CARMILLA



by Sheridan Le Fanu



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 precis of the learned Doctor's reasoning, or extract from his statement
on a subject which he deseribes as "involving, not improbably, some of the
profoundest arcana of our dual existenee, and its intermediates."



  I was anxious, on discovering this paper, to re-open the correspondence
commenced by Doctor Hesselius, so many years before, with a person so
clever and careful as his informant seems to have been.  Much to my regret,
however, I found that she had died in the interval.



  She, probably, could have added little to the Narrative which she
communicates in the following pages, with, so far as I can pronounce, such
a conscientious particularity.



CHAPTER 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 marvellously cheap, I really don't
see how ever so much more money would at all materially add to our
comforts, or even luxuries.



  My father was in the Austrian service, and retired upon a pension and his
patrimony, and purchased this feudal residence and the small estate on
which it stands, a bargain.



  Nothing can be more picturesque or solitary.  It stands on a slight
eminence in a forest.  The road, very old and narrow, passes in front of
its drawbridge, never raised in my time, and its moat, stocked with perch,
and sailed over by many swans, and floating on its surface white fleets of
water-lilies.



  Over all this the schloss shows its many-windowed front, its towers, and
its Gothic chapel.



  The forest opens in an irregular and very picturesque glade before its
gate, and at the right a steep Gothic bridge carries the road over a stream
that winds in deep shadow through the wood.



  I have said that this is a very lonely place.  Judge whether I say
truth.  Looking from the hall door towards the road, the forest in which
our castle stands extends fifteen miles to the right and twelve to the
left.  The nearest inhabited village is about seven of your English miles
to the left.  The nearest inhabited schloss of any historic associations is
that of old General Spielsdorf, nearly twenty miles away to the right.



  I have said "the nearest inhabited village" because there is, only three
miles westward, that is to say in the direction of General Spielsdorf's
schloss, a ruined village, with its quaint little church, now roofless, in
the aisle of which are the mouldering tombs of the proud family of
Karnstein, now extinct, who once owned the equally- desolate 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 dependants
who occupy rooms in the buildings attached to the schloss.  Listen, and
wonder!  My father, who is the kindest man on earth, but growing old; and
I, at the date of my story, only nineteen.  Eight years have passed since
then.  I and my father 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 in part supplied to me the loss of my mother, whom I do not
even remember, so early I lost her.  She made a third at our little dinner
party.  There was a fourth, Mademoiselle de Lafontaine, a lady such as you
term, I believe, a "finishing governess." She spoke French and German,
Madame Perrodon French and broken English, to which my father and I added
English, which, partly to prevent its becoming a lost language among us,
and partly from patriotic motives, we spoke every day. The consequence was
a Babel, at which strangers used to laugh, and which I shall make no
attempt to reproduce in this narrative.  And there were two or three young
lady friends besides, pretty nearly of my own age, who were occasional
visitors for longer or shorter terms; and these visits I sometimes
returned.



  These were our regular social resources; but of course there were chance
visits from "neighbours" of only five or six leagues' distance.  My life
was, notwithstanding, rather a solitary one, I can assure you.



  My gouvernantes had just so much control over me as you might conjecture
such sage persons would have in the case of a rather spoiled girl, whose
only parent allowed her pretty nearly her own way in everything.    The
first occurrence in my existence which produced a 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 creaks suddenly, or
the flicker of an expiring candle makes the shadow of a bed-post dance upon
the wall, nearer to our faces.  I was vexed and insulted at finding myself,
as I conceived, neglected, and I began to whimper, preparatory to a hearty
bout of roaring; when, to my surprise, I saw a solemn, but very pretty face
looking at me from the side of the bed.  It was that of a young lady, who
was kneeling, with her hands under the coverlet.  I looked at her with a
kind of pleased wonder, and ceased whimpering.  She caressed me with her
hands, and lay down beside me on the bed, and drew me towards her, smiling;
I felt immediately delightfully soothed, and fell asleep again.  I was
wakened by a sensation as if two needles ran into my breast very deep at
the same moment, and I cried loudly.  The lady started back with her eyes
fixed on me, and then slipped down upon the floor, and, as I thought, hid
herself under the bed.



  I was now for the first time frightened, and I yelled with all my might
and main.  Nurse, nursery-maid, housekeeper, all came 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 small-pox, and his chestnut wig.  For a good while,
every second day, he came and gave me medicine, which of course I hated.



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



  I remember my father coming up and standing at the bedside, and talking
cheerfully, and asking the nurse a number of questions, and laughing very
heartily at one of the answers; and patting me on the shoulder, and kissing
me, and telling me not to be frightened, that it was nothing but a dream
and could not hurt me.



  But I was not comforted, for I knew the visit of the strange woman was
not a dream; and I was awfully frightened.



  I was a little consoled by the nursery-maid's assuring me that it was she
who had come and looked at me, and lain down beside me in the bed, and that
I must have been half- dreaming not to have known her face.  But this,
though supported by the nurse, did not quite satisfy me.



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



  I remember so well the thoughtful sweet face of that white-haired old
man, in his black cassock, as he stood in that rude, lofty, brown room,
with the clumsy furniture of a fashion three hundred years old, about him,
and the scanty light entering its shadowy atmosphere through the small
lattice.  He kneeled, and the three women with him, and he prayed aloud
with an earnest 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.



CHAPTER 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 eye-witness.



  It was a sweet summer evening, and my father asked me, as he sometimes
did, to take a little ramble with him along that beautiful forest vista
which I have mentioned as Iying 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 for some weeks, and we had expected his
arrival next day.  He was to have brought with him a young lady, his niece
and ward, Mademoiselle Rheinfeldt, whom I had never seen, but whom I had
heard described as a very charming girl, and in whose society I had
promised myself many happy days.  I was more disappointed than a young lady
living in a town or a bustling neighbourhood can possibly imagine.  This
visit, and the new acquaintance it promised, had furnished my day-dream for
many weeks.



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



  "Not till autumn.  Not for two months, I dare say," he answered.  "And I
am very glad now, dear, that you never knew Mademoiselle Rheinfeldt."



  "And why?" I asked, both mortified and curious.



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



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



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



  "I am afraid he is in great affliction; the letter appears to me to have
been written very nearly in distraction."



  We sat down on a rude bench, under a group of magnificent lime trees.
The sun was setting with all its melancholy splendour behind the sylvan
horizon, and the stream that flows beside our home, and passes under the
steep old bridge I have mentioned, wound through many a group of noble
trees, almost at our feet, reflecting in its current the fading crimson of
the sky.  General Spielsdorf's letter was so extraordinary, so vehement,
and in some places so self- contradictory, that I read it twice over--the
second time aloud to my father--and was still unable to account for it,
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 shadow 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 marvellous
physical influences connected with life.  Mademoiselle related that her
cousin, who was mate of a merchant ship, having taken a nap on deck on such
a night, lying on his back, with his face full in the light of the moon,
had wakened, after a dream of an old woman clawing him by the cheek, with
his features horribly drawn to one side; and his countenance had never
quite recovered its equilibrium.



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



  There are indolent states of the spirits in which, indisposed to talk
ourselves, the talk of others is pleasant to our listless ears; and I gazed
on, pleased with the tinkle of the ladies' conversation.



  "I have got into one of my moping moods to-night," said my father, after
a silence, and quoting Shakespeare, whom, by way of keeping up our English,
he used to read aloud, he said:   "In truth I know not why I am so sad:
It wearies me; you say it wearies you;    But how I got it--came by it...



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



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



  They seemed to be approaching from the high ground over- looking the
bridge, and very soon the equipage emerged from that point.  Two horsemen
first crossed the bridge, then came a carriage drawn by four horses, and
two men rode behind.



  It seemed to be the travelling carriage of a person of rank; and we were
all immediately absorbed in watching that very unusual spectacle.  It
became, in a few moments, greatly more interesting, for just as the
carriage had passed the summit of the steep bridge, one of the leaders,
taking fright, communicated his panic to the rest, and, after a plunge or
two, the whole team broke into a wild gallop together, and, dashing between
the horsemen who rode in front, came thundering along the road towards us
with the speed of a hurricane.



  The excitement of the scene was made more painful by the clear,
long-drawn screams of a female voice from the carriage window.



  We all advanced in curiosity and horror; my father in silence, the rest
with various ejaculations of terror.  Our suspense did not last long.  Just
before you reach the castle drawbridge, on the route they were coming,
there stands by the roadside a magnificent lime tree, on the other 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 to her wrist and assured the lady, who
declared herself her mother, that her pulse, though faint and irregular,
was undoubtedly still distinguishable.  The lady clasped her hands and
looked upward, as if in a momentary transport of gratitude; but immediately
she broke out again in that theatrical way which is, I believe, natural to
some people.



  She was what is called a fine-looking woman for her time of life, and
must have been handsome; she was tall, but not thin, and dressed in black
velvet, and looked rather pale, but with a proud and commanding
countenance, though now agitated strangely.



  "Was ever beiug 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
aftords no such inn as you could think of placing your daughter at; you
cannot allow her to continue her journey for any considerable distance
without danger.  If, as you say, you cannot suspend your journey, you must
part with her to-night, and nowhere could you do so with more honest
assurances of care and tenderness than here."



  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.



CHAPTER 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 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 coloured turban
on her head, who was gazing all the time from the carriage window, nodding
and grinning derisively towards the ladies, with gleaming eyes and large
white eye-balls, and her teeth set as if in fury.



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



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



  "I dare say they are worn out with too long travelling," said Madame.
"Besides looking wicked, their faces were so strangely lean, and dark, and
sullen.  I am very curious, I own; but I dare say the young lady will tell
us all about it to-morrow, if she is sufficiently recovered."



  "I don't think she will," said my father, with a mysterious smile, and a
little nod of his head, as if he knew more about it than he cared to tell
us.



  This made me all the more inquisitive as to what had passed between him
and the lady in the black velvet, in the brief but earnest interview that
had immediately preceded her departure.



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



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



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



  "At all events it was said," he laughed, "and as you wish to know all
that passed, which was indeed very little, I tell you.  She then said, 'I
am making a long journey of vital importance'--she emphasized the
word--'rapid and secret; I shall return for my child in three months; in
the meantime she will be silent as to who we are, whence we come, and
whither we are travelling.' That is all she said.  She spoke very pure
French.  When she said the word 'secret,' she paused for a few seconds,
looking sternly, her eyes fixed on mine.  I fancy she makes a great point
of that.  You saw how quickly she was gone.  I hope I have not done a very
foolish thing in taking charge of the young lady."



  For my part I was delighted.  I was longing to see and talk to her; and
only waiting till the doctor should give me leave.  You who live in towns
can have no idea how great an event the introduction of a new friend is, in
such a solitude as surrounded us.



  The doctor did not arrive till nearly one o'clock; but I could no more
have gone to my bed and slept, than I could have overtaken, on foot, the
carriage in which the princess in black velvet had driven away.



  When the physician came down to the drawing-room, it was to report very
favourably upon his patient.  She was now sitting up, her pulse quite
regular, apparently perfectly well.  She had sustained no injury, and the
little shock to her nerves had passed quite harmlessly.  There could be no
harm certainly in my seeing her, if we both wished it; and, with this
permission, I sent, forthwith, to know whether she would allow me to visit
her for a few minutes in her room. The servant returned immediately to say
that she desired nothing more.



  You may be sure I was not long in availing myself of this permission.



  Our visitor lay in one of the handsomest rooms in the schloss.  It was,
perhaps, a little stately.  There was a sombre piece of tapestry opposite
the foot of the bed, representing Cleopatra with the asps to her bosom; and
other solemn classic scenes were displayed, a little faded, upon the other
walls.  But there was gold carving, and rich and varied colour enough in
the other decorations of the room, to more than redeem the gloom of the old
tapestry.



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



  What was it that, as I reached the bed-side and had just begun my little
greeting, struck me dumb in a moment, and made me recoil a step or two from
before her?  I will tell you.



  I saw the very face which had visited me in my childhood at night, which
remained so fixed in my memory, and on which I had for so many years so
often ruminated with horror, when no one suspected of what I was thinking.



  It was pretty, even beautiful; and when I first beheld it, wore the same
melancholy expression.



  But this almost instantly lighted into a strange fixed smile of
recognition.



  There was a silence of fully a minute, and then at length she spoke; I
could not.



  "How wonderful!" she exclaimed.  "Twelve years ago, I saw your face in a
dream, and it has haunted me ever since."



  "Wonderful indeed!" I repeated, overcoming with an effort the horror that
had for a time suspended my utterances. "Twelve 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 then saw."



  It was now my turn to relate my corresponding vision, which I did, to the
undisguised wonder of my new acquaintance.



  "I don't know which should be most afraid of the other," she said, again
smiling.  "If you were less pretty I think I should be very much afraid of
you, but being as you are, and you and I both so young, I feel only that I
have made your acquaintance twelve years ago, and have already a right to
your intimacy; at all events, it does seem as if we were destined, from our
earliest childhood, to be friends.  I wonder whether you feel as strangely
drawn towards me as I do to you; I have never had a friend--shall I find
one now?" She sighed, and her fine dark eyes gazed passionately on me.



  Now the truth is, I felt rather unaccountably towards the beautiful
stranger.  I dixd 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 to-night; one of ours is waiting, and you will find her a very
useful and quiet creature."



  "How kind of you, but I could not sleep, I never could with an attendant
in the room.  I shant require any assistance--and, shall I confess my
weakness, I am haunted with a terror of robbers.  Our house was robbed
once, and two servants murdered, so I always lock my door.  It has become a
habit--and you look so kind I know you will forgive me.  I see there is a
key in the lock."



  She held me close in her pretty arms for a moment and whispered in my
ear, "Good-night, darling, it is very hard to part with you, but
good-night; to-morrow, but not early, I shall see you again."



  She sank back on the pillow with a sigh, and her fine eyes followed me
with a fond and melancholy gaze, and she murmured again "Good-night, dear
friend."



  Young people like, and even love, on impulse.  I was flattered by the
evident, though as yet undeserved, fondness she showed me.  I liked the
confidence with which she at once received me.  She was determined that we
should be very dear 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.



CHAPTER 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 colour a rich very dark brown, with something of gold.  I
loved to let it down, tumbling with its own weight; as, in her room, she
lay back in her chair talking in her sweet low voice, I used to fold and
braid it, and spread it out and play with it.  Heavens ! If I had but known
all!



  I said there were particulars which did not please me.  I have told you
that her confidence won me the first night I saw her; but I found that she
exercised with respect to herself, her mother, her history, everything in
fact connected with her life, plans, and people, an ever-wakeful reserve.
I dare say I was unreasonable, perhaps I was wrong; I dare say I ought to
have respected the solemn injunction laid upon my father by the stately
lady in black velvet.  But curiosity is a restless and unscrupulous
passion, and no one girl can endure, with patience, that her's should be
baffled by another.  What harm could it do anyone to tell me what I so
ardently desired to know?  Had she no trust in my good sense or honour?
Why would she not believe me when I assured her, so solemnly, that I would
not divulge one syllable of what she told me to any mortal breathing.



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



  I cannot say we quarrelled upon this point, for she would not quarrel
upon any.  It was, of course, very unfair of me to press her, very illbred,
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 honour,
and with so many promises that I should at last know all, that I could not
find it in my heart long to be offended with her.



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



  And when she had spoken such a rhapsody, she would press 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 ardour of a lover; it embarrassed me; it was
hateful and yet overpowering; and with gloating eyes she drew me to her,
and her hot lips travelled along my cheek in kisses; and she would whisper,
almost in sobs, "You are mine, you shall be mine, and you and I are one for
ever."  Then she has thrown herself back in her chair, with her small hands
over her eyes, leaving me trembling.



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



  I could boast of no little attentions such as masculine gallantry
delights to offer.  Between these passionate moments there were long
intervals of common-place, of gaiety, of brooding melancholy, during which,
except that I detected her eyes so full of melancholy fire following me, at
times I might have been as nothing to her.  Except in these brief periods
of mysterious excitement her ways were girlish; and there was always a
languor about her, quite incompatible with a masculine system in a state of
health.



  In some respects her habits were odd.  Perhaps not so singular in the
opinion of a town lady like you, as they appeared to us rustic people.  She
used to come down very late, generally not till one o'clock, she would then
take a cup of chocolate, but eat nothing; we then went out for a walk,
which was a mere saunter, and she seemed, almost immediately, exhausted,
and either returned to the schloss or sat on one of the benches that were
placed, here and there, among the trees.  This was a bodily languor in
which her mind did not sympathize.  She was always an animated talker, and
very intelligent.



  She sometimes alluded for a moment to her own home, or mentioned an
adventure or situation, or an early recollection, which indicated a people
of strange manners, and described customs of which we knew nothing.  I
gathered from these chance hints that her native country was much more
remote than I had at first fancied.



  As we sat thus one afternoon under the trees a funeral passed us by.  It
was that of a pretty young girl, whom I had often seen, 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 twoand-two came behind, they were singing a funeral hymn.



  I rose to mark my respect as they passed, and joined in the hymn they
were very sweetly singing.    My companion shook me a little roughly, and I
turned surprised.



  She said brusquely, "Don't you perceive how discordant that is?"



  "I think it very sweet, on the contrary," I answered, vexed at the
interruption, and very uncomfortable, lest the people who composed the
little procession should observe and resent what was passing.



  I resumed, therefore, instantly, and was again interrupted.  "You pierce
my ears," said Carmilla, almost angrily, and stopping her ears with her
tiny fingers. "Besides, how can you tell that your religion and mine are
the same; your forms wound me, and I hate funerals.  What a fuss!  Why, you
must die--everyone must die; and all are happier when they do.  Come home."



  "My father has gone on with the clergyman to the churchyard.  I thought
you knew she was to be buried to-day."



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



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



  "Tell me nothing about ghosts.  I shan't sleep to-night if you do."



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



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



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



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



  And so gradually it did; and perhaps to dissipate the sombre impression
which the spectacle had left upon me, she became unusually animated and
chatty; and so we got home.



  This was the first time I had seen her exhibit any definable symptoms of
that delicacy of health which her mother had spoken of.  It was the first
time, also, I had seen her exhibit anything like temper.



  Both passed away like a summer cloud; and never but once afterwards did I
witness on her part a momentary sign of anger.  I will tell you how it
happened.



  She and I were looking out of one of the long drawing-room windows, when
there entered the court-yard, over the draw- bridge, a figure of a wanderer
whom I knew very well.  He used to visit the schloss generally twice a
year.



  It was the figure of a hunchback, with the sharp lean 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 court-yard,
raised his grotesque hat, and made us a very ceremonious bow, paying his
compliments very volubly in execrable French, and German not much better.
Then, disengaging his fiddle, he began to scrape a lively air, to which he
sang with a merry discord, dancing with ludicrous airs and activity that
made me laugh, in spite of the dog's howling.



  Then he advanced to the window with many smiles and salutations, and his
hat in his left hand, his fiddle under his arm, and with a fluency that
never took breath he gabbled a long advertisement of all his
accomplishments, and the resources of the various arts which he placed at
our service, and the curiosities and entertainments which it was in his
power at our bidding to display.



  "Will your ladyships be pleased to buy an amulet against the oupire,
which is going like the wolf, I hear, through these woods," he said,
dropping his hat on the pavement. "They are dying of it right and left, and
here is a charm that never fails; only pinned to 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 pouch, my nippers; I will make it
round and blunt, if her ladyship pleases; no longer the tooth of a fish,
but 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 cartwhip, and burnt to the bones with the
castle brand!"



  She retired from the window a step or two, and sat down, and had hardly
lost sight of the offender when her wrath subsided as suddenly as it had
risen, and she gradually recovered her usual tone and seemed to forget the
little hunchback and his follies.



  My father was out of spirits that evening.  On coming in he told us that
there had been another case very similar to the two fatal ones which had
lately occurred.  The sister of a young peasant on his estate, only a mile
away, was very ill, had been, as she described it, attacked very nearly in
the same way, and was now slowly but steadily sinking.



  "All this," said my father, "is strictly referable to natural causes.
These poor people infect one another with their superstitions, and so
repeat in imagination the images of terror that have infested their
neighbours."



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



  "How so?" inquired my father.



  "I am so afraid of fancying I see such things; I think it would be as bad
as reality."  "We are in God's hands; nothing can happen without His
permission, and all will end well for those who love Him. He is our
faithful creator; He has made us all, and will take care of us."



  "Creator! Nature!" said the young lady in answer to my gentle father.
"And this disease that invades the country is natural.  Nature.  All things
proceed from Nature--don't they?  All things in the heaven, in the earth,
and under the earth, act and live as Nature ordains?  I think so."



  "The doctor said he would come here to-day," said my father, after a
silence.  "I want to know what he thinks about it, and what he thinks we
had better do."



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



  "Then you have been ill?" I asked.



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



  "Long ago?"



  "Yes, a long time.  I suffered from this very illness; but I forget all
but my pain and weakness, and they were not so bad as are suffered in other
diseases."



  "You were very young then?"



  "I dare say; let us talk no more of it.  You would not wound a friend?"
She looked languidly in my eyes, and passed her arm 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, everyone 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.



CHAPTER 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 colour, 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 it, 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 ask 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 colourless and apathetic.



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



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



  "Yes, I will.  I'm better now.  I shall be quite well in a few minutes.
Yes, do give me a little wine, answered Carmilla, as we approached the
door.  "Let us look again for a moment; it is the last time, perhaps, I
shall see the moonlight with you."



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



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



  "Papa would be grieved beyond measure," I added, "if he thought you were
ever so little ill, without immediately letting us know.  We have a very
skilful doctor near this, the physician who was with papa to-day."



  "I'm sure he is.  I know how kind you all are; but, dear child, I am
quite well again.  There is nothing ever wrong with me, but a little
weakness.  People say I am languid; I am incapable of exertion; I can
scarcely walk as far as a child of three years old; and every now and then
the little strength I have falters, and I become as you have just seen me.
But after all I am very easily set up again; in a moment I am perfectly
myself.  See how I have recovered."



  So, indeed, she had; and she and I talked a great deal, and very animated
she was; and the remainder of that evening passed without any recurrence of
what I called her infatuations.  I mean her crazy talk and looks, which
embarrassed and even frightened me.



  But there occurred that night an event which gave my thoughts quite a new
turn, and seemed to startle even Carmilla's languid nature into momentary
energy.



CHAPTER 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 her whether she knew where a letter would reach her at
present.



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



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



  "Thank you, sir, a thousand times for your hospitality," she answered,
smiling bashfully.  "You have all been too kind to me; I have seldom been
so happy in all my life before, as in your beautiful chþteau, 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 baptized, I should have doubted her being a
Christian.  Religion was a subject on which I had never heard her speak a
word.  If I had known the world better, this particular  neglect or
antipathy would not have so much surprised me.



  The precautions of nervous people are infectious, and persons of a like
temperament are pretty sure, after a time, to imitate them. I had adopted
Carmilla's habit of locking her 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 fortified I might take my rest in peace.  But dreams come through
stone walls, light up dark rooms, or darken light ones, and their persons
make their exits and their entrances as they please, and laugh at
locksmiths.



  I had a dream that night that was the beginning of a very strange agony.



  I cannot call it a nightmare, for I was quite conscious of being asleep.
But I was equally conscious of being in my room and Iying 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 hearth-rug 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 bed-clothes, and lay there more dead than
alive till morning.



CHAPTER 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 neighbourhood.  I had myself no
misgivings 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 dare say; 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 we 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 chimney piece, but I felt under my pillow for my charm, and
the moment my fingers touched it the figure disappeared, and I felt quite
certain, only that I had it by me, that something frightful would have made
its appearance, and, perhaps, throttled me, as it did those poor people we
heard of."



  "Well, listen to me," I began, and recounted my adventure, at the recital
of which she appeared horrified.     "And had you the charm near you?" she
asked, earnestly.



  "No, I had dropped it into a china vase in the drawing- room, but I shall
certainly take it with me to-night, as you have so much faith in it."



  At this distance of time I cannot tell you, or even understand, how I
overcame my horror so effectually as to lie alone in my room that night.  I
remember distinctly that I pinned the charm to my pillow.  I fell asleep
almost immediately, and slept even more soundly than usual all night.



  Next night I passed as well.  My sleep was delightfully deep and
dreamless.  But I wakened with a sense of lassitude and melancholy, which,
however, did not exceed a degree that was almost luxurious.



  "Well, I told you so," said Carmilla, when I described my quiet sleep, "I
had such delightful sleep myself last night; I pinned the charm to the
breast of my 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 quite have 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 ardour the more my strength and spirits waned. This always
shocked me like a momentary glare of insanity.



  Without knowing it, I was now in a pretty advanced stage of the strangest
illness under which mortal ever suffered.  There was an unaccountable
fascination in its earlier symptoms that more than reconciled me to the
incapacitating effect of that stage of the malady.  This fascination
increased for a time, until it reached a certain point, when gradually a
sense of the horrible mingled itself with it, deepening, as you shall hear,
until it discoloured and perverted the whole state of my life.



  The first change I experienced was rather agreeable.  It was very near
the turning point from which began the descent of Avernus.



  Certain vague and strange sensations visited me in my sleep.  The
prevailing one was of that pleasant, peculiar cold thrill which we feel in
bathing, when we move against the current of a river.  This was soon
accompanied by dreams that seemed interminable, and were so vague that I
could never recollect their scenery and persons, or any one connected
portion of their action.  But they 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
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 call 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
left it on bidding her good night.  But Carmilla was gone.



CHAPTER 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 by name again.



  It was all to no purpose.  Our perplexity and agitation increased.  We
examined the windows, but they were secured.  I implored of Carmilla, if
she had concealed herself, to play this cruel trick no longer--to come out
and to end our anxieties.  It was all useless.  I was by this time
convinced that she was not in the room, nor in the dressing-room, the door
of which was still locked on this side.  She could not have passed it.  I
was utterly puzzled.  Had Carmilla discovered one of those secret passages
which the old housekeeper said were known to exist in the schloss, although
the tradition of their exact situation had been lost?  A little time would,
no doubt, explain all--utterly perplexed as, for the present, we were.



  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.  Not a trace of the missing lady could be
discovered.  The stream was about to be dragged; my father was in
distraction; what a tale to have to tell the poor girl's mother on her
return.  I, too, was almost beside myself, though my grief was quite of a
different kind.



  The morning was passed in alarm and excitement.  It was now one o'clock,
and still no tidings.  I ran up to Carmilla's room, and found her standing
at her dressing-table.  I was astounded.  I could not believe my eyes.  She
beckoned me to her with her pretty finger, in silence.  Her face expressed
extreme fear.



  I ran to her in an ecstasy of joy; I kissed and embraced her again and
again.  I ran to the bell and rang it vehemently, to bring others to the
spot, who might at once relieve my father's anxiety.



  "Dear Carmilla, what has become of you all this time? We have been in
agonies of anxiety about you," I exclaimed. "Where have you been?  How did
you come back?"



  "Last night has been a night of wonders," she said.



  "For mercy's sake, explain all you can."



  "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 dressingroom and that opening
upon the gallery.  My sleep was uninterrupted and, so far as I know,
dreamless; but I awoke just now on the sofa in the dressing-room there, and
I found the door between the rooms open, and the other door forced.  How
could all this have happened without my being wakened?  It must have been
accompanied with a great deal of noise, and I am particularly easily
wakened; and how could I have been carried out of my bed without my sleep
having been interrupted, I whom the slightest stir startles?"



  By this time Madame, Mademoiselle, my father, and a number of the
servants were in the room.  Carmilla was, of course, overwhelmed with
inquiries, congratulations, and welcomes.  She had but one story to tell,
and seemed the least able of all the party to suggest any way of accounting
for what had happened.



  My father took a turn up and down the room, thinking.  I saw Carmilla's
eye follow him for a moment with a sly, dark glance.



  When my father had sent the servants away, Mademoiselle having gone in
search of a little bottle of valerian and sal- volatile, and there being no
one now in the room with Carmilla except my father, Madame, and myself, he
came to her thoughtfully, took her hand very kindly, led her to the sofa,
and sat down beside her.



  "Will you forgive me, my dear, if I risk a conjecture, and ask a
question?"



  "Who can have a better right?" she said.  "Ask what you please, and I
will tell you everything.  But my story is simply one of bewilderment and
darkness.  I know absolutely nothing. Put any question you please.  But you
know, of course, the limitations mamma has placed me under."



  "Perfectly, my dear child.  I need not approach the topics on which she
desires our silence.  Now, the marvel of last night consists in your having
been removed from your bed and your room without being wakened, and this
removal having occurred apparently while the windows were still secured,
and the two doors locked upon the inside.  I will tell you my theory, and
first ask you a question."



  Carmilla was leaning on her hand dejectedly; Madame and I were listening
breathlessly.



  "Now, my question is this, Have you ever been suspected of walking in
your sleep?"



  "Never since I was very young indeed."



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



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



  My father smiled and nodded.



  "Well, what has happened is this.  You got up in your sleep, unlocked the
door, not leaving the key as usual in the lock, but 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 anyone 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.



CHAPTER 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 could
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 further end. Not a word could we hear,
however, for they spoke in a very low tone, and the deep recess of the
window quite concealed the doctor from view, and very nearly my father,
whose foot, arm, and shoulder only could we see; and the voices were, I
suppose, all the less audible for the sort of closet which the thick wall
and window formed.



  After a time my father's face looked into the room; it was pale,
thoughtful, and, I fancied, agitated.



  "Laura dear, come here for a moment.  Madame, we shan't trouble you, the
doctor says, at present."



  Accordingly I approached, for the first time a little alarmed; 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 ean 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 thc 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 centre
of that thrill which you described just now, like the current of a cold
stream running against you?"



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



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



  "Certainly," said my father.



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



  In the meantime, Madame and I were both busy, lost in conjecture as to
the reasons of the singular and earnest direction which the doctor and my
father had concurred in imposing.  Madame, as she afterwards told me, was
afraid the doctor apprehended a sudden seizure, and that, without prompt
assistance, I might either lose my life in a fit, or at least be seriously
hurt.



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



  About half-an-hour after my father came in--he had a letter in his
hand--and said:   "This letter had been delayed; it is from General
Spielsdorf.  He might have been here yesterday, he may not come till
tomorrow, or he may be here to-day."



  He put the open letter into my hand; but he did not look pleased, as he
used when a guest, especially one so much loved as the General, was
coming.  On the contrary, he looked as if he wished him at the bottom of
the Red Sea.  There was plainly something on his mind which he did not
choose to divulge.



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



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



  "Does the doctor think me very ill?"



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



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



  "Nothing; you must not plague me with questions," he answered, with more
irritation than I ever remember him to have displayed before; and seeing
that I looked wounded, I suppose, he kissed me, and added, "You shall know
all about it in a day or two; that is, all that I know.  In the meantime,
you are not to trouble your head about it."



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



  At twelve o'clock, accordingly, I was ready, and not long after my
father, Madame and I set out upon our projected drive. Passing the
drawbridge we turn to the right and follow the road over the steep Gothic
bridge, westward, to reach the deserted village and ruined castle of
Karnstein.



  No sylvan drive can be fancied prettier.  The ground breaks into gentle
hills and hollows, all clothed with beautiful 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 waggon, 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.



CHAPTER 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 marvellous--for what I have experienced is marvellous--and I
have been forced by extraordinary evidence to credit that which ran
counter, diametrically, to all my theories. I have been made the dupe of a
preternatural conspiracy."



  Notwithstanding his professions of confidence in the General's
penetration, I saw my father, at this point, glance at the General, with,
as I thought, a marked suspicion of his sanity.     The General did not see
it, luckily.  He was looking gloomily and curiously into the glades and
vistas of the woods that were opening before us.



  "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 dear 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 travelling
to Karnstein.



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



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



CHAPTER 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 fþtes which,
you remember, were given by him in honour of his illustrious visitor, the
Grand Duke Charles."



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



  "Princely!  But then his hospitalities are quite regal. He has Aladdin's
lamp.  The night from which my sorrow dates was devoted to a magnificent
masquerade.  The grounds were thrown open, the trees hung with coloured
lamps.  There was such a display of fireworks as Paris itself had never
witnessed.  And such music--music, you know, is my weakness--such ravishing
music! 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 beautififl.  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 licence of a masquerade, I put
not a few questions to the elder lady.



  "'You have puzzled me utterly,' I said, laughing.  'Is that not enough?
won't you, now, consent to stand on equal terms, and do me the kindness to
remove your mask?'



  "'Can any request be more unreasonable?' she replied. 'Ask a lady to
yield an advantage!  Beside, how do you know you should recognize me?
Years make changes.'



  "'As you see,' I said, with a bow, and, I suppose, a rather melancholy
little laugh.



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



  "'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 had taught to
be indulgent, and I may not like to be compared with what you remember me.
You have no mask to remove. You can offer me nothing in exchange.'     "'My
petition is to your pity, to remove it.'



  "'And mine to yours, to let it stay where it is,' she replied.



  "'Well, then, at least you will tell me whether you are French or German;
you speak both languages so perfectly.'



  "'I don't think I shall tell you that, General; you intend a surprise,
and are meditating the particular point of attack.'



  "'At all events, you won't deny this,' I said, 'that being honoured by
your permission to converse, I ought to know how to address you.  Shall I
say Madame la Comtesse?'



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



  "'As to that,' she began; but she was interrupted, almost as she opened
her lips, by a gentleman, dressed in black, who looked particularly elegant
and distinguished, with this drawback, that his face was the most deadly
pale I ever saw, except in death.  He was in no masquerade--in the plain
evening dress of a gentleman; and he said, without a smile, but with a
courtly and unusually low bow:   "'Will Madame la Comtesse permit me to say
a very few words which may interest her?'



  "The lady turned quickly to him, and touched her lip in token of silence;
she then said to me, 'Keep my place for me, General; I shall return when I
have said a few words.'



  "And with this injunction, playfully given, she walked a little aside
with the gentleman in black, and talked for some minutes, apparently very
earnestly.  They then walked away slowly together in the crowd, and I lost
them for some minutes.



  "I spent the interval in cudgelling my brains for 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, chþteau, 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.



CHAPTER 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
practise as to my name from making a very singular request of you. My poor
child has not quite recovered her strength.  Her horse fell with her, at a
hunt which she had ridden out to witness, her nerves have not yet recovered
the shock, and our physician says that she must on no account exert herself
for some time to come.  We came here, in consequence, by very easy
stages--hardly six leagues a day.  I must now travel day and night, on a
mission of life and death--a mission the critical and momentous nature of
which I shall be able to explain to you when we meet, as I hope we shall,
in a few weeks, without the necessity of any concealment.



  "She went on to make her petition, and it was in the tone of a person
from whom such a request amounted to conferring, rather than seeking, a
favour.  This was only in manner, and, as it seemed, quite unconsciously.
Than the terms in which it was expressed, nothing could be more
deprecatory.  It was simply that I would consent to take charge of her
daughter during her absence.



  "This was, all things considered, a strange, not to say an audacious
request.  She in some sort disarmed me by stating and admitting everything
that could be urged against it, and throwing herself entirely upon my
chivalry.  At the same moment, by a fatality that seems to have
predetermined all that happened, my poor child came to my side, and, in an
undertone, besought me to invite her new friend, Millarca, to pay us a
visit.  She had just been sounding her, and thought, if her mamma would
allow her, she would like it extremely.



  "At another time I should have told her to wait a little, until, at
least, we knew who they were.  But I had no 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 demeanour of this gentleman was such as to impress me with the
conviction that the Countess was a lady of very much more importance than
her modest title alone might have led me to assume.



  "Her last charge to me was that no attempt was to be made to learn more
about her than I might have already guessed, until her return.  Our
distinguished host, whose guest she was, knew her reasons.



  "'But here,' she said, 'neither I nor my daughter could safely remain for
more than a day.  I removed my mask imprudently for a 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 should have thrown myself on your high sense of honour to keep my secret
for some weeks.  As it is, I am satisfied that you did not see me; but if
you now suspect, or, on reflection, should suspect, who I am, I commit
myself, in like manner, entirely to your honour.  My daughter will observe
the same 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 hcr 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 thc
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 illnatured, 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 i`act 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 into 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.



CHAPTER 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 Ieaving 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
spectre, sometimes resembling Millarca, sometimes in the shape of a beast,
indistinctly seen, walking round the foot of her bed, from side to side.
Lastly came sensations.  One, not unpleasant, but very peculiar, she said,
resembled the flow of an icy stream against her breast.  At a later time,
she felt something like a pair of large needles pierce her, a little below
the throat, with a very sharp pain.  A few nights after, followed a gradual
and convulsive sense of strangulation; then came unconsciousness.



  I could hear distinctly every word the kind old General was saying,
because by this time we were driving upon the short grass that spreads on
either side of the road as you approach the roofless village which had not
shown the smoke of a chimney for more than half a century.



  You may guess how strangely I felt as I heard my own symptoms so exactly
described in those which had been experienced by the poor girl who, but for
the catastrophe which followed, would have been at that moment a visitor at
my father's chþteau.  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 blood-stained annals were written," he continued.  "It
is hard that they should, after death, continue to plague the human race
with their atrocious lusts.  That is the chapel of the Karnsteins, do-vn
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 ùvould have justified its being so
styled--" but one obj ect 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 run, 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 for vard 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 travelling this way, heard how matters were, and being
skilled--as many people are in his country--in such affairs, he offered to
deliver the village from its tormentor.  He did so thus: There being a
bright moon that night, he ascended, shortly after sunset, the tower of the
chapel here, from whence he could distinctly see the churchyard beneath
him; you can see it from that window.  From this point he watched until he
saw the vampire come out of his grave, and place near it the linen clothes
in which he had been folded, and 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.



CHAPTER 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
upon her disease, for such I then supposed it to be.  He saw my alarm, and
suggested a consultation.  I called in an abler physician from Gratz.
Several days elapsed before he arrived.  He was a good and pious, as well
as a learned man.  Having seen my poor ward together, they withdrew to my
library to confer and discuss.  I, from the adjoining room, where I awaited
their summons, heard these two gentlemen's voices raised in something
sharper than a strictly philosophical discussion.  I knocked at the door
and entered.  I found the old physician from Gratz maintaining his theory.
His rival was combating it with undisguised ridicule, accompanied with
bursts of laughter.  This unseemly manifestation subsided and the
altercation ended on my entrance.



  "'Sir,' said my first physician, 'my learned brother seems to think that
you want a conjuror, and not a doctor.'



  "'Pardon me,' said the old physician from Gratz, looking displeased, 'I
shall state my own view of the case in my own way 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 honour to suggest something to you.'



  "He seemed thoughtful, and sat down at a table and began to write.
Profoundly disappointed I made my bow, and, as I turned to go, the other
doctor pointed over his shoulder to his companion who was writing, and
then, with a shrug, significantly touched his forehead.



  "This consultation, then, left me precisely where I was. I walked out
into the grounds, all but distracted.  The doctor from Gratz in ten or
fifteen minutes overtook me.  He apologized for having followed me, but
said that he could not conscientiously take his leave without a few words
more.  He told me that he could not be mistaken; no natural disease
exhibited the same symptoms; and that death was already very near.  There
remained, however, a day, or possibly two, of life.  If the fatal seizure
were at once arrested, with great care and skill her strength might
possibly return.  But all hung now upon the confines of the irrevocable.
One more assault might extinguish the last spark of vitality which is,
every moment, ready to die.



  "'And what is the nature of the seizure you speak of?' I entreated.



  "'I have stated all fully in this note, which I place in your hands, upon
the distinct condition that you send for the nearest clergyman, and open my
letter in his presence, and on no account read it till he is with you; you
would despise it else, and it is a matter of life and death.  Should the
priest fail you, then, indeed, you may read it.'



  "He asked me, before taking his leave finally, whether I would wish to
see a man curiously learned upon the very subject which, after I had read
his letter, would probably interest me above all others, and he urged me
earnestly to invite him to visit him there; and so took his leave.



  "The ecclesiastic was absent, and I read the letter by myself. At another
time, or in another case, it might have excited my ridicule.  But into what
quackeries will not people rush for a last chance, where all accustomed
means have failed, and the life of a beloved object is at stake?



  "Nothing, you will say, could be more absurd than the learned man's
letter.  It was monstrous enough to have consigned him to a madhouse.  He
said that the patient was suffering from the visits of a vampire!  The
punctures which she described as having occurred near the throat, were, he
insisted, the insertion of those two long, thin, and sharp teeth which, it
is well known, are peculiar to vampires; and there could be no doubt, he
added, as to the well-defined presence of the small livid mark which all
concurred in describing as that induced by the demon's lips, and every
symptom described by the sufferer was in exact conformity with those
recorded in every case of a similar visitation.



  "Being myself wholly sceptical as to the existence of any such portent as
the vampire, the supernatural theory of the good doctor furnished, in my
opinion, but another instance of learning 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 toward 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 ùvhat, I struck at her instantly
with my sword; but I saw her standing near the door, unscathed. Horrified,
I pursued and struck again.  She was gone! and my sword flew to shivers
against the door.



  "I can't describe to you all that passed on that horrible night. The
whole house was up and stirring.  The spectre Millarca was gone.  But her
victim was sinking fast, and before the morning dawned, she died."



  The old General was agitated.  We did not speak to him. 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
Generalleanedagainstthewall,driedhiseyes,andsighedheavily. I was relieved
on hearing the voices of Carmilla and Madame, who were at that moment
approaching.  The voices died away.



  In this solitude, having just listened to so strange a story, connected,
as it was, with the great and titled dead, whose monuments were mouldering
among the dust and ivy round us, and every incident of which bore so
awfully upon my own mysterious case--in this haunted spot, darkened by the
towering foliage that rose on every side, dense and high above its
noiseless walls--a horror began to steal over me, and my heart sank as I
thought that my friends were, after all, not about to enter and disturb
this triste and ominous scene.



  The old General's eyes were fixed on the ground, as he leaned with his
hand upon the basement of a shattered monument.



  Under a narrow, arched doorway, surmounted by one of those demoniacal
grotesques in which the cynical and ghastly fancy of old Gothic carving
delights, I saw very gladly the beautiful face and figure of Carmilla enter
the shadowy chapel.



  I was just about to rise and speak, and nodded smiling, in answer to her
peculiarly engaging smile; when, with a cry, the old man by my side caught
up the woodman's hatchet, and started forward.  On seeing him a brutalized
change came over her features.  It was an instantaneous and horrible
transformation, 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."



CHAPTER 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 shoul ders.  He wore a pair of gold spectacles, and walked
slowly, with an odd shambling gait, while his face, sometimes turned up to
the sky and sometimes bowed down toward 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
side-wall, which they began to examine with great minuteness: pulling off
the ivy that clung over it, and rapping the plaster with the ends of their
sticks, scraping here, and knocking there.  At length they ascertained the
existence of a broad marble tablet, with letters carved in relief upon it.



  With the assistance of the woodman, who soon returned, a monumental
inscription and carved escutcheon were disclosed.  They proved to be those
of the long-lost monument of Mircalla, Countess Karnstein.



  The old General, though not I fear given to the praying mood, raised his
hands and eyes to heaven in mute thanksgiving for some moments.



  "To-morrow," I heard him say, "the commissioner will be here, and the
Inquisition will be held according to law."



  Then turning to the old man with the gold spectacles, whom I have
described, he shook him warmly by both hands and said:   "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 knew that
he had led them out of hearing, that he might relate my case, and I saw
them glance often quickly at me as the discussion proceeded.     My father
came to me, kissed me again and again, and leading me from the chapel,
said:   "It is time to return, but before we go home we must add to our
party the good priest, who lives but a little way from this, and persuade
him to accompany us to the schloss."



  In this quest we were successful: and I was glad, being unspeakably
fatigued when we reached home.  But my satisfaction was changed to dismay
on discovering that there were no tidings of Carmilla.  Of the scene that
had occurred in the ruined chapel, no explanation was offered to me, and it
was clear that it was a secret which my father for the present determined
to keep from me.



  The sinister absence of Carmilla made the remembrance of the scene more
horrible to me.  The arrangements for that night were singular.  Two
servants and Madame were to sit up in my room that night; and the
ecclesiastic with my father kept watch in the adjoining dressing-room.



  The priest had performed certain solemn rites that night, the purport of
which I did not understand any more than I comprehended the reason of this
extraordinary precaution taken for my safety during sleep.



  I saw all clearly a few days later.



  The disappearance of Carmilla was followed by the discontinuance of my
nightly sufferings.



  You have heard, no doubt, of the appalling superstition that prevails in
Upper and Lower Styria, in Moravia, Silesia, in Turkish Servia, in Poland,
even in Russia; the superstition, so we must call it, of the vampire.



  If human testimony, taken with every care and solemnity, judicially,
before commissions innumerable, each consisting of many members, all chosen
for integrity and intelligence, and constituting reports more voluminous
perhaps than exist upon any one other class of cases, is worth anything, it
is difflcult 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 coffln.  The two
medical men, one officially present, the other on the part of the promoter
of the inquiry, attested the marvellous fact that there was a faint but
appreciable respiration and a corresponding action of the heart.  The limbs
were perfectly flexible, the flesh elastic; and the leaden coffin floated
with blood, in which to a depth of seven inches the body lay immersed.
Here, then, were all the admitted signs and proofs of vampirism.  The body,
therefore, in accordance with the ancient practice, was raised, and a sharp
stake driven through the heart of the vampire, who uttered a piercing
shriek at the moment, in all respects such as might escape from a living
person in the last agony.  Then the head was struck off, and a torrent of
blood flowed from the severed neck.  The body and head were 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.



CHAPTER 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 marvellously authenticated tradition of vampirism.  He
had at his fingers' ends all the great and little works upon the subject,
Magia Posthuma, Phlegon de Mirabilibus, Augustinus de cura pro Mortuis,
Philosophicoe et Christianoe 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 s renewed slumber in the grave.  Its horrible lust for living
blood supplies the vigour of its waking existence.  The vampire is prone to
be fascinated with an engrossing vehemence, resembling the passion of love,
by particular persons.  In pursuit of these it will exercise inexhaustible
patience and stratagem, for access to a particular object may be obstructed
in a hundred ways.  It will never desist until it has satiated its passion,
and drained the very life of its coveted victim.  But it will, in these
cases, husband and protract its murderous enjoyment with the refinement of
an epicure, and heighten it by the gradual approaches of an artful
courtship.  In these cases it seems to yearn for something like sympathy
and consent.  In ordinary ones it goes direct to its object, overpowers
with violence, and strangles and exhausts often at a single feast.



  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 Millarca.



The Baron's grotesque features puckered up into a mysterious smile; he
looked down, still smiling on his worn spectacle-case andfumbled with it.
Then looking up, hesaid:



  "I have many journals, and other papers, written by that remarkable man;
the most curious among them is one treating of the visit of which you
speak, to Karnstein.  The tradition, of course, discolours and distorts a
little.  He might have been termed a Moravian nobleman, for he had changed
his abode to that territory, and was, beside, a noble.  But he was, in
truth, a native of Upper Styria.  It is enough to say that in very early
youth he had been a passionate and favoured lover of the beautiful
Mircalla, Countess Karnstein.  Her early death plunged him into
inconsolable grief. It is the nature of vampires to increase and multiply,
but according to an ascertained and ghostly law.



  "Assume, at starting, a territory perfectly free from that pest. How does
it begin, and how does it multiply itself?  I will tell you.  A person,
more or less wicked, puts an end to himself.  A suicide, under certain
c*cumstances, becomes a vampire. That spectre visits living people in their
slumbers; they die, and almost invariably, in the grave, develop into
vampires. This happened in the case of the beautiful Mircalla, who was
haunted by one of those demons.  My ancestor, Vordenburg, whose title I
still bear, soon discovered this, and in the course of the studies to which
he devoted himself, learned a great deal more.



  "Among other things, he concluded that suspicion of vampirism would
probably fall, sooner or later, upon the dead Countess, who in life had
been his idol.  He conceived a horror, be she what she might, of her
remains being profaned by the outrage of a posthumous execution.  He has
left a curious paper to prove that the vampire, on its expulsion from its
amphibious existence, is projected into a far more horrible life; and he
resolved to save his once beloved Mircalla from this.



  "He adopted the stratagem of a journey here, a pretended removal of her
remains, and a real obliteration of her monument. When age had stolen upon
him, and from the vale of years he looked back on the scenes he was
leaving, he considered, in a different spirit, what he had done, and a
horror took possession of him.  He made the tracings and notes which have
guided me to the very spot, and drew up a confession of the deception that
he had practised. If he had intended any further action in this matter,
death prevented him; and the hand of a remote descendant has, too late for
many, directed the pursuit to the lair of the beast."



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



 "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.



(End.)