Carmilla

J. Sheridan LeFanu

Copyright 1872

PROLOGUE

Upon 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 this volume, simply to interest the "laity," I shall
forestall the intelligent lady, who relates it, in nothing; and after due
consideration, I have determined, 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 reopen 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 conscientious particularity.

I
An Early Fright

In Styria, we, though by no means magnificent people, inhabit a castle, or

schloss. A small income, in that part of the world, goes a great way. Eight
or nine hundred a year does wonders. Scantily enough ours would have
answered among wealthy people at home. My father is English, and I bear
an English name, although I never saw England. But here, in this lonely
and primitive place, where everything is so marvelously cheap, I really
don't see how ever so much more money would at all materially add to our
comforts, or even luxuries.

My father was in the Austrian service, and retired upon a pension and his
patrimony, and purchased this feudal 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.

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 moldering tombs of the proud family of Karnstein,
now extinct, who once owned the equally desolate chateau which, in the
thick of the forest, overlooks the silent ruins of the town.

Respecting the cause of the desertion of this striking and melancholy spot,
there is a legend which I shall relate to you another time.

I must tell you now, how very small is the party who constitute the
inhabitants of our castle. I don't include servants, or those dependents who
occupy rooms in the buildings attached to the schloss. Listen, and wonder!
My father, who is the 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 constituted the family at the schloss. My mother, a Styrian

lady, died in my infancy, but I had a good-natured governess, who had
been with me from, I might almost say, my infancy. I could not remember
the time when her fat, benignant face was not a familiar picture in my
memory.

This was Madame Perrodon, a native of Berne, whose care and good
nature now in part supplied to me the loss of my mother, whom I do not
even remember, so early I lost her. She made a third at our little dinner
party. There was a fourth, 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 "neighbors" 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 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 story of the castle, with a steep
oak roof. I can't have been more than six years old, when one night I
awoke, and looking round the room from my bed, failed to see the nursery
maid. Neither was my nurse there; and I thought myself alone. I was not
frightened, for I was one of those happy children who are studiously kept
in 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 bedpost 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 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;
someone did lie there, so sure as you did not; the place is still warm."

I remember the nursery maid petting me, and all three 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 smallpox, and his chestnut wig. For a good while,
every second day, he came and gave me medicine, which of course I hated.

The morning after I saw this apparition I was in a state of terror, and could
not bear to be left alone, daylight though it was, for a moment.

I remember my father coming up and standing at the bedside, 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 remembered, in the course of that day, a venerable old man, in a black

cassock, coming into the room with the nurse and housekeeper, and talking
a little to them, and very kindly to me; his face was very sweet and gentle,
and he told me they were going to pray, and joined my hands together, and
desired me to say, softly, while they were praying, "Lord hear all good
prayers for us, for Jesus' sake." I think these were the very words, for I
often repeated them to myself, and my nurse used for years to make me
say them in my prayers.

I remembered so well the thoughtful sweet face of that white-haired old

man, in his black cassock, as he stood in that rude, lofty, brown room, with
the clumsy furniture of a fashion three hundred years old about him, and
the scanty light entering its shadowy atmosphere through the small lattice.
He kneeled, and the three women with him, and he prayed aloud with an
earnest quavering voice for, what appeared to me, a long time. I forget all
my life preceding that event, and for some time after it is all obscure also,
but the scenes I have just described stand out vivid as the isolated pictures
of the phantasmagoria surrounded by darkness.

II

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 eyewitness.

It was a sweet summer evening, and my father asked me, as he sometimes

did, to take a little ramble with him along that beautiful forest vista which I
have mentioned as lying in front of the schloss.

"General Spielsdorf cannot come to us so soon as I had hoped," said my

father, as we pursued our walk.

He was to have paid us a visit of some weeks, and we had 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 neighborhood can possibly imagine.
This visit, and the new acquaintance it promised, had furnished my day
dream for many weeks.

"And how soon does he come?" I asked.

"Not till autumn. Not for two months, I dare say," he answered. "And I am
very glad now, dear, that you never knew Mademoiselle Rheinfeldt."
"And why?" I asked, both mortified and curious.

"Because the poor young lady is dead," he replied. "I quite forgot I had not
told you, but you were not in the room when I received the General's letter
this evening."

I was very much shocked. General Spielsdorf had mentioned in his first
letter, six or seven weeks before, that she was not so well as he would wish
her, but there was nothing to suggest the remotest suspicion of danger.

"Here is the General's letter," he said, handing it to me. "I am afraid he is

in great affliction; the letter appears to me to have been written very nearly
in distraction."

We sat down on a rude bench, under a group of magnificent lime trees.

The sun was setting with all its melancholy splendor behind the sylvan
horizon, and the stream that flows beside our home, and passes under the
steep old bridge I have 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, 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 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 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 marvelous
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 on the moon,
had wakened, after a dream of an old woman clawing him by the cheek,
with his features horribly drawn to one side; and his countenance had
never quite recovered its equilibrium.

"The moon, this night," she said, "is full of idyllic and magnetic
influence--and see, when you look behind you at the front of the schloss
how all its windows flash and twinkle with that silvery splendor, as if
unseen hands had lighted up the rooms to receive fairy guests."

There are indolent styles of the spirits in which, indisposed to talk

ourselves, the talk of others is pleasant to our listless ears; and I gazed on,
pleased with the tinkle of the ladies' conversation.

"I have got into one of my moping moods tonight," said my father, after a
silence, and quoting Shakespeare, whom, by way of keeping up our
English, he used to read aloud, he said:

"'In truth I know not why I am so sad.

It wearies me: you say it wearies you;
But how I got it--came by it.'

"I forget the rest. But I feel as if some great misfortune were hanging over
us. I suppose the poor General's afflicted letter has had something to do
with it."

At this moment the unwonted sound of carriage wheels and many hoofs
upon the road, arrested our attention.

They seemed to be approaching from the high ground 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.

It seemed to be the traveling carriage of a person of rank; and we were all

immediately absorbed in watching that very unusual spectacle. It became,
in a few moments, greatly more interesting, for just as the carriage had
passed the summit of the steep bridge, one of the leaders, taking fright,
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; me rather in silence, the rest with
various ejaculations of terror.

Our suspense did not last long. Just before you reach the castle
drawbridge, on the route they were coming, there stands by the roadside a
magnificent lime tree, on the other stands an ancient stone cross, at sight of
which the horses, now going at a pace that was perfectly frightful, swerved
so as to bring the wheel over the projecting roots of the tree.

I knew what was coming. I covered my eyes, unable to see it out, and
turned my head away; at the same moment I heard a cry from my lady
friends, who had gone on a little.

Curiosity opened my eyes, and I saw a scene of utter confusion. Two of

the horses were on the ground, the carriage 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 on her wrist and assured the lady, who
declared herself her mother, that her pulse, though faint and irregular, was
undoubtedly still distinguishable. The lady clasped her hands and looked
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.

"Who was ever being so born to calamity?" I heard her say, with clasped
hands, as I came up. "Here am I, on a journey of life and death, in
prosecuting which to lose an hour is possibly to lose all. My child will not
have recovered sufficiently to resume her route for who can say how long.
I must leave her: I cannot, dare not, delay. How far on, sir, can you tell, is
the nearest village? I must leave her there; and shall not see my darling, or
even hear of her till my return, three months hence."

I plucked my father by the coat, and whispered earnestly in his ear: "Oh!
papa, pray ask her to let her stay with us--it would be so delightful. Do,
pray."

"If Madame will entrust her child to the care of my daughter, and of her
good gouvernante, Madame Perrodon, and permit her to remain as our
guest, under my charge, until her return, it will confer a distinction and an
obligation upon us, and we shall treat her with all the care and devotion
which so sacred a trust deserves."

"I cannot do that, sir, it would be to task your kindness and chivalry too
cruelly," said the lady, distractedly.

"It would, on the contrary, be to confer on us a very great kindness at the

moment when we most need it. My daughter has just been disappointed by
a cruel misfortune, in a visit from which she had long anticipated a great
deal of happiness. If you confide this young lady to our care it will be her
best consolation. The nearest village on your route is distant, and affords
no such inn as you could think of placing your daughter at; you cannot
allow her to continue her journey for any considerable distance without
danger. If, as you say, you cannot suspend your journey, you must part
with her tonight, and nowhere could you do so with more honest
assurances of care and tenderness than here."

There was something in this lady's air and appearance so 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
postilions cracked their whips, the horses plunged and broke suddenly into
a furious canter that threatened soon again to become a gallop, and the
carriage whirled away, followed at the same rapid pace by the two
horsemen in the rear.
III

We Compare Notes

We followed the cortege with our eyes until it was swiftly lost to sight in
the misty wood; and the very sound of the hoofs and the wheels died away
in the silent night air.

Nothing remained to assure us that the adventure had not been an illusion
of a moment but the young lady, who just at that moment opened her eyes.
I could not see, for her face was turned from me, but she raised her head,
evidently looking about her, and I heard a very sweet voice ask
complainingly, "Where is mamma?"

Our good Madame Perrodon answered tenderly, and added some

comfortable assurances.

I then heard her ask:

"Where am I? What is this place?" and after that she said, "I don't see the
carriage; and Matska, where is she?"

Madame answered all her questions in so far as she understood them; and
gradually the young lady remembered how the misadventure came about,
and was glad to hear that no one in, or in attendance on, the carriage was
hurt; and on learning that her mamma had left her here, till her return in
about three months, she wept.

I was going to add my consolations to those of Madame 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 bedroom was being
prepared for the young lady's reception.

The stranger now rose, and leaning on Madame's arm, walked slowly over
the drawbridge and into the castle gate.
In the hall, servants waited to receive her, and she was 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, 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 he insisted that the national beverage should make its
appearance regularly with our coffee and chocolate.

We sat here this night, and with candles lighted, were talking over the
adventure of the evening.

Madame Perrodon and Mademoiselle De Lafontaine were both of our

party. The young stranger had hardly lain down in her bed when she sank
into a deep sleep; and those ladies had left her in the care of a servant.

"How do you like our guest?" I asked, as soon as Madame entered. "Tell
me all about her?"

"I like her extremely," answered Madame, "she is, I almost think, the
prettiest creature I ever saw; about your age, and so gentle and nice."

"She is absolutely beautiful," threw in Mademoiselle, who had peeped for

a moment into the stranger's room.

"And such a sweet voice!" added Madame Perrodon.

"Did you remark a woman in the carriage, after it was set up again, who
did not get out," inquired Mademoiselle, "but only looked from the
window?"

"No, we had not seen her."

Then she described a hideous black woman, with a sort of colored turban
on her head, and who was gazing all the time from the carriage window,
nodding and grinning derisively towards the ladies, with gleaming eyes
and large white eyeballs, and her teeth set as if in fury.

"Did you remark what an ill-looking pack of men the servants were?"
asked Madame.

"Yes," said my father, who had just come in, "ugly, hang-dog looking
fellows as ever I beheld in my life. I hope they mayn't rob the poor lady in
the forest. They are clever rogues, however; they got everything to rights
in a minute."

"I dare say they are worn out with too long traveling," said Madame.

"Besides looking wicked, their faces were so strangely lean, and dark, and
sullen. I am very curious, I own; but I dare say the young lady will tell you
all about it tomorrow, if she is 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 us all the more inquisitive as to what had passed between him
and the lady in the black velvet, in the brief but earnest interview that had
immediately preceded her departure.

We were scarcely alone, when I entreated him to tell me. He did not need
much pressing.

"There is no particular reason why I should not tell you. She expressed a
reluctance to trouble us with the care of her daughter, saying she was in
delicate health, and nervous, but not subject to any kind of seizure--she
volunteered that--nor to any illusion; being, in fact, perfectly sane."

"How very odd to say all that!" I interpolated. "It was so unnecessary."

"At all events it was said," he laughed, "and as you wish to know all that
passed, which was indeed very little, I tell you. She then said, 'I am making
a long journey of vital 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
traveling.' That is all she said. She spoke very pure French. When she said
the word 'secret,' she paused for a few seconds, looking sternly, her eyes
fixed on mine. I fancy she makes a 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 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
favorably upon his patient. She was now sitting up, her pulse quite regular,
apparently perfectly well. She had sustained no injury, and the little shock
to her nerves had passed away quite harmlessly. There could be no harm
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 somber piece of tapestry opposite the
foot of the bed, representing Cleopatra with the asps to her bosom; and
other solemn classic scenes were displayed, a little faded, upon the other
walls. But there was gold carving, and rich and varied color enough in the
other decorations of the room, to more than redeem the gloom of the old
tapestry.

There were candles at the bedside. She was sitting up; her slender pretty
figure enveloped in the soft silk dressing gown, embroidered with flowers,
and lined with thick quilted silk, which her mother had thrown over her
feet as she lay upon the ground.

What was it that, as I reached the bedside and had just 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 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 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 someone crying; and looking up, while I was still upon my
knees, I saw you--most assuredly you--as I see you now; a beautiful young
lady, with golden hair and large blue eyes, and lips--your lips--you as you
are here.

"Your looks won me; I climbed on the bed and put my arms about you,
and I think we both fell asleep. I was aroused by a scream; you were sitting
up screaming. I was frightened, and slipped down upon the ground, and, it
seemed to me, lost 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 saw then."

It was now my turn to relate my corresponding vision, which I did, to the

undisguised wonder of my new acquaintance.

"I don't know which should be most afraid of the other," she said, again
smiling--"If you were less pretty I think I should be very much afraid of
you, but being as you are, and you and I both so young, I feel only that I
have made your acquaintance twelve years ago, and have already a right to
your intimacy; at all events it does seem as if we were destined, from our
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 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 tonight; one of ours is waiting, and you will find her a very useful and
quiet creature."

"How kind of you, but I could not sleep, I never could with an attendant in
the room. I shan't require any assistance--and, 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;
tomorrow, but not early, I shall see you again."

She sank back on the pillow with a sigh, and her fine eyes followed me
with a fond and melancholy gaze, and she 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. 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.
IV

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 color 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 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 hers should be baffled by another.
What harm could it do anyone to tell me what I so ardently desired to
know? Had she no trust in my good sense or honor? Why would she not
believe me when I assured her, so solemnly, that I would not divulge one
syllable of what she told me to any mortal breathing.

There was a coldness, it seemed to me, beyond her years, in her smiling
melancholy persistent refusal to afford me the least ray of light.

I cannot say we quarreled upon this point, for she would not quarrel upon
any. It was, of course, very unfair of me to press her, very ill-bred, but I
really could not help it; and I might just as well have let it alone.

What she did tell me amounted, in my unconscionable 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.

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 honor, and
with so many promises that I should at last know all, that I could not find it
in my heart long to be offended with her.

She used to place her pretty arms about my neck, draw me to her, and
laying her cheek to mine, murmur with her lips near my ear, "Dearest,
your little heart is wounded; think me not cruel because I obey the
irresistible law of my strength and weakness; if your dear heart is
wounded, my wild heart bleeds with yours. In the rapture of my enormous
humiliation I live in your warm life, and you shall die--die, sweetly die--
into mine. I cannot help it; as I draw near to you, you, in your turn, will
draw near to others, and learn the rapture of that cruelty, which yet is love;
so, for a while, seek to know no more of me and mine, but trust me with all
your loving spirit."

And when she had spoken such a rhapsody, she would press me more
closely in her trembling embrace, and her lips in soft kisses gently glow
upon my cheek.

Her agitations and her language were unintelligible to me.

From these foolish embraces, which were not of very 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 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 ardor of a lover; it embarrassed me; it was
hateful and yet over-powering; and with gloating eyes she drew me to her,
and her hot lips traveled along my cheek in kisses; and she would whisper,
almost in sobs, "You are mine, you shall be mine, you and I are one for
ever." Then she had thrown herself back in her chair, with her small hands
over her eyes, leaving me trembling.

"Are we related," I used to ask; "what can you mean by all this? I remind
you perhaps of someone whom you love; but you 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 storybooks of such things. What if a boyish
lover had found his way into the house, and sought to prosecute his suit in
masquerade, with the assistance of a clever old adventuress. But there
were many things against this hypothesis, highly interesting as it was to
my vanity.

I could boast of no little attentions such as masculine gallantry delights to

offer. Between these passionate moments there were long intervals of
commonplace, 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, 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 today."

"She? I don't trouble my head about peasants. I don't know who she is,"
answered Carmilla, with a flash from her fine eyes.

"She is the poor girl who fancied she saw a ghost a fortnight ago, and has
been dying ever since, till yesterday, when she expired."

"Tell me nothing about ghosts. I shan't sleep tonight if you do."

"I hope there is no plague or fever coming; all this looks very like it," I
continued. "The swineherd's young wife died only a week ago, and she
thought something seized her by the throat as she lay in her bed, and
nearly strangled her. Papa says such horrible fancies do accompany some
forms of fever. She was quite well the day before. She sank afterwards,
and died before a week."

"Well, her funeral is over, I hope, and her hymn sung; and our ears shan't
be tortured with that discord and jargon. It has made me nervous. Sit down
here, beside me; sit close; hold my hand; press it hard-hard-harder."

We had moved a little back, and had come to another seat.

She sat down. Her face underwent a change that alarmed and even terrified
me for a moment. It darkened, and became horribly livid; her teeth and
hands were clenched, and she frowned and compressed her lips, while she
stared down upon the ground at her feet, and trembled all over with a
continued shudder as irrepressible as ague. All her energies seemed
strained to suppress a fit, with which she was then breathlessly tugging;
and at length a low convulsive cry of suffering broke from her, and
gradually the hysteria subsided. "There! That comes of strangling people
with hymns!" she said at last. "Hold me, hold me still. It is passing away."

And so gradually it did; and perhaps to dissipate the somber impression

which the spectacle had left upon me, she became unusually animated and
chatty; and so we got home.

This was the first time I had seen her exhibit any definable symptoms of
that delicacy of health which her mother had spoken of. It was the first
time, also, I had seen her exhibit 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 courtyard, 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 laugh.
They were compounded of parts of monkeys, parrots, squirrels, fish, and
hedgehogs, dried and stitched together with great neatness and startling
effect. He had a fiddle, a box of conjuring apparatus, a pair of foils and
masks attached to his belt, several other mysterious cases dangling about
him, and a black staff with copper ferrules in his hand. His companion was
a rough spare dog, that followed at his heels, but stopped short,
suspiciously at the drawbridge, and in a little while began to howl
dismally.

In the meantime, the mountebank, standing in the midst of the courtyard,

raised his grotesque hat, and made us a very 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 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.

"How dares that mountebank insult us so? Where is your father? I shall
demand redress from him. My father would have had the wretch tied up to
the pump, and flogged with a cart whip, and burnt to the bones with the
cattle brand!"

She retired from the window a step or two, and sat down, and had hardly
lost sight of the offender, when her wrath 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 neighbors."

"But that very circumstance frightens one horribly," said Carmilla.

"How so?" inquired my father.

"I am so afraid of fancying I see such things; I think it would be as bad as

reality."

"We are in God's hands: nothing can happen without his 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 today," said my father, after a
silence. "I want to know what he thinks about it, and what he thinks we
had better do."

"Doctors never did me any good," said Carmilla.

"Then you have been ill?" I asked.

"More ill than ever you were," she answered.

"Long ago?"

"Yes, a long time. I suffered from this very illness; but I 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 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:

"Well, I do wonder at a wise man like you. What do you say to hippogriffs
and dragons?"

The doctor was smiling, and made answer, shaking his head--

"Nevertheless life and death are mysterious states, and we know little of
the resources of either."

And so they walked on, and I heard no more. I did not then know what the
doctor had been broaching, but I think I guess it now.

A Wonderful Likeness

This evening there arrived from Gratz the grave, dark-faced son of the
picture cleaner, with a horse and cart laden with two large packing cases,
having many pictures in each. It was a journey of ten leagues, and
whenever a messenger arrived at the schloss from our little capital of
Gratz, we used to crowd about him in the hall, to hear the news.

This arrival created in our secluded quarters quite a 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 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 color, while I was more and more lost in
wonder the more I looked at the picture.

"Will you let me hang this picture in my room, papa?" I asked.

"Certainly, dear," said he, smiling, "I'm very glad you think it so like.

It must be prettier even than I thought it, if it is."

The young lady did not acknowledge this pretty speech, did not seem to
hear it. She was leaning back in her seat, her fine eyes under their long
lashes gazing on me in contemplation, and she smiled in a kind of rapture.

"And now you can read quite plainly the name that is written in the corner.

It is not Marcia; it looks as if it was done in gold. The name is Mircalla,

Countess Karnstein, and this is a little coronet over and underneath A.D.

1698. I am descended from the Karnsteins; that is, mamma was."

"Ah!" said the lady, languidly, "so am I, I think, a very long descent, very
ancient. Are there any Karnsteins living now?"

"None who bear the name, I believe. The family were ruined, I believe, in
some civil wars, long ago, but the ruins of the castle are only about three
miles away."

"How interesting!" she said, languidly. "But see what 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."

"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."

How beautiful she looked in the moonlight!

Shy and strange was the look with which she quickly hid her face in my
neck and hair, with tumultuous sighs, that seemed almost to sob, and
pressed in mine a hand that trembled.

Her soft cheek was glowing against mine. "Darling, darling," she
murmured, "I live in you; and you would die for me, I love you so."

I started from her.

She was gazing on me with eyes from which all fire, all meaning had
flown, and a face colorless and apathetic.

"Is there a chill in the air, dear?" she said drowsily. "I almost shiver; have I
been dreaming? Let us come in. Come; come; come in."

"You look ill, Carmilla; a little faint. You certainly must take some wine,"
I said.

"Yes. I will. I'm better now. I shall be quite well in a few minutes. Yes, do
give me a little wine," answered Carmilla, as we approached the door.

"Let us look again for a moment; it is the last time, perhaps, I shall see the
moonlight with you."

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

I was beginning to take alarm, lest she should have been stricken with the
strange epidemic that they said had invaded the country about us.

"Papa would be grieved beyond measure," I added, "if he thought you

were ever so little ill, without immediately letting us know. We have a
very skilful doctor near us, the physician who was with papa today."

"I'm sure he is. I know how kind you all are; but, dear child, I am quite
well again. There is nothing ever wrong with me, but a little weakness.

People say I am languid; I am incapable of exertion; I can scarcely walk as

far as a child of three years old: and every now and then the little strength I
have falters, and I become as you have just seen me. But after all I am very
easily set up again; in a moment I am perfectly myself. See how I have
recovered."

So, indeed, she had; and she and I talked a great deal, and very animated
she was; and the remainder of that evening passed without any recurrence
of what I called her 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.

VI
A Very Strange Agony

When we got into the drawing room, and had sat down to our coffee and
chocolate, although Carmilla did not take any, she seemed quite herself
again, and Madame, and Mademoiselle De Lafontaine, joined us, and
made a little card party, in the course of which papa came in for what he
called his "dish of tea."

When the game was over he sat down beside Carmilla on the sofa, and
asked her, a little anxiously, whether she had heard from her mother since
her arrival.

She answered "No."

He then asked whether she knew where a letter would reach her at present.

"I cannot tell," she answered ambiguously, "but I have been thinking of
leaving you; you have been already too hospitable and too kind to me. I
have given you an infinity of trouble, and I should wish to take a carriage
tomorrow, and post in pursuit of her; I know where I shall ultimately find
her, although I dare not yet tell you."

"But you must not dream of any such thing," exclaimed my father, to my
great relief. "We can't afford to lose you so, and I won't consent to your
leaving us, except under the care of your mother, who was so good as to
consent to your remaining with us till she should herself return. I should be
quite happy if I knew that you heard from her: but this evening the
accounts of the progress of the mysterious disease that has invaded our
neighborhood, grow even more alarming; and my beautiful guest, I do feel
the responsibility, unaided by advice from your mother, very much. But I
shall do my best; and one thing is certain, that you must not think of
leaving us without her distinct direction to that effect. We should suffer
too much in parting from you to consent to it easily."

"Thank you, sir, a thousand times for your hospitality," she answered,
smiling bashfully. "You have all been too kind to me; I have seldom been
so happy in all my life before, as in your beautiful chateau, under your
care, and in the society of your dear daughter."

So he gallantly, in his old-fashioned way, kissed her hand, smiling and

pleased at her little speech.

I accompanied Carmilla as usual to her room, and sat and chatted with her
while she was preparing for bed.

"Do you think," I said at length, "that you will ever confide fully in me?"

She turned round smiling, but made no answer, only 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.

"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.

If it had not been that it had casually come out in one of our careless talks
that she had been baptised, I should have doubted her being a Christian.
Religion was a subject on which I had never heard her speak a word. If I
had known the world better, this particular neglect or antipathy would not
have so much surprised me.

The precautions of nervous people are infectious, and persons of a like

temperament are pretty sure, after a time, to imitate them. I had adopted
Carmilla's habit of locking her bedroom 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
room, to satisfy herself that no lurking assassin or robber was "ensconced."

These wise measures taken, I got into my bed and fell asleep. A light was
burning in my room. This was an old habit, of very early date, and which
nothing could have tempted me to dispense with.

Thus fortifed 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 lying in bed,

precisely as I actually was. I saw, or fancied I saw, the room and its
furniture just as I had seen it last, except that it was very dark, and I saw
something moving round the foot of the bed, which at first I could not
accurately distinguish. But I soon saw that it was a sooty-black animal that
resembled a monstrous cat. It appeared to me about four or five feet long
for it measured fully the length of the hearthrug as it passed over it; and it
continued to-ing and fro-ing with the lithe, 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 bedclothes, and lay there more dead than alive till
morning.

VII

Descending

It would be vain my attempting to tell you the horror with which, even
now, I recall the occurrence of that night. It was no such transitory terror
as a dream leaves behind it. It seemed to deepen by time, and
communicated itself to the room and the very furniture that had
encompassed the apparition.

I could not bear next day to be alone for a moment. I should have told
papa, but for two opposite reasons. At one time I thought he would laugh
at my story, and I could not bear its being treated as a jest; and at another I
thought he might fancy that I had been attacked by the mysterious
complaint which had invaded our neighborhood. I had myself no
misgiving of the kind, and as he had been rather an invalid for some time, I
was afraid of alarming him.

I was comfortable enough with my good-natured 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 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 near the chimneypiece, 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 tonight, as you have so much faith in it."

At this distance of time I cannot tell you, or even understand, how I

overcame my horror so effectually as to lie alone in my room that night. I
remember distinctly that I pinned the charm to my pillow. I fell asleep
almost immediately, and slept even more soundly than usual all night.

Next night I passed as well. My sleep was delightfully deep and dreamless.

But I wakened with a sense of lassitude and melancholy, which, however,

did not exceed a degree that was almost luxurious.

"Well, I told you so," said Carmilla, when I described my quiet sleep, "I
had such delightful sleep myself last night; I pinned the charm to the breast
of my nightdress. It was too far away the night before. I am quite sure it
was all fancy, except the dreams. I used to think that evil spirits made
dreams, but our doctor told me it is no such thing. Only a fever passing by,
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 it might be, my soul acquiesced in it.

I would not admit that I was ill, I would not consent to tell my papa, or to
have the doctor sent for.

Carmilla became more devoted to me than ever, and her strange

paroxysms of languid adoration more frequent. She used to gloat on me
with increasing ardor the more my strength and spirits waned. This always
shocked me like a 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
discolored 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 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. Sometimes 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 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.

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 on the lobby, crying for help.

Madame and Mademoiselle came scurrying out of their rooms in alarm; a

lamp burned always on the lobby, and seeing me, they soon learned the
cause of my terror.

I insisted on our knocking at Carmilla's door. Our knocking was

unanswered.

It soon became a pounding and an uproar. We shrieked her name, but all
was vain.

We all grew frightened, for the door was locked. We hurried back, in
panic, to my room. There we rang the bell long and furiously. If my
father's room had been at that side of the house, we would have called him
up at once to our aid. But, alas! he was quite out of hearing, and to reach
him involved an excursion for which we none of us had courage.

Servants, however, soon came running up the stairs; I had got on my

dressing gown and slippers meanwhile, and my companions were already
similarly furnished. Recognizing 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.
VIII

Search

At 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
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.

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 chateau was searched. The grounds were
explored. No trace of the missing lady could be discovered. The stream
was about to be dragged; my father was in distraction; what a tale to have
to tell the 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."

"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 woke just now on the sofa in the dressing room there, and
I found the door between the rooms open, and the other door forced. How
could all this have happened without my being wakened? It must have
been accompanied with a great deal of noise, and I am particularly easily
wakened; and how could I have been 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 salvolatile, 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?"

"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 ask you a question."

Carmilla was leaning on her hand dejectedly; Madame and I were listening
breathlessly.
"Now, my question is this. Have you ever been suspected of walking in
your sleep?"

"Never, since I was very young indeed."

"But you did walk in your sleep when you were young?"

"Yes; I know I did. I have been told so often by my old nurse."

My father smiled and nodded.

"Well, what has happened is this. You got up in your sleep, unlocked the
door, not leaving the key, as usual, in the lock, but taking it out and
locking it on the outside; you again took the key out, and carried it away
with you to some one of the five-and-twenty rooms on this floor, or
perhaps upstairs or downstairs. There are so many rooms and closets, so
much heavy furniture, and such accumulations of lumber, that it would
require a week to search this old house thoroughly. Do you see, now, what
I mean?"

"I do, but not all," she answered.

"And how, papa, do you account for her finding herself on the sofa in the
dressing room, which we had searched so carefully?"

"She came there after you had searched it, still in her sleep, and at last
awoke spontaneously, and was as much surprised to find herself where she
was as any one else. I wish all mysteries were as easily and innocently
explained as yours, Carmilla," he said, laughing. "And so we may
congratulate ourselves on the certainty that the most natural explanation of
the occurrence is one that involves no drugging, no tampering with locks,
no burglars, or poisoners, or witches--nothing that need alarm Carmilla, or
anyone else, for our safety."

Carmilla was looking charmingly. Nothing could be more beautiful than

her tints. Her beauty was, I think, enhanced by that graceful languor that
was peculiar to her. I think my father was silently contrasting her looks
with mine, for he said:

"I wish my poor Laura was looking more like herself"; and he sighed.

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

The Doctor

As Carmilla would not hear of an attendant sleeping in her room, my

father arranged that a servant should sleep outside her door, so that she
would not attempt to make another such excursion without being arrested
at her own door.

That night passed quietly; and next morning early, the 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.

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 farther 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; 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.

"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 center of

that thrill which you described just now, like the current of a cold stream
running against you?"

"It may have been; I think it was."

"Ay, you see?" he added, turning to my father. "Shall I say a word to

Madame?"

"Certainly," said my father.

He called Madame to him, and said:

"I find my young friend here far from well. It won't be of any great
consequence, I hope; but it will be necessary that some steps be taken,
which I will explain by-and-by; but in the 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 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 Dranfield 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.

The interpretation did not strike me; and I fancied, perhaps luckily for my
nerves, that the arrangement was prescribed simply to secure a companion,
who would prevent my taking too much exercise, or eating unripe fruit, or
doing any of the fifty foolish things to which young people are supposed to
be prone.

About half an hour after my father came in--he had a letter in his hand--
and said:

"This letter had been delayed; it is from General Spielsdorf. He might have
been here yesterday, he may not come till tomorrow or he may be here
today."

He put the open letter into my hand; but he did not look pleased, as he
used when a guest, especially one so much loved as the General, was
coming.

On the contrary, he looked as if he wished him at the bottom of the Red

Sea. There was plainly something on his mind which he did not choose to
divulge.

"Papa, darling, will you tell me this?" said I, suddenly laying my hand on
his arm, and looking, I am sure, imploringly in his face.

"Perhaps," he answered, smoothing my hair caressingly over my eyes.

"Does the doctor think me very ill?"

"No, dear; he thinks, if right steps are taken, you will be quite well again,
at least, on the high road to a complete recovery, in a day or two," he
answered, a little dryly. "I wish our good friend, the General, had chosen
any other time; that is, I wish you had been perfectly well to receive him."

"But do tell me, papa," I insisted, "what does he think is the matter with
me?"

"Nothing; you must not plague me with questions," he answered, with

more irritation than I ever remember him to have displayed before; and
seeing that I looked wounded, I suppose, he kissed me, and added, "You
shall know all about it in a day or two; that is, all that I know. In the
meantime you are not to trouble your head about it."

He turned and left the room, but came back before I had done wondering
and puzzling over the oddity of all this; it was merely to say that he was
going to Karnstein, and had ordered the carriage to be ready at twelve, and
that I and Madame should accompany him; he was going to see the priest
who lived near those picturesque grounds, upon business, and as Carmilla
had never seen them, she could follow, when she came down, with
Mademoiselle, who would bring materials for what you call a picnic,
which might be laid for us in the ruined castle.

At twelve o'clock, accordingly, I was ready, and not long after, my father,
Madame and I set out upon our projected drive.

Passing the drawbridge we turn to the right, and follow the road over the
steep Gothic bridge, westward, to reach the deserted village and ruined
castle of Karnstein.

No sylvan drive can be fancied prettier. The ground breaks into gentle hills
and hollows, all clothed with beautiful wood, totally destitute of the
comparative formality which artificial planting and early culture and
pruning impart.

The irregularities of the ground often lead the road out of its course, and
cause it to wind beautifully round the sides of broken hollows and the
steeper sides of the hills, among 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 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.

Bereaved

It was about ten months since we had last seen him: but that time had
sufficed to make an alteration of years in his 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 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 predisposed to respect your
conclusions."

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

"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."

"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 which we were
traveling to Karnstein.

"How far is it to the ruins?" inquired the General, looking anxiously

forward.

"About half a league," answered my father. "Pray let us hear the story you
were so good as to promise."

XI

The Story

With all my heart," said the General, with an effort; and after a short pause
in which to arrange his subject, he commenced one of the strangest
narratives I ever heard.

"My dear child was looking forward with great pleasure to the visit you
had been so good as to arrange for her to your charming daughter." Here
he made me a gallant but 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 fetes
which, you remember, were given by him in honor of his illustrious
visitor, the Grand Duke Charles."

"Yes; and very splendid, I believe, they were," said my father.

"Princely! But then his hospitalities are quite regal. He has Aladdin's lamp.
The night from which my sorrow dates was devoted to a magnificent
masquerade. The grounds were thrown open, the trees hung with colored
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! 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 chateau throwing a rosy light from its long rows of
windows, you would suddenly hear these ravishing voices stealing from
the silence of some grove, or rising from boats upon the lake. I felt myself,
as I looked and listened, carried back into the romance and poetry of my
early youth.
"When the fireworks were ended, and the ball beginning, we returned to
the noble suite of rooms that were thrown open to the dancers. A masked
ball, you know, is a beautiful sight; but so brilliant a spectacle of the kind I
never saw before.

"It was a very aristocratic assembly. I was myself almost the only 'nobody'
present.

"My dear child was looking quite beautiful. She wore no mask. Her
excitement and delight added an unspeakable charm to her features,
always lovely. I remarked a young lady, dressed magnificently, but
wearing a mask, who appeared to me to be observing my ward with
extraordinary interest. I had seen her, earlier in the evening, in the great
hall, and again, for a few minutes, walking near us, on the terrace under
the castle windows, similarly employed. A lady, also masked, richly and
gravely dressed, and with a stately air, like a person of rank, accompanied
her as a chaperon.

Had the young lady not worn a mask, I could, of course, have been much
more certain upon the question whether she was really watching my poor
darling.

I am now well assured that she was.

"We were now in one of the salons. My poor dear child had been dancing,
and was resting a little in one of the chairs near the door; I was standing
near. The two ladies I have mentioned had approached and the younger
took the chair next my ward; while her companion stood beside me, and
for a little time 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 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 license 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?'

"'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 honored by your
permission to converse, I ought to know how to address you. Shall I say
Madame la Comtesse?'

"She laughed, and she would, no doubt, have met me with another
evasion--if, indeed, I can treat any occurrence in an interview every
circumstance of which was prearranged, as I now believe, with the
profoundest cunning, as liable to be modified by accident.

"'As to that,' she began; but she was interrupted, almost as she opened her
lips, by a gentleman, dressed in black, who looked particularly elegant and
distinguished, with this 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 cudgeling my brains for a conjecture as to the

identity of the lady who seemed to remember me so kindly, and I was
thinking of turning about and joining in the conversation between my
pretty ward and the Countess's daughter, and trying whether, by the time
she returned, I might not have a surprise in store for her, by having her
name, title, chateau, and estates at my fingers' ends. But at this moment
she returned, accompanied by the pale man in black, who said:

"'I shall return and inform Madame la Comtesse when her carriage is at the
door.'

"He withdrew with a bow."

XII

A Petition

"'Then we are to lose Madame la Comtesse, but I hope only for a few
hours,' I said, with a low bow.

"'It may be that only, or it may be a few weeks. It was very unlucky his
speaking to me just now as he did. Do you now know me?'

"I assured her I did not.

"'You shall know me,' she said, 'but not at present. We are older and better
friends than, perhaps, you suspect. I cannot yet declare myself. I shall in
three weeks pass your beautiful schloss, about which I have been making
enquiries. I shall then look in upon you for an hour or two, and renew a
friendship which I never think of without a thousand pleasant
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 practice as to my
name from making a very singular request of you. My poor child has not
quite recovered her strength. Her horse fell with her, at a hunt which she
had ridden out to witness, her nerves have not yet recovered the shock, and
our physician says that she must on no account 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 favor.

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 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 demeanor of this gentleman was such as to impress me with the

conviction that the Countess was a lady of very much more importance
than her modest title alone might have led me to assume.

"Her last charge to me was that no attempt was to be made to learn more
about her than I might have already guessed, 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 moment, about an
hour ago, and, too late, I fancied you saw me. So I resolved to seek an
opportunity of talking a little to you. Had I found that you had seen me, I
would have thrown myself on your high sense of honor to keep my secret
some weeks. As it is, I am satisfied that you did not see me; but if you now
suspect, or, on reflection, should suspect, who I am, I commit myself, in
like manner, entirely to your honor. My daughter will observe the same
secrecy, and I well know that you will, from time to time, remind her, lest
she should thoughtlessly disclose it.'

"She whispered a few words to her daughter, kissed her 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 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 saloon, when my ward asked me what
had become of Millarca. I thought she had been by her side, and she
fancied she was by mine. The fact was, we had lost her.

"All my efforts to find her were vain. I feared that she had mistaken, in the
confusion of a momentary separation from us, other people for her new
friends, and had, possibly, pursued and lost them in the extensive grounds
which were thrown open to us.
"Now, in its full force, I recognized a new folly in my having undertaken
the charge of a young lady without so much as knowing her name; and
fettered as I was by promises, of the reasons for imposing which I knew
nothing, I could not even point my inquiries by saying that the missing
young lady was the daughter of the Countess who had taken her departure
a few hours before.

"Morning broke. It was clear daylight before I gave up my search. It was

not till near two o'clock next day that we heard anything of my missing
charge.

"At about that time a servant knocked at my niece's door, to say that he
had been earnestly requested by a young lady, who appeared to be in great
distress, to make out where she could find the General Baron Spielsdorf
and the young lady his daughter, in whose charge she had been left by her
mother.

"There could be no doubt, notwithstanding the slight inaccuracy, that our

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

"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."

XIII

The Woodman

"There soon, however, appeared some drawbacks. In the first place,

Millarca complained of extreme languor--the weakness that remained after
her late illness--and she never emerged from her room till the afternoon
was pretty far advanced. In the next place, it was accidentally discovered,
although she 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.

"My dear child began to lose her looks and health, and that in a manner so
mysterious, and even horrible, that I became thoroughly frightened.

"She was at first visited by appalling dreams; then, as she fancied, by a

specter, sometimes resembling Millarca, 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 chateau. You may suppose, also, how I felt
as I heard him detail habits and mysterious peculiarities which were, in
fact, those of our beautiful guest, Carmilla!

A vista opened in the forest; we were on a sudden under the chimneys and
gables of the ruined village, and the towers and battlements of the
dismantled castle, round which gigantic trees are grouped, overhung us
from a slight eminence.

In a frightened dream I got down from the carriage, and in silence, for we
had each abundant matter for thinking; we soon mounted the ascent, and
were among the spacious chambers, winding stairs, and dark corridors of
the castle.

"And this was once the palatial residence of the Karnsteins!" said the old
General at length, as from a great window he looked out across the village,
and saw the wide, undulating expanse of forest. "It was a bad family, and
here its bloodstained annals were written," he continued. "It is hard that
they should, after death, continue to plague the human race with their
atrocious lusts. That is the chapel of the Karnsteins, down there."

He pointed down to the grey walls of the Gothic building partly visible
through the foliage, a little way down the steep. "And I hear the axe of a
woodman," he added, "busy among the trees that surround it; he possibly
may give us the information of which I am in search, and point out the
grave of Mircalla, Countess of Karnstein. These rustics preserve the local
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 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.

"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.

"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 traveling this way, heard how matters were, and being
skilled--as many people are in his country--in such affairs, he offered to
deliver the village from its tormentor. He did so thus: There being a bright
moon that night, he ascended, shortly after sunset, the towers of the chapel
here, from whence he could distinctly see the churchyard beneath him; you
can see it from that window. From this point he watched until he saw the
vampire come out of his grave, and place near it the linen clothes in which
he had been folded, and then glide away towards the village to plague its
inhabitants.

"The stranger, having seen all this, came down from the steeple, took the
linen wrappings of the vampire, and carried them up to the top of the
tower, which he again mounted. When the vampire returned from his
prowlings and missed his clothes, he cried furiously to the Moravian,
whom he saw at the summit of the tower, and who, in reply, beckoned him
to ascend and take them. Whereupon the vampire, accepting his 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 churchyard, 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.

XIV

The Meeting

"My beloved child," he resumed, "was now growing rapidly worse. The
physician who attended her had failed to produce the slightest impression
on her disease, for such I then 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 another time. I grieve,
Monsieur le General, that by my skill and science I can be of no use.

Before I go I shall do myself the honor to suggest something to you.'

"He seemed thoughtful, and sat down at a table and began to write.

Profoundly disappointed, I made my bow, and as I turned to go, the other

doctor pointed over his shoulder to his 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 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 skeptical as to the existence of any such portent as

the vampire, the supernatural theory of the good doctor furnished, in my
opinion, but another instance of learning and intelligence oddly associated
with some one 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 specter Millarca was gone. But her victim
was sinking fast, and before the morning dawned, she died."

The old General was agitated. We did not speak to him. My father walked
to some little distance, and began reading the 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 moldering
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, 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.

"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."

XV

Ordeal and Execution

As he spoke one of the strangest looking men I ever beheld entered the
chapel at the door through which Carmilla had made her entrance and her
exit. He was tall, narrow-chested, stooping, with high shoulders, and
dressed in black. His face was brown and dried in with deep furrows; he
wore an oddly-shaped hat with a broad leaf. His hair, long and grizzled,
hung on his shoulders. He wore a pair of gold spectacles, and walked
slowly, with an odd shambling gait, with his face sometimes turned up to
the sky, and sometimes bowed down towards the ground, seemed to wear a
perpetual smile; his long thin arms were swinging, and his lank hands, in
old black gloves ever so much too wide for them, waving and gesticulating
in utter abstraction.

"The very man!" exclaimed the General, advancing with manifest delight.
"My dear Baron, how happy I am to see you, I had no hope of meeting you
so soon." He signed to my father, who had by this time returned, and
leading the fantastic old gentleman, whom he called the Baron to meet
him. He 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
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
sidewall, which they began to examine with great minuteness; pulling off
the ivy that clung over it, and rapping the plaster with the ends of their
sticks, scraping here, and knocking there. At length they ascertained the
existence of a broad marble tablet, with letters carved in relief upon it.

With the assistance of the woodman, who soon returned, a monumental

inscription, and carved escutcheon, were 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.

"Tomorrow," I heard him say; "the commissioner will be here, and the
Inquisition will be held according to law."

Then turning to the old man with the gold spectacles, whom I have
described, he shook him warmly by both hands and said:

"Baron, how can I thank you? How can we all thank you? You will have
delivered this region from a plague that has scourged its inhabitants for
more than a century. The horrible enemy, thank God, is at last tracked."

My father led the stranger aside, and the General followed. I know that he
had led them out of hearing, that he might relate my case, and I saw them
glance often quickly at me, as the 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 the 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.

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

If human testimony, taken with every care and solemnity, 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 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 marvelous 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.

XVI
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 marvelously authenticated tradition of Vampirism. He
had at his fingers' ends all the great and little works upon the subject.

"Magia Posthuma," "Phlegon de Mirabilibus," "Augustinus de cura pro

Mortuis," "Philosophicae et Christianae Cogitationes de Vampiris," by
John Christofer Herenberg; and a thousand others, among which I
remember only a few of those which he lent to my father. He had a
voluminous digest of all the judicial cases, from which he had extracted a
system of principles that appear to govern--some always, and others
occasionally only--the condition of the vampire. I may mention, in
passing, that the deadly pallor attributed to that sort of revenants, is a mere
melodramatic fiction. They present, in the grave, and when they show
themselves in human society, the appearance of healthy life. When
disclosed to light in their coffins, they 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 vigor 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.

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, discolors 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 favored 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 tell you. A person, more or
less wicked, puts an end to himself. A suicide, under certain
circumstances, becomes a vampire. That specter visits living people in
their slumbers; they die, and 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
practiced. If he had intended any further action in this matter, death
prevented him; and the hand of a remote descendant has, too late for many,
directed the pursuit to the lair of the beast."

We talked a little more, and among other things he said was this:

"One sign of the vampire is the power of the hand. The slender hand of
Mircalla closed like a vice of steel on the 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.