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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10007 ***
+Carmilla
+
+by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
+
+Copyright 1872
+
+
+Contents
+
+ PROLOGUE
+ CHAPTER I. An Early Fright
+ CHAPTER II. A Guest
+ CHAPTER III. We Compare Notes
+ CHAPTER IV. Her Habits—A Saunter
+ CHAPTER V. A Wonderful Likeness
+ CHAPTER VI. A Very Strange Agony
+ CHAPTER VII. Descending
+ CHAPTER VIII. Search
+ CHAPTER IX. The Doctor
+ CHAPTER X. Bereaved
+ CHAPTER XI. The Story
+ CHAPTER XII. A Petition
+ CHAPTER XIII. The Woodman
+ CHAPTER XIV. The Meeting
+ CHAPTER XV. Ordeal and Execution
+ CHAPTER XVI. Conclusion
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+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.
+
+
+
+
+X.
+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.
+
+
+
+
+Other books by J. Sheridan LeFanu
+
+The Cock and Anchor
+Torlogh O’Brien
+The House by the Churchyard
+Uncle Silas
+Checkmate
+Carmilla
+The Wyvern Mystery
+Guy Deverell
+Ghost Stories and Tales of Mystery
+The Chronicles of Golden Friars
+In a Glass Darkly
+The Purcell Papers
+The Watcher and Other Weird Stories
+A Chronicle of Golden Friars and Other Stories
+Madam Growl’s Ghost and Other Tales of Mystery
+Green Tea and Other Stories
+Sheridan LeFanu: The Diabolic Genius
+Best Ghost Stories of J.S. LeFanu
+The Best Horror Stories
+The Vampire Lovers and Other Stories
+Ghost Stories and Mysteries
+The Hours After Midnight
+J.S. LeFanu: Ghost Stories and Mysteries
+Ghost and Horror Stories
+Green Tea and Other Ghost Stones
+Carmilla and Other Classic Tales of Mystery
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10007 ***