horrible mingled
itself with it, deepening, as you shall hear, until it discoloured and
perverted the whole state of my life.

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 interminable,
and were so vague that I could never recollect their scenery and
persons, or any one connected portion of their action. But they

64
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 remembrance
of having been in a place very nearly dark, and of having 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. Sometime there came a sensation as if a hand was drawn
softly along my cheek and neck. Sometimes it was as if warm
lips kissed me, 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

unaccountable state. My sufferings had, during the last week, told
upon my appearance. 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

obstinacy 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.

65
 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 comprehending 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 in 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

66
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 companions
were already similarly furnished. Recognising the voices of
the servants on the lobby, we sallied out together; 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 into the room.

We called her by name; but there was still no reply. We

looked round the room. Everything was undisturbed. It was
exactly in the state in which I had left it on bidding her good-
night. But Carmilla was gone.

67
 Chapter 8

SEARCH

A t sight of the room, perfectly undisturbed except for

our violent entrance, we began to cool a little, and soon
recovered our senses sufficiently to dismiss the men. It had struck
Mademoiselle 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
myrmidons had withdrawn. We now recommenced our search,
and began to call her by name again.

It was all to no purpose. Our perplexity and agitation

increased. 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 utterly
puzzled. Had Carmilla discovered one of those secret passages
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.

68
 It was past four o’clock, and I preferred passing the
remaining 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 château was
searched. The grounds were explored. Not a 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 poor girl’s
mother on her return. I, too, was almost beside myself, 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 extreme 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.’

69
 ‘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 uninterrupted,
and, so far as I know, dreamless; but I awoke 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 carried 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

number 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 sal-volatile,
and there being no one now in the room with Carmilla, except my
father, Madame, and myself, he came to her 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?’

70
 ‘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 limitations
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 occurred
apparently while the windows were still secured, and the two
doors locked upon the inside. I will tell you my theory, and first
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

71
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 up-stairs or down-stairs.
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 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 any
one 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 father was
silently contrasting her looks with mine, for he said:

‘I wish my poor Laura was looking more like herself;’ and he

sighed.

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 So our alarms were happily ended, and Carmilla restored to
her friends.

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 Chapter 9

THE DOCTOR

A s 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 doctor,
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

windows, 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.

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 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 curiosity, at the
further end. Not a word could we hear, however, for they spoke
in a very low tone, and the deep recess of the window 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;

75
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 recollect
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 necessary,
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.

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 ‘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?’

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 centre 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.

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 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 meantime,
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

Madame, and with this parting charge my father left us, and

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walked out with the doctor; and I saw them pacing together up
and down between the road and the moat, on the grassy platform
in front of the castle, evidently absorbed in earnest conversation.

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 Dranfeld
with the letters, and dismount and hand the bag to my father.

In the meantime, Madame and I were both busy, lost

in conjecture 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 apprehended a sudden seizure, and that, without prompt
assistance, I might either lose my life in a fit, or at least be
seriously hurt.

This 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 to-day.’

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 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 recovery, in a
day or two,’ he answered, a little drily. ‘I wish our good friend, the
General, had chosen any other time; that is, I wish you had been
perfectly well to receive him.’

‘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.’

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 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 pic-
nic, 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 woods,
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 varieties of
ground almost inexhaustible.

Turning one of these points, we suddenly encountered our

old friend, the General, riding towards us, attended by a mounted
servant. His portmanteaus were following in a hired wagon, such

81
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.

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 Chapter 10

BEREAVED

I t was about ten months since we had last seen him; but that time
had sufficed to make an alteration of years in his appearance.
He had grown thinner; something of gloom and anxiety had taken
the place of that cordial serenity which used to characterize 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 induces, 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 beloved
niece and ward; and he then broke out in a tone of intense
bitterness and fury, inveighing against the ‘hellish arts’ to which
she had fallen a victim, and expressing, with more exasperation
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

extraordinary had befallen, asked him, if not too painful to him,
to detail the circumstances which he thought justified the strong

83
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 remember
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
require proof for what you believe, and am, therefore, very
strongly pre-disposed to respect your conclusions.’

‘You are right in supposing that I have not been led lightly
into a belief in the marvellous – for what I have experienced is
marvellous – and I have been forced by extraordinary evidence to
credit that which ran counter, diametrically, to all my theories. 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.

84
 ‘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 exploring.
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

unearth 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 descended
from the Karnsteins. But the name and title have long ceased to
exist. The castle is a ruin; the very village is deserted; it is fifty
years since the smoke of a chimney was seen there; not a roof left.’

85
 ‘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
pressure. 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

86
which we were travelling 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.’

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 Chapter 11

THE STORY

‘W ith 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 melancholy
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 fêtes which, you
remember, were given by him in honour 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
devoted to a magnificent masquerade. The grounds were thrown
open, the trees hung with coloured lamps. There was such a
display of fireworks as Paris itself had never witnessed. And such
music – music, you know, is my weakness – such ravishing music!

88
The finest instrumental band, perhaps, in the world, and the
finest singers who could be collected from all the great operas in
Europe. As you wandered through these fantastically illuminated
grounds, the moon-lighted château 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
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.

89
 ‘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 addressed
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 curiosity 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 instantly 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.

‘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

90
which a mask rendered practicable; she talked like a friend; she
admired her dress, and insinuated very prettily her admiration
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 remarkably 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 anyone 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 licence of a

masquerade, 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

melancholy little laugh.

‘“As philosophers tell us,” she said; “and how do you know
that a sight of my face would help you?”

91
 ‘“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 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
surprise, and are meditating the particular point of attack.”

‘“At all events, you won’t deny this,” I said, “that being
honoured 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 pre-arranged, as I now
believe, with the profoundest cunning, as liable to be modified by
accident.

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 ‘“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 drawback, 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 cudgelling 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,
château, and estates at my fingers’ ends. But at this moment she
returned, accompanied by the pale man in black, who said:

‘“I shall return and inform Madame la Comtesse when her

93
carriage is at the door.”

‘He withdrew with a bow.’

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 Chapter 12

A PETITION

‘“T hen 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 recollections. This
moment a piece of news has reached me like a thunderbolt. 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 compulsory reserve I practise 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

95
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 exert herself for some time to come. We came here,
in consequence, by very easy stages – hardly six leagues a day. I
must now travel day and night, on a mission of life and death – a
mission 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 favour. This was only in manner, and, as it seemed,
quite unconsciously. 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

audacious request. She in some sort disarmed me, by stating and
admitting everything that could be urged against it, and throwing
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 allow 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 confess the
refined and beautiful face of the young lady, about which there

96
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
suddenly 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 demeanour 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, until her
return. Our distinguished host, whose guest she was, knew her
reasons.

‘“But here”, she said, “neither I nor my daughter could safely

remain for more than a day. I removed my mask imprudently for a

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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 honour to keep my secret for 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 honour. My daughter will observe the
same secresy, 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

hurriedly twice, and went away, accompanied by the pale
gentleman 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 window.

We looked out, and saw a handsome old-fashioned carriage, 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

98
hurried moments that had elapsed since my consent – reflecting
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 hospitality, and I determined to make her amends for the
unavowed churlishness of my reception.

‘The young lady, replacing her mask, joined my ward in

persuading me to return to the grounds, where the concert
was 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 extremely 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 salon, when my ward

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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

inaccuracy, that our young friend had turned up; and so she had.
Would to heaven we had lost her!

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 ‘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.

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 Chapter 13

THE WOOD-MAN

‘T here 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 always locked her door on the inside, and never
disturbed the key from its place till she admitted the maid to assist
at her toilet, 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 hypothesis did
not solve the puzzle. How did she pass out from her room, leaving
the door locked on the inside? How did she escape from the house
without unbarring door or window?

‘In the midst of my perplexities, an anxiety of a far more

urgent kind presented itself.

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 ‘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 spectre, sometimes resembling Millarca, sometimes
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 peculiar, 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 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 chimney for more
than half a century.

You may guess how strangely I felt as I heard my own

symptoms 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
château. 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

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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 expanse of
forest. ‘It was a bad family, and here its blood-stained 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 traditions 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

Karnstein; should you like to see it?’ asked my father.

‘Time enough, dear friend,’ replied the General. ‘I believe

that I have seen the original; and one motive which has led me

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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

father, 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 interest
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

increasing 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.

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 ‘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 fatigued;
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 fellow stood
before us.

He could not tell us anything of these monuments; but

there was an old man, he said, a ranger of this forest, at present
sojourning 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.

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 ‘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 extinguished 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

continued – ‘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 travelling
this way, heard how matters were, and being skilled – as many
people are in his country – in such affairs, he offered to deliver
the village from its tormentor. He did so thus: There being a
bright moon that night, he ascended, shortly after sunset, the
tower 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

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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 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 Karnstein,
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.

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 Chapter 14

THE MEETING

‘M y beloved child,’ he resumed, ‘was now growing rapidly

worse. The physician who attended her had failed to
produce the slightest impression upon her disease, for such I then
supposed 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 together, 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 sharper than a strictly philosophical discussion. I
knocked at the door and entered. I found the old physician from
Gratz maintaining 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

displeased, “I shall state my own view of the case in my own way

109
another time. I grieve, Monsieur le Général, that by my skill and
science I can be of no use. Before I go I shall do myself the honour
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 companion
who was writing, and then, with a shrug, significantly touched his
forehead.

‘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 apologized for
having followed me, but said that he could not conscientiously
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 account
read it till he is with you; you would despise it else, and it is a

110
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 subject, 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
madhouse. He said that the patient was suffering from the visits of
a vampire! The punctures which she described as having occurred
near the throat, were, he insisted, the insertion of those two
long, thin, and sharp teeth which, it is well known, are peculiar
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, and every
symptom described by the sufferer was in exact conformity with
those recorded in every case of a similar visitation.

‘Being myself wholly sceptical 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

111
and intelligence oddly associated with some one hallucination. 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

forward, 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, unscathed. 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 spectre 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.

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My father walked to some little distance, and began reading the
inscriptions on the tombstones; and thus occupied, he strolled
into 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.

In this solitude, having just listened to so strange a story,

connected, as it was, with the great and titled dead, whose
monuments were mouldering among the dust and ivy round
us, and every incident of which bore so awfully upon my own
mysterious case – in this haunted spot, darkened by the towering
foliage that rose on every side, dense and high above its noiseless
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
beautiful face and figure of Carmilla enter the shadowy chapel.

I was just about to rise and speak, and nodded smiling, in

answer 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
features. It was an instantaneous and horrible transformation,

113
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 Mademoiselle
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.

‘She called herself Carmilla?’ asked the General, still

agitated.

‘Carmilla, yes,’ I answered.

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 ‘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.’

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 Chapter 15

ORDEAL AND EXECUTION

A s 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, leading the fantastic old gentleman,
whom he called the Baron, to meet him. He introduced him
formally, and they at once entered into earnest conversation. 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

116
fingers, with which he traced imaginary lines from point to point
on the paper, which from their often 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
together, facing a piece of the side-wall, 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 disclosed.
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.

‘To-morrow,’ 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:

117
 ‘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 discussion
proceeded.

My father came to me, kissed me again and again, and leading

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

unspeakably fatigued when we reached home. But my satisfaction
was changed to dismay, on discovering that there were no tidings
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 that night
were singular. Two servants, and Madame were to sit up in my
room that night; and the ecclesiastic with my father kept watch in
the adjoining dressing-room.

118
 The priest had performed certain solemn rites that night,
the purport of which I did not understand any more than I
comprehended 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

discontinuance 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
Servia, in Poland, even in Russia; the superstition, so we must call
it, of the Vampire.

If human testimony, taken with every care and solemnity,

judicially, 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 supplied
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 General and my father recognized each his perfidious and

119
beautiful guest, in the face now disclosed to view. The features,
though a hundred and fifty years had passed since her funeral,
were tinted with the warmth of life. Her eyes were open; no
cadaverous smell exhaled from the coffin. The two medical men,
one officially present, the other on the part of the promoter of
the inquiry, attested the marvellous fact, that there was a faint but
appreciable 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 vampirism. The body, therefore, in accordance with
the ancient practice, was raised, and a sharp stake driven through
the heart of 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

Commission, with the signatures of all who were present at these
proceedings, 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

Vordenburg, 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 himself
to the minute and laborious investigation of the marvellously
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 curâ pro Mortuis’,
‘Philosophicae et Christianae Cogitationes de Vampiris’, by John
Christofer Harenberg; and a thousand others, among which I

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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 exhibit all the symptoms
that are enumerated as those which proved the vampire-life of the
long-dead Countess Karnstein.

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 cerements, 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 vigour
of its waking existence. The vampire is prone to be fascinated
with an engrossing vehemence, resembling 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 approaches 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.

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 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 smiling, on his worn
spectacle-case and fumbled with it. Then looking up, he said:

‘I have many journals, and other papers, written by that

remarkable man; the most curious among them is one treating
of the visit of which you speak, to Karnstein. The tradition,
of course, discolours and distorts a little. He might have been
termed a Moravian nobleman, for he had changed his abode to
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 favoured lover of the beautiful
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

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tell you. A person, more or less wicked, puts an end to himself.
A suicide, under certain circumstances, becomes a vampire. That
spectre visits living people in their slumbers; they die, and almost
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

vampirism would probably fall, sooner or later, upon the dead
Countess, who in life had been his idol. He conceived a horror, be
she what she might, of her remains being profaned by the outrage
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 resolved to save
his once beloved Mircalla from this.

‘He adopted the stratagem of a journey here, a pretended

removal 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 possession
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 practised. 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:
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 ‘One sign of the vampire is the power of the hand. The
slender hand of Mircalla closed like a vice of steel on the
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 alternations
– sometimes the playful, languid, beautiful girl; sometimes 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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