tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-48833012476751272912024-03-21T13:34:26.609-07:00Yorick`s callUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger57125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4883301247675127291.post-544668378430626662013-06-10T05:23:00.001-07:002013-06-10T05:23:14.393-07:00<!-- Song Player http://playlist.me --><script data-config="{'skin':'skins/black/skin.css','volume':50,'autoplay':true,'shuffle':false,'repeat':1,'placement':'bottom','showplaylist':false,'playlist':[{'title':'Elend - Moon Of Amber ','url':'http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rf7uHcEPiDI'},{'title':'Moonspell - Vampiria ','url':'http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SS7sos5YCs'},{'title':'Theater of Tragedy - Cassandra','url':'http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hkscSj1zO0'},{'title':'Dark Sanctuary - La r%EAveuse ','url':'http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2h453AIPw4&list=PL8C182E2664277DA1'},{'title':'ATARAXIA - Fountains','url':'http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLEWH8G2wu0'},{'title':'Charles Cases - Dagon','url':'http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezijviKZVYM'},{'title':'Chaostar - Project Atom Traveller ','url':'http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F42oZTuiAY8'},{'title':'Les Fragments de la Nuit - La Ronde des F%E9es ','url':'http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhSJJZzONz8'},{'title':'Daemonia Nymphe - Nymphs Of The Seagod Nereus ','url':'http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbUpcwUy8uk'},{'title':'Decoryah - Some Drops Beyond the Essence','url':'http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sStROROz2M'},{'title':'Requiem - Silentium','url':'http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9-yI0NEGL8'},{'title':'Diary of Dreams - Painkiller','url':'http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgK1UXHLkgg'}]}" src="http://playlist.me/w/script.js" type="text/javascript"></script><noscript><a href="http://playlist.me/skins/">SCM player skins</a></noscript><!-- playlist.me script end -->Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4883301247675127291.post-54082307879814576862012-02-17T04:33:00.000-08:002012-02-17T05:06:52.113-08:00The Last of the Vampires by Phil Robinson (1893)<a style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKBr-ypdzUtN4wk5bnVzlBGykM-YJgL9cLuWOHT6GpaWt2rQfZQtAhr-RvHLEPPRL3lOiZveixJJH-vmet5XXUwDjnxMXpkrphZmkcpj-ooc9P-tf9axgAagWm-bvKRldjjRp2Aj154ros/s1600/remedios_varo-vampiro.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 190px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKBr-ypdzUtN4wk5bnVzlBGykM-YJgL9cLuWOHT6GpaWt2rQfZQtAhr-RvHLEPPRL3lOiZveixJJH-vmet5XXUwDjnxMXpkrphZmkcpj-ooc9P-tf9axgAagWm-bvKRldjjRp2Aj154ros/s320/remedios_varo-vampiro.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5710082288163488690" border="0" /></a><br style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;"><b style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);">Do you remember the discovery of the "man-lizard" bones in a cave on the Amazon some time in the forties? Perhaps not.<br /><br />But it created a great stir at the time in the scientific world and in a lazy sort of way, interested men and women of fashion. For a day or two it was quite the correct thing for Belgravia to talk of "connecting links," of "the evolution of man from the reptile," or "the reasonableness of the ancient myths" that spoke of Centaurs and Mermaids as actual existences.<br /><br />The fact was that a German Jew, an india-rubber merchant, wending his way with the usual mob of natives through a cahucho forest along the Marañon, came upon some bones on the river-bank where he had pitched his camp. Idle curiosity made him try to put them together, when he found, to his surprise, that he had before him the skeleton of a creature with human legs and feet, a dog-like skull, and immense bat-like wings. Being a shrewd man, he saw the possibility of money being made out of such a curiosity; so he put all the bones he could find into a sack and, on the back of a llama they were in due course conveyed to Chachapoyas, and thence to Germany.<br /><br />Unfortunately, his name happened to be the same as that of another German Jew who had just then been trying to hoax the scientific world with some papyrus rolls of a date anterior to the Flood, and who had been found out and put to shame. So when his namesake appeared with the bones of a winged man, he was treated with very scant ceremony.<br /><br />However, he sold his india-rubber very satisfactorily, and as for the bones, he left them with a young medical student of the ancient University of Bierundwurst, and went back to his cahucho trees, his natives and the banks of the Amazon. And there was an end of them.<br /><br />The young student one day put his fragments together, and, do what he would, could only make one thing of them—a winged man with a dog's head.<br /><br />There were a few ribs too many, and some odds and ends of backbone which were superfluous; but what else could be expected of the anatomy of so extraordinary a creature? From one student to another the facts got about, and at last the professors came to hear of it, and, to cut a long story short, the student's skeleton was taken to pieces by the learned heads of the college, and put together again by their own learned hands.<br /><br />But do what they would, they would only make one thing of it—a winged man with a dog's head.<br /><br />The matter now became serious: the professors were at first puzzled, and then got quarrelsome; and the result of their squabbling was that pamphlets and counterblasts were published; and so all the world got to hear of the bitter controversy about the "man-lizard of the Amazon."<br /><br />One side declared, of course, that such a creature was an impossibility, and that the bones were a remarkably clever hoax. The other side retorted by challenging the sceptics to manufacture a duplicate, and publishing the promise of such large rewards to any one who would succeed in doing so, that the museum was beset for months by competitors. But no one could manufacture another man-lizard. The man part was simple enough, provided they could get a human skeleton. But at the angles of the wings were set huge claws, black, polished, and curved, and nothing that ingenuity could suggest would imitate them. And then the "Genuinists," as those who believed in the monster called themselves, set the "Imposturists" another poser; for they publicly challenged them to say what animal either the head or the wings had belonged to, if not to the man-lizard? And the answer was never given.<br /><br />So victory remained with them, but not, alas! the bones of contention. For the Imposturists, by bribery and burglary, got access the precious skeleton, and lo! one morning the glory of the museum had disappeared. The man half of it was left, but the head and wings were gone, and from that day to this no one has ever seen them again.<br /><br />And which of the two factions was right? As a matter of fact, neither; as the following fragments of narrative will go to prove.<br /><br />Once upon a time, so say the Zaporo Indians, who inhabit the district between the Amazon and the Marañon, there came across to Pampas de Sacramendo a company of gold-seekers, white men, who drove the natives from their workings and took possession of them.<br /><br />They were the first white men who had ever been seen there, and the Indians were afraid of their guns; but eventually treachery did the work of courage, for, pretending to be friendly, the natives sent their women among the strangers, and they taught them how to make tucupi out of the bread-root, but did not tell them how to distinguish between the ripe and the unripe. So the wretched white men made tucupi out of the unripe fruit (which brings on fits like epilepsy) and when they were lying about the camp, helpless, the Indians attacked them and killed them all.<br /><br />All except three. These three they gave to the Vampire.<br /><br />But what was the Vampire? The Zaporos did not know. "Very long ago," said they, "there were many vampires in Peru, but they were all swallowed up in the year of the Great Earthquake when the Andes were lifted up, and there was left behind only one 'Arinchi,' who lived where the Amazon joins the Marañon, and he would not eat dead bodies—only live ones, from which the blood would flow."<br /><br />So far the legend; and that it had some foundation in fact is proved by the records of the district, which tell of more than one massacre of white gold-seekers on the Marañon by Indians whom they had attempted to oust from the washings; but of the Arinchi, the Vampire, there is no official mention. Here, however, other local superstitions help us to the reading of the riddle of the man-lizard of the University at Bierundwurst.<br /><br />When sacrifice was made to "the Vampire," the victim was bound in a canoe, and taken down the river to a point where there was a kind of winding back-water, which had shelving banks of slimy mud, and at the end there was a rock with a cave in it. And here the canoe was left. A very slow current flowed through the tortuous creek, and anything thrown into the water ultimately reached the cave. Some of the Indians had watched the canoes drifting along, a few yards only in an hour, and turning round and round as they drifted, and had seen them reach the cave and disappear within. And it had been a wonder to them, generation after generation that the cave was never filled up, for all day long the current was flowing into it, carrying with it the sluggish flotsam of the river. So they said that the cave was the entrance to Hell, and bottomless.<br /><br />And one day a white man, a professor of that same University of Bierundwurst, and a mighty hunter of beetles before the Lord, lived with the Indians in friendship, went up the backwater, right up to the entrance, and set afloat inside the cave a little raft, heaped up with touch-wood and knots of the oil-tree, which he set fire to and he saw the raft go creeping along, all ablaze, for an hour and more, lighting up the wet walls of the cave as it went on either side; and then it was put out.<br /><br />It did not "go" out suddenly, as if it had upset, or had floated over the edge of a waterfall, but just as if it had been beaten out.<br /><br />For the burning fragments were flung to one side and the other, and the pieces, still alight, glowed for a long time on the ledges and flints of rock where they fell, and the cave was filled with the sound of a sudden wind and the echoes of the noise of great wings flapping.<br /><br />And at last, one day, this professor went into the cave himself. "I took," he wrote, "a large canoe, and from the bows I built up a brazier of stout cask-hoops, and behind it set a gold-washing tin tub for a reflector, and loaded the canoe with roots of the resin-tree, and oil-wood, and yams, and dried meat; and I took spears with me, one tipped with the woorali poison, that numbs but does not kill. And so I drifted inside the cave; and I lit my fire, and with my pole I guided the canoe very cautiously through the tunnel, and before long it widened out, and creeping along one wall I suddenly became aware of a moving of something on the opposite side.<br /><br />"So I turned the light fair upon it, and there, upon a kind of ledge, sat a beast with a head like a large grey dog. Its eyes were as large as a cow's.<br /><br />"What its shape was I could not see. But as I looked I began gradually to make out two huge bat-like wings, and these were spread out to their utmost as if the beast were on tiptoe and ready to fly. And so it was. For just as I had realised that I beheld before me some great bat-reptile of a kind unknown to science, except as prediluvian, and the shock had thrilled through me at the thought that I was actually in the presence of a living specimen of the so-called extinct flying lizards of the Flood, the thing launched itself upon the air, and the next instant it was upon me.<br /><br />"Clutching on to the canoe, it beat with its wings at the flame so furiously that it was all I could do to keep the canoe from capsizing, and, taken by surprise, I was nearly stunned by the strength and rapidity of its blows before I attempted to defend myself.<br /><br />"By that time—scarcely half a minute had elapsed—the brazier had been nearly emptied by the powerful brute; and the vampire, mistaking me no doubt for a victim of sacrifice, had already taken hold of me. The next instant I had driven a spear clean through its body, and with a prodigious tumult of wings, the thing loosed its claws from my clothes and dropped off into the stream.<br /><br />"As quickly as possible I rekindled my light, and now saw the Arinchi, with wings outstretched upon the water, drifting down on the current. I followed it.<br /><br />"Hour after hour, with my reflector turned full upon that grey dog's head with cow-like eyes, I passed along down the dark and silent waterway. I ate and drank as I went along, but did not dare fall sleep. A day must have passed, and two nights; and then, as of course I had all along expected, I saw right ahead a pale eye-shaped glimmer, and knew that I was coming out into daylight again.<br /><br />"The opening came nearer and nearer, and it was with intense eagerness that I gazed upon my trophy, the floating Arinchi, the last of the Winged Reptiles.<br /><br />"Already in imagination I saw myself the foremost of travellers in European fame—the hero of my day. What were Bank's kangaroos or Du Chaillu's gorilla to my discovery of the last survivor of the pterodactyles, of the creatures of Flood—the flying Saurian of the pre-Noachian epoch of catastrophe and mud?<br /><br />"Full of these thoughts, I had not noticed that the vampire was no longer moving, and suddenly the bow of the canoe bumped against it. In an instant it had climbed up on to the boat. Its great bat-like wings once more beat me and scattered the flaming brands, and the thing made a desperate effort to get past me back into the gloom. It had seen the daylight approaching and rather than face the sun, preferred to fight.<br /><br />"Its ferocity was that of a maddened dog, but I kept it off with my pole, and seeing my opportunity as it clung, flapping its wings, upon the bow, gave it such a thrust as made it drop off. It began to swim (I then for the first time noticed its long neck), but with my pole I struck it on the head and stunned it, and once more saw it go drifting on the current into daylight.<br /><br />"What a relief it was to be out in the open air! It was noon, and as we passed out from under the entrance of the cave, the river blazed so in the sunlight that after the two days of almost total darkness I was blinded for a time. I turned my canoe to the shore, to the shade of trees, and throwing a noose over the floating body, let it tow behind.<br /><br />"Once more on firm land—and in possession of the Vampire!<br /><br />"I dragged it out of the water. What a hideous beast it looked, this winged kangaroo with a python's neck! It was not dead; so I made a muzzle with a strip of skin, and then I firmly bound its wings together round its body. I lay down and slept. When I awoke, the next day was breaking; so, having breakfasted, I dragged my captive into the canoe and went on down the river. Where I was I had no idea; but I knew that I was going to the sea: going to Germany: and that was enough.<br /><br />* * * *<br /><br />"For two months I have been drifting with the current down this never-ending river. Of my adventures, of hostile natives, of rapids, of alligators, and jaguars, I need say nothing. They are the common property of all travellers. But my vampire! It is alive. And now I am devoured by only one ambition—to keep it alive, to let Europe actually gaze upon the living, breathing, survivor of the great Reptiles known to the human race before the days of Noah—a missing link between the reptile and the bird. To this end I denied myself food; denied myself even precious medicine. In spite of myself I gave it all my quinine, and when the miasma crept up the river at night, I covered it with my rug and lay exposed myself. If the black fever should seize me!<br /><br />* * * *<br /><br />"Three months, and still upon this hateful river! Will it never end? I have been ill—so ill, that for two days I could not feed it. I had not the strength to go ashore to find food, and I fear that it will die—die before I can get it home.<br /><br />* * * *<br /><br />"Been ill again—the black fever! But it is alive. I caught a [---] swimming in the river, and it sucked it dry—gallons of blood. It had been unfed three days. In its hungry haste it broke its muzzle. I was almost too feeble to put it on again. A horrible thought possesses me. Suppose it breaks its muzzle again when I am lying ill, delirious, and it is ravenous? Oh! the horror of it! To see it eating is terrible. It links the claws of its wings together, and cowers over the body; its head is under the wings, out of sight. But the victim never moves. As soon as the vampire touches it there seems to be a paralysis. Once those wings are linked there is absolute quiet. Only the grating of teeth upon bone. Horrible! Terrible! But in Germany I shall be famous. In Germany with my Vampire?<br /><br />* * * *<br /><br />"Am very feeble. It broke its muzzle again. But it was in the daylight—when it is blind. Its great eyes are blind in sunlight. It was a long struggle. This black fever! and the horror of this thing! I am too weak now to kill it, if I would. I must get it home alive. Soon—surely soon—the river will end. Oh God! does it never reach the sea, reach white men, reach home? But if it attacks me I will throttle it. If I am dying I will throttle it. If we cannot go back to Germany alive, we will go together dead. I will throttle it with my two hands, and fix my teeth in its horrible neck, and our bones may lie together on the bank of this accursed river."<br /><br />* * * *<br /><br />This is nearly all that was recovered of the professor's diary. But it is enough to tell us of the final tragedy.<br /><br />The two skeletons were found together on the very edge of the river-bank. Half of each, in the lapse of years, had been washed way at successive flood-tides. The rest, when put together, made up the man-reptile that, to use a Rabelaisian phrase, "metagrobolised all to nothing" the University of Bierundwurst.<br /><br /><br /><br />Contemporary Review, Jan.-June 1893</b>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4883301247675127291.post-69517229933809169082011-03-14T03:09:00.000-07:002011-03-14T03:10:35.670-07:00Transylvanian Concubines<span class="post-author vcard"><br /><a href="http://welcome-to-monster-land.blogspot.com/2009/10/transylvanian-concubines.html"><strong></strong></a><strong></strong> </span><div class="post-header-line-1"> </div> <div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Meet and converse with them</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Marvel at their pale skin</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Wonder how they chew on their pointy...</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Teeth and hair are beauty</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">They know it's their duty</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">To be countess in their hearts and their...</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Minds that have to whisper</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">See in them a sister</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Look into their eyes and you'll become</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Transylvanian Concubine.<br />—Rasputina</span><br /></div><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim3AYpzoEBau4op5RG5W6782QLy9OIdwemvexZd9dRBhcCq-TpTzZXEElsbW_zsH9vywI3fksjYt9x7fxM5XYlTnPxr1ZvVsiJMEAEliqkFowW1R0F4tBVY7s8mHw3oKjeuyma1u5HPIQ/s1600-h/worely.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 190px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim3AYpzoEBau4op5RG5W6782QLy9OIdwemvexZd9dRBhcCq-TpTzZXEElsbW_zsH9vywI3fksjYt9x7fxM5XYlTnPxr1ZvVsiJMEAEliqkFowW1R0F4tBVY7s8mHw3oKjeuyma1u5HPIQ/s400/worely.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5396642190339189762" border="0" /></a>When reading Bram Stoker’s <span style="font-style: italic;">Dracula</span>, it’s hard to forget his trio of mysterious and threatening concubines. Dark, seductive and hungry, the brides of Dracula first appear in an encounter with the hapless Jonathan Harker. Harker has ignored Count Dracula’s warnings against exploring the castle by himself, and walks straight into the arms of the tree beautiful brides:<br /><br /><blockquote>They came close to me, and looked at me for some time, and then whispered together. Two were dark, and had high aquiline noses, like the Count, and great dark, piercing eyes, that seemed to be almost red when contrasted with the pale yellow moon…The other was fair, as fair as can be, with great masses of golden hair and eyes like pale sapphires. I seemed somehow to know her face, and to know it in connection with some dreamy fear, but I could not recollect at the moment how or where. All three had brilliant white teeth that shone like pearls against the ruby of their voluptuous lips. There was something about them that made me uneasy, some longing and at the same time some deadly fear.<br /><br /></blockquote>Dracula’s brides are two dimensional representations of ravenous female sexuality. Stoker uses the word “voluptuous” numerous times in his description of the brides, a word that suggests sensual pleasure. Upon seeing Harker, the fair bride “licks her lips like an animal,” but Harker’s reaction to the brides is less than amorous and he is both “thrilled and repulsed” by their advances.<br /><br />Harker’s polarized reaction to the trio’s sexuality is evocative of the Victorian struggle with female desire. Here Stoker mingles the idea of a desiring woman with the terror of the undead. The horror of the brides is not that they are vampires, but that they express their sexual desire so openly; a horror on par with the sucking of blood.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgADUGreiKWgqlPdpm7bQlGgZ9IgHSLYSxdK_YBYrJrfyv-Rj0w-YFQpC5VmfE2iWaCRF_z1lr-MNz9cE1ZDOBrF1keplM41Q0feL4lBm5IeRbJD2q6zGqoMhD642TK8CdXP85H-KWpeMI/s1600-h/draculasbrides1931pr2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgADUGreiKWgqlPdpm7bQlGgZ9IgHSLYSxdK_YBYrJrfyv-Rj0w-YFQpC5VmfE2iWaCRF_z1lr-MNz9cE1ZDOBrF1keplM41Q0feL4lBm5IeRbJD2q6zGqoMhD642TK8CdXP85H-KWpeMI/s400/draculasbrides1931pr2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5396640540061347298" border="0" /></a>The brides are only seen through the narratives of Harker and Van Helsing as objects of extreme desire and fear. This trend is also reflected in the various film versions of Stoker’s tale, as the brides are depicted as either hyper-sexual or hyper-monstrous. In the 1831 version of <span style="font-style: italic;">Dracula</span> starring Bela Lugosi, the few lines Stoker gives the brides are dropped. Instead of the voluptuous and animalistic women described by Harker, the brides are swathed in drape-like gowns that do their best to conceal their shape. This effort to desexualize the brides turns them in objects of weird horror without making the metaphor explicitly sexual. They also never attack Harker, or even Renfield, who in this particular version is the only one to visit Dracula’s castle.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx_0ueX3gegp_mpmwpCPWgHuQ-90dEswD0H1VVjn-HBlP9ReJHkOeF-iITDbf0npBAWjhJlwDp-dYpeKf58wQe3rbgyefSZ513Z9EwaOQVXefw_T8X6YZHbM9GYNFkP3DJko6Mr3xBYZg/s1600-h/vampire1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx_0ueX3gegp_mpmwpCPWgHuQ-90dEswD0H1VVjn-HBlP9ReJHkOeF-iITDbf0npBAWjhJlwDp-dYpeKf58wQe3rbgyefSZ513Z9EwaOQVXefw_T8X6YZHbM9GYNFkP3DJko6Mr3xBYZg/s400/vampire1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5396640340867674402" border="0" /></a>Francis Ford Coppola’s <span style="font-style: italic;">Dracula</span> (1992) revisits the sexual implications of Dracula’s concubines and their encounter with Harker, preserving the seductive horror of Stoker’s novel. Harker is enjoying his time with the brides until Dracula bursts upon the scene. In a kind of supernatural coitus interruptus, the sexual encounter turns monstrous and the audience sees that the two dark haired brides are connected at the pelvis. This female monstrosity scuttles away like a crab from Dracula’s wrath as Harker looks on in dawning horror.<br /><br />Coppola’s version also gives the brides some personality and they are more like the Desperate Housewives of Transylvania than soulless sirens. Their lines from Stoker’s text are spoken with a kind of pathetic emotion stemming from the neglect of their collective husband. While this may be a step up from previous depictions of Dracula’s brides, Coppola’s characterization extends little beyond this point.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUFx4C50uU5buOY2Dys8eEyzKUdAUYY-1l9fiAQjiT8PWo-uvCYia2-2xXjg-8pbj3eN7yLytzvhxGsg2kcEk8ACGdz1rjZMz8UGv8IlCk2Lj14jkRpLIW16RIyQipEPpe_5RvAUoiLRA/s1600-h/dracula2000800yy0.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUFx4C50uU5buOY2Dys8eEyzKUdAUYY-1l9fiAQjiT8PWo-uvCYia2-2xXjg-8pbj3eN7yLytzvhxGsg2kcEk8ACGdz1rjZMz8UGv8IlCk2Lj14jkRpLIW16RIyQipEPpe_5RvAUoiLRA/s400/dracula2000800yy0.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5396640733018040194" border="0" /></a><br />Since Francis Ford Coppola’s <span style="font-style: italic;">Dracula</span>, it has been all downhill for the brides. They made their next appearance in the lukewarm <span style="font-style: italic;">Dracula 2000</span> as simple T&A window dressing. The <span style="font-style: italic;">Maxim</span>-esque Jennifer Esposito and Jeri Ryan play a scientist and a TV anchor respectively who fall for Dracula’s charms. Nearly bursting out of their snug gowns, the brides of <span style="font-style: italic;">Dracula 2000 </span>have all the personality of a second rate femme fetal. Their scintillating dialogue is embarrassing and the only good performance comes when Jeri Ryan gets the business end of a stake thrust into her perpetually heaving bosom.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtsXghdnAoXqM-OsmUxkidZR6QNkTFtKPF7LW8AOFBN58Jn5MGjNuDFYtJmHBL4i5SrOSS0PSkuOerlV9OdCifkmagQOAh8YUyCqlOmwrxqHHKaYDozCgEIOB8uvW0y9I_G2E7SVw1y4Y/s1600-h/Van_Helsing_Brides_002.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtsXghdnAoXqM-OsmUxkidZR6QNkTFtKPF7LW8AOFBN58Jn5MGjNuDFYtJmHBL4i5SrOSS0PSkuOerlV9OdCifkmagQOAh8YUyCqlOmwrxqHHKaYDozCgEIOB8uvW0y9I_G2E7SVw1y4Y/s400/Van_Helsing_Brides_002.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5396641001841371474" border="0" /></a><br />The brides’ next film, <span style="font-style: italic;">Van Helsing</span> did little to transform the brides into three dimensional characters. They waver between monstrous bat-like creatures and coy vixens dressed in barely-there costumes reminiscent of<span style="font-style: italic;"> I Dream of Jeannie</span>. Despite these shortcomings, <span style="font-style: italic;">Van Helsing</span> does introduce an interesting character motivation of the brides absent from the other films. Instead of eating babies, these gals want to hear the pitter-patter of little wings and get a brood of their own.<br /><br />Relegated to the margins of Stoker’s novel, Dracula’s brides have never broken through a text that designates them as two dimensional representations of horrific female sexuality--a trend that will continue to plague these ladies in film and beyond.<br /><br /><span class="post-author vcard">by <a href="http://welcome-to-monster-land.blogspot.com/2009/10/transylvanian-concubines.html"><strong>Monster Scholar</strong></a></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4883301247675127291.post-86785452688133479622011-03-12T09:06:00.000-08:002011-03-12T09:07:37.210-08:00The Gothic Chamber / Scarbo<object width="640" height="390"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/VBgwk98ZPuI&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&version=3"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/VBgwk98ZPuI&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&version=3" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="640" height="390"></embed></object><br />These are more like two poems then tales. They are part of a cycle of poems written by Aloysius Bertrand.The poems inspired Maurice Ravel to transcribe the poems in music. It resulted three solos for piano famous for their difficulty.<br />I added the piece named Scarbo for the atmosphere.<br />I added some info about Bertrand and the musical poems of Ravel.<center><br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="color:red;"><br /><b>THE GOTHIC CHAMBER<br /><br />by Aloysius Bertrand</b><br /><br />Translated by Michael Benedikt<br /><br /><br /><br />"Nox et solitudo plenae sunt diabolo."<br />-- The Church Fathers --<br />"At night, my room is full of devils."<br /></span></center><span style="color:red;"><br /><br /><br />"Oh! the earth"--I murmured into the night--"is a perfumed flower whose pistel and stamens are the moon and the stars!"<br /><br />And, eyes heavy with sleep, I closed my window inlaid with the cross of Calvary, outlined in black among the yellow haloes of the stained glass.<br /><br />*<br /><br />Oh were it only on this midnight--this traditional time for dragons and devils!--some little gnome once again, drunken from drinking the oil of my lamp!<br /><br />Were it only some wetnurse droning a dismal lullaby, and rocking a tiny, still-born baby in the hollow of my father's breast-plate.<br /><br />Were it only the skeleton of the old swordsman imprisoned in the wall-paneling, and banging on it with his forehead, elbow, and knee!<br /><br />Were it only my grandsire stepping down full-figure from his worm-eaten frame, and dipping his gauntlet in the holy-water fount.<br /><br />But no: Instead it's Scarbo, gnawing away at my neck, and then cauterizing my bloody wound by thrusting out one iron finger--red-hot from the fireplace--straight out into it!<br /><br /><br /></span><center><span style="color:red;"><b><br />SCARBO<br /><br />by Aloysius Bertrand</b><br /><br />Translated by Michael Benedikt<br /><br /><br /><br />"Dear Lord, at the hour of my death,<br />give me the prayers of a priest, a linen shroud, a coffin made of pine<br />and a nice dry place."<br />--The Paternosters of a General<br /></span></center><span style="color:red;"><br /><br />"Whether you die absolved or damned," muttered Scarbo into my ear that night, "your shroud shall be a spiderweb,<br />and I'll wrap up the spider right in there with you!<br /><br />"Oh, let my shroud at least be"--I replied, with eyes red from so much weeping--some trembling leaf in whose hollow<br />the breezes of the lake may rock me!"<br /><br />"No!" snickered that scoffing dwarf, "you shall be a feast for some dung-beetle who comes creeping out at dusk<br />to hunt down gnats blinded by the setting sun!"<br /><br />Sobbing, more in tears than ever, I bitterly replied--"I suppose you'd like it still better yet were a tarantula with a stinger the size of an elephant's trunk to suck the living daylights out of me?"<br /><br />"Now, now, console yourself," he interrupted, "for your shroud you shall have speckled bands of golden snake-skin,<br />in which I'll wrap you up as snug as any mummy."<br /><br />"And from the shadowy crypt of Saint Benigne, where propped up against one wall we'll bury you bolt upright,<br />you'll be able to hear to your heart's content the weeping of little children in Limbo."<br /></span><br /><br /><br /><center><br />*****<br /></center><br /><br /><b>About Aloysius Bertrand:</b><br /><br />Louis-Jacques-Napoléon “Aloysius” Bertrand (20 April 1807 – 29 April 1841) was a French poet instrumental in the introduction of the prose poem into French literature and is credited with inspiring later Symbolist poets [1]. He wrote a collection of poems entitled Gaspard de la nuit, after which composer Maurice Ravel wrote a suite of the same name, based on the poems "Scarbo", "Ondine", and "Le Gibet".<br /><br />Bertrand was born in Ceva, Piedmont, Italy (then a part of Napoleonic France) and his family settled in Dijon in 1814. There he developed an interest in the Burgundian capital. His contributions to a local paper lead to recognition by Victor Hugo and Sainte-Beuve. He lived in Paris shortly with little success. He returned to Dijon and continued writing for local newspapers. Gaspard was sold in 1836 but it wasn't published until 1842 after his death of tuberculosis. The book was rediscovered by Charles Baudelaire and Stéphane Mallarmé. It is now considered a classic of poetic and fantastic literature. He died in Paris.<br /><br /><br /><b>About Ravel`s musical poem:</b><br /><br />Gaspard de la nuit: Trois poèmes pour piano d'après Aloysius Bertrand is a piece for solo piano by Maurice Ravel. It has three movements, each based on a poem by Aloysius Bertrand. The work was premiered on January 9, 1909 in Paris by Ricardo Viñes.<br /><br />The piece is famous for its incredible difficulty, partly due to the fact that Ravel intended the Scarbo movement to be more difficult than Balakirev's Islamey. Because of its technical difficulty and profound musical structure, it is popularly considered to be one of the most difficult solo piano pieces in the standard repertoire.<br /><br />The manuscript currently resides in the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center of The University of Texas at Austin.<br /><br /> 1. Ondine is an oneiric tale of a water fairy singing to seduce the observer and accompany her to visit her kingdom deep at the bottom of the lake in the triangle of water, fire and earth. It is reminiscent of the tinkling of the water in a stream, woven with cascades. This movement was intended to describe the water sprite in Aloysius Bertrand's poem, attempting to lure men into her domain. This piece contains technical problems for the right hand such as wild cadenza figures, fast repetition of three-note chords, rapid chromatic runs and melodies of intervals played with one hand.<br /> 2. Le Gibet, an eerie work in which the observer wonders at the scene he's witnessing. "It is a bell tinting at the walls of a city under the horizon and the carcass of a hanged man reddened by the setting sun". This piece contains over 20 different styles and textures in terms of melody, however, the repeating B-flats (played 153 times) must remain in the same style, that is like sad tolling bells for a man being lynched in the distance.<br /> 3. <b>Scarbo</b>, a small fiend — half goblin, half ghost — making pirouettes, disappearing and scaring a person in his home. Scarbo could stand for "scarabée", a beetle. Its uneven flight, hitting and scratching against the panels of the bed, casting a growing shadow under the moonlight creates a nightmarish scene for the observer lying in his bed. With its repeated notes and two terrifying climaxes, this movement is the high-point of technical difficulty of the three movements. It gives an impression of the fiendish mischief committed by a ghostly imp during the night, fading in and out of vision while changing forms, which is portrayed in the difficult crescendos. The technical difficulties of the piece are wildly arpeggiated figures for both hands, frequent crossing of hands at large intervals, and fast moving melody lines made of chords.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4883301247675127291.post-29118346353241705282011-03-12T09:04:00.000-08:002011-03-12T09:05:55.587-08:00The Succubus by Honore de Balzac<img src="http://i200.photobucket.com/albums/aa246/V-Empire/Succubus.jpg" alt="Photobucket" border="0" /><br /><br /><center><style>#box { width: 500px; height: 400px; overflow: auto; }</style><br /><br /><div id="box"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;color:RED;"><br /><br /></span><center><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;color:RED;"><b>The Succubus</b><br /><br /><br />by Honore de Balzac<br /><br /><br /><br />Prologue<br /><br />A number of persons of the noble country of Touraine, considerably edified by the warm search which the author is making into the antiquities, adventures, good jokes, and pretty tales of that blessed land, and believing for certain that he should know everything, have asked him (after drinking with him of course understood), if he had discovered the etymological reason, concerning which all the ladies of the town are so curious, and from which a certain street in Tours is called the Rue Chaude. By him it was replied, that he was much astonished to see that the ancient inhabitants had forgotten the great number of convents situated in this street, where the severe continence of the monks and nuns might have caused the walls to be made so hot that some woman of position should increase in size from walking too slowly along them to vespers. A troublesome fellow, wishing to appear learned, declared that formerly all the scandalmongers of the neighbourhood were wont to meet in this place. Another entangled himself in the minute suffrages of science, and poured forth golden words without being understood, qualifying words, harmonising the melodies of the ancient and modern, congregating customs, distilling verbs, alchemising all languages since the Deluge, of the Hebrew, Chaldeans, Egyptians, Greeks, Latins, and of Turnus, the ancient founder of Tours; and the good man finished by declaring that chaude or chaulde with the exception of the H and the L, came from Cauda, and that there was a tail in the affair, but the ladies only understood the end of it. An old man observed that in this same place was formerly a source of thermal water, of which his great great grandfather had drunk. In short, in less time than it takes a fly to embrace its sweetheart, there had been a pocketful of etymologies, in which the truth of the matter had been less easily found than a louse in the filthy beard of a Capuchin friar. But a man well learned and well informed, through having left his footprint in many monasteries, consumed much midnight oil, and manured his brain with many a volume-- himself more encumbered with pieces, dyptic fragments, boxes, charters, and registers concerning the history of Touraine than is a gleaner with stalks of straw in the month of August--this man, old, infirm, and gouty, who had been drinking in his corner without saying a word, smiled the smile of a wise man and knitted his brows, the said smile finally resolving itself into a pish! well articulated, which the Author heard and understood it to be big with an adventure historically good, the delights of which he would be able to unfold in this sweet collection.<br /><br />To be brief, on the morrow this gouty old fellow said to him, "By your poem, which is called 'The Venial Sin,' you have forever gained my esteem, because everything therein is true from head to foot--which I believe to be a precious superabundance in such matters. But doubtless you do not know what became of the Moor placed in religion by the said knight, Bruyn de la Roche-Corbon. I know very well. Now if this etymology of the street harass you, and also the Egyptian nun, I will lend you a curious and antique parchment, found by me in the Olim of the episcopal palace, of which the libraries were a little knocked about at a period when none of us knew if he would have the pleasure of his head's society on the morrow. Now will not this yield you a perfect contentment?"<br /><br />"Good!" said the author.<br /><br />Then this worthy collector of truths gave certain rare and dusty parchments to the author, the which he has, not without great labour, translated into French, and which were fragments of a most ancient ecclesiastical process. He has believed that nothing would be more amusing than the actual resurrection of this antique affair, wherein shines forth the illiterate simplicity of the good old times. Now, then, give ear. This is the order in which were the manuscripts, of which the author has made use in his own fashion, because the language was devilishly difficult.<br /><br />I<br /><br />WHAT THE SUCCUBUS WAS.<br /><br />/In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen./<br /><br />In the year of our Lord, one thousand two hundred and seventy-one, before me, Hierome Cornille, grand inquisitor and ecclesiastical judge (thereto commissioned by the members of the chapter of Saint Maurice, the cathedral of Tours, having of this deliberated in the presence of our Lord Jean de Montsoreau, archbishop--namely, the grievances and complaints of the inhabitants of the said town, whose request is here subjoined), have appeared certain noblemen, citizens, and inhabitants of the diocese, who have stated the following facts concerning a demon suspected of having taken the features of a woman, who has much afflicted the minds of the diocese, and is at present a prisoner in the jail of the chapter; and in order to arrive at the truth of the said charge we have opened the present court, this Monday, the eleventh day of December, after mass, to communicate the evidence of each witness to the said demon, to interrogate her upon the said crimes to her imputed, and to judge her according to the laws enforced /contra demonios/.<br /><br />In this inquiry has assisted me to write the evidence therein given, Guillaume Tournebouche, rubrican of the chapter, a learned man.<br /><br />Firstly has come before us one Jehan, surnamed Tortebras, a citizen of Tours, keeping by licence the hostelry of La Cigoyne, situated on the Place du Pont, and who has sworn by the salvation of his soul, his hand upon the holy Evangelists, to state no other thing than that which by himself hath been seen and heard.<br /><br />He hath stated as here followeth:--<br /><br />"I declare that about two years before the feast of St. Jehan, upon which are the grand illuminations, a gentleman, at first unknown to me, but belonging without doubt to our lord the King, and at that time returned to our country from the Holy Land, came to me with the proposition that I should let to him at rental a certain country-house by me built, in the quit rent of the chapter over against the place called of St. Etienne, and the which I let to him for nine years, for the consideration of three besans of fine gold. In the said house was placed by the said knight a fair wench having the appearance of a woman, dressed in the strange fashion of the Saracens Mohammedans, whom he would allow by none to be seen or to be approached within a bow-shot, but whom I have seen with mine own eyes, weird feathers upon her head, and eyes so flaming that I cannot adequately describe them, and from which gleamed forth a fire of hell. The defunct knight having threatened with death whoever should appear to spy about the said house, I have by reason of great fear left the said house, and I have until this day secretly kept to my mind certain presumptions and doubts concerning the bad appearance of the said foreigner, who was more strange than any woman, her equal not having as yet by me been seen.<br /><br />"Many persons of all conditions having at the time believed the said knight to be dead, but kept upon his feet by virtue of the said charms, philters, spells, and diabolical sorceries of this seeming woman, who wished to settle in our country, I declare that I have always seen the said knight so ghastly pale that I can only compare his face to the wax of a Paschal candle, and to the knowledge of all the people of the hostelry of La Cigoyne, this knight was interred nine days after his first coming. According to the statement of his groom, the defunct had been chalorously coupled with the said Moorish woman during seven whole days shut up in my house, without coming out from her, the which I heard him horribly avow upon his deathbed. Certain persons at the present time have accused this she-devil of holding the said gentleman in her clutches by her long hair, the which was furnished with certain warm properties by means of which are communicated to Christians the flames of hell in the form of love, which work in them until their souls are by this means drawn from their bodies and possessed by Satan. But I declare that I have seen nothing of this excepting the said dead knight, bowelless, emaciated, wishing, in spite of his confessor, still to go to this wench; and then he has been recognised as the lord de Bueil, who was a crusader, and who was, according to certain persons of the town, under the spell of a demon whom he had met in the Asiatic country of Damascus or elsewhere.<br /><br />"Afterwards I have let my house to the said unknown lady, according to the clauses of the deed of lease. The said lord of Bueil, being defunct, I had nevertheless been into my house in order to learn from the said foreign woman if she wished to remain in my dwelling, and after great trouble was led before her by a strange, half-naked black man, whose eyes were white.<br /><br />"Then I have seen the said Moorish woman in a little room, shining with gold and jewels, lighted with strange lights, upon an Asiatic carpet, where she was seated, lightly attired, with another gentleman, who was there imperiling his soul; and I had not the heart bold enough to look upon her, seeing that her eyes would have incited me immediately to yield myself up to her, for already her voice thrilled into my very belly, filled my brain, and debauched my mind. Finding this, from the fear of God, and also of hell, I have departed with swift feet, leaving my house to her as long as she liked to retain it, so dangerous was it to behold that Moorish complexion from which radiated diabolical heats, besides a foot smaller than it was lawful in a real woman to possess; and to hear her voice, which pierced into one's heart! And from that day I have lacked the courage to enter my house from great fear of falling into hell. I have said my say."<br /><br />To the said Tortebras we have then shown an Abyssinian, Nubian or Ethiopian, who, black from head to foot, had been found wanting in certain virile properties with which all good Christians are usually furnished, who, having persevered in his silence, after having been tormented and tortured many times, not without much moaning, has persisted in being unable to speak the language of our country. And the said Tortebras has recognised the said Abyss heretic as having been in his house in company with the said demoniacal spirit, and is suspected of having lent his aid to her sorcery.<br /><br />And the said Tortebras has confessed his great faith in the Catholic religion, and declared no other things to be within his knowledge save certain rumours which were known to every one, of which he had been in no way a witness except in the hearing of them.<br /><br />In obedience to the citations served upon him, has appeared then, Matthew, surname Cognefestu, a day-labourer of St. Etienne, whom, after having sworn by the holy Evangelists to speak the truth, has confessed to us always to have seen a bright light in the dwelling of the said foreign woman, and heard much wild and diabolical laughter on the days and nights of feasts and fasts, notably during the days of the holy and Christmas weeks, as if a great number of people were in the house. And he has sworn to have seen by the windows of the said dwellings, green buds of all kinds in the winter, growing as if by magic, especially roses in a time of frost, and other things for which there was a need of a great heat; but of this he was in no way astonished, seeing that the said foreigner threw out so much heat that when she walked in the evening by the side of his wall he found on the morrow his salad grown; and on certain occasions she had by the touching of her petticoats, caused the trees to put forth leaves and hasten the buds. Finally, the said, Cognefestu has declared to us to know no more, because he worked from early morning, and went to bed at the same hour as the fowls.<br /><br />Afterwards the wife of the aforesaid Cognefestu has by us been required to state also upon oath the things come to her cognisance in this process, and has avowed naught save praises of the said foreigner, because since her coming her man had treated her better in consequence of the neighbourhood of this good lady, who filled the air with love, as the sun did light, and other incongruous nonsense, which we have not committed to writing.<br /><br />To the said Cognefestu and to his wife we have shown the said unknown African, who has been seen by them in the gardens of the house, and is stated by them for certain to belong to the said demon. In the third place, has advanced Harduin V., lord of Maille, who being by us reverentially begged to enlighten the religion of the church, has expressed his willingness so to do, and has, moreover, engaged his word, as a gallant knight, to say no other thing than that which he has seen. Then he has testified to have known in the army of the Crusades the demon in question, and in the town of Damascus to have seen the knight of Bueil, since defunct, fight at close quarters to be her sole possessor. The above-mentioned wench, or demon, belonged at that time to the knight Geoffroy IV., Lord of Roche-Pozay, by whom she was said to have been brought from Touraine, although she was a Saracen; concerning which the knights of France marvelled much, as well as at her beauty, which made a great noise and a thousand scandalous ravages in the camp. During the voyage this wench was the cause of many deaths, seeing that Roche-Pozay had already discomfited certain Crusaders, who wished to keep her to themselves, because she shed, according to certain knights petted by her in secret, joys around her comparable to none others. But in the end the knight of Bueil, having killed Geoffroy de la Roche-Pozay, became lord and master of this young murderess, and placed her in a convent, or harem, according to the Saracen custom. About this time one used to see her and hear her chattering as entertainment many foreign dialects, such as the Greek or the Latin empire, Moorish, and, above all, French better than any of those who knew the language of France best in the Christian host, from which sprang the belief that she was demoniacal.<br /><br />The said knight Harduin has confessed to us not to have tilted for her in the Holy Land, not from fear, coldness or other cause, so much as that he believed the time had arrived for him to bear away a portion of the true cross, and also he had belonging to him a noble lady of the Greek country, who saved him from this danger in denuding him of love, morning and night, seeing that she took all of it substantially from him, leaving him none in his heart or elsewhere for others.<br /><br />And the said knight has assured us that the woman living in the country house of Tortebras, was really the said Saracen woman, come into the country from Syria, because he had been invited to a midnight feast at her house by the young Lord of Croixmare, who expired the seventh day afterwards, according to the statement of the Dame de Croixmare, his mother, ruined all points by the said wench, whose commerce with him had consumed his vital spirit, and whose strange phantasies had squandered his fortune.<br /><br />Afterwards questioned in his quality of a man full of prudence, wisdom and authority in this country, upon the ideas entertained concerning the said woman, and summoned by us to open his conscience, seeing that it was a question of a most abominable case of Christian faith and divine justice, answer has been made by the said knight:--<br /><br />That by certain of the host of Crusaders it has been stated to him that always this she-devil was a maid to him who embraced her, and that Mammon was for certain occupied in her, making for her a new virtue for each of her lovers, and a thousand other foolish sayings of drunken men, which were not of a nature to form a fifth gospel. But for a fact, he, an old knight on that turn of life, and knowing nothing more of the aforesaid, felt himself again a young man in that last supper with which he had been regaled by the lord of Croixmare; then the voice of this demon went straight to his heart before flowing into his ears, and had awakened so great a love in his body that his life was ebbing from the place whence it should flow, and that eventually, but for the assistance of Cyprus wine, which he had drunk to blind his sight, and his getting under the table in order no longer to gaze upon the fiery eyes of his diabolical hostess, and not to rend his heart from her, without doubt he would have fought the young Croixmare, in order to enjoy for a single moment this supernatural woman. Since then he had had absolution from his confessor for the wicked thought. Then, by advice from on high, he had carried back to his house his portion of the true Cross, and had remained in his own manor, where, in spite of his Christian precautions, the said voice still at certain times tickled his brain, and in the morning often had he in remembrance this demon, warm as brimstone; and because the look of this wench was so warm that it made him burn like a young man, be half dead, and because it cost him then many transshipments of the vital spirit, the said knight has requested us not to confront him with the empress of love to whom, if it were not the devil, God the Father had granted strange liberties with the minds of men. Afterwards, he retired, after reading over his statement, not without having first recognised the above-mentioned African to be the servant and page of the lady.<br /><br />In the fourth place, upon the faith pledged in us in the name of the Chapter and of our Lord Archbishop, that he should not be tormented, tortured, nor harassed in any manner, nor further cited after his statement, in consequence of his commercial journeys, and upon the assurance that he should retire in perfect freedom, has come before us a Jew, Salomon al Rastchid, who, in spite of the infamy of his person and his Judaism, has been heard by us to this one end, to know everything concerning the conduct of the aforesaid demon. Thus he has not been required to take any oath this Salomon, seeing that he is beyond the pale of the Church, separated from us by the blood of our saviour (trucidatus Salvatore inter nos). Interrogated by us as to why he appeared without the green cap upon his head, and the yellow wheel in the apparent locality of the heart in his garment, according to the ecclesiastical and royal ordinances, the said de Rastchid has exhibited to us letters patent of the seneschal of Touraine and Poitou. Then the said Jew has declared to us to have done a large business for the lady dwelling in the house of the innkeeper Tortebras, to have sold to her golden chandeliers, with many branches, minutely engraved, plates of red silver, cups enriched with stones, emeralds and rubies; to have brought for her from the Levant a number of rare stuffs, Persian carpets, silks, and fine linen; in fact, things so magnificent that no queen in Christendom could say she was so well furnished with jewels and household goods; and that he had for his part received from her three hundred thousand pounds for the rarity of the purchases in which he had been employed, such as Indian flowers, poppingjays, birds' feathers, spices, Greek wines, and diamonds. Requested by us, the judge, to say if he had furnished certain ingredients of magical conjuration, the blood of new-born children, conjuring books, and things generally and whatsoever made use of by sorcerers, giving him licence to state his case without that thereupon he should be the subject to any further inquest or inquiry, the said al Rastchid has sworn by his Hebrew faith never to have had any such commerce; and has stated that he was involved in too high interests to give himself to such miseries, seeing that he was the agent of certain most powerful lords, such as the Marquis de Montferrat, the King of England, the King of Cyprus and Jerusalem, the Court of Provence, lords of Venice, and many German gentleman; to have belonging to him merchant galleys of all kinds, going into Egypt with the permission of the Sultan, and he trafficking in precious articles of silver and of gold, which took him often into the exchange of Tours. Moreover, he has declared that he considered the said lady, the subject of inquiry, to be a right royal and natural woman, with the sweetest limbs, and the smallest he has ever seen. That in consequence of her renown for a diabolical spirit, pushed by a wild imagination, and also because that he was smitten with her, he had heard once that she was husbandless, proposed to her to be her gallant, to which proposition she willingly acceded. Now, although from that night he felt his bones disjointed and his bowels crushed, he had not yet experienced, as certain persons say, that who once yielded was free no more; he went to his fate as lead into the crucible of the alchemist. Then the said Salomon, to whom we have granted his liberty according to the safe conduct, in spite of the statement, which proves abundantly his commerce with the devil, because he had been saved there where all Christians have succumbed, has admitted to us an agreement concerning the said demon. To make known that he had made an offer to the chapter of the cathedral to give for the said semblance of a woman such a ransom, if she were condemned to be burned alive, that the highest of the towers of the Church of St. Maurice, at present in course of construction, could therewith be finished.<br /><br />The which we have noted to be deliberated upon at an opportune time by the assembled chapter. And the said Salomon has taken his departure without being willing to indicate his residence, and has told us that he can be informed of the deliberation of the chapter by a Jew of the synagogue of Tours, a name Tobias Nathaneus. The said Jew has before his departure been shown the African, and has recognised him as the page of the demon, and has stated the Saracens to have the custom of mutilating their slaves thus, to commit to them the task of guarding their women by an ancient usage, as it appears in the profane histories of Narsez, general of Constantinople, and others.<br /><br />On the morrow after mass has appeared before us the most noble and illustrious lady of Croixmare. The same has worn her faith in the holy Evangelists, and has related to us with tears how she had placed her eldest son beneath the earth, dead by reason of his extravagant amours with this female demon. The which noble gentleman was three-and-twenty years of age; of good complexion, very manly and well bearded like his defunct sire. Notwithstanding his great vigour, in ninety days he had little by little withered, ruined by his commerce with the succubus of the Rue Chaude, according to the statement of the common people; and her maternal authority over the son had been powerless. Finally in his latter days he appeared like a poor dried up worm, such as housekeepers meet with in a corner when they clean out the dwelling- rooms. And always, so long as he had the strength to go, he went to shorten his life with this cursed woman; where, also, he emptied his cash-box. When he was in his bed, and knew his last hour had come, he swore at, cursed, and threatened and heaped upon all--his sister, his brother, and upon her his mother--a thousand insults, rebelled in the face of the chaplain; denied God, and wished to die in damnation; at which were much afflicted the retainers of the family, who, to save his soul and pluck it from hell, have founded two annual masses in the cathedral. And in order to have him buried in consecrated ground, the house of Croixmare has undertaken to give to the chapter, during one hundred years, the wax candles for the chapels and the church, upon the day of the Paschal feast. And, in conclusion, saving the wicked words heard by the reverend person, Dom Loys Pot, a nun of Marmoustiers, who came to assist in his last hours the said Baron de Croixmaire affirms never to have heard any words offered by the defunct, touching the demon who had undone him.<br /><br /><br />And therewith has retired the noble and illustrious lady in deep mourning.<br /><br />In the sixth place has appeared before us, after adjournment, Jacquette, called Vieux-Oing, a kitchen scullion, going to houses to wash dishes, residing at present in the Fishmarket, who, after having placed her word to say nothing she did not hold to be true, has declared as here follows:--Namely, that one day she, being come into the kitchen of the said demon, of whom she had no fear, because she was wont to regale herself only upon males, she had the opportunity of seeing in the garden this female demon, superbly attired, walking in company with a knight, with whom she was laughing, like a natural woman. Then she had recognised in this demon that true likeness of the Moorish woman placed as a nun in the convent of Notre Dame de l'Egrignolles by the defunct seneschal of Touraine and Poitou, Messire Bruyn, Count of Roche-Corbon, the which Moorish woman had been left in the situation and place of the image of our Lady the Virgin, the mother of our Blessed Saviour, stolen by the Egyptians about eighteen years since. Of this time, in consequence of the troubles come about in Touraine, no record has been kept. This girl, aged about twelve years, was saved from the stake at which she would have been burned by being baptised; and the said defunct and his wife had then been godfather and godmother to this child of hell. Being at that time laundress at the convent, she who bears witness has remembrance of the flight which the said Egyptian took twenty months after her entry into the convent, so subtilely that it has never been known how or by what means she escaped. At that time it was thought by all, that with the devil's aid she had flown away in the air, seeing that not withstanding much search, no trace of her flight was found in the convent, where everything remained in its accustomed order.<br /><br />The African having been shown to the said scullion, she has declared not to have seen him before, although she was curious to do so, as he was commissioned to guard the place in which the Moorish woman combated with those whom she drained through the spigot.<br /><br />In the seventh place has been brought before us Hugues de Fou, son of the Sieur de Bridore, who, aged twenty years, has been placed in the hands of his father, under caution of his estates, and by him is represented in this process, whom it concerns if should be duly attained and convicted of having, assisted by several unknown and bad young men, laid siege to the jail of the archbishop and of the chapter, and of having lent himself to disturb the force of ecclesiastical justice, by causing the escape of the demon now under consideration. In spite of the evil disposition we have commanded the said Hugues de Fou to testify truly, touching the things he should know concerning the said demon, with whom he is vehemently reputed to have had commerce, pointing out to him that it was a question of his salvation and of the life of the said demon. He, after having taken the oath, he said:--<br /><br />"I swear by my eternal salvation, and by the holy Evangelists here present under my hand, to hold the woman suspected of being a demon to be an angel, a perfect woman, and even more so in mind than in body, living in all honesty, full of the migniard charms and delights of love, in no way wicked, but most generous, assisting greatly the poor and suffering. I declare that I have seen her weeping veritable tears for the death of my friend, the knight of Croixmare. And because on that day she had made a vow to our Lady the Virgin no more to receive the love of young noblemen too weak in her service; she has to me constantly and with great courage denied the enjoyment of her body, and has only granted to me love, and the possession of her heart, of which she has made sovereign. Since this gracious gift, in spite of my increasing flame I have remained alone in her dwelling, where I have spent the greater part of my days, happy in seeing and in hearing her. Oh! I would eat near her, partake of the air which entered into her lungs, of the light which shone in her sweet eyes, and found in this occupation more joy than have the lords of paradise. Elected by me to be forever my lady, chosen to be one day my dove, my wife, and only sweetheart, I, poor fool, have received from her no advances on the joys of the future, but, on the contrary, a thousand virtuous admonitions; such as that I should acquire renown as a good knight, become a strong man and a fine one, fear nothing except God; honour the ladies, serve but one and love them in memory of that one; that when I should be strengthened by the work of war, if her heart still pleased mine, at that time only would she be mine, because she would be able to wait for me, loving me so much."<br /><br />So saying the young Sire Hugues wept, and weeping, added:--<br /><br />"That thinking of this graceful and feeble woman, whose arms seemed scarcely large enough to sustain the light weight of her golden chains, he did not know how to contain himself while fancying the irons which would wound her, and the miseries with which she would traitorously be loaded, and from this cause came his rebellion. And that he had licence to express his sorrow before justice, because his life was so bound up with that of his delicious mistress and sweetheart that on the day when evil came to her he would surely die."<br /><br />And the same young man has vociferated a thousand other praises of the said demon, which bear witness to the vehement sorcery practised upon him, and prove, moreover, the abominable, unalterable, and incurable life and the fraudulent witcheries to which he is at present subject, concerning which our lord the archbishop will judge, in order to save by exorcisms and penitences this young soul from the snares of hell, if the devil has not gained too strong a hold of it.<br /><br />Then we have handed back the said young nobleman into the custody of the noble lord his father, after that by the said Hugues, the African has been recognised as the servant of the accused.<br /><br />In the eighth place, before us, have the footguards of our lord the archbishop led in great state the MOST HIGH AND REVEREND LADY JACQUELINE DE CHAMPCHEVRIER, ABBESS OF THE CONVENT OF NOTRE-DAME, under the invocation of Mount Carmel, to whose control has been submitted by the late seneschal of Touraine, father of Monseigneur the Count of Roche-Corbon, present advocate of the said convent, the Egyptian, named at the baptismal font Blanche Bruyn.<br /><br />To the said abbess we have shortly stated the present cause, in which is involved the holy church, the glory of God, and the eternal future of the people of the diocese afflicted with a demon, and also the life of a creature who it was possible might be quite innocent. Then the cause elaborated, we have requested the said noble abbess to testify that which was within her knowledge concerning the magical disappearance of her daughter in God, Blanche Bruyn, espoused by our Saviour under the name of Sister Clare.<br /><br />Then has stated the very high, very noble, and very illustrious lady abbess as follows:--<br /><br />"The Sister Clare, of origin to her unknown, but suspected to be of an heretic father and mother, people inimical to God, has truly been placed in religion in the convent of which the government had canonically come to her in spite of her unworthiness; that the said sister had properly concluded her noviciate, and made her vows according to the holy rule of the order. That the vows taken, she had fallen into great sadness, and had much drooped. Interrogated by her, the abbess, concerning her melancholy malady, the said sister had replied with tears that she herself did not know the cause. That one thousand and one tears engendered themselves in her at feeling no more her splendid hair upon her head; that besides this she thirsted for air, and could not resist her desire to jump up into the trees, to climb and tumble about according to her wont during her open air life; that she passed her nights in tears, dreaming of the forests under the leaves of which in other days she slept; and in remembrance of this she abhorred the quality of the air of the cloisters, which troubled her respiration; that in her inside she was troubled with evil vapours; that at times she was inwardly diverted in church by thoughts which made her lose countenance. Then I have repeated over and over again to the poor creature the holy directions of the church, have reminded her of the eternal happiness which women without seeing enjoy in paradise, and how transitory was life here below, and certain the goodness of God, who for first certain bitter pleasures lost, kept for us a love without end. Is spite of this wise maternal advice the evil spirit has persisted in the said sister; and always would she gaze upon the leaves of the trees and grass of the meadows through the windows of the church during the offices and times of prayer; and persisted in becoming as white as linen in order that she might stay in her bed, and at certain times she would run about the cloisters like a goat broken loose from its fastening. Finally, she had grown thin, lost much of the great beauty, and shrunk away to nothing. While in this condition by us, the abbess her mother, was she placed in the sick-room, we daily expecting her to die. One winter's morning the said sister had fled, without leaving any trace of her steps, without breaking the door, forcing of locks, or opening of windows, nor any sign whatever of the manner of her passage; a frightful adventure which was believed to have taken place by the aid of the demon which has annoyed and tormented her. For the rest it was settled by the authorities of the metropolitan church that the mission of this daughter of hell was to divert the nuns from their holy ways, and blinded by their perfect lives, she had returned through the air on the wings of the sorcerer, who had left her for mockery of our holy religion in the place of our Virgin Mary."<br /><br />The which having said, the lady abbess was, with great honour and according to the command of our lord the archbishop, accompanied as far as the convent of Carmel.<br /><br />In the ninth place, before us has come, agreeably to the citation served upon him, Joseph, called Leschalopier, a money-changer, living on the bridge at the sign of the Besant d'Or, who, after having pledged his Catholic faith to say no other thing than the truth, and that known to him, touching the process before the ecclesiastical tribunal, has testified as follows:--"I am a poor father, much afflicted by the sacred will of God. Before the coming of the Succubus of the Rue Chaude, I had, for all good, a son as handsome as a noble, learned as a clerk, and having made more than a dozen voyages into foreign lands; for the rest a good Catholic; keeping himself on guard against the needles of love, because he avoided marriage, knowing himself to be the support of my old days, the love for my eyes, and the constant delight of my heart. He was a son of whom the King of France might have been proud--a good and courageous man, the light on my commerce, the joy of my roof, and, above all, an inestimable blessing, seeing that I am alone in the world, having had the misfortune to lose my wife, and being too old to take another. Now, monseigneur, this treasure without equal has been taken from me, and cast into hell by the demon. Yes, my lord judge, directly he beheld this mischievous jade, this she-devil, in whom it is a whole workshop of perdition, a conjunction of pleasure and delectation, and whom nothing can satiate, my poor child stuck himself fast into the gluepot of love, and afterwards lived only between the columns of Venus, and there did not live long, because in that place like so great a heat that nothing can satisfy the thirst of this gulf, not even should you plunge therein the germs of the entire world. Alas! then, my poor boy --his fortune, his generative hopes, his eternal future, his entire self, more than himself, have been engulfed in this sewer, like a grain of corn in the jaws of a bull. By this means become an old orphan I, who speak, shall have no greater joy than to see burning, this demon, nourished with blood and gold. This Arachne who has drawn out and sucked more marriages, more families in the seed, more hearts, more Christians then there are lepers in all the lazar houses or Christendom. Burn, torment this fiend--this vampire who feeds on souls, this tigerish nature that drinks blood, this amorous lamp in which burns the venom of all the vipers. Close this abyss, the bottom of which no man can find.... I offer my deniers to the chapter for the stake, and my arm to light the fire. Watch well, my lord judge, to surely guard this devil, seeing that she has a fire more flaming than all other terrestrial fires; she has all the fire of hell in her, the strength of Samson in her hair, and the sound of celestial music in her voice. She charms to kill the body and the soul at one stroke; she smiles to bite, she kisses to devour; in short, she would wheedle an angel, and make him deny his God. My son! my son! where is he at this hour? The flower of my life--a flower cut by this feminine needlecase as with scissors. Ha, lord! why have I been called? Who will give me back my son, whose soul has been absorbed by a womb which gives death to all, and life to none? The devil alone copulates, and engenders not. This is my evidence, which I pray Master Tournebouche to write without omitting one iota, and to grant me a schedule, that I may tell it to God every evening in my prayer, to this end to make the blood of the innocent cry aloud into His ears, and to obtain from His infinite mercy the pardon for my son."<br /><br />Here followed twenty and seven other statements, of which the transcription in their true objectivity, in all their quality of space would be over-fastidious, would draw to a great length, and divert the thread of this curious process--a narrative which, according to ancient precepts, should go straight to the fact, like a bull to his principal office. Therefore, here is, in a few words, the substance of these testimonies.<br /><br />A great number of good Christians, townsmen and townswomen, inhabitants of the noble town of Tours, testified the demon to have held every day wedding feasts and royal festivities, never to have been seen in any church, to have cursed God, to have mocked the priests, never to have crossed herself in any place; to have spoken all the languages of the earth--a gift which has only been granted by God to the blessed Apostles; to have been many times met in the fields, mounted upon an unknown animal who went before the clouds; not to grow old, and to have always a youthful face; to have received the father and the son on the same day, saying that her door sinned not; to have visible malign influences which flowed from her, for that a pastrycook, seated on a bench at her door, having perceived her one evening, received such a gust of warm love that, going in and getting to bed, he had with great passion embraced his wife, and was found dead on the morrow, that the old men of the town went to spend the remainder of their days and of their money with her, to taste the joys of the sins of their youth, and that they died like fleas on their bellies, and that certain of them, while dying, became as black as Moors; that this demon never allowed herself to be seen neither at dinner, nor at breakfast, nor at supper, but ate alone, because she lived upon human brains; that several had seen her during the night go to the cemeteries, and there embrace the young dead men, because she was not able to assuage otherwise the devil who worked in her entrails, and there raged like a tempest, and from that came the astringent biting, nitrous shooting, precipitant, and diabolical movements, squeezings, and writhings of love and voluptuousness, from which several men had emerged bruised, torn, bitten, pinched and crushed; and that since the coming of our Saviour, who had imprisoned the master devil in the bellies of the swine, no malignant beast had ever been seen in any portion of the earth so mischievous, venomous and so clutching; so much so that if one threw the town of Tours into this field of Venus, she would there transmute it into the grain of cities, and this demon would swallow it like a strawberry.<br /><br />And a thousand other statements, sayings, and depositions, from which was evident in perfect clearness the infernal generation of this woman, daughter, sister, niece, spouse, or brother of the devil, beside abundant proofs of her evil doing, and of the calamity spread by her in all families. And if it were possible to put them here conformably with the catalogue preserved by the good man to whom he accused the discovery, it would seem like a sample of the horrible cries which the Egyptians gave forth on the day of the seventh plague. Also this examination has covered with great honour Messire Guillaume Tournebouche, by whom are quoted all the memoranda. In the tenth vacation was thus closed this inquest, arriving at a maturity of proof, furnished with authentic testimony and sufficiently engrossed with the particulars, plaints, interdicts, contradictions, charges, assignments, withdrawals, confessions public and private, oaths, adjournments, appearances and controversies, to which the said demon must reply. And the townspeople say everywhere if there were really a she-devil, and furnished with internal horns planted in her nature, with which she drank the men, and broke them, this woman might swim a long time in this sea of writing before being landed safe and sound in hell.<br /><br />II<br /><br />THE PROCEEDINGS TAKEN RELATIVE TO THIS FEMALE VAMPIRE.<br /><br />/In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen./<br /><br />In the year of our Lord one thousand two hundred and seventy-one, before us, Hierome Cornille, grand penitentiary and ecclesiastical judge to this, canonically appointed, have appeared--<br /><br />The Sire Philippe d'Idre, bailiff of the town and city of Tours and province of Touraine, living in his hotel in the Rue de la Rotisserie, in Chateauneuf; Master Jehan Ribou, provost of the brotherhood and company of drapers, residing on the Quay de Bretaingne, at the image of St. Pierre-es-liens; Messire Antoine Jehan, alderman and chief of the Brotherhood of Changers, residing in the Place du Pont, at the image of St. Mark-counting-tournoise-pounds; Master Martin Beaupertuys, captain of the archers of the town residing at the castle; Jehan Rabelais, a ships' painter and boat maker residing at the port at the isle of St. Jacques, treasurer of the brotherhood of the mariners of the Loire; Mark Hierome, called Maschefer, hosier, at the sign of Saint-Sebastian, president of the trades council; and Jacques, called de Villedomer, master tavern-keeper and vine dresser, residing in the High Street, at the Pomme de Pin; to the said Sire d'Idre, and to the said citizens, we have read the following petition by them, written, signed, and deliberated upon, to be brought under the notice of the ecclesiastical tribunal:--<br /><br />PETITION<br /><br />We, the undersigned, all citizens of Tours, are come into the hotel of his worship the Sire d'Idre, bailiff of Touraine, in the absence of our mayor, and have requested him to hear our plaints and statements concerning the following facts, which we intend to bring before the tribunal of the archbishop, the judge of ecclesiastical crimes, to whom should be deferred the conduct of the cause which we here expose:--<br /><br />A long time ago there came into this town a wicked demon in the form of a woman, who lives in the parish of Saint-Etienne, in the house of the innkeeper Tortebras, situated in the quit-rent of the chapter, and under the temporal jurisdiction of the archiepiscopal domain. The which foreigner carries on the business of a gay woman in a prodigal and abusive manner, and with such increase of infamy that she threatens to ruin the Catholic faith in this town, because those who go to her come back again with their souls lost in every way, and refuse the assistance of the Church with a thousand scandalous discourses.<br /><br />Now considering that a great number of those who yielded to her are dead, and that arrived in our town with no other wealth than her beauty, she has, according to public clamour, infinite riches and right royal treasure, the acquisition of which is vehemently attributed to sorcery, or at least to robberies committed by the aid of magical attractions and her supernaturally amorous person.<br /><br />Considering that it is a question of the honour and security of our families, and that never before has been seen in this country a woman wild of body or a daughter of pleasure, carrying on with such mischief of vocation of light o' love, and menacing so openly and bitterly the life, the savings, the morals, chastity, religion, and the everything of the inhabitants of this town;<br /><br />Considering that there is need of a inquiry into her person, her wealth and her deportment, in order to verify if these effects of love are legitimate, and to not proceed, as would seem indicated by her manners, from a bewitchment of Satan, who often visits Christianity under the form of a female, as appears in the holy books, in which it is stated that our blessed Saviour was carried away into a mountain, from which Lucifer or Astaroth showed him the fertile plains of Judea and that in many places have been seen succubi or demons, having the faces of women, who, not wishing to return to hell, and having with them an insatiable fire, attempt to refresh and sustain themselves by sucking in souls;<br /><br />Considering that in the case of the said woman a thousand proofs of diablerie are met with, of which certain inhabitants speak openly, and that it is necessary for the repose of the said woman that the matter be sifted, in order that she shall not be attacked by certain people, ruined by the result of her wickedness;<br /><br />For these causes we pray that it will please you to submit to our spiritual lord, father of this diocese, the most noble and blessed archbishop Jehan de Monsoreau, the troubles of his afflicted flock, to the end that he may advise upon them.<br /><br />By doing so you will fulfil the duties of your office, as we do those of preservers of the security of this town, each one according to the things of which he has charge in his locality.<br /><br />And we have signed the present, in the year of our Lord one thousand two hundred and seventy-one, of All Saints' Day, after mass.<br /><br />Master Tournebouche having finished the reading of this petition, by us, Hierome Cornille, has it been said to the petitioners--<br /><br />"Gentlemen, do you, at the present time, persist in these statements? have you proofs other than those come within your own knowledge, and do you undertake to maintain the truth of this before God, before man, and before the accused?"<br /><br />All, with the exception of Master Jehan Rabelais, have persisted in their belief, and the aforesaid Rabelais has withdrawn from the process, saying that he considered the said Moorish woman to be a natural woman and a good wench who had no other fault than that of keeping up a very high temperature of love.<br /><br />Then we, the judge appointed, have, after mature deliberation, found matter upon which to proceed in the petition of the aforesaid citizens, and have commanded that the woman at present in the jail of the chapter shall be proceeded against by all legal methods, as written in the canons and ordinances, /contra demonios/. The said ordinance, embodied in a writ, shall be published by the town-crier in all parts, and with the sound of the trumpet, in order to make it known to all, and that each witness may, according to his knowledge, be confronted with the said demon, and finally the said accused to be provided with a defender, according to custom, and the interrogations, and the process to be congruously conducted.<br /><br />(Signed) HIEROME CORNILLE.<br /><br />And, lower-down.<br /><br />TOURNEBOUCHE.<br /><br />In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.<br /><br />In the year of our Lord one thousand two hundred and seventy-one, the 10th day of February, after mass, by command of us, Hierome Cornille, ecclesiastical judge, has been brought from the jail of the chapter and led before us the woman taken in the house of the innkeeper Tortebras, situated in the domains of the chapter and the cathedral of St. Maurice, and are subject to the temporal and seigneurial justice of the Archbishop of Tours; besides which, in consequence of the nature of the crimes imputed to her, she is liable to the tribunal and council of ecclesiastical justice, the which we have made known to her, to the end that she should not ignore it.<br /><br />And after a serious reading, entirely at will understood by her, in the first place of the petition of the town, then of the statements, plaints, accusations, and proceedings which written in twenty-four quires by Master Tournebouche, and are above related, we have, with the invocation and assistance of God and the Church, resolved to ascertain the truth, first by interrogatories made to the said accused.<br /><br />In the first interrogation we have requested the aforesaid to inform us in what land or town she had been born. By her who speaks was it answered: "In Mauritania."<br /><br />We have then inquired: "If she had a father or mother, or any relations?" By her who speaks has it been replied: "That she had never known them." By us requested to declare her name. By her who speaks has been replied: "Zulma," in Arabian tongue.<br /><br />By us has it been demanded: "Why she spoke our language?" By her who speaks has it been said: "Because she had come into this country." By us has it been asked: "At what time?" By her who speaks has it been replied: "About twelve years."<br /><br />By us has it been asked: "What age she then was?" By her who speaks has it been answered: "Fifteen years or thereabout."<br /><br />By us has it been said: "Then you acknowledge yourself to be twenty- seven years of age?" By her who speaks has it been replied: "Yes."<br /><br />By us has it been said to her: "That she was then the Moorish child found in the niche of Madame the Virgin, baptised by the Archbishop, held at the font by the late Lord of Roche-Corbon and the Lady of Azay, his wife, afterwards by them placed in religion at the convent of Mount Carmel, where by her had been made vows of chastity, poverty, silence, and the love of God, under the divine assistance of St. Clare?" By her who speaks has been said: "That is true."<br /><br />By us has it been asked her: "If, then, she allowed to be true the declarations of the very noble and illustrious lady the abbess of Mount Carmel, also the statements of Jacquette, called Vieux-Oing, being kitchen scullion?" By the accused has been answered: "These words are true in great measure."<br /><br />Then by us has it been said to her: "Then you are a Christian?" And by her who speaks has been answered: "Yes, my father."<br /><br />Then by us has she been requested to make the sign of the cross, and to take holy water from the brush placed by Master Tournebouche in her hand; the which having been done, and by us having been witnessed, it has been admitted as an indisputable fact, that Zulma, the Moorish woman, called in our country Blanche Bruyn, a nun of the convent under the invocation of Mount Carmel, there named Sister Clare, and suspected to be the false appearance of a woman under which is concealed a demon, has in our presence made act of religion and thus recognised the justice of the ecclesiastical tribunal.<br /><br />Then by us have these words been said to her: "My daughter, you are vehemently suspected to have had recourse to the devil from the manner in which you left the convent, which was supernatural in every way." By her who speaks has it been stated, that she at that time gained naturally the fields by the street door after vespers, enveloped in the robes of Jehan de Marsilis, visitor of the convent, who had hidden her, the person speaking, in a little hovel belonging to him, situated in the Cupidon Lane, near a tower in the town. That there this said priest had to her then speaking, at great length, and most thoroughly taught the depths of love, of which she then speaking was before in all points ignorant, for which delights she had a great taste, finding them of great use. That the Sire d'Amboise having perceived her then speaking at the window of this retreat, had been smitten with a great love for her. That she loved him more heartily than the monk, and fled from the hovel where she was detained for profit of his pleasure by Don Marsilis. And then she had gone in great haste to Amboise, the castle of the said lord, where she had had a thousand pastimes, hunting, and dancing, and beautiful dresses fit for a queen. One day the Sire de la Roche-Pozay having been invited by the Sire d'Amboise to come and feast and enjoy himself, the Baron d'Amboise had allowed him to see her then speaking, as she came out naked from her bath. That at this sight the said Sire de la Roche-Pozay having fallen violently in love with her, had on the morrow discomfited in single combat the Sire d'Amboise, and by great violence, had, is spite of her tears, taken her to the Holy Land, where she who was speaking had lived the life of a woman well beloved, and had been held in great respect on account of her great beauty. That after numerous adventures, she who was speaking had returned into this country in spite of the apprehensions of misfortune, because such was the will of her lord and master, the Baron de Bueil, who was dying of grief in Asiatic lands, and desired to return to his patrimonial manor. Now he had promised her who was speaking to preserve her from peril. Now she who was speaking had faith and belief in him, the more so as she loved him very much; but on his arrival in this country, the Sire de Bueil was seized with an illness, and died deplorably, without taking any remedies, this spite of the fervent requests which she who was speaking had addressed to him, but without success, because he hated physicians, master surgeons, and apothecaries; and that this was the whole truth.<br /><br />Then by us has it been said to the accused that she then held to be true the statements of the good Sire Harduin and of the innkeeper Tortebras. By her who speaks has it been replied, that she recognised as evidence the greater part, and also as malicious, calumnious, and imbecile certain portions.<br /><br />Then by us has the accused been required to declare if she had had pleasure and carnal commerce with all the men, nobles, citizens, and others as set forth in the plaints and declarations of the inhabitants. To which her who speaks has it been answered with great effrontery: "Pleasure, yes! Commerce, I do not know."<br /><br />By us has it been said to her, that all had died by her acts. By her who speaks has it been said that their deaths could not be the result of her acts, because she had always refused herself to them, and the more she fled from them the more they came and embraced her with infinite passion, and that when she who was speaking was taken by them she gave herself up to them with all her strength, by the grace of God, because she had in that more joy than in anything, and has stated, she who speaks, that she avows her secret sentiments solely because she had been requested by us to state the whole truth, and that she the speaker stood in great fear of the torments of the torturers.<br /><br />Then by us has she been requested to answer, under pain of torture, in what state of mind she was when a young nobleman died in consequence of his commerce with her. Then by her speaking has it been replied, that she remained quite melancholy and wished to destroy herself; and prayed God, the Virgin, and the saints to receive her into Paradise, because never had she met with any but lovely and good hearts in which was no guile, and beholding them die she fell into a great sadness, fancying herself to be an evil creature or subject to an evil fate, which she communicated like the plague.<br /><br />Then by us has she been requested to state where she paid her orisons.<br /><br />By her speaking has it been said that she played in her oratory on her knees before God, who according to the Evangelists, sees and hears all things and resides in all places.<br /><br />Then by us has it been demanded why she never frequented the churches, the offices, nor the feasts. To this by her speaking has it been answered, that those who came to love her had elected the feast days for that purpose, and that she speaking did all things to their liking.<br /><br />By us has it been remonstrated that, by so doing, she was submissive to man rather than to the commandments of God.<br /><br />Then by her speaking has it been stated, that for those who loved her well she speaking would have thrown herself into a flaming pile, never having followed in her love any course but that of nature, and that for the weight of the world in gold she would not have lent her body or her love to a king who did not love her with his heart, feet, hair, forehead, and all over. In short and moreover the speaker had never made an act of harlotry in selling one single grain of love to a man whom she had not chosen to be hers, and that he who held her in his arms one hour or kissed her on the mouth a little, possessed her for the remainder of her days.<br /><br />Then by us has she been requested to state whence preceded the jewels, gold plate, silver, precious stones, regal furniture, carpets, et cetera, worth 200,000 doubloons, according to the inventory found in her residence and placed in the custody of the treasurer of the chapter. By the speaker answer has been made, that in us she placed all her hopes, even as much as in God, but that she dare not reply to this, because it involved the sweetest things of love upon which she had always lived. And interpellated anew, the speaker has said that if the judge knew with what fervour she held him she loved, with what obedience she followed him in good or evil ways, with what study she submitted to him, with what happiness she listened to his desires, and inhaled the sacred words with which his mouth gratified her, in what adoration she held his person, even we, an old judge, would believe with her well-beloved, that no sum could pay for this great affection which all the men ran after. After the speaker has declared never from any man loved by her, to have solicited any present or gift, and that she rested perfectly contented to live in their hearts, that she would there curl herself up with indestructible and ineffable pleasure, finding herself richer with this heart than with anything, and thinking of no other thing than to give them more pleasure and happiness than she received from them. But in spite of the iterated refusals of the speaker her lovers persisted in graciously rewarding her. At times one came to her with a necklace of pearls, saying, "This is to show my darling that the satin of her skin did not falsely appear to me whiter than pearls" and would put it on the speaker's neck, kissing her lovingly. The speaker would be angry at these follies, but could not refuse to keep a jewel that gave them pleasure to see it there where they placed it. Each one had a different fancy. At times another liked to tear the precious garments which the speaker wore to gratify him; another to deck out the speaker with sapphires on her arms, on her legs, on her neck, and in her hair; another to seat her on the carpet, clad in silk or black velvet, and to remain for days together in ecstasy at the perfections of the speaker the whom the things desired by her lovers gave infinite pleasure, because these things rendered them quite happy. And the speaker has said, that as we love nothing so much as our pleasure, and wish that everything should shine in beauty and harmonise, outside as well as inside the heart, so they all wished to see the place inhabited by the speaker adorned with handsome objects, and from this idea all her lovers were pleased as much as she was in spreading thereabout gold, silks and flowers. Now seeing that these lovely things spoil nothing, the speaker had no force or commandment by which to prevent a knight, or even a rich citizen beloved by her, having his will, and thus found herself constrained to receive rare perfumes and other satisfaction with which the speaker was loaded, and that such was the source of the gold, plate, carpets, and jewels seized at her house by the officers of justice. This terminates the first interrogation made to the said Sister Clare, suspected to be a demon, because we the judge and Guillaume Tournebouche, are greatly fatigued with having the voice of the aforesaid, in our ears, and finding our understanding in every way muddled.<br /><br />By us the judge has the second interrogatory been appointed, three days from to-day, in order that the proofs of the possession and presence of the demon in the body of the aforesaid may be sought, and the accused, according to the order of the judge, has been taken back to the jail under the conduct of Master Guillaume Tournebouche.<br /><br />In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.<br /><br />On the thirteenth day following of the said month of the February before us, Hierome Cornille, et cetera, has been produced the Sister Clare above-mentioned, in order to be interrogated upon the facts and deeds to her imputed, and of them to be convicted.<br /><br />By us, the judge, has it been said to the accused that, looking at the divers responses by her given to the proceeding interrogatories, it was certain that it never had been in the power of a simple woman, even if she were authorised, if such licence were allowed to lead the life of a loose woman, to give pleasure to all, to cause so many deaths, and to accomplish sorceries so perfect, without the assistance of a special demon lodged in her body, and to whom her soul had been sold by an especial compact. That it had been clearly demonstrated that under her outward appearance lies and moves a demon, the author of these evils, and that she was now called upon to declare at what age she had received the demon, to vow the agreement existing between herself and him, and to tell the truth concerning their common evil doings. By the speaker was it replied that she would answer us, man, as to God, who would be judge of all of us. Then has the speaker pretended never to have seen the demon, neither to have spoken with him, nor in any way to desire to see him; never to have led the life of a courtesan, because she, the speaker, had never practised the various delights that love invents, other than those furnished by the pleasure which the Sovereign Creator has put in the thing, and to have always been incited more from the desire of being sweet and good to the dear lord loved by her, then by an incessantly raging desire. But if such had been her inclination, the speaker begged us to bear in mind that she was a poor African girl, in whom God had placed very hot blood, and in her brain so easy an understanding of the delights of love, that if a man only looked at her she felt greatly moved in her heart. That if from desire of acquaintance an amorous gentleman touched the speaker her on any portion of the body, there passing his hand, she was, in spite of everything, under his power, because her heart failed her instantly. By this touch, the apprehension and remembrance of all the sweet joys of love woke again in her breast, and there caused an intense heat, which mounted up, flamed in her veins, and made her love and joy from head to foot. And since the day when Don Marsilis had first awakened the understanding of the speaker concerning these things, she had never had any other thought, and thenceforth recognised love to be a thing so perfectly concordant with her nature, that it had since been proved to the speaker that in default of love and natural relief she would have died, withered at the said convent. As evidence of which, the speaker affirms as a certainty, that after her flight from the said convent she had not passed a single day or one particle of time in melancholy and sadness, but always was she joyous, and thus followed the sacred will of God, which she believed to have been diverted during the time lost by her in the convent.<br /><br />To this was it objected by us, Hierome Cornille, to the said demon, that in this response she had openly blasphemed against God, because we had all been made to his greater glory, and placed in the world to honour and to serve Him, to have before our eyes His blessed commandments, and to live in sanctity, in order to gain eternal life, and not to be always in bed, doing that which even the beasts only do at a certain time. Then by the said sister, has answer been made, that she honoured God greatly, that in all countries she had taken care of the poor and suffering, giving them both money and raiment, and that at the last judgement-day she hoped to have around her a goodly company of holy works pleasant to God, which would intercede for her. That but for her humility, a fear of being reproached and of displeasing the gentlemen of the chapter, she would with joy have spent her wealth in finishing the cathedral of St. Maurice, and there have established foundations for the welfare of her soul--would have spared therein neither her pleasure nor her person, and that with this idea she would have taken double pleasure in her nights, because each one of her amours would have added a stone to the building of this basilic. Also the more this purpose, and for the eternal welfare of the speaker, would they have right heartily given their wealth.<br /><br />Then by us has it been said to this demon that she could not justify the fact of her sterility, because in spite of so much commerce, no child had been born of her, the which proved the presence of a demon in her. Moreover, Astaroth alone, or an apostle, could speak all languages, and she spoke after the manner of all countries, the which proved the presence of the devil in her. Thereupon the speaker has asked: "In what consisted the said diversity of language?"--that of Greek she knew nothing but a Kyrie eleison, of which she made great use; of Latin, nothing, save Amen, which she said to God, wishing therewith to obtain her liberty. That for the rest the speaker had felt great sorrow, being without children, and if the good wives had them, she believed it was because they took so little pleasure in the business, and she, the speaker, a little too much. But that such was doubtless the will of God, who thought that from too great happiness, the world would be in danger of perishing. Taking this into consideration, and a thousand other reasons, which sufficiently establish the presence of the devil in the body of the sister, because the peculiar property of Lucifer is to always find arguments having the semblance of truth, we have ordered that in our presence the torture be applied to the said accused, and that she be well tormented in order to reduce the said demon by suffering to submit to the authority of the Church, and have requested to render us assistance one Francois de Hangest, master surgeon and doctor to the chapter, charging him by a codicil hereunder written to investigate the qualities of the feminine nature (virtutes vulvae) of the above- mentioned woman, to enlighten our religion on the methods employed by this demon to lay hold of souls in that way, and see if any article was there apparent.<br /><br />Then the said Moorish women had wept bitterly, tortured in advance, and in spite of her irons, has knelt down imploring with cries and clamour the revocation of this order, objecting that her limbs were in such a feeble state, and her bones so tender, that they would break like glass; and finally, has offered to purchase her freedom from this by the gift all her goods to the chapter, and to quit incontinently the country.<br /><br />Upon this, by us has she been required to voluntarily declare herself to be, and to have always been, demon of the nature of the Succubus, which is a female devil whose business it is to corrupt Christians by the blandishments and flagitious delights of love. To this the speaker has replied that the affirmation would be an abominable falsehood, seeing that she had always felt herself to be a most natural woman.<br /><br />Then her irons being struck off by the torturer, the aforesaid has removed her dress, and has maliciously and with evil design bewildered and attacked our understandings with the sight of her body, the which, for a fact, exercises upon a man supernatural coercion.<br /><br />Master Guillaume Tournebouche has, by reason of nature, quitted the pen at this period, and retired, objecting that he was unable, without incredible temptations, which worked in his brain, to be a witness of this torture, because he felt the devil violently gaining his person.<br /><br />This finishes the second interrogatory; and as the apparitor and janitor of the chapter have stated Master Francois de Hangest to be in the country, the torture and interrogations are appointed for to-morrow at the hour of noon after mass.<br /><br />This has been written verbally by me, Hierome, in the absence of Master Guillaume Tournebouche, on whose behalf it is signed.<br /><br />HIEROME CORNILLE<br />Grand Penitentiary.<br /><br /><br />PETITION<br /><br />Today, the fourteenth day of the month of February, in the presence of me, Hierome Cornille, have appeared the said Masters Jehan Ribou, Antoine Jehan, Martin Beaupertuys, Hierome Maschefer, Jacques de Ville d'Omer, and the Sire d'Idre, in place of the mayor of the city of Tours, for the time absent. All plaintiffs designated in the act of process made at the Town Hall, to whom we have, at the request of Blanche Bruyn (now confessing herself a nun of the convent of Mount Carmel, under the name of Sister Clare), declared the appeal made to the Judgment of God by the said person accused of demonical possession, and her offer to pass through the ordeal of fire and water, in presence of the Chapter and of the town of Tours, in order to prove her reality as a woman and her innocence.<br /><br />To this request have agreed for their parts, the said accusers, who, on condition that the town is security for it, have engaged to prepare a suitable place and a pile, to be approved by the godparents of the accused.<br /><br />Then by us, the judge, has the first day of the new year been appointed for the day of the ordeal--which will be next Paschal Day-- and we have indicated the hour of noon, after mass, each of the parties having acknowledged this delay to be sufficient.<br /><br />And the present proclamation shall be cited, at the suit of each of them, in all the towns, boroughs, and castles of Touraine and the land of France, at their request and at their cost and suit.<br /><br />HIEROME CORNILLE.<br /><br />III<br /><br />WHAT THE SUCCUBUS DID TO SUCK OUT THE SOUL OF THE OLD JUDGE, AND WHAT CAME OF THE DIABOLICAL DELECTATION.<br /><br />This the act of extreme confession made the first day of the month of March, in the year one thousand two hundred and seventy-one, after the coming of our blessed Saviour, by Hierome Cornille, priest, canon of the chapter of the cathedral of St. Maurice, grand penitentiary, of all acknowledging himself unworthy, who, finding his last hour to be come, and contrite of his sins, evil doings, forfeits, bad deeds, and wickednesses, has desired his avowal to be published to serve the preconisation of the truth, the glory of God, the justice of the tribunal, and to be an alleviation to him of his punishment, in the other world. The said Hierome Cornille being on his deathbed, there had been convoked to hear his declarations, Jehan de la Haye (de Hago), vicar of the church of St. Maurice; Pietro Guyard, treasurer of the chapter, appointed by our Lord Jean de Monsoreau, Archbishop, to write his words; and Dom Louis Pot, a monk of maius MONASTERIUM (Marmoustier), chosen by him for a spiritual father and confessor; all three assisted by the great and illustrious Dr Guillaume de Censoris, Roman Archdeacon, at present sent into the diocese (LEGATUS), by our Holy Father the Pope; and, finally, in the presence of a great number of Christians come to be witnesses of the death of the said Hierome Cornille, upon his known wish to make act of public repentance, seeing that he was fast sinking, and that his words might open the eyes of Christians about to fall into hell.<br /><br />And before him, Hierome, who, by reason of his great weakness could not speak, has Dom Louis Pot read the following confession to the great agitation of the said company:--<br /><br />"My brethren, until the seventy-first year of my age, which is the one in which I now am, with the exception of the little sins through which, all holy though he be, a Christian renders himself culpable before God, but which it is allowed to us to repurchase by penitence, I believe I led a Christian life, and merited the praise and renown bestowed upon me in this diocese, where I was raised to the high office of grand penitentiary, of which I am unworthy. Now, struck with the knowledge of the infinite glory of God, horrified at the agonies which await the wicked and prevaricators in hell, I have thought to lessen the enormity of my sins by the greatest penitence I can show in the extreme hour at which I am. Thus I have prayed of the Church, whom I have deceived and betrayed, whose rights and judicial renown I have sold, to grant me the opportunity of accusing myself publicly in the manner of ancient Christians. I hoped, in order to show my great repentance, to have still enough life in me to be reviled at the door of the cathedral by all my brethren, to remain there an entire day on my knees, holding a candle, a cord around my neck, and my feet naked, seeing that I had followed the way of hell with regard to the sacred instincts of the Church. But in this great shipwreck of my fragile virtue, which will be to you as a warning to fly from vice and the snares of the demon, and to take refuge in the Church, where all help is, I have been so bewitched by Lucifer that our Saviour Jesus Christ will take, by the intercession of all you whose help and prayers I request, pity on me, a poor abused Christian, whose eyes now stream with tears. So would I have another life to spend in works of penitence. Now then listen and tremble with great fear! Elected by the assembled Chapter to carry it out, instruct, and complete the process commenced against a demon, who had appeared in a feminine shape, in the person of a relapse nun--an abominable person, denying God, and bearing the name of Zulma in the infidel country whence she comes; the which devil is known in the diocese under that of Clare, of the convent of Mount Carmel, and has much afflicted the town by putting herself under an infinite number of men to gain their souls to Mammon, Astaroth, and Satan--princes of hell, by making them leave this world in a state of mortal sin, and causing their death where life has its source, I have, I the judge, fallen in my latter days into this snare, and have lost my senses, while acquitting myself traitorously of the functions committed with great confidence by the Chapter to my cold senility. Hear how subtle the demon is, and stand firm against her artifices. While listening to the first response of the aforesaid Succubus, I saw with horror that the irons placed upon her feet and hands left no mark there, and was astonished at her hidden strength and at her apparent weakness. Then my mind was troubled suddenly at the sight of the natural perfections with which the devil was endowed. I listened to the music of her voice, which warmed me from head to foot, and made me desire to be young, to give myself up to this demon, thinking that for an hour passed in her company my eternal salvation was but poor payment for the pleasure of love tasted in those slender arms. Then I lost that firmness with which all judges should be furnished. This demon by me questioned, reasoned with me in such a manner that at the second interrogatory I was firmly persuaded I should be committing a crime in fining and torturing a poor little creature who cried like an innocent child. Then warned by a voice from on high to do my duty, and that these golden words, the music of celestial appearance, were diabolical mummeries, that this body, so pretty, so infatuating, would transmute itself into a bristly beast with sharp claws, those eyes so soft into flames of hell, her behind into a scaly tail, the pretty rosebud mouth and gentle lips into the jaws of a crocodile, I came back to my intention of having the said Succubus tortured until she avowed her permission, as this practice had already been followed in Christianity. Now when this demon showed herself stripped to me, to be put to the torture, I was suddenly placed in her power by magical conjurations. I felt my old bones crack, my brain received a warm light, my heart transhipped young and boiling blood. I was light in myself, and by virtue of the magic philter thrown into my eyes the snows on my forehead melted away. I lost all conscience of my Christian life and found myself a schoolboy, running about the country, escaped from class and stealing apples. I had not the power to make the sign of the cross, neither did I remember the Church, God the Father, nor the sweet Saviour of men. A prey to this design, I went about the streets thinking over the delights of that voice, the abominable, pretty body of this demon, and saying a thousand wicked things to myself. Then pierced and drawn by a blow of the devil's fork, who had planted himself already in my head as a serpent in an oak, I was conducted by this sharp prong towards the jail, in spite of my guardian angel, who from time to time pulled me by the arm and defended me against these temptations, but in spite of his holy advice and his assistance I was dragged by a million claws stuck into my heart, and soon found myself in the jail. As soon as the door was opened to me I saw no longer any appearance of a prison, because the Succubus had there, with the assistance of evil genii or fays, constructed a pavilion of purple and silk, full of perfumes and flowers, where she was seated, superbly attired with neither irons on her neck nor chains on her feet. I allowed myself to be stripped of my ecclesiastical vestments, and was put into a scent bath. Then the demon covered me with a Saracen robe, entertained me with a repast of rare viands contained in precious vases, gold cups, Asiatic wines, songs and marvellous music, and a thousand sweet sounds that tickled my soul by means of my ears. At my side kept always the said Succubus, and her sweet, delectable embrace distilled new ardour into my members. My guardian angel quitted me. Then I lived only by the terrible light of the Moorish woman's eyes, coveted the warm embraces of the delicate body, wished always to feel her red lips, that I believed natural, and had no fear of the bite of those teeth which drew me to the bottom of hell, I delighted to feel the unequalled softness of her hands without thinking that they were unnatural claws. In short, I acted like husband desiring to go to his affianced without thinking that that spouse was everlasting death. I had no thought for the things of this world nor the interests of God, dreaming only of love, of the sweet breasts of this woman, who made me burn, and of the gate of hell in which I wished to cast myself. Alas! my brethren, during three days and three nights was I thus constrained to toil without being able to stop the stream which flowed from my reins, in which were plunged, like two pikes, the hands of the Succubus, which communicated to my poor old age and to my dried up bones, I know not what sweat of love. At first this demon, to draw me to her, caused to flow in my inside the softness of milk, then came poignant joys which pricked like a hundred needles my bones, my marrow, my brain, and my nerves. Then all this gone, all things became inflamed, my head, my blood, my nerves, my flesh, my bones, and then I burned with the real fire of hell, which caused me torments in my joints, and an incredible, intolerable, tearing voluptuousness which loosened the bonds of my life. The tresses of this demon, which enveloped my poor body, poured upon me a stream of flame, and I felt each lock like a bar of red iron. During this mortal delectation I saw the ardent face of the said Succubus, who laughed and addressed to me a thousand exciting words; such as that I was her knight, her lord, her lance, her day, her joy, her hero, her life, her good, her rider, and that she would like to clasp me even closer, wishing to be in my skin or have me in hers. Hearing which, under the prick of this tongue which sucked out my soul, I plunged and precipitated myself finally into hell without finding the bottom. And then when I had no more a drop of blood in my veins, when my heart no longer beat in my body, and I was ruined at all points, the demon, still fresh, white, rubicund, glowing, and laughing, said to me--<br /><br />"'Poor fool, to think me a demon! Had I asked thee to sell thy soul for a kiss, wouldst thou not give it to me with all thy heart?'<br /><br />"'Yes,' said I.<br /><br />"'And if always to act thus it were necessary for thee to nourish thyself with the blood of new-born children in order always to have new life to spend in my arms, would you not imbibe it willingly?'<br /><br />"'Yes,' said I.<br /><br />"'And to be always my gallant horseman, gay as a man in his prime, feeling life, drinking pleasure, plunging to the depths of joy as a swimmer into the Loire, wouldst thou not deny God, wouldst thou not spit in the face of Jesus?'<br /><br />"'Yes,' said I.<br /><br />"Then I felt a hundred sharp claws which tore my diaphragm as if the beaks of a thousand birds there took their bellyfuls, shrieking. Then I was lifted suddenly above the earth upon the said Succubus, who had spread her wings, and cried to me--<br /><br />"'Ride, ride, my gallant rider! Hold yourself firmly on the back of thy mule, by her mane, by her neck; and ride, ride, my gallant rider-- everything rides!' And then I saw, as a thick fog, the cities of the earth, where by a special gift I perceived each one coupled with a female demon, and tossing about, and engendering in great concupiscence, all shrieking a thousand words of love and exclamations of all kinds, and all toiling away with ecstasy. Then my horse with the Moorish head pointed out to me, still flying and galloping beyond the clouds, the earth coupled with the sun in a conjunction, from which proceeded a germ of stars, and there each female world was embracing a male world; but in place of the words used by creatures, the worlds were giving forth the howls of tempests, throwing up lightnings and crying thunders. Then still rising, I saw overhead the female nature of all things in love with the Prince of Movement. Now, by way of mockery, the Succubus placed me in the centre of this horrible and perpetual conflict, where I was lost as a grain of sand in the sea. Then still cried my white mare to me, 'Ride, ride my gallant rider--all things ride!' Now, thinking how little was a priest in this torment of the seed of worlds, nature always clasped together, and metals, stones, waters, airs, thunders, fish, plants, animals, men, spirits, worlds and planets, all embracing with rage, I denied the Catholic faith. Then the Succubus, pointing out to me the great patch of stars seen in heavens, said to me, 'That way is a drop of celestial seed escaped from great flow of the worlds in conjunction.' Thereupon I instantly clasped the Succubus with passion by the light of a thousand million of stars, and I wished in clasping her to feel the nature of those thousand million creatures. Then by this great effort of love I fell impotent in every way, and heard a great infernal laugh. Then I found myself in my bed, surrounded by my servitors, who had had the courage to struggle with the demon, throwing into the bed where I was stretched a basin full of holy water, and saying fervent prayers to God. Then had I to sustain, in spite of this assistance, a horrible combat with the said Succubus, whose claws still clutched my heart, causing me infinite pains; still, while reanimated by the voice of my servitors, relations, and friends, I tried to make the sacred sign of the cross; the Succubus perched on my bed, on the bolster, at the foot, everywhere, occupying herself in distracting my nerves, laughing, grimacing, putting before my eyes a thousand obscene images, and causing me a thousand wicked desires. Nevertheless, taking pity on me, my lord the Archbishop caused the relics of St. Gatien to be brought, and the moment the shrine had touched my bed the said Succubus was obliged to depart, leaving an odour of sulphur and of hell, which made the throats of my servants, friends, and others sore for a whole day. Then the celestial light of God having enlightened my soul, I knew I was, through my sins and my combat with the evil spirit, in great danger of dying. Then did I implore the especial mercy, to live just a little time to render glory to God and his Church, objecting the infinite merits of Jesus dead upon the cross for the salvation of the Christians. By this prayer I obtained the favour of recovering sufficient strength to accuse myself of my sins, and to beg of the members of the Church of St.Maurice their aid and assistance to deliver me from purgatory, where I am about to atone for my faults by infinite agonies. Finally, I declare that my proclamation, wherein the said demon appeals the judgment of God by the ordeals of holy water and a fire, is a subterfuge due to an evil design suggested by the said demon, who would thus have had the power to escape the justice of the tribunal of the Archbishop and of the Chapter, seeing that she secretly confessed to me, to be able to make another demon accustomed to the ordeal appear in her place. And, in conclusion, I give and bequeath to the Chapter of the Church of St. Maurice my property of all kinds, to found a chapter in the said church, to build it and adorn it and put it under the invocation of St. Hierome and St. Gatien, of whom one is my patron and the other the saviour of my soul."<br /><br />This, heard by all the company, has been brought to the notice of the ecclesiastical tribunal by Jehan to la Haye (Johannes de Haga).<br /><br />We, Jehan de la Haye (Johannes de Haga), elected grand penitentiary of St.Maurice by the general assembly of the Chapter, according to the usage and custom of that church, and appointed to pursue afresh the trial of the demon Succubus, at present in the jail of the Chapter, have ordered a new inquest, at which will be heard all those of this diocese having cognisance of the facts relative thereto. We declared void the other proceedings, interrogations, and decrees, and annul them in the name of the members of the Church in general, and sovereign Chapter assembled, and declare that the appeal to God, traitorously made by the demon, shall not take place, in consequence of the notorious treachery of the devil in this affair. And the said judgment shall be cried by sound of trumpet in all parts of the diocese in which have been published the false edicts of the preceding month, all notoriously due to the instigation of the demon, according to the confession of the late Hierome Cornille.<br /><br />Let all good Christians be of assistance to our Holy Church, and to her commandments.<br /><br />JEHAN DE LA HAYE.<br /><br /><br />IV<br /><br />HOW THE MOORISH WOMAN OF THE RUE CHAUDE TWISTED ABOUT SO BRISKLY THAT WITH GREAT DIFFICULTY WAS SHE BURNED AND COOKED ALIVE, TO THE GREAT LOSS OF THE INFERNAL REGIONS.<br /><br />This was written in the month of May, of the year 1360, after the manner of a testament.<br /><br />"My very dear and well-beloved son, when it shall be lawful for thee to read this I shall be, I thy father, reposing in the tomb, imploring thy prayers, and supplicating thee to conduct thyself in life as it will be commanded thee in this rescript, bequeathed for the good government of thy family, thy future, and safety; for I have done this at a period when I had my senses and understanding, still recently affected by the sovereign injustice of men. In my virile age I had a great ambition to raise myself in the Church, and therein to obtain the highest dignities, because no life appeared to me more splendid. Now with this earnest idea, I learned to read and write, and with great trouble became in a fit condition to enter the clergy. But because I had no protection, or good advice to superintend my training I had an idea of becoming the writer, tabellion, and rubrican of the Chapter of St. Maurice, in which were the highest and richest personages of Christendom, since the King of France is only therein a simple canon. Now there I should be able better than anywhere else to find services to render to certain lords, and thus to find a master or gain patronage, and by this assistance enter into religion, and be mitred and esconced in an archiepiscopal chair, somewhere or other. But this first vision was over credulous, and a little too ambitious, the which God caused me clearly to perceive by the sequel. In fact, Messire Jepan de Villedomer, who afterwards became cardinal, was given this appointment, and I was rejected, discomfited. Now in this unhappy hour I received an alleviation of my troubles, by the advice of the good old Hierome Cornille, of whom I have often spoken to you. This dear man induced me, by his kindness, to become penman to the Chapter of St. Maurice and the Archbishop of Tours, the which offer I accepted with joy, since I was reputed a scrivener. At the time I was about to enter into the presbytery commenced the famous process against the devil of the Rue Chaude, of which the old folk still talk, and which in its time, has been recounted in every home in France. Now, believing that it would be of great advantage to my ambition, and that for this assistance the Chapter would raise me to some dignity, my good master had me appointed for the purpose of writing all of that should be in this grave cause, subject to writing. At the very outset Monseigneur Hierome Cornille, a man approaching eighty years, of great sense, justice, and sound understanding, suspected some spitefulness in this cause, although he was not partial to immodest girls, and had never been involved with a woman in his life, and was holy and venerable, with a sanctity which had caused him to be selected as a judge, all this not withstanding. As soon as the depositions were completed, and the poor wench heard, it remained clear that although this merry doxy had broken her religious vows, she was innocent of all devilry, and that her great wealth was coveted by her enemies, and other persons, whom I must not name to thee for reasons of prudence. At this time every one believed her to be so well furnished with silver and gold that she could have bought the whole county of Touraine, if so it had pleased her. A thousand falsehoods and calumnious words concerning the girl, envied by all the honest women, were circulated and believed in as gospel. At this period Master Hierome Cornille, having ascertained that no demon other than that of love was in the girl, made her consent to remain in a convent for the remainder of her days. And having ascertained certain noble knights brave in war and rich in domains, that they would do everything to save her, he invited her secretly to demand of her accusers the judgment of God, at the same time giving her goods to the chapter, in order to silence mischievous tongues. By this means would be saved from the stake the most delicate flower that ever heaven has allowed to fall upon our earth; the which flower yielded only from excessive tenderness and amiability to the malady of love, cast by her eyes into the hearts of all her pursuers. But the real devil, under the form of a monk, mixed himself up in this affair; in this wise: great enemy of the virtue, wisdom, and sanctity of Monsignor Hierome Cornille, named Jehan de la Haye, having learned that in the jail, the poor girl was treated like a queen, wickedly accused the grand penitentiary of connivance with her and of being her servitor, because, said this wicked priest, she makes him young, amorous, and happy, from which the poor old man died of grief in one day, knowing by this that Jehan de la Haye had worn his ruin and coveted his dignities. In fact, our lord the archbishop visited the jail, and found the Moorish woman in a pleasant place, reposing comfortably, and without irons, because, having placed a diamond in a place when none could have believed she could have held it, she had purchased the clemency of her jailer. At the time certain persons said that this jailer was smitten with her, and that from love, or perhaps in great fear of the young barons, lovers of this woman, he had planned her escape. The good man Cornille being at the point of death, through the treachery of Jehan de la Haye, the Chapter thinking it necessary to make null and void the proceedings taken by the penitentiary, and also his decrees, the said Jehan de la Haye, at that time a simple vicar of the cathedral, pointed out that to do this it would be sufficient to obtain a public confession from the good man on his death-bed. Then was the moribund tortured and tormented by the gentleman of the Chapter, those of Saint Martin, those of Marmoustiers, by the archbishop and also by the Pope's legate, in order that he might recant to the advantage of the Church, to which the good man would not consent. But after a thousand ills, the public confession was prepared, at which the most noteworthy people of the town assisted, and the which spread more horror and consternation than I can describe. The churches of the diocese held public prayers for this calamity, and every one expected to see the devil tumble into his house by the chimney. But the truth of it is that the good Master Hierome had a fever, and saw cows in his room, and then was this recantation obtained of him. The access passed, the poor saint wept copiously on learning this trick from me. In fact, he died in my arms, assisted by his physicians, heartbroken at this mummery, telling us that he was going to the feet of God to pray to prevent the consummation of this deplorable iniquity. The poor Moorish woman had touched him much by her tears and repentance, seing that before making her demand for the judgment of God he had minutely confessed her, and by that means had disentangled the soul divine which was in the body, and of which he spoke as of a diamond worthy of adorning the holy crown of God, when she should have departed this life, after repenting her sins. Then, my dear son, knowing by the statements made in the town, and by the naive responses of this unhappy wretch, all the trickery of this affair, I determined by the advice of Master Francois de Hangest, physician of the chapter, to feign an illness and quit the service of the Church of St. Maurice and of the archbishopric, in order not to dip my hands in the innocent blood, which still cries and will continue to cry aloud unto God until the day of the last judgment. Then was the jailer dismissed, and in his place was put the second son of the torturer, who threw the Moorish woman into a dungeon, and inhumanly put upon her hands and feet chains weighing fifty pounds, besides a wooden waistband; and the jail were watched by the crossbowmen of the town and the people of the archbishop. The wench was tormented and tortured, and her bones were broken; conquered by sorrow, she made an avowal according to the wishes of Jehan de la Haye, and was instantly condemned to be burned in the enclosure of St. Etienne, having been previously placed in the portals of the church, attired in a chemise of sulphur, and her goods given over to the Chapter, et cetera. This order was the cause of great disturbances and fighting in the town, because three young knights of Touraine swore to die in the service of the poor girl, and to deliver her in all possible ways. Then they came into the town, accompanied by thousands of sufferers, labouring people, old soldiers, warriors, courtesans, and others, whom the said girls had succoured, saved from misfortune, from hunger and misery, and searched all the poor dwellings of the town where lay those to whom she had done good. Thus all were stirred up and called together to the plain of Mount- Louis under the protection of the soldiers of the said lords; they had for companions all the scape-graces of the said twenty leagues around, and came one morning to lay siege to the prison of the archbishop, demanding that the Moorish woman should be given up to them as though they would put her to death, but in fact to set her free, and to place her secretly upon a swift horse, that she might gain the open country, seeing that she rode like a groom. Then in this frightful tempest of men have we seen between the battlements of the archiepiscopal palace and the bridges, more than ten thousand men swarming, besides those who were perched upon the roofs of the houses and climbing on all the balconies to see the sedition; in short it was easy to hear the horrible cries of the Christians, who were terribly in earnest, and of those who surrounded the jail with the intention of setting the poor girl free, across the Loire, the other side of Saint Symphorien. The suffocation and squeezing of bodies was so great in this immense crowd, bloodthirsty for the poor creature at whose knees they would have fallen had they had the opportunity of seeing her, that seven children, eleven women, and eight citizens were crushed and smashed beyond all recognition, since they were like splodges of mud; in short, so wide open was the great mouth of this popular leviathan, this horrible monster, that the clamour was heard at Montils-les- Tours. All cried 'Death to the Succubus! Throw out the demon! Ha! I'd like a quarter! I'll have her skin! The foot for me, the mane for thee! The head for me! The something for me! Is it red? Shall we see? Will it be grilled? Death to her! death!' Each one had his say. But the cry, 'Largesse to God! Death to the Succubus!' was yelled at the same time by the crowd so hoarsely and so cruelly that one's ears and heart bled therefrom; and the other cries were scarcely heard in the houses. The archbishop decided, in order to calm this storm which threatened to overthrow everything, to come out with great pomp from the church, bearing the host, which would deliver the Chapter from ruin, since the wicked young men and the lords had sworn to destroy and burn the cloisters and all the canons. Now by this stratagem the crowd was obliged to break up, and from lack of provisions return to their houses. Then the monks of Touraine, the lords, and the citizens, in great apprehension of pillage on the morrow, held a nocturnal council, and accepted the advice of the Chapter. By their efforts the men-at-arms, archers, knights, and citizens, in a large number, kept watch, and killed a party of shepherds, road menders, and vagrants, who, knowing the disturbed state of Tours, came to swell the ranks of the malcontents. The Sire Harduin de Maille, an old nobleman, reasoned with the young knights, who were the champions of the Moorish woman, and argued sagely with them, asking them if for so small a woman they wished to put Touraine to fire and sword; that even if they were victorious they would be masters of the bad characters brought together by them; that these said freebooters, after having sacked the castles of their enemies, would turn to those of their chiefs. That the rebellion commenced had had no success in the first attack, because up to that time the place was untouched, could they have any over the church, which would invoke the aid of the king? And a thousand other arguments. To these reasons the young knights replied, that it was easy for the Chapter to aid the girl's escape in the night, and that thus the cause of the sedition would be removed. To this humane and wise requests replied Monseigneur de Censoris, the Pope's legate, that it was necessary that strength should remain with the religion of the Church. And thereupon the poor wench payed for all, since it was agreed that no inquiry should be made concerning this sedition.<br /><br />"Then the Chapter had full licence to proceed to the penance of the girl, to which act and ecclesiastical ceremony the people came from twelve leagues around. So that on the day when, after divine satisfaction, the Succubus was to be delivered up to secular justice, in order to be publicly burnt at a stake, not for a gold pound would a lord or even an abbott have been found lodging in the town of Tours. The night before many camped outside the town in tents, or slept upon straw. Provisions were lacking, and many who came with their bellies full, returned with their bellies empty, having seen nothing but the reflection of the fire in the distance. And the bad characters did good strokes of business by the way.<br /><br />"The poor courtesan was half dead; her hair had whitened. She was, to tell the truth, nothing but a skeleton, scarcely covered with flesh, and her chains weighed more than she did. If she had had joy in her life, she paid dearly for it at this moment. Those who saw her pass say that she wept and shrieked in a way that should have earned the pity of her hardest pursuers; and in the church there were compelled to put a piece of wood in her mouth, which she bit as a lizard bites a stick. Then the executioner tied her to a stake to sustain her, since she let herself roll at times and fell for want of strength. Then she suddenly recovered a vigorous handful, because, this notwithstanding, she was able, it is said to break her cords and escape into the church, where in remembrance of her old vocation, she climbed quickly into galleries above, flying like a bird along the little columns and small friezes. She was about to escape on to the roof when a soldier perceived her, and thrust his spear in the sole of her foot. In spite of her foot half cut through, the poor girl still ran along the church without noticing it, going along with her bones broken and her blood gushing out, so great fear had she of the flames of the stake. At last she was taken and bound, thrown into a tumbrel and led to the stake, without being afterwards heard to utter a cry. The account of her flight in the church assisted in making the common people believe that she was the devil, and some of them said that she had flown in the air. As soon as the executioner of the town threw her into the flames, she made two or three horrible leaps and fell down into the bottom of the pile, which burned day and night. On the following evening I went to see if anything remained of this gentle girl, so sweet, so loving, but I found nothing but a fragment of the 'os stomachal,' in which, is spite of this, there still remained some moisture, and which some say still trembled like a woman does in the same place. It is impossible to tell, my dear son, the sadnesses, without number and without equal, which for about ten years weighed upon me; always was I thinking of this angel burnt by wicked men, and always I beheld her with her eyes full of love. In short the supernatural gifts of this artless child were shining day and night before me, and I prayed for her in the church, where she had been martyred. At length I had neither the strength nor the courage to look without trembling upon the grand penitentiary Jehan de la Haye, who died eaten up by lice. Leprosy was his punishment. Fire burned his house and his wife; and all those who had a hand in the burning had their own hands singed.<br /><br />"This, my well-beloved son, was the cause of a thousand ideas, which I have here put into writing to be forever the rule of conduct in our family.<br /><br />"I quitted the service of the church, and espoused your mother, from whom I received infinite blessings, and with whom I shared my life, my goods, my soul, and all. And she agreed with me in following precepts --Firstly, that to live happily, it is necessary to keep far away from church people, to honour them much without giving them leave to enter your house, any more than to those who by right, just or unjust, are supposed to be superior to us. Secondly, to take a modest condition, and to keep oneself in it without wishing to appear in any way rich. To have a care to excite no envy, nor strike any onesoever in any manner, because it is needful to be as strong as an oak, which kills the plants at its feet, to crush envious heads, and even then would one succumb, since human oaks are especially rare and that no Tournebouche should flatter himself that he is one, granting that he be a Tournebouche. Thirdly, never to spend more than one quarter of one's income, conceal one's wealth, hide one's goods and chattels, to undertake no office, to go to church like other people, and always keep one's thoughts to oneself, seeing that they belong to you and not to others, who twist them about, turn them after their own fashion, and make calumnies therefrom. Fourthly, always to remain in the condition of the Tournebouches, who are now and forever drapers. To marry your daughters to good drapers, send your sons to be drapers in other towns of France furnished with these wise precepts, and to bring them up to the honour of drapery, and without leaving any dream of ambition in their minds. A draper like a Tournebouche should be their glory, their arms, their name, their motto, their life. Thus by being always drapers, they will be always Tournebouches, and rub on like the good little insects, who, once lodged in the beam, made their dens, and go on with security to the end of their ball of thread. Fifthly never to speak any other language than that of drapery, and never to dispute concerning religion or government. And even though the government of the state, the province, religion, and God turn about, or have a fancy to go to the right or to the left, always in your quality of Tournebouche, stick to your cloth. Thus unnoticed by the others of the town, the Tournebouches will live in peace with their little Tournebouches--paying the tithes and taxes, and all that they are required by force to give, be it to God, or to the king, to the town of to the parish, with all of whom it is unwise to struggle. Also it is necessary to keep the patrimonial treasure, to have peace and to buy peace, never to owe anything, to have corn in the house, and enjoy yourselves with the doors and windows shut.<br /><br />"By this means none will take from the Tournebouches, neither the state, nor the Church, nor the Lords, to whom should the case be that force is employed, you will lend a few crowns without cherishing the idea of ever seeing him again--I mean the crowns.<br /><br />"Thus, in all seasons people will love the Tournebouches, will mock the Tournebouches as poor people--as the slow Tournebouches, as Tournebouches of no understanding. Let the know-nothings say on. The Tournebouches will neither be burned nor hanged, to the advantage of King or Church, or other people; and the wise Tournebouches will have secretly money in their pockets, and joy in their houses, hidden from all.<br /><br />"Now, my dear son, follow this the counsel of a modest and middle- class life. Maintain this in thy family as a county charter; and when you die, let your successor maintain it as the sacred gospel of the Tournebouches, until God wills it that there be no longer Tournebouches in this world."<br /><br />This letter has been found at the time of the inventory made in the house of Francois Tournebouche, lord of Veretz, chancellor to Monseigneur the Dauphin, and condemned at the time of the rebellion of the said lord against the King to lose his head, and have all his goods confiscated by order of the Parliament of Paris. The said letter has been handed to the Governor of Touraine as an historical curiosity, and joined to the pieces of the process in the archbishopric of Tours, by me, Pierre Gaultier, Sheriff, President of the Trades Council.<br /><br />The author having finished the transcription and deciphering of these parchments, translating them from their strange language into French, the donor of them declared that the Rue Chaude at Tours was so called, according to certain people, because the sun remained there longer than in all other parts. But in spite of this version, people of lofty understanding will find, in the warm way of the said Succubus, the real origin of the said name. In which acquiesces the author. This teaches us not to abuse our body, but use it wisely in view of our salvation.<br /><br /><br />-THE END-<br /></span></center></div></center>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4883301247675127291.post-41301571385951859662011-03-12T08:47:00.001-08:002011-03-12T08:47:55.538-08:00"Wake not the dead" by Johann Ludwig Tieck<center><img src="http://i200.photobucket.com/albums/aa246/V-Empire/Maria%20poze/927d4c334e1a09df.jpg" alt="Photobucket" border="0" /></center><br /><br />This story is a German Gothic Vampire novella. Published in _Odds and Ends _ it is now one of the oldest vampire stories (available in English). It is a story about love gone wrong due to the twisted personality of the protagonist Walter. It is his inability to allow his first wife, Brunhilde, to rest in peace, his insistence that he must have her, that causes the problems. He pretty much spurns his second wife, who does everything in her power to please him because of his total fixation on Brunhilde. (Yes, the Biblical story of Jacob is echoed here; note also the twist to the story of the prodigal!) While you read it, note the various and different characteristics of this particular undead. They aren't those we are used to.<br /><br />Note that although Tieck never calls Brunhilde a vampire, her essence and behavior is that of the vampire.<br /><br /><br /><br /><center><b><br />Johann Ludwig Tieck : "Wake Not The Dead"<br /></b></center><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />1. "Will you sleep forever? Will you never again awaken, my beloved, but henceforth repose for ever from your short pilgrimage on earth? Oh, once again return, bringing with you the life-giving dawning of hope to me; my existence has, since your death, been full of hopelessness. What! Speechless? for ever speechless? I lament, and you pay me no attention? I shed bitter, scalding tears, and you sleep still, ignoring my affliction? I am in despair, and you no longer open your arms to me to hide me from my grief? Say then, does the pale shroud become you better than the bridal veil? Is the chamber of the grave a warmer bed than the couch of our love? Is the specter of death more welcome to your arms than me? Oh! return my love, return once again to this inconsolable bosom." Such were the laments that Walter poured forth for his Brunhilda, the partner of his youthful passionate love; thus did he wail over her grave at midnight, the time when the spirit that presides in the troubled atmosphere sends his legions of monsters through mid-air, so that their shadows, as they flit beneath the moon and across the earth dart as wild, agitating thoughts that chase each other over the sinner's bosom; thus did he lament under the tall linden trees by her gave, while his head reclined on the cold stone.<br /><br />2. Walter was a powerful lord in Burgundy, who, in his early youth had been smitten with the charms of the fair Brunhilda, a beauty far surpassing in loveliness all her rivals; her hair was dark as the raven face of night, streaming over her shoulders, set off to the utmost advantage the sweetness of her slender form, and the rich dye of a cheek whose tint was deep and brilliant as that of the western heaven. Her eyes bore no resemblance to the stars that glowed in the night sky whose immeasurable distance fills the soul with deep thoughts of eternity, but instead were the sober beams which cheer this world, enlightening, kindling the sons of earth to joy and love.<br /><br />3. Brunhilda became Walter's wife, and both being equally enamored and devoted, they abandoned themselves to the enjoyment of a passion that rendered them reckless of all else, while lulling them in a fascinating dream. Their sole fear was that something would awaken them from the delirium which they preyed would never end. Yet how vain is the wish that would stop the decree of destiny; one might as well try to divert the circling planets from their eternal course. Their passion for each other did not last long, not that it decayed and subsided into apathy, death snatched away his loving wife leaving Walter to a widowed couch. Although the first flush of his grief was intense, it did not last forever; before too long another the widow took another wife.<br /><br />4. Swanhilda was also beautiful; although her charms were very different from those of Brunhilda. She had golden hair that waved bright as the beams of the morning sun, and only when excited by some emotion did a rosy hue tinge the lily paleness of her cheek; her limbs were well proportioned; her eyes spoke eloquently, but it was with the radiance of a minor star, tranquillizing to tenderness rather than exciting to warmth. She was formed so differently from his former love that it as not possible that she could excite the same passion in his heart, although she rendered his waking hours happy -- tranquil and serious, yet cheerful, she studied her husbands preferences in all things and restored order and comfort to his home, shedding a comforting influence all around. Her mild benevolence tended to restrain Walter's passionate, fiery, and impetuous disposition; while at the same time her prudence recalled him in some degree from his vain, turbulent wishes, and his pursuit of unattainable enjoyments, to the duties and pleasures of actual life. Swanhilda bore two children, a son and a daughter. She was a mild and patient mother, well contented in her solitary times, yet even in these solitary times she displayed the serious turn of her character. The boy possessed his fathers fiery, restless disposition, tempered by the solidity of his mother. Attached by his offspring more tenderly towards their mother, Walter now lived quite happily for several years; although his thoughts would return now and then to Brunhilda, they did so less violently and merely as a person would dwell on the memory of a friend borne from us on the rapid current of time to a region where we know that he is happy.<br /><br />5. But clouds dissolve into air, flowers fade, the sands of an hourglass run imperceptibly away, and human feelings dissolve, fade, and pass away, and with them human happiness. Walter's inconstant breast again sighed for the ecstatic dreams of those days which he had spent with his equally romantic, enamored Brunhilda. In his memory she again presented herself to his ardent fancy in all the glow of her bridal charm, and he began to draw parallel between the past and the present; nor did imagination fail to array her in her former beauty. He pictured himself so much richer in enjoyment of the former, and the other, much less so than they really were.<br /><br />6. This change in her husband did not escape Swanhilda; whereupon she redoubled her attentions towards him, and her care towards their children. She expected by these means to reunite the know that was slackening, yet the more she tried to regain his affection, the colder he seemed to grow, and the more intolerable did her touch become, and the more continually the image of Brunhilda haunted his thoughts. The children, whose endearments were now indispensable to him, alone joined their parents as genii eager to affect a reconciliation; and, beloved by them both, formed a uniting link between them. Yet, as evil can be plucked from the heart of man only before the root has yet struck deep, its fangs afterwards too firm to be eradicated, so was Walter's diseased fancy too far affected to have its disorder stopped; in a short time it completely tyrannized over him. Frequently, instead of retiring to his wife's chamber, he went to Brunhilda's grave, where he murmured forth his discontent, saying, "Will you sleep forever?"<br /><br />7. One night as he reclined on the grass indulging in his normal sorrow, a sorcerer from the neighboring mountains entered the graveyard to gather such herbs as grow only from the earth where the dead sleep, herbs which are gifted with a powerful and supernatural influence. The sorcerer perceived the mourner, and approached the spot where he way lying. "Why, fond wretch, do you grieve so for what is now a hideous mass of mortality, mere bones, and nerves, and veins? Nations have fallen unlamented; even worlds themselves, long before this world of ours was created, have moldered into nothing. No one has wept over them; why then should you indulge this vain affliction for a child of the dust, a being as frail as yourself, and like you the creature of but a moment?"<br /><br />8. Walter raised himself up and lamented, "let the worlds shine in the sky lamenting for each other as they perish. It is true that I who am myself clay lament for my fellow-clay: yet this is clay impregnated with a fire, with an essence that none of the elements of creation possess, with love, and this divine passion I felt for her who lays beneath this sod."<br /><br />9. "Will your complaints awaken her? Or could they do so, would she not soon scold you for having disturbed that sleep in which she is now hushed?"<br /><br />10. "Go away, cold-hearted being, you don't know what love is! Oh, that my tears could wash away the earthy covering that conceals her from these eyes; that my groan of anguish could rouse her from her slumber of death! No, she would not again seek her earthy couch (her grave)."<br /><br />11. "Senseless as you are, could you endure gazing without shuddering on one disgorged from the grave? Are you the same person from whom she parted? Or has time passed over your brow and left no traces there? Would your love not be converted into hate?" 12."Say instead that the stars would leave the heavens, and the sun will henceforth refuse to shed his beams. Oh, that she stood once more before me, that once again she slept on my bosom! How quickly should we then forget that death or time had ever stepped between us."<br /><br />13. "Delusion, mere delusion of the brain from over-heated blood, like that which arises from the fumes of wine. It is not my wish to tempt you, to restore to you your dead, or would you soon feel that I have spoken truth."<br /><br />14. "How could you restore her to me?" exclaimed Walter, casting himself at the sorcerer's feet. "Oh, if you are indeed able to do that, grant it to me at my urgent plea if one throb of human feeling vibrate in your breast. Let my tears prevail with you, restore my beloved to me. You shall hereafter bless the deed, and see that it was a good work."<br /><br />15. "A good work! A blessed deed!" returned the sorcerer with a smile of scorn, "for me there exists neither good nor evil since my will is always the same. You alone know evil, who will for that you know you should not. It is indeed in my power to restore her to you, yet you should think long and hard as to whether it will indeed prove to your benefit. Consider also how deep the abyss between life and death; across this abyss my power can build a bridge, but it can never fill up the frightful chasm."<br /><br />16.Walter would have spoken, seeking to prevail upon this powerful being by fresh pleas, but the latter prevented him, saying, "Peace! Think well about what you want, and return here to me tomorrow night at midnight. Yet I warn you again, 'Wake not the Dead!'"<br /><br />17. Having uttered these words, they mysterious being disappeared. Drunk with fresh hope, Walter found no sleep on his couch, for fancy, prodigal of the richest stores, expanded before him the glittering possibility of having his fondest wish granted. During the next day, we wandered through the woods, fearful of being reminders of her death might disturb his blissful hope that he would again fold her in his arms, gaze on her beaming brow by day, repose on her bosom at night. As this idea filled his imagination, how was it possible that the least doubt should arise, or that the warning of the mysterious old man should recur to his thoughts?<br /><br />17.No sooner did the midnight hour approach, than he hurried to the grave-field where the sorcerer was already standing by that of Brunhilda. "Have you maturely considered ?" he inquired.<br /><br />18. "Restore to me the object of my ardent passion," exclaimed Walter with impetuous eagerness. "Don't delay your generous action, lest I die this night, consumed with disappointed desire at beholding her face no more."<br /><br />19."Well then," answered the old man, "return here again tomorrow at the same hour. But once more I give you this friendly warning, 'Wake not the dead.' "<br /><br />20.Walter would have prostrated himself at his feet in the despair of impatience, and begged him to fulfill at once a desire now increased to agony, but the sorcerer had already disappeared. Pouring forth his lamentations more wildly and impetuously than ever, he lay upon the grave of his adored one, until the gray dawn streaked the east. During the day, which seemed to him longer than any he had ever experienced, he wandered to and fro, restless and impatient, seemingly without any object to his wandering, deeply buried in his own reflection. The stars of evening found him once more at the appointed spot. At midnight the sorcerer was there also.<br /><br />21."Have you deliberated maturely?" he inquired.<br /><br />22."What I demand of you is what you have promised me -- that which will prove my bliss. Or do you only mock me? If so, get out of my sight, or I will be tempted to strike you."<br /><br />23."Once more do I warn you," answered the old man with undisturbed composure, "Wake not the dead -- let her rest."<br /><br />24."Aye, but not in the cold grave: she shall rather rest on this bosom which burns with eagerness to clasp her."<br /><br />25."Reflect on your choice, you may not leave her until death, even though aversion and horror should seize your heart. There would then remain only one horrible means to rid yourself of her."<br /><br />26."Old fool!" cried Walter, interrupting him, "how may I hate that very thing which I love with such intensity of passion? How should I hate that for which my every drop of blood is boiling?"<br /><br />27.""Then it shall be as you wish," answered the sorcerer; "step back."<br /><br />28.The old man now drew a circle around the grave, all the while muttering words of enchantment. Immediately the storm began to howl among the tops of the trees; owls flapped their wings, and uttered their low voice of omen; the stars hid their mild, beaming aspect, so that they might not behold such an unholy and impious spectacle; the stone then rolled from the grave with a hollow sound, leaving a free passage for the inhabitant of that dreadful tenement. The sorcerer scattered roots and herbs of the most magic power into the yawning earth. The worms crawling forth from the earth congregated together, and raised themselves in a fiery column over the grave: while rushing wind burst from the earth, scattering the mould before it, until at length the coffin lay uncovered. The moonbeams fell on it, and the lid burst open with a tremendous sound. The sorcerer poured some blood out of a human skull on the exposed grave, exclaiming at the same time, "Drink, sleeper, of this warm stream, that your heart may again beat within your bosom." And, after a short pause, shedding on her some other mystic liquid, he cried aloud with the voice of one inspired: "Yes, thy heart beats once more with the flood of life: your eye is again opened to sight. Arise, therefore, from the tomb."<br /><br />29."As an island suddenly springs forth from the dark waves of the ocean, raised upwards from the deep by the force of subterraneous fires, so did Brunhilda start from her earthy couch, borne forward by some invisible power. Taking her by the hand, the sorcerer led her towards Walter, who stood at some little distance, rooted to the ground with amazement.<br /><br />30."Receive again," he said, "the object of your passionate sighs: may you never require my aid again; should that happen; however, you will find me during the full of the moon upon the mountains in that spot where the three roads meet."<br /><br />31."Instantly Walter recognized in the form that stood before him the woman whom he so ardently loved; and a sudden glow shot through his frame at finding her thus restored to him: yet the night-frost had chilled his limbs and palsied his tongue. For a while he gazed upon her without either motion or speech, and during this pause, all was again hushed and serene; and the stars shone brightly in the clear heavens.<br /><br />32."Walter!" exclaimed the figure, and at once the well-known sound, thrilling to his heart, broke the spell by which he was bound.<br /><br />33.""Is it reality? Is it truth?" cried he, "or is it a cheating delusion?"<br /><br />34."No, it is no imposture; I am really living: conduct me quickly to your castle in the mountains."<br /><br />35.Walter looked around: the old man had disappeared, but he perceived close by his side a coal-black steed of fiery eye, already equipped to conduct him away. On its back lay proper clothing for Brunhilda who lost no time in changing into the provided clothing. This being done, she cried; "Haste, let us away before the dawn breaks, for my eye is yet too weak to endure the light of day." Fully recovered from his stupor, Walter leaped into his saddle, and catching her up with a mingled feeling of delight and awe the beloved being thus mysteriously restored from the power of the grave, he spurred on across the wild, towards the mountains, as furiously as if pursued by the shadows of the dead, hastening to recover from him their sister.<br /><br />36.The castle to which Walter conducted his Brunhilda was situated on a rock between other rocks which rose up above it. Here they arrived unseen by anyone except one aged domestic, on whom Walter imposed secrecy by the severest threats.<br /><br />37."Here will we tarry," said Brunhilda, "until I can endure the light, and until you can look upon me without trembling as if struck with a cold chill." They accordingly continued to make that place their abode; their meals were provided by the one aged domestic. During seven entire days they had no light except that of candles: during the next seven, the light was admitted through the lofty casements only while the rising or setting-sun faintly illumined the mountain-tops, the valley being still enveloped in shade.<br /><br />38.Seldom did Walter leave Brunhilda's side: a nameless spell seemed to attach him to her, and even the shudder which he felt in her presence and which would not permit him to touch her, was not unmixed with pleasure; he rather sought, therefore, than avoided this feeling. Often too as he had indulged in calling to mind the beauties of Brunhilda, she had never appeared so fair, so fascinating, so admirable when depicted by his imagination as when now beheld her, returned to him, in reality. Never till now had her voice sounded with such tones of sweetness; never before did her language possess such eloquence as it now did, when she conversed with him on the subject of the past. This was the magic fairy-land towards which her words constantly conducted him: she dwelled upon the days of their first love, those hours of delight which they had together when the one derived all enjoyment from the other. So rapturous, so enchanting, so full of life did she recall to his imagination that blissful season, that he even doubted whether he had ever experienced with her so much felicity, or had been so truly happy. And, while she thus vividly portrayed their hours of past delight, she delineated in still more glowing, more enchanting colors, those hours of approaching bliss which now awaited them, richer in enjoyment than any preceding ones. In this manner she charmed her attentive auditor with enrapturing hopes for the future, and lulled him into dreams of more than mortal ecstasy; so that while he listened to her siren strain he entirely forgot how little blissful was the latter period of their union, when he had often sighed at her imperiousness, and at her harshness both to himself and all his household. Yet even had he recalled this to mind would it have disturbed him in his present delirious trance? Had she not now left behind in the grave all the frailty of mortality? Was not her whole being refined and purified by that long sleep in which neither passion nor sin had approached her even in dreams? How different now was the subject of her discourse! Only when speaking of her affection for him, did she betray anything of earthly feeling: at other times, she uniformly dwelt upon themes relating to the invisible and future world; when in declaring the mysteries of eternity, a stream of prophetic eloquence would burst from her lips.<br /><br />39.In this manner twice seven days passed, and, for the first time, Walter beheld the being now dearer to him than ever in the full light of day. Every trace of the grave had disappeared from her countenance; a roseate tinge like the ruddy streaks of dawn again beamed on her pallid cheek; the faint, moldering taint of the grave was changed into a delightful violet scent; the only sign of earth that never disappeared. He no longer felt either apprehension or awe, as he gazed upon her in the sunny light of day: it was not until now that he seemed to have recovered her completely; and, glowing with all his former passion towards her, he would have pressed her to his bosom, but she gently repulsed him, saying, "Not yet! Spare your caresses until the moon has again filled her horn."<br /><br />40In spite of his impatience, Walter was obliged to await until another period of seven days slowly crawled past: but finally, on the night when the moon arrived at the full, he hastened to Brunhilda, whom he found more lovely than she had ever appeared before. Fearing no obstacles to his transports, he embraced with all the fervor of a deeply enamored and successful lover. Brunhilda, however, still refused to yield to his passion. "What!" exclaimed she, "is it fitting that I, who have been purified by death from the frailty of mortality, should become thy concubine, while a mere daughter of the earth bears the title of your wife? It shall never be. No, it must be within the walls of your palace, within that chamber where I once reigned as queen, that thou obtain the end of your wishes, -- and of mine also," she added, imprinting a glowing kiss on the lips, then immediately disappearing from the room.<br /><br />40.Heated with passion, and determined to sacrifice everything to the accomplishment of his desires, Walter hastily left the apartment, and shortly after the castle itself. He traveled over mountain and across heath, with the rapidity of a storm, so that the turf was flung up by his horse's hoofs; he didn't once stop until he arrived home.<br /><br />41.Once he arrived home, neither the affectionate caresses of Swanhilda, or those of his children could touch his heart, or induce him to restrain his furious desires. Alas! is the impetuous torrent to be checked in its devastating course by the beauteous flowers over which it rushes, when they exclaim, "Destroyer, commiserate with our helpless innocence and beauty, don't lay us waste?" The stream sweeps over them irregardless, and a single moment annihilates the pride of a whole summer.<br /><br />42.Shortly afterwards, Walter began to hint to Swanhilda that they were ill-suited to each other; that he was anxious to taste that wild, tumultuous life, so well according with the spirit of his sex, while she, on the contrary, was satisfied with the monotonous circle of household enjoyments. He told her that he was eager for whatever promised novelty, while she felt most attached to what was familiarized to her by habit: and lastly, that her cold disposition, bordering upon indifference just didn't match well with his ardent temperament. It was therefore more prudent that they should seek apart from each other the happiness which they could not find together. A sigh, and a brief acquiescence in his wishes was all the reply that Swanhilda made; and on the following morning, upon his presenting her with a paper of separation, informing her that she was at liberty to return home to her father, she received it most submissively. Yet before she departed, she gave him the following warning, "Too well do I conjecture to whom I am indebted for our separation. Often have I seen you at Brunhilda's grave, and beheld you there even on that night when the face of the heavens was suddenly enveloped in a veil of clouds. Have you rashly dared to tear aside the awful veil that separates the mortality that dreams, from that which dreams not? Oh! then woe to you, you wretched man, for you have attached to yourself that which will prove your destruction."<br /><br />43.She ceased speaking and Walter attempted no reply, for the similar admonition uttered by the sorcerer flashed upon his mind, all obscured as it was by passion, just as the lightning glares momentarily through the gloom of night without dispersing the obscurity.<br /><br />44.Swanhilda then departed to give to her children a bitter farewell, for they, according to national custom, belonged to the father; and, having bathed them in her tears, and consecrated them with the holy water of maternal love, she quitted her husband's residence, and departed to the home of her father's.<br /><br />45.Thus was the kind and benevolent Swanhilda exiled from those halls where she had presided with grace; from halls which were now newly decorated to receive another mistress. The day at length arrived on which Walter, for the second time, conducted Brunhilda home as a newly made bride. And he caused it to be reported among his domestics that his new consort had gained his affections by her extraordinary likeness to Brunhilda, their former mistress. How ineffably happy did he deem himself as he conducted his beloved once more into the chamber which had often witnessed their former joys, and which was now newly gilded and adorned in a most costly style: among the other decorations were figures of angels scattering roses, which served to support the purple draperies whose ample folds overshadowed the nuptial couch. With what impatience did he await the hour that was to put him in possession of those beauties for which he had already paid so high a price, unknowing that this enjoyment was to cost him most dearly yet! Unfortunate Walter! reveling in bliss, your behold not the abyss that yawns beneath your feet, intoxicated with the luscious perfume of the flower you have plucked, you little deem how deadly is the venom with which it is fraught; although, for a short season, its potent fragrance bestows new energy on all your feelings.<br /><br />46.Happy, however, as Walter now was, his household was far from being equally so. The strange resemblance between their new lady and the deceased Brunhilda filled them with a secret dismay and an indefinable horror: there was not a single difference of feature, of tone of voice, or of gesture. To add too to these mysterious circumstances, her female attendants discovered a particular mark on her back, exactly like one which Brunhilda had. A report was soon circulated that their lady was no other than Brunhilda herself, who had been recalled to life by the power of necromancy. How truly horrible was the idea of living under the same roof with one who had been an inhabitant of the tomb, and of being obliged to attend upon her, and acknowledge her as mistress! There was also in Brunhilda much to increase this aversion and favor their superstition: no ornaments of gold ever decked her person; all that others were wont to wear of this metal, she had formed of silver: no richly colored and sparkling jewels glittered upon her; pearls alone, lent their pale luster to adorn her bosom. Most carefully did she always avoid the cheerful light of the sun, and was wont to spend the brightest days in the most retired and gloomy apartments: only during the twilight of the commencing or declining day did she ever walk abroad, but her favorite hour was when the phantom light of the moon bestowed on all objects a shadowy appearance and a somber hue; always too at the crowing of the cock an involuntary shudder was observed to seize her limbs. Imperious as before her death, she quickly imposed her iron yoke on every one around her, while she seemed even far more terrible than ever, since a dread of some supernatural power attached to her, appalled all who approached her. A malignant withering glance seemed to shoot from her eye on the unhappy object of her wrath, as if it would annihilate its victim. In short, those halls which, in the time of Swanhilda were the residence of cheerfulness and mirth, now resembled an extensive desert tomb. With fear imprinted on their pale countenances, the domestics glided through the apartments of the castle; and in this abode of terror, the crowing of the cock caused the living to tremble, as if they were the spirits of the departed; for the sound always reminded them of their mysterious mistress. There was no one but who shuddered at meeting her in a lonely place, in the dusk of evening, or by the light of the moon, a circumstance that was deemed to be ominous of some evil: so great was the apprehension of her female attendants, they pined in continual disquietude, and, by degrees, all quit her. In the course of time even others of the domestics fled, for an insupportable horror had seized them.<br /><br />47.The art of the sorcerer had indeed bestowed upon Brunhilda an artificial life, and due nourishment had continued to support the restored body; yet this body was not able of itself to keep up the genial glow of vitality, and to nourish the flame whence springs all the affections and passions, whether of love or hate; for death had for ever destroyed and withered it. All that Brunhilda now possessed was a chilled existence, colder than that of the snake. It was nevertheless necessary that she should love, and return with equal ardor the warm caresses of her spell-enthralled husband, to whose passion alone she was indebted for her renewed existence. It was necessary that a magic draught should animate the dull current in her veins and awaken her to the glow of life and the flame of love -- a potion of abomination -- one not even to be named without a curse -- human blood, imbibed whilst yet warm, from the veins of youth. This was the hellish drink for which she thirsted: possessing no sympathy with the purer feelings of humanity; deriving no enjoyment from anything that interests in life and occupies its varied hours; her existence was a mere blank, unless when in the arms of her paramour husband, and therefore was it that she craved incessantly after the horrible draught. It was even with the utmost effort that she could forbear sucking even the blood of Walter himself, as he reclined beside her. Whenever she beheld some innocent child whose lovely face denoted the exuberance of infantine health and vigor, she would entice it by soothing words and fond caresses into her most secret apartment, where, lulling it to sleep in her arms, she would suck from its bosom the warm, purple tide of life. Nor were youths of either sex safe from her horrid attack: having first breathed upon her unhappy victim, who never failed immediately to sink into a lengthened sleep, she would then in a similar manner drain his veins of the vital juice. Thus children, youths, and maidens quickly faded away, as flowers gnawed by the cankering worm: the fullness of their limbs disappeared; a sallow line succeeded to the rosy freshness of their cheeks, the liquid luster of the eye was deadened, even as the sparkling stream when arrested by the touch of frost; and their locks became thin and gray, as if already ravaged by the storm of life. Parents beheld with horror this desolating pestilence devouring their offspring; nor could simple or charm, potion or amulet avail aught against it. The grave swallowed up one after the other; or did the miserable victim survive, he became cadaverous and wrinkled even in the very morn of existence. Parents observed with horror this devastating pestilence snatch away their offspring -- a pestilence which, nor herb however potent, nor charm, nor holy taper, nor exorcism could avert. They either beheld their children sink one after the other into the grave, or their youthful forms, withered by the unholy vampire embrace of Brunhilda, assume the decrepitude of sudden age.<br /><br />48.At length, strange surmises and reports began to prevail; it was whispered that Brunhilda herself was the cause of all these horrors; although no one could pretend to tell in what manner she destroyed her victims, since no marks of violence were discernible. Yet when young children confessed that she had frequently lulled them asleep in her arms, and elder ones said that a sudden slumber had come upon them whenever she began to converse with them, suspicion became converted into certainty, and those whose offspring had hitherto escaped unharmed, quitted their hearths and home -- leaving all their little possessions -- the dwellings of their fathers and the inheritance of their children, in order to rescue from so horrible a fate those who were dearer to their simple affections than anything else the world could give.<br /><br />49.Thus, every day the castle assumed a more desolate appearance; daily its environs become more deserted; none but a few aged decrepit old women and gray-headed menials were to be seen remaining of the once numerous retinue. Such will in the latter days of the earth be the last generation of mortals, when childbearing shall have ceased, when youth shall no more be seen, nor any arise to replace those who shall await their fate in silence.<br /><br />50.Walter (being an utter and totally self-involved jerk-- my comment) alone noticed not, or heeded not, the desolation around him; he didn't notice the death, lapped as he was in a glowing Elysium of love. Far more happy than formerly did he now seem in the possession of Brunhilda. All those caprices and frowns which had been able to over-cloud their former union had now entirely disappeared. She even seemed to doat on him with a warmth of passion that she had never exhibited before, not even during the happy season of bridal love; for the flame of that youthful blood, which she drained from the veins of others, rioted in her own. At night, as soon as he closed his eyes, she would breathe on him till he sank into delicious dreams, from which he awoke only to experience more rapturous enjoyments. By day, she would continually discourse with him on the bliss experienced by happy spirits beyond the grave, assuring him that, as his affection had recalled her from the tomb, they were now irrevocably united. Thus fascinated by a continual spell, it was not possible that he should perceive what was taking place around him. Brunhilda, however, foresaw with savage grief that the source of her youthful ardor was daily decreasing, for, in a short time, there remained nothing gifted with youth, save Walter and his children, and these latter she resolved should be her next victims.<br /><br />51.On her first return to the castle, she had felt an aversion towards the children of Walter's other wife, and therefore abandoned them entirely to the attendants appointed by Swanhilda. Now, however, she began to pay considerable attention to them, and caused them to be frequently admitted into her presence. The aged nurses were filled with dread at perceiving these marks of regard from her towards their young charges, yet dared they not to oppose the will of their terrible and imperious mistress. Brunhilda soon gained the affection of the children, who were too unsuspecting of guile to apprehend any danger from her; on the contrary, her caresses won them completely to her. Instead of ever preventing their mirthful play, she would rather instruct them in new sports: often too did she recite to them tales of such strange and wild interest as to exceed all the stories of their nurses. When they wearied either from play or from listening to her narratives, she would take them on her knees and lull them to slumber. During these slumbers visions of the most surpassing magnificence attended their dreams: they would fancy themselves in some garden where flowers of every color climbed in rows one above the other, sloping upwards towards the golden clouds where little angels whose wings sparkled with azure and gold descended to bring them delicious cakes or splendid jewels; or sung to them soothing melodious hymns. So delightful did these dream in a short time become to the children that they longed for nothing so eagerly as to slumber on Brunhilda's lap, for only there did they enjoy such visions of heavenly forms. They were then very anxious for that which was to prove their destruction. Yet do we not all aspire after that which conducts us to the grave after the enjoyment of life? These innocents stretched out their arms to approaching death because it assumed the mask of pleasure; for when they were lapped in these ecstatic slumbers, Brunhilda sucked the life-stream from their bosoms. On waking, indeed, they felt themselves faint and exhausted, yet no pain nor any mark betrayed the cause. Shortly, however, their strength entirely failed, even as the summer brook is gradually dried up: their sports became less and less noisy; their loud, frolicsome laughter was converted into a faint smile; the full tones of their voices died away into a mere whisper. Their attendants were filled with horror and despair; too well did they conjecture the horrible truth, yet they dared not impart their suspicions to Walter, who was so devotedly attached to his horrible partner. Death had already smote his prey: the children were but the mere shadows of their former selves, and even this shadow quickly disappeared.<br /><br />52.The anguished father deeply bemoaned their loss, for, notwithstanding his apparent neglect, he was strongly attached to them; nor until he had experienced their loss was he aware that his love was so great. His affliction could not fail to excite the displeasure of Brunhilda. "Why do you lament so fondly for these little ones? What satisfaction could such unformed beings yield to you unless thou were still attached to their mother? Is your heart then still hers? Or do you now regret her and them because you are satiated with my fondness and weary of my endearments? Had these young ones grown up, would they not have attached you, your spirit and your affections more closely to this earth of clay -- to this dust? And have alienated you from that sphere to which I, who have already passed the grave, endeavor to raise you? Is your spirit so heavy, or your love so weak, or your faith so hollow, that the hope of being mine for ever is unable to touch you?" Thus did Brunhilda express her indignation at her husband's grief, and forbade him her presence. The fear of offending her beyond forgiveness and his anxiety to appease her soon dried up his tears; and he again abandoned himself to his fatal passion, until approaching destruction at length awakened him from his delusion.<br /><br />53.Neither maiden nor youth were seen any longer, either within the dreary walls of the castle or in the adjoining territory -- all had disappeared; for those whom the grave had not swallowed up had fled from the region of death. Who, therefore, now remained to quench the horrible thirst of the female vampire save Walter himself? And his death she dared to contemplate unmoved; for that divine sentiment that unites two beings in one joy and one sorrow was unknown to her bosom. If he was in his tomb, she would be free to search out other victims and to glut herself with destruction, until she herself should, at the last day, be consumed with the earth itself, such is the fatal law to which the dead are subject when awoke by the arts of necromancy from the sleep of the grave.<br /><br />54.She now began to fix her blood-thirsty lips on Walter's breast, when he was cast into a profound sleep by the odor of her violet breath, and he reclined beside her quite unconscious of his impending fate. Yet soon his vital powers began to decay, and many a gray hair peeped through his raven locks. With his strength, his passion also declined, and he now frequently left her in order to pass the whole day in the sports of the chase, hoping thereby to regain his accustomed vigor. As he was reposing one day in a wood beneath the shade of an oak, he perceived on the top of a tree a bird of strange appearance, one quite unknown to him. But before he could take aim at it with his bow, it flew away into the clouds; at the same time letting fall a rose-colored root which dropped at Walter's feet; he immediately took it up and, although he was well acquainted with almost every plant, he could not remember having seen any at all resembling this. Its delightful scent induced him to try its taste, but ten times more bitter than wormwood, it was even as gall in his mouth; upon which, impatient with the disappointment, he flung it away with violence. Had he, however, been aware of its miraculous quality and that it acted as a counter-charm against the opiate perfume of Brunhilda's breath, he would have blessed it in spite of its bitterness: thus do mortals often blindly cast away in displeasure the unsavory remedy that would otherwise work to their gain.<br /><br />55.When Walter returned home that evening and laid down to sleep as usual by Brunhilda's side, the magic power of her breath produced no effect upon him; and for the first time during many months he closed his eyes in a natural slumber. Yet hardly had he fallen asleep, before a smarting pain disturbed him from his dreams, and opening his eyes, he discerned, by the gloomy rays of a lamp that glimmered in the apartment what for some moments transfixed him quite aghast, for it was Brunhilda, drawing with her lips, the warm blood from his bosom. The wild cry of horror which at length escaped him, terrified Brunhilda, whose mouth was besmeared with the warm blood. "Monster!" exclaimed he, springing from the couch, "is it thus that you love me?"<br /><br />56."Aye, even as the dead love," replied she, with a malignant coldness.<br /><br />57."Creature of blood!" continued Walter, "the delusion which has so long blinded me is at an end: you are the fiend who destroyed my children -- who has murdered the offspring of my vassals." Raising herself upwards and, at the same time, casting on him a glance that froze him to the spot with dread, she replied. "It is not I who have murdered them; I was obliged to pamper myself with warm youthful blood in order that I might satisfy your furious desires -- you art the murderer!" These dreadful words summoned before Walter's terrified conscience the threatening shades of all those who had thus perished; despair choked his voice.<br /><br />58."Why," continued she, in a tone that increased his horror, "why do you make mouths at me like a puppet? you who had the courage to love the dead -- to take into your bed one who had been sleeping in the grave, the bed-fellow of the worm -- who has clasped in your lustful arms the corruption of the tomb -- do you, unhallowed as you are, now raise this hideous cry for the sacrifice of a few lives? -- They are but leaves swept from their branches by a storm. Come, chase these idiot fancies, and taste the bliss you have purchased so dearly." So saying, she extended her arms towards him, but this motion served only to increase his terror, and exclaiming: "Accursed Being," he rushed out of the apartment.<br /><br />59.All the horrors of a guilty, upbraiding conscience became his companions, now that he was awakened from the delirium of his unholy pleasures. Frequently he cursed his own obstinate blindness, cursed himself for having given no heed to the hints and admonitions of his children's nurses, but treating them as vile calumnies. But his sorrow was now too late, for, although repentance may gain pardon for the sinner, it cannot alter the immutable decrees of fate -- it cannot recall the murdered from the tomb. No sooner did the first break of dawn appear, than he set out for his lonely castle in the mountains, determined no longer to abide under the same roof with so terrible a being; yet vain was his flight, for, on waking the following morning, he perceived himself in Brunhilda's arms, and quite entangled in her long raven tresses, which seemed to involve him, and bind him in the fetters of his fate; the powerful fascination of her breath held him still more captivated, so that, forgetting all that had passed, he returned her caresses, until awakening as if from a dream he recoiled in unmixed horror from her embrace. During the day he wandered through the solitary wilds of the mountains, as a culprit seeking an asylum from his pursuers; and, at night, retired to the shelter of a cave; fearing less to couch himself within such a dreary place, than to expose himself to the horror of again meeting Brunhilda; but alas! it was in vain that he endeavored to flee her. Again, when he awoke, he found her the partner of his miserable bed. Nay, had he sought the center of the earth as his hiding place; had he even imbedded himself beneath rocks, or formed his chamber in the recesses of the ocean, still would he find her his constant companion; for, by calling her again into existence, he had rendered himself inseparably hers; so fatal were the links that united them.<br /><br />60.Struggling with the madness that was beginning to seize him, and brooding incessantly on the ghastly visions that presented themselves to his horror-stricken mind, he lay motionless in the gloomiest recesses of the woods, from the rise of sun till the shades of evening. But, no sooner was the light of day extinguished in the west, and the woods buried in impenetrable darkness, than the apprehension of resigning himself to sleep drove him forth among the mountains. The storm played wildly with the fantastic clouds, and with the rattling leaves, as they were caught up into the air, as if some dread spirit was sporting with these images of transitoriness and decay: it roared among the summits of the oaks as if uttering a voice of fury, while its hollow sound rebounding among the distant hills, seemed as the moans of a departing sinner, or as the faint cry of some wretch expiring under the murderer's hand: the owl too, uttered its ghastly cry as if foreboding the wreck of nature. Walter's hair flew disorderly in the wind, like black snakes wreathing around his temples and shoulders; while each sense was awake to catch fresh horror. In the clouds he seemed to behold the forms of the murdered; in the howling wind to hear their laments and groans; in the chilling blast itself he felt the dire kiss of Brunhilda; in the cry of the screeching bird he heard her voice; in the moldering leaves he scented the charnel-bed out of which he had awakened her. "Murderer of thy own offspring," he exclaimed in a voice making night, and the conflict of the element still more hideous, "paramour of a blood-thirsty vampire, reveler with the corruption of the tomb!" while in his despair he rent the wild locks from his head. Just then the full moon darted from beneath the bursting clouds; and the sight recalled to his remembrance the advice of the sorcerer, when he trembled at the first apparition of Brunhilda rising from her sleep of death; -- namely, to seek him at the season of the full moon in the mountains, where three roads met. Scarcely had this gleam of hope broke in on his bewildered mind than he flew to the appointed spot.<br /><br />61.On his arrival, Walter found the old man seated upon a stone as calmly as though it had been a bright sunny day and completely regardless of the uproar around. "Are you come then?" exclaimed he to the breathless wretch, who, flinging himself at his feet, cried in a tone of anguish, "Oh save me -- succor me -- rescue me from the monster that scatters death and desolation around her.<br /><br />62."Wherefore a mysterious warning? Why did you not rather disclose to me at once all the horrors that awaited my sacrilegious profanation of the grave?"<br /><br />63."And wherefore a mysterious warning? Why did you not perceive how wholesome was the advice -- 'Wake not the dead.'"<br /><br />64."Were you able to listen to any other voice than that of your impetuous passions? Did not your eager impatience shut my mouth at the very moment I would have cautioned you?"<br /><br />65."True, true: your reproof is just. But what does it avail now; I need the promptest aid."<br /><br />66."Well," replied the old man, "there remains even yet a means of rescuing yourself, but it is fraught with horror and demands all your resolution."<br /><br />67."Utter it then, utter it; for what can be more appalling, more hideous than the misery I now endure?"<br /><br />68."Know then," continued the sorcerer, "that only on the night of the new moon does she sleep the sleep of mortals; and then all the supernaturural power which she inherits from the grave totally fails her. 'Tis then that thou must murder her."<br /><br />69."How! murder her!" echoed Walter.<br /><br />70."Aye," returned the old man calmly, "pierce her bosom with a sharpened dagger, which I will furnish you with; at the same time renounce her memory for ever, swearing never to think of her intentionally, and that, if you do involuntarily think of her, you wilt repeat the curse."<br /><br />71."Most horrible! yet what can be more horrible than she herself is? I'll do it."<br /><br />72."Keep then this resolution until the next new moon."<br /><br />73."What, must I wait until then?" cried Walter, "alas before then. either her savage thirst for blood will have forced me into the night of the tomb, or horror will have driven me into the night of madness."<br /><br />"74.Nay," replied the sorcerer, "that I can prevent;" and, so saying, he conducted him to a cavern further among the mountains. "Abide here twice seven days," said he; "so long can I protect thee against her deadly caresses. Here you will find all due provision for your wants; but take heed that nothing tempt you to leave this place. Farewell, when the moon renews itself, then do I come here again." So saying, the sorcerer drew a magic circle around the cave, and then immediately disappeared.<br /><br />75.Twice seven days did Walter continue in this solitude, where his companions were his own terrifying thoughts and his bitter repentance. The present was all desolation and dread; the future presented the image of a horrible deed which he must perforce commit; while the past was poisoned by the memory of his guilt. Did he think on his former happy union with Brunhilda, her horrible image presented itself to his imagination with her lips defiled with dropping blood: or, did he call to mind the peaceful days he had passed with Swanhilda, he beheld her sorrowful spirit with the shadows of her murdered children. Such were the horrors that attended him by day: those of night were still more dreadful, for then he beheld Brunhilda herself, who, wandering round the magic circle which she could not pass, called upon his name till the cavern reechoed the horrible sound. "WaIter, my beloved," cried she, "why do you avoid me? Are yout not mine? forever mine -- mine here, and mine hereafter? And do you seek to murder me? -- ah! commit not a deed which hurls us both to perdition -- yourself as well as me." In this manner did the horrible visitant torment him each night, and, even when she departed, robbed him of all repose.<br /><br />76.The night of the new moon at length arrived, dark as the deed it was doomed to bring forth. The sorcerer entered the cavern; "Come," he told Walter, "let us depart hence, the hour is now arrived:" and he forthwith conducted him in silence from the cave to a coal-black steed, the sight of which recalled to Walter's remembrance the fatal night. He then related to the old man Brunhilda's nocturnal visits and anxiously inquired whether her apprehensions of eternal perdition would be fulfilled or not. "Mortal eye," exclaimed the sorcerer, "may not pierce the dark secrets of another world, or penetrate the deep abyss that separates earth from heaven." Walter hesitated to mount the steed. "Be resolute," exclaimed his companion, "but this once is it granted to you to make the trial, and, should you fail now, nothing can rescue you from her power."<br /><br />77."What can be more horrible than she herself? I am determined," and he leaped on the horse, the sorcerer mounting also behind him.<br /><br />78.Carried with a rapidity equal to that of the storm that sweeps across the plain, in brief space of time they arrived at Walter's castle. All the doors flew open at the bidding of his companion, and they speedily reached Brunhilda's chamber, and stood beside her couch. Reclining in a tranquil slumber, she reposed in all her native loveliness, every trace of horror had disappeared from her countenance; she looked so pure, meek and innocent that all the sweet hours of their endearments rushed to Walter's memory, like interceding angels pleading in her behalf. His unnerved hand could not take the dagger which the sorcerer presented to him. "The blow must be struck even now:" said the latter, "should you delay but an hour, she will lie at daybreak on thy bosom, sucking the warm life drops from thy heart."<br /><br />79."Horrible! most horrible!" faltered the trembling Walter, and turning away his face, he thrust the dagger into her bosom, exclaiming, "I curse thee for ever! And the cold blood gushed upon his hand. Opening her eyes once more, she cast a look of ghastly horror on her husband, and, in a hollow dying accent said, "Thou too art doomed to perdition."<br /><br />80."Lay now your hand upon her corpse," said the sorcerer, "and swear the oath." Walter did as commanded, saying, "Never will I think of her with love, never recall her to mind intentionally, and, should her image recur to my mind involuntarily, so will I exclaim to it: be you accursed."<br /><br />81."You have now done everything," returned the sorcerer; "restore her therefore to the earth from which you so foolishly recalled her; and be sure to recollect your oath: for, should you forget it but once, she would return, and you would be inevitably lost. Adieu -- we see each other no more." Having uttered these words he quitted the apartment, and Walter also fled from this abode of horror, having first given direction that the corpse should be speedily interred.<br /><br />82.The terrific Brunhilda again reposed within her grave; but her image continually haunted Walter's imagination, so that his existence was one continued martyrdom in which he continually struggled to dismiss the hideous phantoms from his memory, yet the stronger his effort to banish them, the more frequently and vividly did they return. His imagination seemed incapable of admitting any other image than that of Brunhilda: now he fancied he beheld her expiring, the blood streaming from her beautiful bosom: at others he saw the lovely bride of his youth, who reproached him with having disturbed the slumbers of the tomb; and to both he was compelled to utter the dreadful words, "I curse thee forever." The terrible imprecation was constantly passing his lips; yet he was in incessant terror lest he should forget to say it, or dream of her without being able to repeat it, and then, on awaking, find himself in her arms. Or he would recall her dying words, and appalled at their terrible meaning, imagine that the doom of his perdition was irrecoverably passed. Whence should he fly from himself? Or how erase from his brain these images and forms of horror? In the din of combat, in the tumult of war and its incessant movement of victory to defeat, from the cry of anguish to the exultation of victory -- in these he hoped to find at least the relief of distraction; here, too, he was disappointed. The giant fang of apprehension now seized him who had never before known fear; each drop of blood that sprayed upon him seemed the cold blood that had gushed from Brunhilda's wound; each dying wretch that fell beside him looked like her, when expiring, she exclaimed, "You too art doomed to perdition," so that the aspect of death seemed more full of dread to him than anything else, and this unconquerable terror compelled him to abandon the battle-field. At length, after many a weary and fruitless wandering, he returned to his castle. Here all was deserted and silent, as if the sword, or a still more deadly pestilence had laid everything waste. For the few inhabitants that still remained, and even those servants who had once shown themselves the most attached to the castle, now fled from him as though he had been branded with the mark of Cain. With horror he perceived that, by uniting himself as he had done with the dead, he had cut himself off from the living; they now refused to hold any intercourse with him. Often, when he stood on the battlements of his castle, and looked down upon desolate fields, he compared their present solitude with the lively activity they were wont to exhibit under the strict but benevolent discipline of Swanhilda. He now felt that she alone could reconcile him to life, but dared he hope that one whom he so deeply aggrieved could pardon him and receive him again? Impatience at length got the better of fear; he sought Swanhilda. With the deepest contrition he acknowledged his complicated guilt; embracing her knees as he beseeched her to pardon him and to return to his desolate castle in order that it might again become the abode of contentment and peace. The pale form which she beheld at her feet, the shadow of the lately blooming youth, touched Swanhilda. "The folly," she said gently, "though it has caused me much sorrow, has never excited my resentment or my anger. But say, where are my children?" To this dreadful interrogation the agonized father could for a while frame no reply: at length he was obliged to confess the dreadful truth. "Then we are sundered for ever," returned Swanhilda; nor could all his tears or supplications prevail upon her to revoke the sentence she had given.<br /><br />83Stripped of his last earthly hope, bereft of his last consolation, and thereby rendered as poor as mortal can possibly be on this side of the grave, Walter returned homewards. As he was riding through the forest in the neighborhood of his castle, absorbed in his gloomy meditations, the sudden sound of a horn roused him from his reverie. Shortly after hearing the horn, he saw a female figure clad in black, and mounted on a steed of the same color. Her attire was like that of a huntress, but instead of a falcon, she bore a raven in her hand, and she was attended by a gay troop of cavaliers and dames. After the exchange of the first salutations, he found that she was following the same road as himself; and, when she found that Walter's castle was close at hand, she requested that he would lodge her for that night, the evening being far advanced. Most willingly did he comply with this request, since the appearance of the beautiful stranger had struck him greatly, so wonderfully did she resemble Swanhilda, except that her hair was brown, and her eye dark and full of fire. He entertained his guests with a sumptuous banquet, and their mirth and songs enlivened the lately silent halls. Three days did this revelry continue, and so exhilarating did it prove to Walter that he seemed to have forgotten his sorrows and his fears; nor could he prevail upon himself to dismiss his visitors, dreading lest, on their departure, the castle would seem a hundred times more desolate than before hand his grief be proportionally increased. At his earnest request, the stranger consented to stay seven, and again another seven days. Without being requested, she took upon herself the superintendence of the household, which she regulated as discreetly and cheerfully as Swanhilda had been wont to do, so that the castle, which had so lately been the abode of melancholy and horror, became the residence of pleasure and festivity, and Walter's grief disappeared altogether in the midst of so much gaiety. Daily his attachment to the fair unknown increased; he even made her his confidant; and, one evening as they were walking together apart from any of her companions, he related to her his melancholy and frightful history. "My dear friend," returned she, as soon as he had finished his tale, "It ill becomes a man of your discretion to afflict yourself on account of all this.<br /><br />84.You have awakened the dead from the sleep of the grave and afterwards found what might have been anticipated, that the dead possess no sympathy with life. What then? You will not commit this error a second time.<br /><br />85.You have; however, murdered the being whom you had thus recalled again to existence -- but it was only in appearance, for you could not deprive that thing of life which properly had no life. You have, too, lost a wife and two children, but at your age such a loss is most easily repaired. There are beauties who will gladly share your couch and make you again a father. But you dread the reckoning of hereafter: go, open the graves and ask the sleepers there whether that hereafter disturbs them." In such manner would she frequently exhort and cheer him, so that in a short time his melancholy entirely disappeared. He now ventured to declare to the unknown the passion with which she had inspired him, nor did she refuse him her hand. Within seven days afterwards the nuptials were celebrated, and the very foundations of the castle seemed to rock from the wild tumultuous uproar of unrestrained riot. The wine streamed in abundance; the goblets circled incessantly; intemperance reached its utmost bounds while shouts of laughter almost resembling madness burst from the numerous companions belonging to the unknown. At length Walter, heated with wine and love, conducted his bride into the nuptial chamber; but, oh! horror! scarcely had he clasped her in his arms before she transformed herself into a monstrous serpent, which entwining him in its horrid folds, crushed him to death. Flames crackled on every side of the apartment; in a few minutes after, the whole castle was enveloped in a blaze that consumed it entirely: while, as the walls fell in with a tremendous crash, a voice exclaimed aloud -- "Wake not the dead!"<br /><br /><br />~ The end ~<br /><br /><br />*************************************<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />This is the unabridged version.<br /><br /><br /><br />"Wilt thou for ever sleep? Wilt thou never more awake, my beloved, but henceforth repose for ever from thy short pilgrimage on earth? O yet once again return! and bring back with thee the vivifying dawn of hope to one whose existence hath, since thy departure, been obscured by the dunnest shades. What! dumb? for ever dumb? Thy friend lamenteth, and thou heedest him not? He sheds bitter, scalding tears, and thou reposest unregarding his affliction? He is in despair, and thou no longer openest thy arms to him as an asylum from his grief? Say then, doth the paly shroud become thee better than the bridal veil? Is the chamber of the grave a warmer bed than the couch of love? Is the spectre death more welcome to thy arms than thy enamoured consort? Oh! return, my beloved, return once again to this anxious disconsolate bosom."<br /><br />Such were the lamentations which Walter poured forth for his Brunhilda, the partner of his youthful passionate love; thus did he bewail over her grave at the midnight hour, what time the spirit that presides in the troublous atmosphere, sends his legions of monsters through mid-air; so that their shadows, as they flit beneath the moon and across the earth, dart as wild, agitating thoughts that chase each other o'er the sinner's bosom: -- thus did he lament under the tall linden trees by her grave, while his head reclined on the cold stone.<br /><br />Walter was a powerful lord in Burgundy, who, in his earliest youth, had been smitten with the charms of the fair Brunhilda, a beauty far surpassing in loveliness all her rivals; for her tresses, dark as the raven face of night, streaming over her shoulders, set off to the utmost advantage the beaming lustre of her slender form, and the rich dye of a cheek whose tint was deep and brilliant as that of the western heaven; her eyes did not resemble those burning orbs whose pale glow gems the vault of night, and whose immeasurable distance fills the soul with deep thoughts of eternity. but rather as the sober beams which cheer this nether world, and which, while they enlighten, kindle the sons of earth to joy and love. Brunhilda became the wife of Walter, and both being equally enamoured and devoted, they abandoned themselves to the enjoyment of a passion that rendered them reckless of aught besides, while it lulled them in a fascinating dream. Their sole apprehension was lest aught should awaken them from a delirium which they prayed might continue for ever. Yet how vain is the wish that would arrest the decrees of destiny! as well might it seek to divert the circling planets from their eternal course. Short was the duration of this phrenzied passion; not that it gradually decayed and subsided into apathy, but death snatched away his blooming victim, and left Walter to a widowed couch. Impetuous, however, as was his first burst of grief, he was not inconsolable, for ere long another bride became the partner of the youthful nobleman.<br /><br />Swanhilda also was beautiful; although nature had formed her charms on a very different model from those of Brunhilda. Her golden locks waved bright as the beams of morn: only when excited by some emotion of her soul did a rosy hue tinge the lily paleness of her cheek: her limbs were proportioned in the nicest symmetry, yet did they not possess that luxuriant fullness of animal life: her eye beamed eloquently, but it was with the milder radiance of a star, tranquillizing to tenderness rather than exciting to warmth. Thus formed, it was not possible that she should steep him in his former delirium, although she rendered happy his waking hours -- tranquil and serious, yet cheerful, studying in all things her husband's pleasure, she restored order and comfort in his family, where her presence shed a general influence all around. Her mild benevolence tended to restrain the fiery, impetuous disposition of Walter: while at the same time her prudence recalled him in some degree from his vain, turbulent wishes, and his aspirings after unattainable enjoyments, to the duties and pleasures of actual life. Swanhilda bore her husband two children, a son and a daughter; the latter was mild and patient as her mother, well contented with her solitary sports, and even in these recreations displayed the serious turn of her character. The boy possessed his father's fiery, restless disposition, tempered, however, with the solidity of his mother. Attached by his offspring more tenderly towards their mother, Walter now lived for several years very happily: his thoughts would frequently, indeed, recur to Brunhilda, but without their former violence, merely as we dwell upon the memory of a friend of our earlier days, borne from us on the rapid current of time to a region where we know that he is happy.<br /><br />But clouds dissolve into air, flowers fade, the sands of the hourglass run impeceptibly away, and even so, do human feelings dissolve, fade, and pass away, and with them too, human happiness. Walter's inconstant breast again sighed for the ecstatic dreams of those days which he had spent with his equally romantic, enamoured Brunhilda -- again did she present herself to his ardent fancy in all the glow of her bridal charms, and he began to draw a parallel between the past and the present; nor did imagination, as it is wont, fail to array the former in her brightest hues, while it proportionably obscured the latter; so that he pictured to himself, the one much more rich in enjoyment, and the other, much less so than they really were. This change in her husband did not escape Swanhilda; whereupon, redoubling her attentions towards him, and her cares towards their children, she expected, by this means, to reunite the knot that was slackened; yet the more she endeavoured to regain his affections, the colder did he grow, -- the more intolerable did her caresses seem, and the more continually did the image of Brunhilda haunt his thoughts. The children, whose endearments were now become indispensable to him, alone stood between the parents as genii eager to affect a reconciliation; and, beloved by them both, formed a uniting link between them. Yet, as evil can be plucked from the heart of man, only ere its root has yet struck deep, its fangs being afterwards too firm to be eradicated; so was Walter's diseased fancy too far affected to have its disorder stopped, for, in a short time, it completely tyrannized over him. Frequently of a night, instead of retiring to his consort's chamber, he repaired to Brunhilda's grave, where he murmured forth his discontent, saying: "Wilt thou sleep for ever?"<br /><br />One night as he was reclining on the turf, indulging in his wonted sorrow, a sorcerer from the neighbouring mountains, entered into this field of death for the purpose of gathering, for his mystic spells, such herbs as grow only from the earth wherein the dead repose, and which, as if the last production of mortality, are gifted with a powerful and supernatural influence. The sorcerer perceived the mourner, and approached the spot where he was lying.<br /><br />"Wherefore, fond wretch, dost thou grieve thus, for what is now a hideous mass of mortality -- mere bones, and nerves, and veins? Nations have fallen unlamented; even worlds themselves, long ere this globe of ours was created, have mouldered into nothing; nor hath any one wept over them; why then should'st thou indulge this vain affliction for a child of the dust -- a being as frail as thyself, and like thee the creature but of a moment?"<br /><br />Walter raised himself up: -- "Let yon worlds that shine in the firmament" replied he, "lament for each other as they perish. It is true, that I who am myself clay, lament for my fellow-clay: yet is this clay impregnated with a fire, -- with an essence, that none of the elements of creation possess -- with love: and this divine passion, I felt for her who now sleepeth beneath this sod."<br /><br />"Will thy complaints awaken her: or could they do so, would she not soon upbraid thee for having disturbed that repose in which she is now hushed?"<br /><br />"Avaunt, cold-hearted being: thou knowest not what is love. Oh! that my tears could wash away the earthy covering that conceals her from these eyes; -- that my groan of anguish could rouse her from her slumber of death! -- No, she would not again seek her earthy couch."<br /><br />"Insensate that thou art, and couldst thou endure to gaze without shuddering on one disgorged from the jaws of the grave? Art thou too thyself the same from whom she parted; or hath time passed o'er thy brow and left no traces there? Would not thy love rather be converted into hate and disgust?"<br /><br />"Say rather that the stars would leave yon firmament, that the sun will henceforth refuse to shed his beams through the heavens. Oh! that she stood once more before me; -- that once again she reposed on this bosom! -- how quickly should we then forget that death or time had ever stepped between us."<br /><br />"Delusion! mere delusion of the brain, from heated blood, like to that which arises from the fumes of wine. It is not my wish to tempt thee; -- to restore to thee thy dead; else wouldst thou soon feel that I have spoken truth."<br /><br />"How! restore her to me," exclaimed Walter casting himself at the sorcerer's feet. "Oh! if thou art indeed able to effect that, grant it to my earnest supplication; if one throb of human feeling vibrates in thy bosom, let my tears prevail with thee; restore to me my beloved; so shalt thou hereafter bless the deed, and see that it was a good work."<br /><br />"A good work! a blessed deed!" -- returned the sorcerer with a smile of scorn; "for me there exists nor good nor evil; since my will is always the same. Ye alone know evil, who will that which ye would not. It is indeed in my power to restore her to thee: yet, bethink thee well, whether it will prove thy weal. Consider too, how deep the abyss between life and death; across this, my power can build a bridge, but it can never fill up the frightful chasm."<br /><br />Walter would have spoken, and have sought to prevail on this powerful being by fresh entreaties, but the latter prevented him, saying: "Peace! bethink thee well! and return hither to me tomorrow at midnight. Yet once more do I warn thee, 'Wake not the dead.' "<br /><br />Having uttered these words, the mysterious being disappeared. Intoxicated with fresh hope, Walter found no sleep on his couch; for fancy, prodigal of her richest stores, expanded before him the glittering web of futurity; and his eye, moistened with the dew of rapture, glanced from one vision of happiness to another. During the next day he wandered through the woods, lest wonted objects by recalling the memory of later and less happier times, might disturb the blissful idea. that he should again behold her -- again fold her in his arms, gaze on her beaming brow by day, repose on her bosom at night: and, as this sole idea filled his imagination, how was it possible that the least doubt should arise; or that the warning of the mysterious old man should recur to his thoughts?<br /><br />No sooner did the midnight hour approach, than he hastened before the grave-field where the sorcerer was already standing by that of Brunhilda. "Hast thou maturely considered?" inquired he.<br /><br />"Oh! restore to me the object of my ardent passion," exclaimed Walter with impetuous eagerness. "Delay not thy generous action, lest I die even this night, consumed with disappointed desire; and behold her face no more."<br /><br />"Well then," answered the old man, "return hither again tomorrow at the same hour. But once more do I give thee this friendly warning, 'Wake not the dead.' "<br /><br />All in the despair of impatience, Walter would have prostrated himself at his feet, and supplicated him to fulfil at once a desire now increased to agony; but the sorcerer had already disappeared. Pouring forth his lamentations more wildly and impetuously than ever, he lay upon the grave of his adored one, until the grey dawn streaked the east. During the day, which seemed to him longer than any he had ever experienced, he wandered to and fro, restless and impatient, seemingly without any object, and deeply buried in his own reflections, inquest as the murderer who meditates his first deed of blood: and the stars of evening found him once more at the appointed spot. At midnight the sorcerer was there also.<br /><br />"Hast thou yet maturely deliberated?" inquired he, "as on the preceding night?"<br /><br />"Oh what should I deliberate?" returned Walter impatiently. "I need not to deliberate; what I demand of thee, is that which thou hast promised me -- that which will prove my bliss. Or dost thou but mock me? if so, hence from my sight, lest I be tempted to lay my hand on thee."<br /><br />"Once more do I warn thee." answered the old man with undisturbed composure, " 'Wake not the dead' -- let her rest."<br /><br />"Aye, but not in the cold grave: she shall rather rest on this bosom which burns with eagerness to clasp her."<br /><br />"Reflect, thou mayst not quit her until death, even though aversion and horror should seize thy heart. There would then remain only one horrible means."<br /><br />"Dotard!" cried Walter, interrupting him, 'how may I hate that which I love with such intensity of passion? how should I abhor that for which my every drop of blood is boiling?"<br /><br />"Then be it even as thou wishest," answered the sorcerer; "step back."<br /><br />The old man now drew a circle round the grave, all the while muttering words of enchantment. Immediately the storm began to howl among the tops of the trees; owls flapped their wings, and uttered their low voice of omen; the stars hid their mild, beaming aspect, that they might not behold so unholy and impious a spectacle; the stone then rolled from the grave with a hollow sound, leaving a free passage for the inhabitant of that dreadful tenement. The sorcerer scattered into the yawning earth, roots and herbs of most magic power, and of most penetrating odour. so that the worms crawling forth from the earth congregated together, and raised themselves in a fiery column over the grave: while rushing wind burst from the earth, scattering the mould before it, until at length the coffin lay uncovered. The moonbeams fell on it, and the lid burst open with a tremendous sound. Upon this the sorcerer poured upon it some blood from out of a human skull, exclaiming at the same time, "Drink, sleeper, of this warm stream, that thy heart may again beat within thy bosom." And, after a short pause, shedding on her some other mystic liquid, he cried aloud with the voice of one inspired: "Yes, thy heart beats once more with the flood of life: thine eye is again opened to sight. Arise, therefore, from the tomb."<br /><br />As an island suddenly springs forth from the dark waves of the ocean, raised upwards from the deep by the force of subterraneous fires, so did Brunhilda start from her earthy couch, borne forward by some invisible power. Taking her by the hand, the sorcerer led her towards Walter, who stood at some little distance, rooted to the ground with amazement.<br /><br />"Receive again," said he, "the object of thy passionate sighs: mayest thou never more require my aid; should that, however, happen, so wilt thou find me, during the full of the moon, upon the mountains in that spot and where the three roads meet."<br /><br />Instantly did Walter recognize in the form that stood before him, her whom he so ardently loved; and a sudden glow shot through his frame at finding her thus restored to him: yet the night-frost had chilled his limbs and palsied his tongue. For a while he gazed upon her without either motion or speech, and during this pause, all was again become hushed and serene; and the stars shone brightly in the clear heavens.<br /><br />"Walter!" exclaimed the figure; and at once the well-known sound, thrilling to his heart, broke the spell by which he was bound.<br /><br />"Is it reality? Is it truth?" cried he, "or a cheating delusion?"<br /><br />"No, it is no imposture; I am really living: -- conduct me quickly to thy castle in the mountains."<br /><br />Walter looked around: the old man had disappeared, but he perceived close by his side, a coal-black steed of fiery eye, ready equipped to conduct him thence; and on his back lay all proper attire for Brunhilda, who lost no time in arraying herself. This being done, she cried; "Haste, let us away ere the dawn breaks, for my eye is yet too weak to endure the light of day." Fully recovered from his stupor, Walter leaped into his saddle, and catching up, with a mingled feeling of delight and awe, the beloved being thus mysteriously restored from the power of the grave, he spurred on across the wild, towards the mountains, as furiously as if pursued by the shadows of the dead, hastening to recover from him their sister.<br /><br />The castle to which Walter conducted his Brunhilda, was situated on a rock between other rocks rising up above it. Here they arrived, unseen by any save one aged domestic, on whom Walter imposed secrecy by the severest threats.<br /><br />"Here will we tarry," said Brunhilda, "until I can endure the light, and until thou canst look upon me without trembling as if struck with a cold chill." They accordingly continued to make that place their abode: yet no one knew that Brunhilda existed, save only that aged attendant, who provided their meals. During seven entire days they had no light except that of tapers: during the next seven, the light was admitted through the lofty casements only while the rising or setting-sun faintly illumined the mountain-tops, the valley being still enveloped in shade.<br /><br />Seldom did Walter quit Brunhilda's side: a nameless spell seemed to attach him to her; even the shudder which he felt in her presence, and which would not permit him to touch her, was not unmixed with pleasure, like that thrilling awful emotion felt when strains of sacred music float under the vault of some temple; he rather sought, therefore, than avoided this feeling. Often too as he had indulged in calling to mind the beauties of Brunhilda, she had never appeared so fair, so fascinating, so admirable when depicted by his imagination, as when now beheld in reality. Never till now had her voice sounded with such tones of sweetness; never before did her language possess such eloquence as it now did, when she conversed with him on the subject of the past. And this was the magic fairy-land towards which her words constantly conducted him. Ever did she dwell upon the days of their first love, those hours of delight which they had participated together when the one derived all enjoyment from the other: and so rapturous, so enchanting, so full of life did she recall to his imagination that blissful season, that he even doubted whether he had ever experienced with her so much felicity, or had been so truly happy. And, while she thus vividly portrayed their hours of past delight, she delineated in still more glowing, more enchanting colours, those hours of approaching bliss which now awaited them, richer in enjoyment than any preceding ones. In this manner did she charm her attentive auditor with enrapturing hopes for the future, and lull him into dreams of more than mortal ecstasy; so that while he listened to her siren strain, he entirely forgot how little blissful was the latter period of their union, when he had often sighed at her imperiousness, and at her harshness both to himself and all his household. Yet even had he recalled this to mind would it have disturbed him in his present delirious trance? Had she not now left behind in the grave all the frailty of mortality? Was not her whole being refined and purified by that long sleep in which neither passion nor sin had approached her even in dreams? How different now was the subject of her discourse! Only when speaking of her affection for him, did she betray anything of earthly feeling: at other times, she uniformly dwelt upon themes relating to the invisible and future world; when in descanting and declaring the mysteries of eternity, a stream of prophetic eloquence would burst from her lips.<br /><br />In this manner had twice seven days elapsed, and, for the first time, Walter beheld the being now dearer to him than ever, in the full light of day. Every trace of the grave had disappeared from her countenance; a roseate tinge like the ruddy streaks of dawn again beamed on her pallid cheek; the faint, mouldering taint of the grave was changed into a delightful violet scent; the only sign of earth that never disappeared. He no longer felt either apprehension or awe, as he gazed upon her in the sunny light of day: it was not until now, that he seemed to have recovered her completely; and, glowing with all his former passion towards her, he would have pressed her to his bosom, but she gently repulsed him, saying: -- "Not yet -- spare your caresses until the moon has again filled her horn."<br /><br />Spite of his impatience, Walter was obliged to await the lapse of another period of seven days: but, on the night when the moon was arrived at the full, he hastened to Brunhilda, whom he found more lovely than she had ever appeared before. Fearing no obstacles to his transports, he embraced with all the fervour of a deeply enamoured and successful lover. Brunhilda, however, still refused to yield to his passion. "What!" exclaimed she, "is it fitting that I who have been purified by death from the frailty of mortality, should become thy concubine, while a mere daughter of the earth bears the title of thy wife: never shall it be. No, it must be within the walls of thy palace, within that chamber where I once reigned as queen, that thou obtainest the end of thy wishes, -- and of mine also," added she, imprinting a glowing kiss on the lips, and immediately disappeared.<br /><br />Heated with passion, and determined to sacrifice everything to the accomplishment of his desires, Walter hastily quitted the apartment, and shortly after the castle itself. He travelled over mountain and across heath, with the rapidity of a storm, so that the turf was flung up by his horse's hoofs; nor once stopped until he arrived home.<br /><br />Here, however, neither the affectionate caresses of Swanhilda, or those of his children could touch his heart, or induce him to restrain his furious desires. Alas! is the impetuous torrent to be checked in its devastating course by the beauteous flowers over which it rushes, when they exclaim: -- "Destroyer, commiserate our helpless innocence and beauty, nor lay us waste?" -- the stream sweeps over them unregarding, and a single moment annihilates the pride of a whole summer.<br /><br />Shortly afterwards did Walter begin to hint to Swanhilda that they were ill-suited to each other; that he was anxious to taste that wild, tumultuous life, so well according with the spirit of his sex, while she, on the contrary, was satisfied with the monotonous circle of household enjoyments: -- that he was eager for whatever promised novelty, while she felt most attached to what was familiarized to her by habit: and lastly, that her cold disposition, bordering upon indifference, but ill assorted with his ardent temperament: it was therefore more prudent that they should seek apart from each other that happiness which they could not find together. A sigh, and a brief acquiescence in his wishes was all the reply that Swanhilda made: and, on the following morning, upon his presenting her with a paper of separation, informing her that she was at liberty to return home to her father, she received it most submissively: yet, ere she departed, she gave him the following warning: "Too well do I conjecture to whom I am indebted for this our separation. Often have I seen thee at Brunhilda's grave, and beheld thee there even on that night when the face of the heavens was suddenly enveloped in a veil of clouds. Hast thou rashly dared to tear aside the awful veil that separates the mortality that dreams, from that which dreameth not? Oh! then woe to thee, thou wretched man, for thou hast attached to thyself that which will prove thy destruction."<br /><br />She ceased: nor did Walter attempt any reply, for the similar admonition uttered by the sorcerer flashed upon his mind, all obscured as it was by passion, just as the lightning glares momentarily through the gloom of night without dispersing the obscurity.<br /><br />Swanhilda then departed, in order to pronounce to her children, a bitter farewell, for they, according to national custom, belonged to the father; and, having bathed them in her tears, and consecrated them with the holy water of maternal love, she quitted her husband's residence, and departed to the home of her father's.<br /><br />Thus was the kind and benevolent Swanhilda driven an exile from those halls where she had presided with grace; -- from halls which were now newly decorated to receive another mistress. The day at length arrived on which Walter, for the second time, conducted Brunhilda home as a newly made bride. And he caused it to be reported among his domestics that his new consort had gained his affections by her extraordinary likeness to Brunhilda, their former mistress. How ineffably happy did he deem himself as he conducted his beloved once more into the chamber which had often witnessed their former joys, and which was now newly gilded and adorned in a most costly style: among the other decorations were figures of angels scattering roses, which served to support the purple draperies whose ample folds o'ershadowed the nuptial couch. With what impatience did he await the hour that was to put him in possession of those beauties for which he had already paid so high a price, but, whose enjoyment was to cost him most dearly yet! Unfortunate Walter! revelling in bliss, thou beholdest not the abyss that yawns beneath thy feet, intoxicated with the luscious perfume of the flower thou hast plucked, thou little deemest how deadly is the venom with which it is fraught, although, for a short season, its potent fragrance bestows new energy on all thy feelings.<br /><br />Happy, however, as Walter was now, his household were far from being equally so. The strange resemblance between their new lady and the deceased Brunhilda filled them with a secret dismay, -- an undefinable horror; for there was not a single difference of feature, of tone of voice, or of gesture. To add too to these mysterious circumstances, her female attendants discovered a particular mark on her back, exactly like one which Brunhilda had. A report was now soon circulated, that their lady was no other than Brunhilda herself, who had been recalled to life by the power of necromancy. How truly horrible was the idea of living under the same roof with one who had been an inhabitant of the tomb, and of being obliged to attend upon her, and acknowledge her as mistress! There was also in Brunhilda much to increase this aversion, and favour their superstition: no ornaments of gold ever decked her person; all that others were wont to wear of this metal, she had formed of silver: no richly coloured and sparkling jewels glittered upon her; pearls alone, lent their pale lustre to adorn her bosom. Most carefully did she always avoid the cheerful light of the sun, and was wont to spend the brightest days in the most retired and gloomy apartments: only during the twilight of the commencing or declining day did she ever walk abroad, but her favourite hour was when the phantom light of the moon bestowed on all objects a shadowy appearance and a sombre hue; always too at the crowing of the cock an involuntary shudder was observed to seize her limbs. Imperious as before her death, she quickly imposed her iron yoke on every one around her, while she seemed even far more terrible than ever, since a dread of some supernatural power attached to her, appalled all who approached her. A malignant withering glance seemed to shoot from her eye on the unhappy object of her wrath, as if it would annihilate its victim. In short, those halls which, in the time of Swanhilda were the residence of cheerfulness and mirth, now resembled an extensive desert tomb. With fear imprinted on their pale countenances, the domestics glided through the apartments of the castle; and in this abode of terror, the crowing of the cock caused the living to tremble, as if they were the spirits of the departed; for the sound always reminded them of their mysterious mistress. There was no one but who shuddered at meeting her in a lonely place, in the dusk of evening, or by the light of the moon, a circumstance that was deemed to be ominous of some evil: so great was the apprehension of her female attendants, they pined in continual disquietude, and, by degrees, all quitted her. In the course of time even others of the domestics fled, for an insupportal horror had seized them.<br /><br />The art of the sorcerer had indeed bestowed upon Brunhilda an artificial life, and due nourishment had continued to support the restored body: yet this body was not able of itself to keep up the genial glow of vitality, and to nourish the flame whence springs all the affections and passions, whether of love or hate; for death had for ever destroyed and withered it: all that Brunhilda now possessed was a chilled existence, colder than that of the snake. It was nevertheless necessary that she should love, and return with equal ardour the warm caresses of her spell-enthralled husband, to whose passion alone she was indebted for her renewed existence. It was necessary that a magic draught should animate the dull current in her veins and awaken her to the glow of life and the flame of love -- a potion of abomination -- one not even to be named without a curse -- human blood, imbibed whilst yet warm, from the veins of youth. This was the hellish drink for which she thirsted: possessing no sympathy with the purer feelings of humanity; deriving no enjoyment from aught that interests in life and occupies its varied hours; her existence was a mere blank, unless when in the arms of her paramour husband, and therefore was it that she craved incessantly after the horrible draught. It was even with the utmost effort that she could forbear sucking even the blood of Walter himself, reclined beside her. Whenever she beheld some innocent child whose lovely face denoted the exuberance of infantine health and vigour, she would entice it by soothing words and fond caresses into her most secret apartment, where, lulling it to sleep in her arms, she would suck form its bosom the war, purple tide of life. Nor were youths of either sex safe from her horrid attack: having first breathed upon her unhappy victim, who never failed immediately to sink into a lengthened sleep, she would then in a similar manner drain his veins of the vital juice. Thus children, youths, and maidens quickly faded away, as flowers gnawn by the cankering worm: the fullness of their limbs disappeared; a sallow line succeeded to the rosy freshness of their cheeks, the liquid lustre of the eye was deadened, even as the sparkling stream when arrested by the touch of frost; and their locks became thin and grey, as if already ravaged by the storm of life. Parents beheld with horror this desolating pestilence devouring their offspring; nor could simple or charm, potion or amulet avail aught against it. The grave swallowed up one after the other; or did the miserable victim survive, he became cadaverous and wrinkled even in the very morn of existence. Parents observed with horror this devastating pestilence snatch away their offspring -- a pestilence which, nor herb however potent, nor charm, nor holy taper, nor exorcism could avert. They either beheld their children sink one after the other into the grave, or their youthful forms, withered by the unholy, vampire embrace of Brunhilda, assume the decrepitude of sudden age.<br /><br />At length strange surmises and reports began to prevail; it was whispered that Brunhilda herself was the cause of all these horrors; although no one could pretend to tell in what manner she destroyed her victims, since no marks of violence were discernible. Yet when young children confessed that she had frequently lulled them asleep in her arms, and elder ones said that a sudden slumber had come upon them whenever she began to converse with them, suspicion became converted into certainty, and those whose offspring had hitherto escaped unharmed, quitted their hearths and home -- all their little possessions -- the dwellings of their fathers and the inheritance of their children, in order to rescue from so horrible a fate those who were dearer to their simple affections than aught else the world could give.<br /><br />Thus daily did the castle assume a more desolate appearance; daily did its environs become more deserted; none but a few aged decrepit old women and grey-headed menials were to be seen remaining of the once numerous retinue. Such will in the latter days of the earth be the last generation of mortals, when childbearing shall have ceased, when youth shall no more be seen, nor any arise to replace those who shall await their fate in silence.<br /><br />Walter alone noticed not, or heeded not, the desolation around him; he apprehended not death, lapped as he was in a glowing elysium of love. Far more happy than formerly did he now seem in the possession of Brunhilda. All those caprices and frowns which had been wont to overcloud their former union had now entirely disappeared. She even seemed to doat on him with a warmth of passion that she had never exhibited even during the happy season of bridal love; for the flame of that youthful blood, of which she drained the veins of others, rioted in her own. At night, as soon as he closed his eyes, she would breathe on him till he sank into delicious dreams, from which he awoke only to experience more rapturous enjoyments. By day she would continually discourse with him on the bliss experienced by happy spirits beyond the grave, assuring him that, as his affection had recalled her from the tomb, they were now irrevocably united. Thus fascinated by a continual spell, it was not possible that he should perceive what was taking place around him. Brunhilda, however, foresaw with savage grief that the source of her youthful ardour was daily decreasing, for, in a short time, there remained nothing gifted with youth, save Walter and his children, and these latter she resolved should be her next victims.<br /><br />On her first return to the castle, she had felt an aversion towards the offspring of another, and therefore abandoned them entirely to the attendants appointed by Swanhilda. Now, however, she began to pay considerable attention to them, and caused them to be frequently admitted into her presence. The aged nurses were filled with dread at perceiving these marks of regard from her towards their young charges, yet dared they not to oppose the will of their terrible and imperious mistress. Soon did Brunhilda gain the affection of the children, who were too unsuspecting of guile to apprehend any danger from her; on the contrary, her caresses won them completely to her. Instead of ever checking their mirthful gambols, she would rather instruct them in new sports: often too did she recite to them tales of such strange and wild interest as to exceed all the stories of their nurses. Were they wearied either with play or with listening to her narratives, she would take them on her knees and lull them to slumber. Then did visions of the most surpassing magnificence attend their dreams: they would fancy themselves in some garden where flowers of every hue rose in rows one above the other, from the humble violet to the tall sunflower, forming a parti-coloured broidery of every hue, sloping upwards towards the golden clouds where little angels whose wings sparkled with azure and gold descended to bring them delicious cakes or splendid jewels; or sung to them soothing melodious hymns. So delightful did these dream in short time become to the children that they longered for nothing so eagerly as to slumber on Brunhilda's lap, for never did they else enjoy such visions of heavenly forms. They were they most anxious for that which was to prove their destruction: -- yet do we not all aspire after that which conducts us to the grave -- after the enjoyment of life? These innocents stretched out their arms to approaching death because it assumed the mask of pleasure; for, which they were lapped in these ecstatic slumbers, Brunhilda sucked the life-stream from their bosoms. On waking, indeed, they felt themselves faint and exhausted, yet did no pain nor any mark betray the cause. Shortly, however, did their strength entirely fail, even as the summer brook is gradually dried up: their sports became less and less noisy; their loud, frolicsome laughter was converted into a faint smile; the full tones of their voices died away into a mere whisper. Their attendants were filled with horror and despair; too well did they conjecture the horrible truth, yet dared not to impart their suspicions to Walter, who was so devotedly attached to his horrible partner. Death had already smote his prey: the children were but the mere shadows of their former selves, and even this shadow quickly disappeared.<br /><br />The anguished father deeply bemoaned their loss, for, notwithstanding his apparent neglect, he was strongly attached to them, nor until he had experienced their loss was he aware that his love was so great. His affliction could not fail to excite the displeasure of Brunhilda: "Why dost thou lament so fondly," said she, "for these little ones? What satisfaction could such unformed beings yield to thee unless thou wert still attached to their mother? Thy heart then is still hers? Or dost thou now regret her and them because thou art satiated with my fondness and weary of my endearments? Had these young ones grown up, would they not have attached thee, thy spirit and thy affections more closely to this earth of clay -- to this dust and have alienated thee from that sphere to which I, who have already passed the grave, endeavour to raise thee? Say is thy spirit so heavy, or thy love so weak, or thy faith so hollow, that the hope of being mine for ever is unable to touch thee?" Thus did Brunhilda express her indignation at her consort's grief, and forbade him her presence. The fear of offending her beyond forgiveness and his anxiety to appease her soon dried up his tears; and he again abandoned himself to his fatal passion, until approaching destruction at length awakened him from his delusion.<br /><br />Neither maiden, nor youth, was any longer to be seen, either within the dreary walls of the castle, or the adjoining territory: -- all had disappeared; for those whom the grave had not swallowed up had fled from the region of death. Who, therefore, now remained to quench the horrible thirst of the female vampire save Walter himself? and his death she dared to contemplate unmoved; for that divine sentiment that unites two beings in one joy and one sorrow was unknown to her bosom. Was he in his tomb, so was she free to search out other victims and glut herself with destruction, until she herself should, at the last day, be consumed with the earth itself, such is the fatal law to which the dead are subject when awoke by the arts of necromancy from the sleep of the grave.<br /><br />She now began to fix her blood-thirsty lips on Walter's breast,when cast into a profound sleep by the odour of her violet breath he reclined beside her quite unconscious of his impending fate: yet soon did his vital powers begin to decay; and many a grey hair peeped through his raven locks. With his strength, his passion also declined; and he now frequently left her in order to pass the whole day in the sports of the chase, hoping thereby to regain his wonted vigour. As he was reposing one day in a wood beneath the shade of an oak, he perceived, on the summit of a tree, a bird of strange appearance, and quite unknown to him; but, before he could take aim at it with his bow, it flew away into the clouds; at the same time letting fall a rose-coloured root which dropped at Walter's feet, who immediately took it up and, although he was well acquainted with almost every plant, he could not remember to have seen any at all resembling this. Its delightfully odoriferous scent induced him to try its flavour, but ten times more bitter than wormwood it was even as gall in his mouth; upon which, impatient of the disappointment, he flung it away with violence. Had he, however, been aware of its miraculous quality and that it acted as a counter charm against the opiate perfume of Brunhilda's breath, he would have blessed it in spite of its bitterness: thus do mortals often blindly cast away in displeasure the unsavoury remedy that would otherwise work their weal.<br /><br />When Walter returned home in the evening and laid him down to repose as usual by Brunhilda's side, the magic power of her breath produced no effect upon him; and for the first time during many months did he close his eyes in a natural slumber. Yet hardly had he fallen asleep, ere a pungent smarting pain disturbed him from his dreams; and. opening his eyes, he discerned, by the gloomy rays of a lamp, that glimmered in the apartment what for some moments transfixed him quite aghast, for it was Brunhilda, drawing with her lips, the warm blood from his bosom. The wild cry of horror which at length escaped him, terrified Brunhilda, whose mouth was besmeared with the warm blood. "Monster!" exclaimed he, springing from the couch, "is it thus that you love me?"<br /><br />"Aye, even as the dead love," replied she, with a malignant coldness.<br /><br />"Creature of blood!" continued Walter, "the delusion which has so long blinded me is at an end: thou are the fiend who hast destroyed my children -- who hast murdered the offspring of my vassels." Raising herself upwards and, at the same time, casting on him a glance that froze him to the spot with dread, she replied. "It is not I who have murdered them; -- I was obliged to pamper myself with warm youthful blood, in order that I might satisfy thy furious desires -- thou art the murderer!" -- These dreadful words summoned, before Walter's terrified conscience, the threatening shades of all those who had thus perished; while despair choked his voice.<br /><br />"Why," continued she, in a tone that increased his horror, "why dost thou make mouths at me like a puppet? Thou who hadst the courage to love the dead -- to take into thy bed, one who had been sleeping in the grave, the bed-fellow of the worm -- who hast clasped in thy lustful arms, the the corruption of the tomb -- dost thou, unhallowed as thou art, now raise this hideous cry for the sacrifice of a few lives? -- They are but leaves swept from their branches by a storm. -- Come, chase these idiot fancies, and taste the bliss thou hast so dearly purchased." So saying, she extended her arms towards him; but this motion served only to increase his terror, and exclaiming: "Accursed Being," -- he rushed out of the apartment.<br /><br />All the horrors of a guilty, upbraiding conscience became his companions, now that he was awakened from the delirium of his unholy pleasures. Frequently did he curse his own obstinate blindness, for having given no heed to the hints and admonitions of his children's nurses, but treating them as vile calumnies. But his sorrow was now too late, for, although repentance may gain pardon for the sinner, it cannot alter the immutable decrees of fate -- it cannot recall the murdered from the tomb. No sooner did the first break of dawn appear, than he set out for his lonely castle in the mountains, determined no longer to abide under the same roof with so terrific a being; yet vain was his flight, for, on waking the following morning, he perceived himself in Brunhilda's arms, and quite entangled in her long raven tresses, which seemed to involve him, and bind him in the fetters of his fate; the powerful fascination of her breath held him still more captivated, so that, forgetting all that had passed, he returned her caresses, until awakening as if from a dream he recoiled in unmixed horror from her embrace. During the day he wandered through the solitary wilds of the mountains, as a culprit seeking an asylum from his pursuers; and, at night, retired to the shelter of a cave; fearing less to couch himself within such a dreary place, than to expose himself to the horror of again meeting Brunhilda; but alas! it was in vain that he endeavoured to flee her. Again, when he awoke, he found her the partner of his miserable bed. Nay, had he sought the centre of the earth as his hiding place; had he even imbedded himself beneath rocks, or formed his chamber in the recesses of the ocean, still had he found her his constant companion; for, by calling her again into existence, he had rendered himself inseparably hers; so fatal were the links that united them.<br /><br />Struggling with the madness that was beginning to seize him, and brooding incessantly on the ghastly visions that presented themselves to his horror-stricken mind, he lay motionless in the gloomiest recesses of the woods, even from the rise of sun till the shades of eve. But, no sooner was the light of day extinguished in the west, and the woods buried in impenetrable darkness, than the apprehension of resigning himself to sleep drove him forth among the mountains. The storm played wildly with the fantastic clouds, and with the rattling leaves, as they were caught up into the air, as if some dread spirit was sporting with these images of transitoriness and decay: it roared among the summits of the oaks as if uttering a voice of fury, while its hollow sound rebounding among the distant hills, seemed as the moans of a departing sinner, or as the faint cry of some wretch expiring under the murderer's hand: the owl too, uttered its ghastly cry as if foreboding the wreck of nature. Walter's hair flew disorderly in the wind, like black snakes wreathing around his temples and shoulders; while each sense was awake to catch fresh horror. In the clouds he seemed to behold the forms of the murdered; in the howling wind to hear their laments and groans; in the chilling blast itself he felt the dire kiss of Brunhilda; in the cry of the screeching bird he heard her voice; in the mouldering leaves he scented the charnel-bed out of which he had awakened her. "Murderer of thy own offspring," exclaimed he in a voice making night, and the conflict of the element still more hideous, "paramour of a blood-thirsty vampire, reveller with the corruption of the tomb!" while in his despair he rent the wild locks from his head. Just then the full moon darted from beneath the bursting clouds; and the sight recalled to his remembrance the advice of the sorcerer, when he trembled at the first apparition of Brunhilda rising from her sleep of death; -- name]y, to seek him at the season of the full moon in the mountains, where three roads met. Scarcely had this gleam of hope broke in on his bewildered mind than he flew to the appointed spot.<br /><br />On his arrival, Walter found the old man seated there upon a stone as calmly as though it had been a bright sunny day and completely regardless of the uproar around. "Art thou come then?" exclaimed he to the breathless wretch, who, flinging himself at his feet, cried in a tone of anguish: -- "Oh save me -- succour me -- rescue me from the monster that scattereth death and desolation around her.<br /><br />"Wherefore a mysterious warning? why didst thou not rather disclose to me at once all the horrors that awaited my sacrilegious profanation of the grave?"<br /><br />"And wherefore a mysterious warning? why didst thou not perceivest how wholesome was the advice -- 'Wake not the dead.'<br /><br />"Wert thou able to listen to another voice than that of thy impetuous passions? Did not thy eager impatience shut my mouth at the very moment I would have cautioned thee?"<br /><br />"True, true: -- thy reproof is just: but what does it avail now; -- I need the promptest aid."<br /><br />"Well," replied the old man, "there remains even yet a means of rescuing thyself, but it is fraught with horror and demands all thy resolution."<br /><br />"Utter it then, utter it; for what can be more appalling, more hideous than the misery I now endure?"<br /><br />"Know then," continued the sorcerer, "that only on the night of the new moon does she sleep the sleep of mortals; and then all the supernaturural power which she inherits from the grave totally fails her. 'Tis then that thou must murder her."<br /><br />"How! murder her!" echoed Walter.<br /><br />"Aye," returned the old man calmly, "pierce her bosom with a sharpened dagger, which I will furnish thee with; at the same time renounce her memory for ever, swearing never to think of her intentionally, and that, if thou dost involuntarily, thou wilt repeat the curse."<br /><br />"Most horrible! yet what can be more horrible than she herself is? -- I'll do it."<br /><br />"Keep then this resolution until the next new moon."<br /><br />"What, must I wait until then?" cried Walter, "alas ere then. either her savage thirst for blood will have forced me into the night of the tomb, or horror will have driven me into the night of madness."<br /><br />"Nay," replied the sorcerer, "that I can prevent;" and, so saying, he conducted him to a cavern further among the mountains. "Abide here twice seven days," said he; "so long can I protect thee against her deadly caresses. Here wilt thou find all due provision for thy wants; but take heed that nothing tempt thee to quit this place. Farewell, when the moon renews itself, then do I repair hither again." So saying, the sorcerer drew a magic circle around the cave, and then immediately disappeared.<br /><br />Twice seven days did Walter continue in this solitude, where his companions were his own terrifying thoughts, and his bitter repentance. The present was all desolation and dread; the future presented the image of a horrible deed which he must perforce commit; while the past was empoisoned by the memory of his guilt. Did he think on his former happy union with Brunhilda, her horrible image presented itself to his imagination with her lips defiled with dropping blood: or, did he call to mind the peaceful days he had passed with Swanhilda, he beheld her sorrowful spirit with the shadows of her murdered children. Such were the horrors that attended him by day: those of night were still more dreadful, for then he beheld Brunhilda herself, who, wandering round the magic circle which she could not pass, called upon his name till the cavern reechoed the horrible sound. "WaIter, my beloved," cried she, "wherefore dost thou avoid me? art thou not mine? for ever mine -- mine here, and mine hereafter? And dost thou seek to murder me? -- ah! commit not a deed which hurls us both to perdition -- thyself as well as me." In this manner did the horrible visitant torment him each night, and, even when she departed, robbed him of all repose.<br /><br />The night of the new moon at length arrived, dark as the deed it was doomed to bring forth. The sorcerer entered the cavern; "Come," said he to Walter, "let us depart hence, the hour is now arrived:" and he forthwith conducted him in silence from the cave to a coal-black steed, the sight of which recalled to Walter's remembrance the fatal night. He then related to the old man Brunhilda's nocturnal visits and anxiously inquired whether her apprehensions of eternal perdition would be fulfilled or not. "Mortal eye," exclaimed the sorcerer, "may not pierce the dark secrets of another world, or penetrate the deep abyss that separates earth from heaven." Walter hesitated to mount the steed. "Be resolute," exclaimed his companion, "but this once is it granted to thee to make the trial, and, should thou fail now, nought can rescue thee from her power."<br /><br />"What can be more horrible than she herself? -- I am determined:" and he leaped on the horse, the sorcerer mounting also behind him.<br /><br />Carried with a rapidity equal to that of the storm that sweeps across the plain they in brief space arrived at Walter's castle. All the doors flew open at the bidding of his companion, and they speedily reached Brunhilda's chamber, and stood beside her couch. Reclining in a tranquil slumber; she reposed in all her native loveliness, every trace of horror had disappeared from her countenance; she looked so pure, meek and innocent that all the sweet hours of their endearments rushed to Walter's memory, like interceding angels pleading in her behalf. His unnerved hand could not take the dagger which the sorcerer presented to him. "The blow must be struck even now:" said the latter, "shouldst thou delay but an hour, she will lie at daybreak on thy bosom, sucking the warm life drops from thy heart."<br /><br />"Horrible! most horrible!" faltered the trembling Walter, and turning away his face, he thrust the dagger into her bosom, exclaiming -- "I curse thee for ever! -- and the cold blood gushed upon his hand. Opening her eyes once more, she cast a look of ghastly horror on her husband, and, in a hollow dying accent said -- "Thou too art doomed to perdition."<br /><br />"Lay now thy hand upon her corpse," said the sorcerer, "and swear the oath." -- Walter did as commanded, saying, "Never will I think of her with love, never recall her to mind intentionally, and, should her image recur to my mind involuntarily, so will I exclaim to it: be thou accursed."<br /><br />"Thou hast now done everything," returned the sorcerer; -- "restore her therefore to the earth, from which thou didst so foolishly recall her; and be sure to recollect thy oath: for, shouldst thou forget it but once, she would return, and thou wouldst be inevitably lost. Adieu -- we see each other no more." Having uttered these words he quitted the apartment, and Walter also fled from this abode of horror, having first given direction that the corpse should be speedily interred.<br /><br />Again did the terrific Brunhilda repose within her grave; but her image continually haunted Walter's imagination, so that his existence was one continued martyrdom, in which he continually struggled, to dismiss from his recollection the hideous phantoms of the past; yet, the stronger his effort to banish them, so much the more frequently and the more vividly did they return; as the night-wanderer, who is enticed by a fire-wisp into quagmire or bog, sinks the deeper into his damp grave the more he struggles to escape. His imagination seemed incapable of admitting any other image than that of Brunhilda: now he fancied he beheld her expiring, the blood streaming from her beautiful bosom: at others he saw the lovely bride of his youth, who reproached him with having disturbed the slumbers of the tomb; and to both he was compelled to utter the dreadful words, "I curse thee for ever." The terrible imprecation was constantly passing his lips; yet was he in incessant terror lest he should forget it, or dream of her without being able to repeat it, and then, on awaking, find himself in her arms. Else would he recall her expiring words, and, appalled at their terrific import, imagine that the doom of his perdition was irrecoverably passed. Whence should he fly from himself? or how erase from his brain these images and forms of horror? In the din of combat, in the tumult of war and its incessant pour of victory to defeat; from the cry of anguish to the exultation of victory -- in these he hoped to find at least the relief of distraction: but here too he was disappointed. The giant fang of apprehension now seized him who had never before known fear; each drop of blood that sprayed upon him seemed the cold blood that had gushed from Brunhilda's wound; each dying wretch that fell beside him looked like her, when expiring, she exclaimed, -- "Thou too art doomed to perdition"; so that the aspect of death seemed more full of dread to him than aught beside, and this unconquerable terror compelled him to abandon the battle-field. At length, after many a weary and fruitless wandering, he returned to his castle. Here all was deserted and silent, as if the sword, or a still more deadly pestilence had laid everything waste: for the few inhabitants that still remained, and even those servants who had once shewn themselves the most attached, now fled from him, as though he had been branded with the mark of Cain. With horror he perceived that, by uniting himself as he had done with the dead, he had cut himself off from the living, who refused to hold any intercourse with him. Often, when he stood on the battlements of his castle, and looked down upon desolate fields, he compared their present solitude with the lively activity they were wont to exhibit, under the strict but benevolent discipline of Swanhilda. He now felt that she alone could reconcile him to life, but durst he hope that one, whom he so deeply aggrieved, could pardon him, and receive him again? Impatience at length got the better of fear; he sought Swanhilda, and, with the deepest contrition, acknowledged his complicated guilt; embracing her knees as he beseeched her to pardon him, and to return to his desolate castle, in order that it might again become the abode of contentment and peace. The pale form which she beheld at her feet, the shadow of the lately blooming youth, touched Swanhilda. "The folly," said she gently, "though it has caused me much sorrow, has never excited my resentment or my anger. But say, where are my children?" To this dreadful interrogation the agonized father could for a while frame no reply: at length he was obliged to confess the dreadful truth. "Then we are sundered for ever," returned Swanhilda; nor could all his tears or supplications prevail upon her to revoke the sentence she had given.<br /><br />Stripped of his last earthly hope, bereft of his last consolation, and thereby rendered as poor as mortal can possibly be on this side of the grave. Walter returned homewards; when, as he was riding through the forest in the neighbourhood of his castle, absorbed in his gloomy meditations, the sudden sound of a horn roused him from his reverie. Shortly after he saw appear a female figure clad in black, and mounted on a steed of the same colour: her attire was like that of a huntress, but, instead of a falcon, she bore a raven in her hand; and she was attended by a gay troop of cavaliers and dames. The first salutations bring passed, he found that she was proceeding the same road as himself; and, when she found that Walter's castle was close at hand, she requested that he would lodge her for that night, the evening being far advanced. Most willingly did he comply with this request, since the appearance of the beautiful stranger had struck him greatly; so wonderfully did she resemble Swanhilda, except that her locks were brown, and her eye dark and full of fire. With a sumptous banquet did he entertain his guests, whose mirth and songs enlivened the lately silent halls. Three days did this revelry continue, and so exhilarating did it prove to Walter that he seemed to have forgotten his sorrows and his fears; nor could he prevail upon himself to dismiss his visitors, dreading lest, on their departure, the castle would seem a hundred times more desolate than before hand his grief be proportionally increased. At his earnest request, the stranger consented to stay seven, and again another seven days. Without being requested, she took upon herself the superintendence of the household, which she regulated as discreetly and cheerfully as Swanhilda had been wont to do, so that the castle, which had so lately been the abode of melancholy and horror, became the residence of pleasure and festivity, and Walter's grief disappeared altogether in the midst of so much gaiety. Daily did his attachment to the fair unknown increase; he even made her his confidant; and, one evening as they were walking together apart from any of her train, he related to her his melancholy and frightful history. "My dear friend," returned she, as soon as he he had finished his tale, "it ill beseems a man of thy discretion to afflict thyself on account of all this. Thou hast awakened the dead from the sleep of the grave and afterwards found, -- what might have been anticipated, that the dead possess no sympathy with life. What then? thou wilt not commit this error a second time.<br /><br />Thou hast however murdered the being whom thou hadst thus recalled again to existence -- but it was only in appearance, for thou couldst not deprive that of life which properly had none. Thou hast, too, lost a wife and two children: but at thy years such a loss is most easily repaired. There are beauties who will gladly share thy couch, and make thee again a father. But thou dreadst the reckoning of hereafter: -- go, open the graves and ask the sleepers there whether that hereafter disturbs them." In such manner would she frequently exhort and cheer him, so that, in a short time. his melancholy entirely disappeared. He now ventured to declare to the unknown the passion with which she had inspired him, nor did she refuse him her hand. Within seven days afterwards the nuptials were celebrated, and the very foundations of the castle seemed to rock from the wild tumultuous uproar of unrestrained riot. The wine streamed in abundance; the goblets circled incessantly; intemperance reached its utmost bounds, while shouts of laughter almost resembling madness burst from the numerous train belonging to the unknown. At length Walter, heated with wine and love, conducted his bride into the nuptial chamber: but, oh! horror! scarcely had he clasped her in his arms ere she transformed herself into a monstrous serpent, which entwining him in its horrid folds, crushed him to death. Flames crackled on every side of the apartment; in a few minutes after, the whole castle was enveloped in a blaze that consumed it entirely: while, as the walls fell in with a tremendous crash, a voice exclaimed aloud -- "Wake not the dead!"Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4883301247675127291.post-53506338402575985282011-03-12T08:43:00.000-08:002011-03-12T08:44:03.700-08:00The Mortal Immortal by Mary Shelley<center>Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (yes, the Frankenstein Shelley) published "The Mortal Immortal" in 1833.<br />The story features a thoroughly nice young man. He drinks a potion which he believes will break him out of love with a local beauty, but it is really an immortality potion. It gives him a real lasting high. He stays with the female through her lifetime, and he is still wandering around, Methuselah style, years later.<br /><br /><br /><img src="http://i200.photobucket.com/albums/aa246/V-Empire/VR/_Follow_me__by_ellaine.jpg" alt="Photobucket" border="0" /><br /><br /><b><br /><br /><br />The Mortal Immortal<br /><br />by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley<br /><br />JULY 16, 1833.<br /><br /></b></center><br /><br /><br /><br /> This is a memorable anniversary for me: on it I complete my three hundred and twenty-third year!<br /><br />The Wandering Jew? - certainly not. More than eighteen centuries have passed over his head. In comparison with him, I am a very young Immortal.<br /><br />Am I, then, immortal? This is a question which I have asked myself, by day and night, for now three hundred and three years, and yet cannot answer it. I detected a gray hair amidst my brown locks this very day - that surely signifies decay. Yet it may have remained concealed there for three hundred years - for some persons have become entirely white headed before twenty years of age.<br /><br />I will tell my story, and my reader shall judge for me. I will tell my story, and so contrive to pass some few hours of a long eternity, become so wearisome to me. For ever! Can it be? to live for ever! I have heard of enchantments, in which the victims were plunged into a deep sleep, to wake, after a hundred years, as fresh as ever: I have heard of the Seven Sleepers - thus to be immortal would not be so burthensome: but, oh! the weight of never-ending time - the tedious passage of the still-succeeding hours! How happy was the fabled Nourjahad! - But to my task.<br /><br />All the world has heard of Cornelius Agrippa. His memory is as immortal as his arts have made me. All the world has also heard of his scholar, who, unawares, raised the foul fiend during his master`s absence, and was destroyed by him. The report, true or false, of this accident, was attended with many inconveniences to the renowned philosopher. All his scholars at once deserted him - his servants disappeared. He had no one near him to put coals on his ever-burning fires while he slept, or to attend to the changeful colours of his medicines while he studied. Experiment after experiment failed, because one pair of hands was insufficient to complete them: the dark spirits laughed at him for not being able to retain a single mortal in his service.<br /><br />I was then very young - very poor - and very much. in love. I had been for about a year the pupil of Cornelius, though I was absent when this accident took place. On my return, my friends implored me not to return to the alchemist`s abode. I trembled as I listened to the dire tale they told: I required no second warning: and when Cornelius came and offered me a purse of gold if I would remain under his roof, I felt as if Satan himself tempted me. My teeth chattered - my hair stood on end; I ran off as fast as my trembling knees would permit.<br /><br />My failing steps were directed whither for two years they had every evening been attracted, - a gently bubbling spring of pure living waters, beside which lingered a dark-haired girl, whose beaming eyes were fixed on the path I was accustomed each night to tread. I cannot remember the hour when I did not love Bertha: we had been neighbours and playmates from infancy - her parents, like mine, were of humble life, yet respectable - our attachment had been a source of pleasure to them. In an evil hour, a malignant fever carried off both her father and mother, and Bertha became an orphan. She would have found a home beneath my paternal roof, but, unfortunately, the old lady of the near castle, rich, childless, and solitary, declared her intention to adopt her. Henceforth Bertha was clad in silk - inhabited a marble palace - and was looked on as being highly favoured by fortune. But in her new situation among her new associates, Bertha remained true to the friend of her humbler days: she often visited the cottage of my father, and when forbidden to go thither, she would stray towards the neighbouring wood, and meet me beside its shady fountain.<br /><br />She often declared that she owed no duty to her new protectress equal in sanctity to that which bound us. Yet still I was too poor to marry, and she grew weary of being tormented on my account. She had a haughty but an impatient spirit, and grew angry at the obstacles that prevented our union. We met now after an absence, and she had been sorely beset while I was away: she complained bitterly, and almost reproached me for being poor. I replied hastily:<br /><br />"I am honest, if I am poor! - were I not, I might soon become rich!"<br /><br />This exclamation produced a thousand questions. I feared to shock her by owning the truth, but she drew it from me: and then, casting a look of disdain on me, she said - "You pretend to love, and you fear to face the Devil for my sake!" I protested that I had only dreaded to offend her: - while she dwelt on the magnitude of the reward that I should receive. Thus encouraged - shamed by her - led on by love and hope, laughing at my late fears, with quick steps and a light heart, I returned to accept the offers of the alchemist, and was instantly installed in my office. A year passed away. I became possessed of no insignificant sum of money. Custom had banished my fears. In spite of the most painful vigilance, I had never detected the trace of a cloven foot: nor was the studious silence of our abode ever disturbed by demoniac howls. I still continued my stolen interviews with Bertha, and Hope dawned on me Hope - but not perfect joy: for Bertha fancied that love and security were enemies, and her pleasure was to divide them in my bosom. Though true of heart, she was somewhat of a coquette in manner: and I was jealous as a Turk. She slighted me in a thousand ways, yet would never acknowledge herself to be in the wrong. She would drive me mad with anger, and then force me to beg her pardon. Sometimes she fancied that I was not sufficiently submissive, and then she had some story of a rival, favoured by her protectress. She was surrounded by silk-clad youths - the rich and gay - What chance had the sad-robed scholar of Cornelius compared with these?<br /><br />On one occasion, the philosopher made such large demands upon my time, that I was unable to meet her as I was wont. He was engaged in some mighty work, and I was forced to remain, day and night, feeding his furnaces and watching his chemical preparations. Bertha waited for me in vain at the fountain. Her haughty spirit fired at this neglect: and when at last I stole out during the few short minutes allotted to me for slumber, and hoped to be consoled by her, she received me with disdain, dismissed me in scorn, and vowed that any man should possess her hand rather than he who could not be in two places at once for her sake. She would be revenged! - And truly she was. In my dingy retreat I heard that she had been hunting, attended by Albert Hoffer. Albert Hoffer was favoured by her protectress, and the three passed in cavalcade before my smoky window. Methought that they mentioned my name - it was followed by a laugh of derision, as her dark eyes glanced contemptuously towards my abode.<br /><br />Jealousy, with all its venom, and all its misery, entered my breast. Now I shed a torrent of tears, to think that I should never call her mine: and, anon, I imprecated a thousand curses on her inconstancy. Yet, still I must stir the fires of the alchemist, still attend on the changes of his unintelligible medicines.<br /><br />Cornelius had watched for three days and nights, nor closed his eyes. The progress of his alembics was slower than he expected: in spite of his anxiety, sleep weighed upon his eyelids. Again and again he threw off drowsiness with more than human energy: again and again it stole away his senses. He eyed his crucibles wistfully. "Not ready yet," he murmured: "will another night pass before the work is accomplished? Winzy, you are vigilant - you are faithful - you have slept, my boy - you slept last night. Look at that glass vessel. The liquid it contains is of a soft rose-colour: the moment it begins to change its hue, awaken me - till then I may close my eyes. First, it will turn white, and then emit golden flashes: but wait not till then: when the rose-colour fades, rouse me." I scarcely heard the last words, muttered, as they were, in sleep. Even then he did not quite yield to nature. "Winzy, my boy," he again said, "do not touch the vessel - do not put it to your lips: it is a philter - a philter to cure love: you would not cease to love your Bertha - beware to drink!"<br /><br />And he slept. His venerable head sunk on his breast, and I scarce heard his regular breathing. For a few minutes I watched the vessel - the rosy hue of the liquid remained unchanged. Then my thoughts wandered - they visited the fountain, and dwelt on a thousand charming scenes never to be renewed - never! Serpents and adders were in my heart as the word "Never!" half formed itself on my lips. False girl! - false and cruel! Never more would she smile on me as that evening she smiled on Albert. Worthless, detested woman! I would not remain unrevenged - she should see Albert expire at her feet - she should die beneath my vengeance. She had smiled in disdain and triumph - she knew my wretchedness and her power. Yet what power had she? - the power of exciting my hate - my utter scorn - my - oh, all but indifference! Could I attain that - could I regard her with careless eyes, transferring my rejected love to one fairer and more true, that were indeed a victory!<br /><br />A bright flash darted before my eyes. I had forgotten the medicine of the adept: I gazed on it with wonder: flashes of admirable beauty, more bright than those which the diamond emits when the sun`s rays are on it, glanced from the surface of the liquid: an odour the most fragrant and grateful stole over my sense: the vessel seemed one globe of living radiance, lovely to the eye, and most inviting to the taste. The first thought, instinctively inspired by the grosser sense, was, I will - I must drink. I raised the vessel to my lips. "It will cure me of love - of torture!" Already I had quaffed half of the most delicious liquor ever tasted by the palate of man, when the philosopher stirred. I started - I dropped the glass - the fluid flamed and glanced along the floor, while I felt Cornelius`s gripe at my throat, as he shrieked aloud, "Wretch! you have destroyed the labour of my life!"<br /><br />The philosopher was totally unaware that I had drunk any portion of his drug. His idea was, and I gave a tacit assent to it, that I had raised the vessel from curiosity, and that, frighted at its brightness, and the flashes of intense light it gave forth, I had let it fall. I never undeceived him. The fire of the medicine was quenched - the fragrance died away - he grew calm, as a philosopher should under the heaviest trials, and dismissed me to rest.<br /><br />I will not attempt to describe the sleep of glory and bliss which bathed my soul in paradise during the remaining hours of that memorable night. Words would be faint and shallow types of my enjoyment, or of the gladness that possessed my bosom when I woke. I trod air - my thoughts were in heaven. Earth appeared heaven, and my inheritance upon it was to be one trance of delight. "This it is to be cured of love," I thought: "I will see Bertha this day, and she will find her lover cold and regardless: too happy to be disdainful, yet how utterly indifferent to her!"<br /><br />The hours danced away. The philosopher, secure that he had once succeeded, and believing that he might again, began to concoct the same medicine once more. He was shut up with his books and drugs, and I had a holiday. I dressed myself with care: I looked in an old but polished shield, which served me for a mirror: methought my good looks had wonderfully improved. I hurried beyond the precincts of the town, joy in my soul, the beauty of heaven and earth around me. I turned my steps towards the castle - I could look on its lofty turrets with lightness of heart, for I was cured of love. My Bertha saw me afar off, as I came up the avenue. I know not what sudden impulse animated her bosom, but at the sight, she sprung with a light fawn-like bound down the marble steps, and was hastening towards me. But I had been perceived by another person. The old high-born hag, who called herself her protectress, and was her tyrant, had seen me, also: she hobbled, panting, up the terrace: a page, as ugly as herself, held up her train, and fanned her as she hurried along, and stopped my fair girl with a "How, now, my bold mistress? whither so fast? Back to your cage - hawks are abroad!"<br /><br />Bertha clasped her hands - her eyes were still bent on my approaching figure. I saw the contest. How I abhorred the old crone who checked the kind impulses of my Bertha`s softening heart. Hitherto, respect for her rank had caused me to avoid the lady of the castle: now I disdained such trivial considerations. I was cured of love, and lifted above all human fears: I hastened forwards, and soon reached the terrace. How lovely Bertha looked! her eyes flashing fire, her cheeks glowing with impatience and anger, she was a thousand times more graceful and charming than ever - I no longer loved - Oh! no, I adored - worshipped - idolized her!<br /><br />She had that morning been persecuted, with more than usual vehemence, to consent to an immediate marriage with my rival. She was reproached with the encouragement that she had shown him - she was threatened with being turned out of doors with disgrace and shame. Her proud spirit rose in arms at the threat: but when she remembered the scorn that she had heaped upon me, and how, perhaps, she had thus lost one whom she now regarded as her only friend, she wept with remorse and rage. At that moment I appeared. "O, Winzy!" she exclaimed, "take me to your mother`s cot: swiftly let me leave the detested luxuries and wretchedness of this noble dwelling - take me to poverty and happiness."<br /><br />I clasped her in my arms with transport. The old lady was speechless with fury, and broke forth into invective only when we were far on our road to my natal cottage. My mother received the fair fugitive, escaped from a gilt cage to nature and liberty, with tenderness and joy: my father, who loved her, welcomed her heartily: it was a day of rejoicing, which did not need the addition of the celestial potion of the alchemist to steep me in delight.<br /><br />Soon after this eventful day, I became the husband of Bertha. I ceased to be the scholar of Cornelius, but I continued his friend. I always felt grateful to him for having, unawares, procured me that delicious draught of a divine elixir, which, instead of curing me of love (sad cure! solitary and joyless remedy for evils which seem blessings to the memory), had inspired me with courage and resolution, thus winning for me an inestimable treasure in my Bertha.<br /><br />I often called to mind that period of trance-like inebriation with wonder. The drink of Cornelius had not fulfilled the task for which he affirmed that it had been prepared, but its effects were more potent and blissful than words can express.<br /><br />They had faded by degrees, yet they lingered long - and painted life in hues of splendour. Bertha often wondered at my lightness of heart and unaccustomed gaiety: for, before, I had been rather serious, or even sad, in my disposition. She loved me the better for my cheerful temper, and our days were winged by joy.<br /><br />Five years afterwards I was suddenly summoned to the bedside of the dying Cornelius. He had sent for me in haste, conjuring my instant presence. I found him stretched on his pallet, enfeebled even to death: all of life that yet remained animated his piercing eyes, and they were fixed on a glass vessel, full of a roseate liquid.<br /><br />"Behold," he said, in a broken and inward voice, "the vanity of human wishes! a second time my hopes are about to be crowned, a second time they are destroyed. Look at that liquor - you remember five years ago I had prepared the same, with the same success: - then, as now, my thirsting lips expected to taste the immortal elixir - you dashed it from me! and at present it is too late."<br /><br />He spoke with difficulty, and fell back on his pillow. I could not help saying, - "How, revered master, can a cure for love restore you to life?"<br /><br />A faint smile gleamed across his face as I listened earnestly to his scarcely intelligible answer. "A cure for love and for all things - the Elixir of Immortality. Ah! if now I might drink, I should live for ever!"<br /><br />As he spoke, a golden flash gleamed from the fluid: a well-remembered fragrance stole over the air: he raised himself, all weak as he was - strength seemed miraculously to re-enter his frame - he stretched forth his hand - a loud explosion startled me - a ray of fire shot up from the elixir, and the glass vessel which contained it was shivered to atoms! I turned my eyes towards the philosopher: he had fallen back - his eyes were glassy - his features rigid - he was dead!<br /><br />But I lived, and was to live for ever! So said the unfortunate alchemist, and for a few days I believed his words. I remembered the glorious drunkenness that had followed my stolen draught. I reflected on the change I had felt in my frame - in my soul. The bounding elasticity of the one - the buoyant lightness of the other. I surveyed myself in a mirror, and could perceive no change in my features during the space of the five years which had elapsed. I remembered the radiant hues and grateful scent of that delicious beverage - worthy the gift it was capable of bestowing - I was, then, IMMORTAL!<br /><br />A few days after I laughed at my credulity. The old proverb, that "a prophet is least regarded in his own country," was true with respect to me and my defunct master. I loved him as a man - I respected him as a sage - but I derided the notion that he could command the powers of darkness, and laughed at the superstitious fears with which he was regarded by the vulgar. He was a wise philosopher, but had no acquaintance with any spirits but those clad in flesh and blood. His science was simply human: and human science, I soon persuaded myself, could never conquer nature`s laws so far as to imprison the soul for ever within its carnal habitation. Cornelius had brewed a soul-refreshing drink - more inebriating than wine - sweeter and more fragrant than any fruit: it possessed probably strong medicinal powers, imparting gladness to the heart and vigor to the limbs: but its effects would wear out: already were they diminished in my frame. I was a lucky fellow to have quaffed health and joyous spirits, and perhaps long life, at my master`s hands: but my good fortune ended there: longevity was far different from immortality.<br /><br />I continued to entertain this belief for many years. Sometimes a thought stole across me - Was the alchemist indeed deceived? But my habitual credence was, that I should meet the fate of all the children of Adam at my appointed time - a little late, but still at a natural age. Yet it was certain that I retained a wonderfully youthful look. I was laughed at for my vanity in consulting the mirror so often, but I consulted it in vain - my brow was untrenched - my cheeks - my eyes - my whole person continued as untarnished as in my twentieth year.<br /><br />I was troubled. I looked at the faded beauty of Bertha - I seemed more like her son. By degrees our neighbours began to make similar observations, and I found at last that I went by the name of the Scholar bewitched. Bertha herself grew uneasy. She became jealous and peevish, and at length she began to question me. We had no children: we were all in all to each other: and though, as she grew older, her vivacious spirit became a little allied to ill-temper, and her beauty sadly diminished, I cherished her in my heart as the mistress I had idolized, the wife I had sought and won with such perfect love.<br /><br />At last our situation became intolerable: Bertha was fifty - I twenty years of age. I had, in very shame, in some measure adopted the habits of a more advanced age: I no longer mingled in the dance among the young and gay, but my heart bounded along with them while I restrained my feet: and a sorry figure I cut among the Nestors of our village. But before the time I mention, things were altered - we were universally shunned: we were - at least, I was - reported to have kept up an iniquitous acquaintance with some of my former master`s supposed friends. Poor Bertha was pitied, but deserted. I was regarded with horror and detestation.<br /><br />What was to be done? we sat by our winter fire - poverty had made itself felt, for none would buy the produce of my farm: and often I had been forced to journey twenty miles, to some place where I was not known, to dispose of our property. It is true we had saved something for an evil day - that day was come.<br /><br />We sat by our lone fireside - the old-hearted youth and his antiquated wife. Again Bertha insisted on knowing the truth: she recapitulated all she had ever heard said about me, and added her own observations. She conjured me to cast off the spell: she described how much more comely grey hairs were than my chestnut locks: she descanted on the reverence and respect due to age - how preferable to the slight regard paid to mere children: could I imagine that the despicable gifts of youth and good looks outweighed disgrace, hatred, and scorn? Nay, in the end I should be burnt as a dealer in the black art, while she, to whom I had not deigned to communicate any portion of my good fortune, might be stoned as my accomplice. At length she insinuated that I must share my secret with her, and bestow on her like benefits to those I myself enjoyed, or she would denounce me - and then she burst into tears.<br /><br />Thus beset, methought it was the best way to tell the truth. I revealed it as tenderly as I could, and spoke only of a very long life, not of immortality - which representation, indeed, coincided best with my own ideas. When I ended, I rose and said,<br /><br />"And now, my Bertha, will you denounce the lover of your youth? - You will not, I know. But it is too hard, my poor wife, that you should suffer from my ill-luck and the accursed arts of Cornelius. I will leave you - you have wealth enough, and friends will return in my absence. I will go: young as I seem, and strong as I am, I can work and gain my bread among strangers, unsuspected and unknown. I loved you in youth: God is my witness that I would not desert you in age, but that your safety and happiness require it."<br /><br />I took my cap and moved towards the door: in a moment Bertha`s arms were round my neck, and her lips were pressed to mine. "No, my husband, my Winzy," she said, "you shall not go alone - take me with you: we will remove from this place, and, as you say, among strangers we shall be unsuspected and safe. I am not so very old as quite to shame you, my Winzy: and I dare say the charm will soon wear off, and, with the blessing of God, you will become more elderly-looking, as is fitting: you shall not leave me."<br /><br />I returned the good soul`s embrace heartily. "I will not, my Bertha: but for your sake I had not thought of such a thing. I will be your true, faithful husband while you are spared to me, and do my duty by you to the last."<br /><br />The next day we prepared secretly for our emigration. We were obliged to make great pecuniary sacrifices - it could not be helped. We realised a sum sufficient, at least, to maintain us while Bertha lived: and, without saying adieu to any one, quitted our native country to take refuge in a remote part of western France.<br /><br />It was a cruel thing to transport poor Bertha from her native village, and the friends of her youth, to a new country, new language, new customs. The strange secret of my destiny rendered this removal immaterial to me: but I compassionated her deeply, and was glad to perceive that she found compensation for her misfortunes in a variety of little ridiculous circumstances. Away from all tell- tale chroniclers, she sought to decrease the apparent disparity of our ages by a thousand feminine arts - rouge, youthful dress, and assumed juvenility of manner. I could not be angry - Did not I myself wear a mask? Why quarrel with hers, because it was less successful? I grieved deeply when I remembered that this was my Bertha, whom I had loved so fondly, and won with such transport - the dark eyed, dark-haired girl, with smiles of enchanting archness and a step like a fawn - this mincing, simpering, jealous old woman. I should have revered her gray locks and withered cheeks: but thus! - It was my, work, I knew: but I did not the less deplore this type of human weakness.<br /><br />Her jealousy never slept. Her chief occupation was to discover that, in spite of outward appearances, I was myself growing old. I verily believe that the poor soul loved me truly in her heart, but never had woman so tormenting a mode of displaying fondness. She would discern wrinkles in my face and decrepitude in my walk, while I bounded along in youthful vigour, the youngest looking of twenty youths. I never dared address another woman: on one occasion, fancying that the belle of the village regarded me with favouring eyes, she bought me a gray wig. Her constant discourse among her acquaintances was, that though I looked so young, there was ruin at work within my frame: and she affirmed that the worst symptom about me was my apparent health. My youth was a disease, she said, and I ought at all times to prepare, if not for a sudden and awful death, at least to awake some morning white-headed, and bowed down with all the marks of advanced years. I let her talk - I often joined in her conjectures. Her warnings chimed in with my never-ceasing speculations concerning my state, and I took an earnest, though painful, interest in listening to all that her quick wit and excited imagination could say on the subject.<br /><br />Why dwell on these minute circumstances? We lived on for many long years. Bertha became bed-rid and paralytic: I nursed her as mother might a child. She grew peevish, and still harped upon one string - of how long I should survive her. It has ever been a source of consolation to me, that I performed my duty scrupulously towards her. She had been mine in youth, she was mine in age, and at last, when I heaped the sod over her corpse, I wept to feel that I had lost all that really bound me to humanity.<br /><br />Since then how many have been my cares and woes, how few and empty my enjoyments! I pause here in my history - I will pursue it no further. A sailor without rudder or compass, tossed on a stormy sea - a traveller lost on a wide-spread heath, without landmark or star to him - such have I been: more lost, more hopeless than either. A nearing ship, a gleam from some far cot, may save them: but I have no beacon except the hope of death.<br /><br />Death! mysterious, ill-visaged friend of weak humanity! Why alone of all mortals have you cast me from your sheltering fold? O, for the peace of the grave! the deep silence of the iron-bound tomb! that thought would cease to work in my brain, and my heart beat no more with emotions varied only by new forms of sadness!<br /><br />Am I immortal? I return to my first question. In the first place, is it not more probable that the beverage of the alchemist was fraught rather with longevity than eternal life? Such is my hope. And then be it remembered that I only drank half of the potion prepared by him. Was not the whole necessary to complete the charm? To have drained half the Elixir of Immortality is but to be half immortal - my For-ever is thus truncated and null.<br /><br />But again, who shall number the years of the half of eternity? I often try to imagine by what rule the infinite may be divided. Sometimes I fancy age advancing upon me. One gray hair I have found. Fool! Do I lament? Yes, the fear of age and death often creeps coldly into my heart: and the more I live, the more I dread death, even while I abhor life. Such an enigma is man - born to perish - when he wars, as I do, against the established laws of his nature.<br /><br />But for this anomaly of feeling surely I might die: the medicine of the alchemist would not be proof against fire - sword - and the strangling waters. I have gazed upon the blue depths of many a placid lake, and the tumultuous rushing of many a mighty river, and have said, peace inhabits those waters: yet I have turned my steps away, to live yet another day. I have asked myself, whether suicide would be a crime in one to whom thus only the portals of the other world could be opened. I have done all, except presenting myself as a soldier or duellist, an object of destruction to my - no, not my fellow-mortals, and therefore I have shrunk away. They are not my fellows. The inextinguishable power of life in my frame, and their ephemeral existence, place us wide as the poles asunder. I could not raise a hand against the meanest or the most powerful among them.<br /><br />Thus I have lived on for many a year - alone, and weary of myself - desirous of death, yet never dying - a mortal immortal. Neither ambition nor avarice can enter my mind, and the ardent love that gnaws at my heart, never to be returned - never to find an equal on which to expend itself - lives there only to torment me.<br /><br />This very day I conceived a design by which I may end all - without self-slaughter, without making another man a Cain - an expedition, which mortal frame can never survive, even endued with the youth and strength that inhabits mine. Thus I shall put my immortality to the test, and rest for ever - or return, the wonder and benefactor of the human species.<br /><br />Before I go, a miserable vanity has caused me to pen these pages. I would not die, and leave no name behind. Three centuries have passed since I quaffed the fatal beverage: another year shall not elapse before, encountering gigantic dangers - warring with the powers of frost in their home - beset by famine, toil, and tempest - I yield this body, too tenacious a cage for a soul which thirsts for freedom, to the destructive elements of air and water - or, if I survive, my name shall be recorded as one of the most famous among the sons of men: and, my task achieved, I shall adopt more resolute means, and, by scattering and annihilating the atoms that compose my frame, set at liberty the life imprisoned within, and so cruelly prevented from soaring from this dim earth to a sphere more congenial to its immortal essence.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4883301247675127291.post-4386054152627628352011-03-12T08:39:00.001-08:002011-03-12T08:39:50.487-08:00Blood TreeI have come across a wide assortment of strange and twisted vampire stories – from vampire cats to floating heads, but today’s tale is a new one even for me.<br /><br />Among the many fascinatingly wicked Japanese myths, the jubokko is for sure my new favorite. According to the myth, on grounds where there has been much bloodshed, such as execution sites or battlefields, a special kind of tree grows. This tree is known as the jubokko. But what is so unique about this tree? The jubokko is a vampire tree that feeds on the blood and life-force of humans.<br /><br />These demonized trees must feed off of humans in order to survive. But unfortunately the jubokko appears as a normal tree, there is no way of knowing what it really is… until it’s too late. Once a person walks too close to the tree it attacks, capturing the person with its branches and draining them of their blood.<br /><br />There is one way to spot the jubokko for what it is but you have to get up close to it, which obviously means painful death for you. Either way, you can reveal a jubokko by cutting it, for it is said that a jubokko will bleed real human blood. Another problem is that is heals incredibly fast, so even if you were able to some how attack it from a distance it would simply bleed for a moment and then heal.<br /><br />Oh but it doesn’t end there, this evil tree is also known to hide amongst other trees and bushes and it is able to alter the flora in the area. This makes it very easy for someone to get lost in the forest, which makes it easy for a jubokko to snatch them up. In some versions of the myth the jubokko can speak to other plants as well and are able to find its victims that way.<br /><br />But it’s not all bad; in fact a jubokko can bring goodness to a lucky few. Any branch taken from a jubokko tree, with permission of course, is a powerful item that can be used to heal and purify almost anyone.<br />Well, I guess that’s something.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4883301247675127291.post-53274127299343347252011-03-12T08:37:00.001-08:002011-03-12T08:37:55.058-08:00Vampiro by Emilia Pardo BazánThis is "Vampire" written in 1901 by the countess Emilia Pardo Bazán and it seems to be one of the first short tales dedicated to the energetic vampire. I couldn`t find it in English so I add it here in Spanish because there are a few lucky people on VR that can read it.<br /><br /><br /><center><b><br /><img src="http://i200.photobucket.com/albums/aa246/V-Empire/anne-bachelier-770lejardinpetrifie.jpg" alt="Photobucket" border="0" /><br /><br /><br /><br />Vampiro<br /><br /><br />de Emilia Pardo Bazán<br /></b><br /><br />1901</center><br /><br /><br /><br />No se hablaba en el país de otra cosa. ¡Y qué milagro! ¿Sucede todos los días que un setentón vaya al altar con una niña de quince?<br /><br />Así, al pie de la letra: quince y dos meses acababa de cumplir Inesiña, la sobrina del cura de Gondelle, cuando su propio tío, en la iglesia del santuario de Nuestra Señora del Plomo -distante tres leguas de Vilamorta- bendijo su unión con el señor don Fortunato Gayoso, de setenta y siete y medio, según rezaba su partida de bautismo.<br /><br />La única exigencia de Inesiña había sido casarse en el santuario; era devota de aquella Virgen y usaba siempre el escapulario del Plomo, de franela blanca y seda azul. Y como el novio no podía, ¡qué había de poder, malpocadiño!, subir por su pie la escarpada cuesta que conduce al Plomo desde la carretera entre Cebre y Vilamorta, ni tampoco sostenerse a caballo, se discurrió que dos fornidos mocetones de Gondelle, hechos a cargar el enorme cestón de uvas en las vendimias, llevasen a don Fortunato a la silla de la reina hasta el templo. ¡Buen paso de risa!<br /><br />Sin embargo, en los casinos, boticas y demás círculos, digámoslo así, de Vilamorta y Cebre, como también en los atrios y sacristías de las parroquiales, se hubo de convenir en que Gondelle cazaba muy largo, y en que a Inesiña le había caído el premio mayor. ¿Quién era, vamos a ver, Inesiña? Una chiquilla fresca, llena de vida, de ojos brillantes, de carrillos como rosas; pero qué demonio, ¡hay tantas así desde el Sil al Avieiro! En cambio, caudal como el de don Fortunato no se encuentra otro en toda la provincia. Él sería bien ganado o mal ganado, porque esos que vuelven del otro mundo con tantísimos miles de duros, sabe Dios qué historia ocultan entre las dos tapas de la maleta; solo que.... ¡pchs!, ¿quién se mete a investigar el origen de un fortunón? Los fortunones son como el buen tiempo: se disfrutan y no se preguntan sus causas.<br /><br />Que el señor Gayoso se había traído un platal, constaba por referencias muy auténticas y fidedignas; solo en la sucursal del Banco de Auriabella dejaba depositados, esperando ocasión de invertirlos, cerca de dos millones de reales (en Cebre y Vilamorta se cuenta por reales aún). Cuantos pedazos de tierra se vendían en el país, sin regatear los compraba Gayoso; en la misma plaza de la Constitución de Vilamorta había adquirido un grupo de tres casas, derribándolas y alzando sobre los solares nuevo y suntuoso edificio.<br /><br />-¿No le bastarían a ese viejo chocho siete pies de tierra? -preguntaban entre burlones e indignos los concurrentes al Casino.<br /><br />Júzguese lo que añadirían al difundirse la extraña noticia de la boda, y al saberse que don Fortunato, no sólo dotaba espléndidamente a la sobrina del cura, sino que la instituía heredera universal. Los berridos de los parientes, más o menos próximos, del ricachón, llegaron al cielo: hablóse de tribunales, de locura senil, de encierro en el manicomio. Mas como don Fortunato, aunque muy acabadito y hecho una pasa seca, conservaba íntegras sus facultades y discurría y gobernaba perfectamente, fue preciso dejarle, encomendando su castigo a su propia locura.<br /><br />Lo que no se evitó fue la cencerrada monstruo. Ante la casa nueva, decorada y amueblada sin reparar en gastos, donde se habían recogido ya los esposos, juntáronse, armados de sartenes, cazos, trípodes, latas, cuernos y pitos, más de quinientos bárbaros. Alborotaron cuanto quisieron sin que nadie les pusiese coto; en el edificio no se entreabrió una ventana, no se filtró luz por las rendijas: cansados y desilusionados, los cencerreadores se retiraron a dormir ellos también. Aun cuando estaban conchavados para cencerrar una semana entera, es lo cierto que la noche de boda ya dejaron en paz a los cónyuges y en soledad la plaza.<br /><br />Entre tanto, allá dentro de la hermosa mansión, abarrotada de ricos muebles y de cuanto pueden exigir la comodidad y el regalo, la novia creía soñar; por poco, y a sus solas, capaz se sentía de bailar de gusto. El temor, más instintivo que razonado, con que fue al altar de Nuestra Señora del Plomo, se había disipado ante los dulces y paternales razonamientos del anciano marido, el cual sólo pedía a la tierna esposa un poco de cariño y de calor, los incesantes cuidados que necesita la extrema vejez.<br /><br />Ahora se explicaba Inesiña los reiterados «No tengas miedo, boba»; los «Cásate tranquila», de su tío el abad de Gondelle. Era un oficio piadoso, era un papel de enfermera y de hija el que le tocaba desempeñar por algún tiempo..., acaso por muy poco. La prueba de que seguiría siendo chiquilla, eran las dos muñecas enormes, vestidas de sedas y encajes, que encontró en su tocador, muy graves, con caras de tontas, sentadas en el confidente de raso. Allí no se concebía, ni en hipótesis, ni por soñación, que pudiesen venir otras criaturas más que aquellas de fina porcelana.<br /><br />¡Asistir al viejecito! Vaya: eso sí que lo haría de muy buen grado Inés. Día y noche -la noche sobre todo, porque era cuando necesitaba a su lado, pegado a su cuerpo, un abrigo dulce- se comprometía a atenderle, a no abandonarle un minuto. ¡Pobre señor! ¡Era tan simpático y tenía ya tan metido el pie derecho en la sepultura! El corazón de Inesiña se conmovió: no habiendo conocido padre, se figuró que Dios le deparaba uno. Se portaría como hija, y aún más, porque las hijas no prestan cuidados tan íntimos, no ofrecen su calor juvenil, los tibios efluvios de su cuerpo; y en eso justamente creía don Fortunato encontrar algún remedio a la decrepitud. «Lo que tengo es frío -repetía-, mucho frío, querida; la nieve de tantos años cuajada ya en las venas. Te he buscado como se busca el sol; me arrimo a ti como si me arrimase a la llama bienhechora en mitad del invierno. Acércate, échame los brazos; si no, tiritaré y me quedaré helado inmediatamente. Por Dios, abrígame; no te pido más».<br /><br />Lo que se callaba el viejo, lo que se mantenía secreto entre él y el especialista curandero inglés a quien ya como en último recurso había consultado, era el convencimiento de que, puesta en contacto su ancianidad con la fresca primavera de Inesiña, se verificaría un misterioso trueque. Si las energías vitales de la muchacha, la flor de su robustez, su intacta provisión de fuerzas debían reanimar a don Fortunato, la decrepitud y el agotamiento de éste se comunicarían a aquélla, transmitidos por la mezcla y cambio de los alientos, recogiendo el anciano un aura viva, ardiente y pura y absorbiendo la doncella un vaho sepulcral. Sabía Gayoso que Inesiña era la víctima, la oveja traída al matadero; y con el feroz egoísmo de los últimos años de la existencia, en que todo se sacrifica al afán de prolongarla, aunque sólo sea horas, no sentía ni rastro de compasión.<br /><br />Agarrábase a Inés, absorbiendo su respiración sana, su hálito perfumado, delicioso, preso en la urna de cristal de los blancos dientes; aquel era el postrer licor generoso, caro, que compraba y que bebía para sostenerse; y si creyese que haciendo una incisión en el cuello de la niña y chupando la sangre en la misma vena se remozaba, sentíase capaz de realizarlo. ¿No había pagado? Pues Inés era suya.<br /><br />Grande fue el asombro de Vilamorta -mayor que el causado por la boda aún- cuando notaron que don Fortunato, a quien tenían pronosticada a los ocho días la sepultura, daba indicios de mejorar, hasta de rejuvenecerse. Ya salía a pie un ratito, apoyado primero en el brazo de su mujer, después en un bastón, a cada paso más derecho, con menos temblequeteo de piernas. A los dos o tres meses de casado se permitió ir al casino, y al medio año, ¡oh maravilla!, jugó su partida de billar, quitándose la levita, hecho un hombre. Diríase que le soplaban la piel, que le inyectaban jugos: sus mejillas perdían las hondas arrugas, su cabeza se erguía, sus ojos no eran ya los muertos ojos que se sumen hacia el cráneo. Y el médico de Vilamorta, el célebre Tropiezo, repetía con una especie de cómico terror:<br /><br />-Mala rabia me coma si no tenemos aquí un centenario de esos de quienes hablan los periódicos.<br /><br />El mismo Tropiezo hubo de asistir en su larga y lenta enfermedad a Inesiña, la cual murió -¡lástima de muchacha!- antes de cumplir los veinte. Consunción, fiebre hética, algo que expresaba del modo más significativo la ruina de un organismo que había regalado a otro su capital.<br /><br />Buen entierro y buen mausoleo no le faltaron a la sobrina del cura; pero don Fortunato busca novia. De esta vez, o se marcha del pueblo, o la cencerrada termina en quemarle la casa y sacarle arrastrando para matarle de una paliza tremenda. ¡Estas cosas no se toleran dos veces! Y don Fortunato sonríe, mascando con los dientes postizos el rabo de un puro.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4883301247675127291.post-24986791939581948922011-03-12T08:36:00.000-08:002011-03-12T08:37:06.678-08:00Dracula and the children<center>Drácula y los niños<br /><br />de Juan José Millás</center><br /><br /><br /><br />Estaba firmando ejemplares de mi última novela en unos grandes almacenes, cuando llegó una señora con un niño en la mano derecha y mi libro en la izquierda. Me pidió que se lo dedicara mientras el niño lloraba a voz en grito.<br /><br />-¿Qué le pasa? -pregunté.<br />-Nada, que quería que le comprara un libro de Drácula y le he dicho que es pequeño para leer esas cosas.<br /><br />El niño cesó de llorar unos segundos para gritar al universo que no era pequeño y que le gustaba Drácula. Tendría 6 ó 7 años, calculo yo, y al abrir la boca dejaba ver unos colmillos inquietantes, aunque todavía eran los de leche. Yo estaba un poco confuso. Pensé que a un niño que defendía su derecho a leer con tal ímpetu no se le podía negar un libro, aunque fuera de Drácula. De modo que insinué tímidamente a la madre que se lo comprara.<br /><br />-Su hijo tiene una vocación lectora impresionante. Conviene cultivarla.<br />-Mi hijo lo que tiene es un ramalazo psicópata que, como no se lo quitemos a tiempo, puede ser un desastre.<br /><br />Me irritó que confundiera a Drácula con un psicópata y me dije que hasta ahí habíamos llegado.<br />-Pues si usted no le compra el libro de Drácula al niño, yo no le firmo mi novela -afirmé.<br />-¿Cómo que no me firma su novela? Ahora mismo voy a buscar al encargado.<br /><br />Al poco volvió la señora con el encargado que me rogó que firmara el libro, pues para eso estaba allí, para firmar libros, dijo. El niño había dejado de llorar y nos miraba a su madre y a mí sin saber por quién tomar partido. La gente, al oler la sangre, se había arremolinado junto a la mesa. No quería escándalos, de modo que cogí la novela y puse: "A la idiota de Asunción (así se llamaba), con el afecto de Drácula". La mujer leyó la dedicatoria, arrancó la página, la tiró al suelo y se fue. Cuando salían, el pequeño volvió la cabeza y me guiñó un ojo de un modo extremadamente raro. Llevo varios días soñando con él. Quizá llevaba razón su madre.<br /><br /><br /><br /><center>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<br /><br /><br />Dracula and the children by Juan Jose Millas</center><br /><br /><br /><br />I was signing copies of my book at some mall, when a lady arrived carrying a child with her right hand and my book with her left hand. She asked me to sign her copy of my book while the child was crying out loud.<br /><br />- ¿What happens to him? --I asked to her.<br />- Nothing, he wanted me to buy a book of Dracula for him and I have told him that he is too young to read such things.<br /><br />The child stopped crying during few seconds just to shout to the Universe that he was not too young and he did like Dracula. He was 6 or 7 years old I calculated and when he opened his mouth, he showed scary fangs, but they were the milk teeth yet. I was a little bit confused. I thought that a child who defended in that way his right to read, must not be denied a book, even a Dracula's book. I suggested --in a timid way-- to the mother that she should buy the book.<br /><br />- Your son has an impressive reading vocation. It would be better to cultivate it.<br />- My son has a psychopath impulse, If we don't stop it on time, it may become a disaster.<br /><br />It irritated me that she thought of Dracula as a psychopath and I told her that it was the end.<br /><br />- If you don't buy the book of Dracula to the child, I will not sign my novel for you --I said.<br />- How come that you will not sign your novel for me? I will look for the manager right now.<br /><br />Few moments later the lady arrived with the manager who begged me to sign the book, because I was there for that, for signing books --he said. The child had stopped crying and stared at her mother and me with no idea for who to take part. The people, at the smell of the blood, had been all around the table. I didn't want any scandal, so I took the novel and signed it: "To the idiot of Asuncion (that was her name), with affection from Dracula". The woman read the signature, ripped off the page, threw it away to the floor and went out. When they were going out, the child turned his head and winked an eye at me in a extremely strange way. I have been dreaming of him during several days. Maybe his mother was right.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4883301247675127291.post-80729108257411475002011-03-12T08:16:00.000-08:002011-03-12T08:19:50.644-08:00Lilith by Marcel Schwob<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhKHeYkWtdYNAvW25UJ1TGCz18ViFPMvlMIizvE08LyDWP0QBLAGjQ7rvpFja-Ex8nfT0CDX8lLzHQa7kUayJc0F0sgrl_UR97iHifjq3gHP8p1VPAz2SA1ZW7mJ-orLdUoOXSfcXOI1HC/s1600/areddre-3.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 165px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhKHeYkWtdYNAvW25UJ1TGCz18ViFPMvlMIizvE08LyDWP0QBLAGjQ7rvpFja-Ex8nfT0CDX8lLzHQa7kUayJc0F0sgrl_UR97iHifjq3gHP8p1VPAz2SA1ZW7mJ-orLdUoOXSfcXOI1HC/s320/areddre-3.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5583228935732492418" border="0" /></a><br /><center><br />LILITH<br /><br />par<br />MarcelSchwob<br /><br /><br /><br />"Not a drop of her blood was human,<br />But she was made like a soft sweet woman."<br />DANTE-GABRIEL ROSSETTI.<br /></center><br /><br />Je pense qu'il l'aima autant qu'on peut aimer une femme ici-bas ; mais leur histoire fut plus triste qu'aucune autre. Il avait longtemps étudié Dante et Pétrarque ; les formes de Béatrice et de Laure flottaient devant ses yeux et les divins vers où resplendit le nom de Françoise de Rimini chantaient à ses oreilles.<br /><br />Il avait passionnément aimé dans la première ardeur de sa jeunesse les vierges tourmentées du Corrège, dont les corps voluptueusement épris du ciel ont des yeux qui désirent, des bouches qui palpitent et appellent douloureusement l'amour. Plus tard, il admira la pâle splendeur humaine des figures de Raphaël, et leur sourire paisible, et leur contentement virginal. Mais lorsqu'il fut lui-même, il choisit pour maître, comme Dante, Brunetto Latini, et vécut dans son siècle, où les faces rigides ont l'extraordinaire béatitude des paradis mystérieux.<br /><br />Et, parmi les femmes, il connut d'abord Jenny, qui était nerveuse et passionnée, dont les yeux étaient adorablement cernés, noyés d'une humidité langoureuse avec un regard profond. Ce fut un amant triste et rêveur ; il cherchait l'expression de la volupté avec une âcreté enthousiaste ; et quand Jenny s'endormait, lassée, aux rayons du matin, il épandait les guinées brillantes parmi ses cheveux ensoleillés ; puis, contemplant ses paupières battues et ses longs cils qui reposaient, son front candide qui semblait ignorant du péché, il se demandait amèrement, accoudé sur l'oreiller, si elle ne préférait pas l'or jaune à son amour, et quels rêves désenchantants passaient sous les parois transparentes de sa chair.<br /><br />Puis il imagina les filles des temps superstitieux, qui envoûtaient leurs amants, ayant été abandonnées par eux ; il choisit Hélène, qui tournait dans une poêle d'airain l'image en cire de son fiancé perfide : il l'aima, tandis qu'elle lui perçait le coeur avec sa fine aiguille d'acier. Et il la quitta pour Rose-Mary, à qui sa mère, qui était fée, avait donné un globe cristallin de béryl comme gage de sa pureté. Les esprits du béryl veillaient sur elle et la berçaient de leurs chants.<br /><br />Mais lorsqu'elle succomba, le globe devint couleur d'opale, et elle le fendit d'un coup de glaive dans sa fureur ; les esprits du béryl s'échappèrent en pleurant de la pierre brisée, et l'âme de Rose-Mary s'envola avec eux.<br /><br />Alors il aima Lilith, la première femme d'Adam, qui ne fut pas créée de l'homme. Elle ne fut pas faite de terre rouge, comme Éve, mais de matière inhumaine ; elle avait été semblable au serpent, et ce fut elle qui tenta le serpent pour tenter les autres. Il lui parut qu'elle était plus vraiment femme, et la première, de sorte que la fille du Nord qu'il aima finalement dans cette vie, et qu'il épousa, il lui donna le nom de Lilith.<br /><br /><br />Mais c'était un pur caprice d'artiste ; elle était semblable à ces figures préraphaélites qu'il faisait revivre sur ses toiles. Elle avait les yeux de la couleur du ciel, et sa longue chevelure blonde était lumineuse comme celle de Bérénice, qui, depuis qu'elle l'offrit aux dieux, est épandue dans le firmament. Sa voix avait le doux son des choses qui sont près de se briser ; tous ses gestes étaient tendres comme des lissements de plumes ; et si souvent elle avait l'air d'appartenir à un monde diffèrent de celui d'ici-bas qu'il la regardait comme une vision.<br /><br />Il écrivit pour elle des sonnets étincelants, qui se suivaient dans l'histoire de son amour, et il leur donna le nom de Maison de la vie. Il les avait copiés sur un volume fait avec des pages de parchemin ; l'oeuvre était semblable à un missel patiemment enluminé.<br />Lilith ne vécut pas longtemps, n'étant guère née pour cette terre ; et comme ils savaient<br />tous deux qu'elle devait mourir, elle le consola du mieux qu'elle put.<br /><br />«Mon aimé, lui dit-elle, des barrières d'or du ciel je me pencherai vers toi ; j'aurai trois lys à la main, sept étoiles aux cheveux. Je te verrai du pont divin qui est tendu sur l'éther ; et tu viendras vers moi et nous irons dans les puits insondables de lumière. Et nous demanderons à Dieu de vivre éternellement comme nous nous sommes aimés un moment ici-bas».<br /><br />Il la vit mourir, tandis qu'elle disait ces mots et il en fit aussitôt un poème magnifique, le plus beau joyau dont on eût jamais paré une morte. Il pensa qu'elle l'avait quitté déjà depuis dix ans ; et il la voyait, penchée sur les barrières d'or du ciel, jusqu'à ce que la barre fût devenue tiède à la pression de son sein, jusqu'à ce que les lys se fussent assoupis dans ses bras. Elle lui murmurait les mêmes paroles ; puis elle écoutait longtemps et souriait : «Tout cela sera quand il viendra», disait-elle. Et il la voyait sourire ; puis elle tendait ses bras le long des barrières, et elle plongeait sa figure dans ses mains, et elle pleurait. Il entendait ses pleurs.<br /><br />Ce fut la dernière poésie qu'il écrivit dans le livre de Lilith. Il le ferma - pour jamais - avec des fermoirs d'or, et, brisant sa plume, il jura qu'il n'avait été poète que pour elle, et que Lilith emporterait sa gloire dans sa tombe.<br /><br />Ainsi les anciens rois barbares entraient en terre suivis de leurs trésors et de leurs esclaves préférés. On égorgeait au-dessus de la fosse ouverte les femmes qu'ils aimaient, et leurs âmes venaient boire le sang vermeil.<br />Le poète qui avait aimé Lilith lui donnait la vie de sa vie et le sang de son sang ; il<br />immolait son immortalité terrestre et mettait au cercueil l'espoir des temps futurs.<br /><br />Il souleva la chevelure lumineuse de Lilith, et plaça le manuscrit sous sa tête ; derrière la pâleur de sa peau il voyait luire le maroquin rouge et les agrafes d'or qui resserraient l'oeuvre de son existence.<br /><br />Puis il s'enfuit, loin de la tombe, loin de tout ce qui avait été humain, emportant l'image de Lilith dans son coeur et ses vers qui sonnaient dans son cerveau. Il voyagea, cherchant les paysages nouveaux, ceux qui ne lui rappelaient pas son amie. Car il voulait en garder le souvenir par lui-même, non que la vue des objets indifférents la fit reparaître à ses yeux, non pas une Lilith humaine en vérité, telle qu'elle avait semblé - 39 -<br />être dans une forme éphémère, mais une des élues, idéalement fixée au-delà du ciel, et<br />qu'il irait rejoindre un jour.<br /><br />Mais le bruit de la mer lui rappelait ses pleurs, et il entendait sa voix dans la basse profonde des forêts ; et l'hirondelle, tournant sa tête noire, semblait le gracieux mouvement du cou de sa bien-aimée, et le disque de la lune, brisé dans les eaux sombres des étangs de clairière, lui renvoyait des milliers de regards dorés et fuyants.<br /><br />Soudain une biche entrant au fourré lui étreignait le coeur d'un souvenir ; les brumes qui enveloppent les bosquets à la lueur bleutée des étoiles prenaient forme humaine pour s'avancer vers lui, et les gouttes d'eau de la pluie qui tombe sur les feuilles mortes semblaient le bruit léger des doigts aimés.<br /><br />Il ferma ses yeux devant la nature ; et dans l'ombre où passent les images de lumière sanglante, il vit Lilith, telle qu'il l'avait aimée, terrestre, non céleste, humaine, non divine, avec un regard changeant de passion et qui était tour à tour le regard d'Hélène, de Rose-Mary et de Jenny ; et quand il voulait se l'imaginer penchée sur les barrières d'or du ciel, parmi l'harmonie des sept sphères, son visage exprimait le regret des choses de la terre, l'infélicité de ne plus aimer.<br />Alors il souhaita d'avoir les yeux sans paupières des êtres de l'enfer, pour échapper à de<br />si tristes hallucinations.<br /><br />Et il voulut ressaisir par quelque moyen cette image divine. Malgré son serment, il essaya de la décrire, et la plume trahit ses efforts. Ses vers pleuraient aussi sur Lilith, sur le pâle corps de Lilith que la terre enfermait dans son sein. Alors il se souvint (car deux années s'étaient écoulées) qu'il avait écrit de merveilleuses poésies où son idéal resplendissait étrangement. Il frissonna.<br /><br />Quand cette idée l'eut repris, elle le tint tout entier. Il était poète avant tout ; Corrège,<br />Raphaël et les maîtres préraphaélites, Jenny, Hélène, Rose-Mary, Lilith n'avaient été<br />que des occasions d'enthousiasme littéraire. Même Lilith ? Peut-être, - et cependant<br />Lilith ne voulait revenir à lui que tendre et douce comme une femme terrestre. - Il pensa<br />à ses vers, et il lui en revint des fragments, qui lui semblèrent beaux. Il se surprit à dire :<br />«Et pourtant il devait y avoir là des choses bien». Il remâcha l'âcreté de la gloire perdue.<br />L'homme de lettres revécut en lui et le rendit implacable.<br />.............................................................................................................................<br /><br />Un soir il se retrouva, tremblant, poursuivi par une odeur tenace qui s'attache aux vêtements, avec de la moiteur de terre aux mains, un fracas de bois brisé dans les oreilles - et devant lui le livre, l'oeuvre de sa vie qu'il venait d'arracher à la mort. Il avait volé Lilith ; et il défailllait à la pensée des cheveux écartés, de ses mains fouillant parmi la pourriture de ce qu'il avait aimé, de ce maroquin terni qui sentait la morte, de ces pages odieusement humides d'où s'échapperait la gloire avec un relent de corruption.<br /><br />Et lorsqu'il eut revu l'idéal un instant senti, quand il crut voir de nouveau le sourire de Lilith et boire ses larmes chaudes, il fut pris du frénétique désir de cette gloire. Il lança le manuscrit sous les presses d'imprimerie, avec le remords sanglant d'un vol et d'une prostitution, avec le douloureux sentiment d'une vanité inassouvie. Il ouvrit au public son coeur, et en montra les déchirements ; il traîna sous les yeux de tous le cadavre de<br />Lilith et son inutile image parmi les demoiselles élues ; et de ce trésor forcé par un<br />sacrilège, entre les ruissellements des phrases, retentissent des craquements de cercueil .Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4883301247675127291.post-46291846549864055492011-03-12T08:15:00.001-08:002011-03-12T08:15:51.959-08:00The Sad Story of a Vampire<span style="color:red;"><img src="http://i200.photobucket.com/albums/aa246/V-Empire/b232d018.jpg" alt="Photobucket" border="0" /><br /><br /><br /><br /><b>The Sad Story of a Vampire<br /><br />by Count Stenbock Eric<br /><br /><br />1894</b></span><span style="color:red;"><b><br /></b><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />"Vampire stories are generally located in Styria; mine is also. Styria is by no<br />means the romantic kind of place described by those who have certainly never<br />been there. It is a flat, uninteresting country, only celebrated for its turkeys, its<br />capons, and the stupidity of its inhabitants. Vampires generally arrive at night, in<br />carriages drawn by two black horses.<br /><br />Our Vampire arrived by the commonplace means of the railway train, and in the<br />afternoon.<br /><br />You must think I am joking, or perhaps that by the word "Vampire" I mean a<br />financial vampire.<br /><br />No, I am quite serious. The Vampire of whom I am speaking, who laid waste our<br />hearth and home, was a real vampire.<br /><br />Vampires are generally described as dark, sinister-looking, and singularly<br />handsome. Our Vampire was, on the contrary, rather fair, and certainly was not at<br />first sight sinister-looking, and though decidedly attractive in appearance, not<br />what one would call singularly handsome.<br /><br />Yes, he desolated our home, killed my brother—the one object of my<br />adoration—also my dear father. Yet, at the same time, I must say that I myself<br />came under the spell of his fascination, and, in spite of all, have no ill-will<br />towards him now.<br /><br />Doubtless you have read in the papers passim of "the Baroness and her beasts." It<br />is to tell how I came to spend most of my useless wealth on an asylum for stray<br />animals that I am writing this.<br /><br />I am old now; what happened then was when I was a little girl of about thirteen. I<br />will begin by describing our household. We were Poles: our name was Wronski:<br />we lived in Styria, where we had a castle. Our household was very limited. It<br />consisted, with the exclusion of domestics, of only my father, our governess—a<br />worthy Belgian named Mademoiselle Vonnaert—my brother, and myself. Let me<br />begin with my father: he was old and both my brother and I were children of his<br />old age. Of my mother I remember nothing: she died in giving birth to my<br />brother, who was only one year, or not as much, younger than in self. Our father<br />was studious, continually occupied in reading books, chiefly on recondite<br />subjects and in all kinds of unknown languages.<br /><br />He had a long white beard, and wore habitually a black velvet skull-cap.<br /><br />How kind he was to us! It was more than I could tell. Still it was not I who was<br />the favourite.<br /><br />His whole heart went out to Gabriel—Gabryel as we spelt it in Polish. He was<br />always called by the Russian abbreviation Gavril—I mean, of course, my brother,<br />who had a resemblance to the only portrait of my mother, a slight chalk sketch<br />which hung in my father's study. But I was by no means jealous: my brother was<br />and has been the only love of my life. It is for his sake that I am now keeping in<br />Westbourne Park a home for stray cats and dogs.<br /><br />I was at that time, as I said before, a little girl; my name was Carmela. My long<br />tangled hair was always all over the place, and never would combed straight. I<br />was not pretty—at least, looking at a photograph of me at that time. I do not think<br />I could describe myself as such. Yet at the same time, when I look at the<br />photograph, I think my expression may have been pleasing to some people:<br />irregular features, large mouth, and large wild eyes.<br /><br />I was by way of being naughty—not so naughty Gabriel in the opinion of Mlle<br />Vonnaert. Mlle Vonnaert. I may intercalate, was a wholly excellent person,<br />middle-aged, who really did speak good French, although she was a Belgian, and<br />could also make herself understood in German, which, as you may or may not<br />know, is the current language of Styria.<br /><br />I find it difficult to describe my brother Gabriel; there was something about him<br />strange and superhuman, or perhaps I should rather say praeterhuman, something<br />between the animal and the divine. Perhaps the Greek idea of the Faun might<br />illustrate what I mean: but that will not do either. He had large, wild, gazelle-like<br />eyes: his hair, like mine, was in a perpetual tangle—that point he had in common<br />with me, and indeed, as I afterwards heard, our mother having been of gipsy race,<br />it will account for much of the innate wildness there was in our natures. I was<br />wild enough, but Gabriel was much wilder. Nothing would induce him to put on<br />shoes and stockings, except on Sundays—when he also allowed his hair to be<br />combed, but only by me. How shall I describe the grace of that lovely mouth,<br />shaped verily "en arc d'amour." I always think of the text in the Psalm, "Grace is<br />shed forth on thy lips, therefore has God blessed thee eternally"— lips that<br />seemed to exhale the very breath of life. Then that beautiful, lithe, living, elastic<br />form!<br /><br />He could run faster than any deer: spring like a squirrel to the topmost branch of<br />a tree: he might have stood for the sign and symbol of vitality itself. But seldom<br />could he be induced by Mlle Vonnaert to learn lessons; but when he did so, he<br />learnt with extraordinary quickness. He would play upon every conceivable<br />instrument, holding a violin here, there, and everywhere except the right place:<br />manufacturing instruments for himself out of reeds—even sticks. Mlle Vonnaert<br />made futile efforts to induce him to learn to play the piano. I suppose he was<br />what was called spoilt, though merely in the superficial sense of the word. Our<br />father allowed him to indulge in every caprice.<br /><br />One of his peculiarities, when quite a little child, was horror at the sight of meat.<br />Nothing on earth would induce him to taste it. Another thing which was<br />particularly remarkable about him was his extraordinary power over animals.<br />Everything seemed to come tame to his hand. Birds would sit on his shoulder.<br />Then sometimes Mlle Vonnaert and I would lose him in the woods— he would<br />suddenly dart away. Then we would find him singing softly or whistling to<br />himself, with all manner of woodland creatures around him—hedgehogs, little<br />foxes, wild rabbits, marmots, squirrels, and such like. He would frequently bring<br />these things home with him and insist on keeping them. This strange menagerie<br />was the terror of poor Mlle Vonnaert's heart. He chose to live in a little room at<br />the top of a turret; but which, instead of going upstairs, he chose to reach by<br />means of a very tall chestnut-tree, through the window. But in contradiction of all<br />his, it was his custom to serve every Sunday Mass in the parish church, with hair<br />nicely combed and with white surplice and red cassock. He looked as demure and<br />tamed as possible. Then came the element of the divine. What an expression of<br />ecstasy there was in those glorious eyes!<br /><br />Thus far I have not been speaking about the Vampire. However, let me begin<br />with my narrative at last. One day my father had to go to the neighbouring<br />town—as he frequently had. This time he returned accompanied by a guest. The<br />gentleman, he said, had missed his train, through the late arrival of another at our<br />station, which was a junction, and he would therefore, as trains were not frequent<br />in our parts, have had to wait there all night. He had joined in conversation with<br />my father in the too-late-arriving train from the town: and had consequently<br />accepted my father's invitation to stay the night at our house. But of course, you<br />know, in those out-of-the-way parts we are almost patriarchal in our hospitality.<br /><br />He was announced under the name of Count Vardalek—the name being<br />Hungarian. But he spoke German well enough: not with the monotonous<br />accentuation of Hungarians, but rather, if anything, with a slight Slavonic<br />intonation. His voice was peculiarly soft and insinuating. We soon afterwards<br />found that he could talk Polish, and Mlle Vonnaert vouched for his good French.<br /><br />Indeed he seemed to know all languages. But let me give my first impressions.<br />He was rather tall with fair wavy hair, rather long, which accentuated a certain<br />effeminacy about his smooth face.<br /><br />His figure had something—I cannot say what—serpentine about it. The features<br />were refined; and he had long, slender, subtle, magnetic-looking hands, a<br />somewhat long sinuous nose, a graceful mouth, and an attractive smile, which<br />belied the intense sadness of the expression of the eyes. When he arrived his eyes<br />were half closed—indeed they were habitually so—so that I could not decide<br />their colour. He looked worn and wearied. I could not possibly guess his age.<br /><br />Suddenly Gabriel burst into the room: a yellow butterfly was clinging to his hair.<br />He was carrying in his arms a little squirrel. Of course he was barelegged as<br />usual. The stranger looked up at his approach; then I noticed his eves. They were<br />green: they seemed to dilate and grow larger. Gabriel stood stock-still, with a<br />startled look, like that of a bird fascinated by a serpent.<br /><br />But nevertheless he held out his hand to the newcomer Vardalek, taking his<br />hand—I don't know why I noticed this trivial thing—pressed the pulse with his<br />forefinger. Suddenly Gabriel darted from the room and rushed upstairs, going to<br />his turret-room this time by the staircase instead of the tree. I was in terror what<br />the Count might think of him. Great was my relief when he came down in his<br />velvet Sunday suit, and shoes and stockings. I combed his hair, and set him<br />generally right.<br /><br />When the stranger came down to dinner his appearance had somewhat altered; he<br />looked much younger. There was an elasticity of the skin, combined with a<br />delicate complexion, rarely to be found in a man. Before, he had struck me as<br />being very pale.<br /><br />Well, at dinner we were all charmed with him, especially my father. He seemed<br />to be thoroughly acquainted with all my father's particular hobbies. Once, when<br />my father was relating some of his military experiences, he said something about<br />a drummer-boy who was wounded in battle. His eyes opened completely again<br />and dilated: this time with a particularly disagreeable expression, dull and dead,<br />yet at the same time animated by some horrible excitement. But this was only<br />momentary.<br /><br />The chief subject of his conversation with my father was about certain curious<br />mystical books which my father had just lately picked up, and which he could not<br />make out, but Vardalek seemed completely to understand. At dessert-time my<br />father asked him if he were in a great hurry to reach his destination: if not, would<br />he not stay with us a little while: though our place was out of the way, he would<br />find much that would interest him in his library.<br /><br />He answered, "I am in no hurry. I have no particular reason for going to that<br />place at all, and if I can be of service to you in deciphering these books, I shall be<br />only too glad." He added with a smile which was bitter, very very bitter: "You<br />see I am a cosmopolitan, a wanderer on the face of the earth."<br /><br />After dinner my father asked him if he played the piano. He said, "Yes, I can a<br />little," and he sat down at the piano. Then he played a Hungarian csardas—wild,<br />rhapsodic, wonderful.<br /><br />That is the music which makes men mad. He went on in the same strain.<br /><br />Gabriel stood stock-still by the piano, his eyes dilated and fixed, his form<br />quivering. At last he said very slowly, at one particular motive—for want of a<br />better word you may call it the relâche of a csardas, by which I mean that point<br />where the original quasi-slow movement begins again— "Yes, I think I could<br />play that."<br /><br />Then he quickly fetched his fiddle and self-made xylophone, and did, actually<br />alternating the instruments, render the same very well indeed.<br /><br />Vardalek looked at him, and said in. a very sad voice, "Poor child! you have the<br />soul of music within you."<br /><br />I could not understand why he should seem to commiserate instead of<br />congratulate Gabriel on what certainly showed an extraordinary talent.<br /><br />Gabriel was shy even as the wild animals who were tame to him. Never before<br />had he taken to a stranger. Indeed, as a rule, if any stranger came to the house by<br />any chance, he would hide himself, and I had to bring him up his food to the<br />turret chamber. You may imagine what was my surprise when I saw him walking<br />about hand in hand with Vardalek the next morning, in the garden, talking lively<br />with him, and showing his collection of pet animals, which he had gathered from<br />the woods, and for which we had had to fit up a regular zoological gardens. He<br />seemed utterly under the domination of Vardalek. What surprised us was (for<br />otherwise we liked the stranger, especially for being kind to him) that he seemed,<br />though not noticeably at first—except perhaps to me, who noticed everything<br />with regard to him—to be gradually losing his general health and vitality. He did<br />not become pale as yet; but there was a certain languor about his movements<br />which certainly there was by no means before.<br /><br />My father got more and more devoted to Count Vardalek. He helped him in his<br />studies: and my father would hardly allow him to go away, which he did<br />sometimes—to Trieste, he said: he always came back, bringing us presents of<br />strange Oriental jewellery or textures.<br /><br />I knew all kinds of people came to Trieste, Orientals included. Still, there was a<br />strangeness and magnificence about these things which I was sure even then<br />could not possibly have come from such a place as Trieste, memorable to me<br />chiefly for its necktie shops.<br /><br />When Vardalek was away, Gabriel was continually asking for him and talking<br />about him. Then at the same time he seemed to regain his old vitality and spirits.<br />Vardalek always returned looking much older, wan, and weary. Gabriel would<br />rush to meet him, and kiss him on the mouth. Then he gave a slight shiver: and<br />after a little while began to look quite young again.<br /><br />Things continued like this for some time. My father would not hear of Vardalek's<br />going away permanently. He came to be an inmate of our house. I indeed, and<br />Mlle Vonnaert also, could not help noticing what a difference there was<br />altogether about Gabriel. But my father seemed totally blind to it.<br /><br />One night I had gone downstairs to fetch something which I had left in the<br />drawing-room. As I was going up again I passed Vardalek's room. He was<br />playing on a piano, which had been specially put there for him, one of Chopin's<br />nocturnes, very beautifully: I stopped, leaning on the banisters to listen.<br /><br />Something white appeared on the dark staircase. We believed in ghosts in our<br />part. I was transfixed with terror, and clung to the baIlisters. What was my<br />astonishment to see Gabriel walking slowly down the staircase, his eyes fixed as<br />though in a trance! This terrified me even more than a ghost would. Could I<br />believe my senses? Could that be Gabriel?<br /><br />I simply could not move. Gabriel, clad in his long white night-shirt, came<br />downstairs and opened the door. He left it open. Vardalek still continued playing,<br />but talked as he played.<br /><br />He said—this time speaking in Polish—Nie umiem wyrazic jak ciechi kocham—<br />"My darling, I fain would spare thee: but thy life is my life, and I must live, I<br />who would rather die. Will God not have any mercy on me? Oh! Oh! life; oh, the<br />torture of life!" Here he struck one agonized and strange chord, then continued<br />playing softly, "O, Gabriel, my beloved! my life, yes life—oh, why life? I am<br />sure this is but a little that I demand of thee. Sorely thy superabundance of life<br />can spare little to one who is already dead. No, stay," he said now almost harshly,<br />"what must be, must be!"<br /><br />Gabriel stood there quite still, with the same fixed vacant expression, in the<br />room. He was evidently walking in his sleep. Vardalek played on: then said,<br />"Ah!" with a sign of terrible agony. Then very gently, ''Go now, Gabriel; it is<br />enough." And Gabriel went out of the room.and ascended the staircase at the<br />same slow pace, with the same unconscious stare. Vardalek struck the piano, and<br />although he did not play loudly, it seemed as though the strings would break.<br />You never heard music so strange and so heart-rending!<br /><br />I only know I was found by Mlle Vonnaert in the morning, in an unconscious<br />state, at the foot of the stairs. Was it a dream after all? I am sure now that it was<br />not. I thought then it might be, and said nothing to anyone about it. Indeed, what<br />could I say?<br /><br />Well, to let me cut a long story short, Gabriel, who had never known a moment's<br />sickness in his life, grew ill: and we had to send to Gratz for a doctor, who could<br />give no explanation of Gabriel's strange illness. Gradual wasting away, he said:<br />absolutely no organic complaint. What could this mean?<br /><br />My father at last became conscious of the fact that Gabriel was ill. His anxiety<br />was fearful. The last trace of grey faded from his hair, and it became quite white.<br />We sent to Vienna for doctors.<br /><br />But all with the same result.<br /><br />Gabriel was generally unconscious, and when conscious, only seemed to<br />recognize Vardalek, who sat continually by his bedside, nursing him with the<br />utmost tenderness.<br /><br />One day I was alone in the room: and Vardalek cried suddenly, almost fiercely,<br />"Send for a priest at once, at once," he repeated. "It is now almost too late!"<br /><br />Gabriel stretched out his arms spasmodically, and put them round Vardalek's<br />neck. This was the only movement he had made, for some time. Vardalek bent<br />down and kissed him on the lips.<br /><br />I rushed downstairs: and the priest was sent for. When I came back Vardalek was<br />not there. The priest administered extreme unction. I think Gabriel was already<br />dead, although we did not think so at the time.<br /><br />Vardalek had utterly disappeared; and when we looked for him he was nowhere<br />to be found; nor have I seen or heard of him since.<br /><br />My father died very soon afterwards: suddenly aged, and bent down with grief.<br />And so the whole of the Wronski property came into my sole possession. And<br />here I am, an old woman, generally laughed at for keeping, in memory of<br />Gabriel, an asylum for stray animals—and— people do not, as a rule, believe in<br />Vampires!"<br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4883301247675127291.post-33974441819621737082011-03-12T08:08:00.000-08:002011-03-12T08:10:17.806-08:00Ekimmu - The Summerian Vampire<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1RSK-rLPPXL6P15mA2dH9V-4SQZu211kcOjszTxdFJ_LKNNwBscxFwro4B7C6CBKxG0zwOZ6y6aRuev3jJ-OItCWxw7XnrQvYlvNWES_30d-2hdac-HNK-0ELMGOTH8sygpBaFXwZEZCy/s1600/tumblr_l7ywqrqPiz1qcgqs9o1_500.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 199px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1RSK-rLPPXL6P15mA2dH9V-4SQZu211kcOjszTxdFJ_LKNNwBscxFwro4B7C6CBKxG0zwOZ6y6aRuev3jJ-OItCWxw7XnrQvYlvNWES_30d-2hdac-HNK-0ELMGOTH8sygpBaFXwZEZCy/s320/tumblr_l7ywqrqPiz1qcgqs9o1_500.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5583226470186529154" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br />Predating back to nearly 4000 B.C.E., the Ekimmu is one of the first and oldest myths known to man. This entity was given life by the beliefs of the Ancient Assyrians and shared by the Babylonians as well, and later with the Inuit and Eskimo tribes. The Assyrians are believed by some to have given birth to the vampire belief, others believe, that it was Egypt. The Ekimmu was fearfully dreaded by the Mesopotamian empire and was described as a very angry and bitter spirit of a once living human being, who was unable to find peace. The Ekimmu’s appearance was described by the Inuit and Eskimo tribes as “severely rotting corpses” and considered unusual in the fact that they maintained, the mind and personality they had in their mortal life. However, the Ancient Sumerians description of the Ekimmu is somewhat different than that of the Inuit and Eskimo tribes. The Sumerians described the Ekimmu as demonic, phantom-like entities that roamed the earth, unable to obtain solace, searching for victims. They were also referenced as “evil wind gusts” and according to Sumerian mythology, wind is often shown as an expression of psychic or apparitional power. (As in the example of the Babylonian God, Marduk.) The Ekimmu has also been referenced on rare occasions with the British Banshee who would be heard wailing and crying outside of a household, warning that there would be a forthcoming death to someone within that home. The Ekimmu has never actually been labeled “vampire” because of their lack of blood consumption, but, because the Ekimmu’s characteristics are very similar to the “utukku”(a.k.a. Uruku) meaning “vampyre which attacks man” derived from a cuneiform inscription, and much more is known of the Ekimmu, it has respectfully earned it’s place amongst the vampire myths.<br /><br />One should also keep in mind that not all vampires sustain themselves through blood consumption alone, but can also feed from the life force of plants, animals, elements, and human beings by tapping into their aura. These vampires are known as psychic vampires. The Sumerians reference to the Ekimmu as being “evil wind gusts” and if you look into occult studies of the psychic vampire, you will find that breath and the transfer of psychic energy are intimately correspondent. With this reference, the Ekimmu very much indeed fits the description of an intentional psychic vampire.<br /><br />Some of the reasons behind the hostility of the Ekimmu (translated meaning “that which was snatched away”) were believed to be due to the following: a violent or premature death by being murdered, possibly in a battle, or dying at a very young age. Dying before love could be fulfilled, improper burial, or not being buried at all, dying in pregnancy, drowning, starvation, improper libations (a serving (of wine) poured out in honor of a deity.) or food offerings.<br /><br />In Inuit legends, it is believed that the Ekimmu becomes existent when an individual makes a promise to take care of the grave of the deceased, and then fails to uphold that responsibility. The deceased then become this creature with full knowledge of why they have returned, making them very angry and bitter. But they are rarely concerned with avenging the person responsible for their return, instead they roam the earth attacking at random. They try to put their past lives behind them, but there have been rare instances where an Ekimmu has attempted to get their family to join them in undeath. They are said to be found amongst the unfortunate homeless, living in steam tunnels, sewers and abandoned buildings in decayed inner cities. It is believed that the Ekimmu can not stand their atrocious existence which drives them into insanity, causing them to be the horrendous predators that they are, feeding on the terror of those who remind them of their former loved ones.<br /><br />According to the Ancient Sumerians, an Ekimmu would seize its victim and torment them until a priest or priestess could come and perform a ritual or exorcism to force the vampire off.<br /><br /><br /><br />by Becca PedersenUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4883301247675127291.post-81063875758552527692011-03-12T08:06:00.000-08:002011-03-12T08:07:29.597-08:00vampire artistThe true artist will let his wife starve, his children go barefoot, his mother drudge for his living at seventy, sooner than work at anything but his art. To women he is half vivisector, half vampire. He gets into intimate relations with them to study them, to strip the mask of convention from them, to surprise their inmost secrets, knowing that they have the power to rouse his deepest creative energies, to rescue him from his cold reason, to make him see visions and dream dreams, to inspire him, as he calls it.<br /><br />-- G. B. Shaw, Man and SupermanUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4883301247675127291.post-50314759405059960192011-03-12T08:05:00.000-08:002011-03-12T08:06:37.090-08:00Der Vampir<b><span class="warn"></span></b><br /><img src="http://i200.photobucket.com/albums/aa246/V-Empire/VR/f989d24f.jpg" alt="Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket" border="0" /><br /><br /><br />by Heinrich August Ossenfelder<br /><br />My dear young maiden clingeth<br />Unbending. fast and firm<br />To all the long-held teaching<br />Of a mother ever true;<br />As in vampires unmortal<br />Folk on the Theyse's portal<br />Heyduck-like do believe.<br />But my Christine thou dost dally,<br />And wilt my loving parry<br />Till I myself avenging<br />To a vampire's health a-drinking<br />Him toast in pale Tockay.<br /><br />And as softly thou art sleeping<br />To thee shall I come creeping<br />And thy life's blood drain away.<br />And so shalt thou be trembling<br />For thus shall I be kissing<br />And death's threshold thou' it be crossing<br />With fear, in my cold arms.<br />And last shall I thee question<br />Compared to such instruction<br />What are a mother's charms?<br /><br />(1748)Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4883301247675127291.post-55278367463999976582011-03-12T08:04:00.001-08:002011-03-12T08:04:39.008-08:00Et mourir de plaisir<center><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjUz3iSgJ54&feature=related">RARE RECORDING WITH THE MUSIC OF THE MOVIE</a><br /><br /><br /><img src="http://i200.photobucket.com/albums/aa246/V-Empire/VR/t2238.jpg" alt="Photobucket" border="0" /><br /><br />English title: BLOOD AND ROSES<br />Production: France/Italy 1960<br />Director – Roger Vadim<br />Screenplay – Vadim & Roger Vailland<br />Story – Claude Brule & Claude Martin<br />Based on the Short Story Carmilla by J. SheridanLe Fanu<br />Photography – Claude Renoir<br />Cast:<br />Annette Vadim (Carmilla Von Karnstein)<br />Mel Ferrer (Count LeopoldoVon Karnstein)<br />Elsa Martinelli (Georgia Monteverdi)<br /><br /></center><br /><br />"This film has three outstanding features: The spectacular location, Hadrian's Villa, Claude Renoir's ravishing color and b&w cinematography, and an exquisite score featuring the rarely-used Irish harp.<br />Annette Stroyberg and Elsa Martinelli are both interesting.<br />It's above average for Vadim."<br /><br /><center><img src="http://i200.photobucket.com/albums/aa246/V-Empire/VR/1960_et_mourir_de_plaisir.jpg" alt="Photobucket" border="0" /></center><br /><br />"This was the second film made from J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s oft-filmed short story Carmilla (1872). (The first was claimedlyCarl Dreyer’s Vampyr (1932), althoughthe connection there is very slim). Blood and Roses comes from Roger Vadim, the French director of various softcore features in the 1960s such as theBrigitte Bardot breakthrough, And God CreatedWoman (1957) and the great Barbarella(1968).<br /><br /> Hammer Films had spurred off a substantial revival of Gothic horrorwith their twin successes The Curse of Frankenstein(1957) and Dracula/The Horror of Dracula(1958) and it seems almost certain that Blood and Roses was intended to ride that wave of success.<br /> Hammer Films themselves later spunoff a series of Carmilla films, beginningwith The Vampire Lovers (1970), withwhich inevitable comparisons arise. (See below for the Hammer films). The one thing that the Hammer comparisonmakes one realize is how much Terence Fisher et al tied Hammer’s visionof the Gothic to a specific period and time – when Bloodand Roses updates the Le Fanu story in a modern setting onehas to consciously jolt themselves to realize that the presence of planes, sports-carsand stereos is not anachronistic.<br /> Opposing the rich, flamboyance of Hammer’streatment, Vadim’s vampirism is a lot more soft-focus and softcorein intent. There is more eroticism than horror to the film (and Britishcensors cut out much of the softcore lesbianism anyway). In fact there is verylittle vampirism going on altogether – there is a ludicrously tame scenewhere Annette Vadim pursues a servant girl, which just fades out just asVadim closes in on her. And the plot doesn’t really do much with the possession/vampirism themes. The atmosphere Vadim creates is occasionally compulsive– there are undeniably striking shots, like the lake lit up by fireworks, and in particular the surrealistic fevre dreamthat turns black-and-white with bodies swimming upside down outside Frenchwindows and an operation where the surgeon’s gloves are all tinted bloodred.<br /> The beautiful photography, classy music, elaborate costumes and ornatelylayed-out gardens all make for a sumptuously assembled film."<br /><br /><br /><img src="http://i200.photobucket.com/albums/aa246/V-Empire/VR/VM_SY400_SX600_.jpg" alt="Photobucket" border="0" /><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOvO7aG-65g&feature=related">THE DREAM SEQUENCE</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4883301247675127291.post-64688563778442744382011-03-12T08:03:00.001-08:002011-03-12T08:03:50.133-08:00RED IS THE COLOR OF BLOOD<span style="color:#c80000;"><b>RED IS THE COLOR OF BLOOD<br /><br />by: Conrad Aiken (1889-1973)</b><br /><br /><img src="http://i200.photobucket.com/albums/aa246/V-Empire/VR/d0j4rmhl.jpg" alt="Photobucket" border="0" /><br /><br />Red is the color of blood, and I will seek it:<br />I have sought it in the grass.<br />It is the color of steep sun seen through eyelids.<br /> <br />It is hidden under the suave flesh of women--<br />Flows there, quietly flows.<br />It mounts from the heart to the temples, the singing mouth--<br />As cold sap climbs to the rose.<br />I am confused in webs and knots of scarlet<br />Spun from the darkness;<br />Or shuttled from the mouths of thirsty spiders.<br /> <br />Madness for red! I devour the leaves of autumn.<br />I tire of the green of the world.<br />I am myself a mouth for blood ...<br /> <br />Here, in the golden haze of the late slant sun,<br />Let us walk, with the light in our eyes,<br />To a single bench from the outset predetermined.<br />Look: there are seagulls in these city skies,<br />Kindled against the blue.<br />But I do not think of the seagulls, I think of you.<br /> <br />Your eyes, with the late sun in them,<br />Are like blue pools dazzled with yellow petals.<br />This pale green suits them well.<br /> <br />Here is your finger, with an emerald on it:<br />The one I gave you. I say these things politely--<br />But what I think beneath them, who can tell?<br /> <br />For I think of you, crumpled against a whiteness;<br />Flayed and torn, with a dulled face.<br />I think of you, writing, a thing of scarlet,<br />And myself, rising red from that embrace.<br /> <br />November sun is sunlight poured through honey:<br />Old things, in such a light, grow subtle and fine.<br />Bare oaks are like still fire.<br />Talk to me: now we drink the evening's wine.<br />Look, how our shadows creep along the grave!--<br />And this way, how the gravel begins to shine!<br /> <br />This is the time of day for recollections,<br />For sentimental regrets, oblique allusions,<br />Rose-leaves, shrivelled in a musty jar.<br />Scatter them to the wind! There are tempests coming.<br />It is dark, with a windy star.<br /> <br />If human mouths were really roses, my dear,--<br />(Why must we link things so?--)<br />I would tear yours petal by petal with slow murder.<br />I would pluck the stamens, the pistils,<br />The gold and the green,--<br />Spreading the subtle sweetness that was your breath<br />On a cold wave of death....<br /> <br />Now let us walk back, slowly, as we came.<br />We will light the room with candles; they may shine<br />Like rows of yellow eyes.<br />Your hair is like spun fire, by candle-flame.<br />You smile at me--say nothing. You are wise.<br /> <br />For I think of you, flung down brutal darkness;<br />Crushed and red, with pale face.<br />I think of you, with your hair disordered and dripping.<br />And myself, rising red from that embrace.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4883301247675127291.post-19313428818447738022011-03-12T08:02:00.000-08:002011-03-12T08:03:00.493-08:00From the Order of the Dragon to Draculaby Constantin Rezachevici<br /><br />[Professor Constantin Rezachevici is chief researcher at the Nicolae Iorga National Institute of History, a member of the Romanian Academy, and Professor with the Faculty of History at the University of Bucharest. He is author of The History of the Neighbouring Countries and the Romanian People in the Middle Ages (1998).]<br /><br /><br />The name “Dracula” has witnessed periods of both brilliance and fame. It became famous in the second half of the fifteenth century through the actions of Vlad Tepes (Dracula), ruler of Wallachia (1448, 1456-1462, 1476). It has continued to exist, although less known, through his legitimate descendants, the noble family Dracula of Sintesti and of Band, established in Transylvania between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. Families that originated from Vlad’s marriage to a close relative of the Hungarian King Matias Corvin in February of 1462 can provide an explanation of the Szekely ancestry wrongly attributed to Vlad Tepes and his literary metamorphosis the vampire Count Dracula. As a result of the novel of Irish writer Bram Stoker, the name “Dracula” has obtained universal fame during the modern epoch.<br /> The origin of the name “Dracula” has a very interesting history, very different from what has been commonly believed. For a long time, many theories have existed about its genesis, ranging from the claim by Grigore Nandris that it was the genitive Slavonic form meaning “the son of Dracul” (Vlad Dracul was the ruler of Wallachia from 1437-1442 and 1444-1447) to the false connection with a coincidentally similar Romanian word “dragulea”, meaning the dear one or lover. All these theories are connected to the starting point of this name exclusively for Vlad Tepes, until this popular name, meaning “son of Dracul” became confused with the Romanian word “Dracul”, meaning “the devil” (Andreescu 149-50).<br /> To clarify matters, Dracula (Draculea) has represented from the beginning a new popular Romanian form (from the name Vlad Dracul) applied to Vlad Dracul’s famous son Vlad Tepes (Andreescu 156, Stoicescu 201), while the nickname given to Vlad by the Turks was “Tepes”, the Romanian word for impaler. Even before Vlad Tepes’ reign in Romania, the boyar Albu had called Vlad Dracul (which was a nickname known outside of Romania), simply Draculea (Andreescu 150-51), the popular exclusively Romanian name. The Venetian messenger Bartholomeo de Jano and his contemporary Greek chroniclers Leonicos Chalkokondyles and Critobul of Imbros have also called him Draculea (Andreescu 154-55). Even Iancu of Hunedora, who executed him, made mention on December 17, 1456, of “infidelem Drakwlam wayvodem” (Documenta 461). In the end, the Turkish chronicler Asakpasazade, referring to the year 1442, calls Vlad Tepes “Dracula” instead of “Draculea” (Cronici 88), while the Serb janissary who wrote from 1496 to 1501, called him “voievodul valah Dracula” (Calatori 125), which in English means the Wallachian prince Dracula. It is clear that Draculea (Dracula) was a popular nickname for Vlad Dracul, meaning a person belonging to the Order of the Dragon. For his son, Vlad Tepes, the name “Dracula” became through affiliation an alternative, not only a nickname, with the side effect of increasing his bad reputation, with its diabolical meaning, even though originally, in his father’s days, “Dracul” did not have a malevolent meaning.<br /> Vlad (the father) had obtained the nickname “Dracul” in connection with his receiving the <br />Order of the Dragon from Hungary’s king Sigismund of Luxembourg, at Nürnberg around February 8, 1431. The German name for this order was “Drachenordens,” and in Latin “Societatis draconistarum.” The Order of the Dragon, which some confuse with a decoration, was really an institution, just like the other chivalric orders in medieval times. As a model, Sigismund of Luxembourg took the Order of St. George (Societas militae Sancti Georgii) created by the king of Hungary Carol Robert of Anjou (1308_1342) in 1318. Its statute from 1326 requires the protection of the king from any danger or plot against him; the symbol of the Order of the Dragon was a red cross on a silver field and a black mantle. With the exception of the last object, these are also found in the new order.<br /> In a battle with the anarchical Hungarian nobles and in the background of the other battles for the possession of Bosnia, Sigismund of Luxembourg and the queen Barbara Cilli created the Order of the Dragon on December 12, 1408, mainly meant to protect the king and his family, with the help of a big part of the Hungarian nobility, led by the families of Gara and Cilli. The statute of this Order of the Dragon, elaborated by the chancellor of the Hungarian court, Eberhard, bishop of Oradea, maintained only in a copy from 1707 and published in a Hungarian edition in 1841, has remained almost unknown, even to the investigators of this problem. The analysis of this important document shows that the order aimed at defending the cross and at the destruction of its enemies, symbolized by the ancient Dragons (Draconis tortuosi) with the help of St. George. The battle was against the Turkish pagan armies and the husits, who were outside the Orthodox nations who were faithful to the cross and to King Sigismund (Romanians etc). Barons, priests and leaders of the kingdom gathered below the sign of the dragon, submitted to the cross and proclaimed loyalty to King Sigismund and the queen. The members who founded the order were 24 nobles of the kingdom, led by the despot Stefan Lazarevici, the leader of Serbia, among whom were Nicolae of Gara, the Hungarian prince, Stibor of Stibericz, the prince of Transylvania, Pipo of Ozora, the Ban (local ruler) of Severin etc, in general great local noblemen. They were all engaged in serving with loyalty no matter the price, the royal couple, their family and their friends.<br /> The symbol of the order was, after the statute of 1408, a circular dragon with its tail coiled up around its neck. On its back, from the base of its neck to its tail, was the red cross of St. George, on the background of a silver field. According to the first Medieval encyclopedist, Isidor of Seville, it was a “serpens,” a dragon that lives on land.<br /> As the years went by, the Order of the Dragon expanded, including two classes, a superior one, whose symbol was a dragon being strangled with a cross stretched out on its back, which, especially from the late fifteenth century to the seventeenth century surrounded a family coat-of-arms. Sometimes foreign members were allowed in, but only as allies, who did not have to take the oath of eternal loyalty to King Sigismund of Luxembourg, for example, the king of Poland, Vladislav Jagiello, his former brother-in-law Vitautas (Witold), the great duke of Lithuania, King Henry the fifth of England, the members of the Italian families Carrara, della Scala and leaders of Venezia, Padova and Verona. During the life of King Sigismund, from 1408 to 1437, the Order of the Dragon became the most important noble political association in Hungary, loyal to the king, the main political force in the kingdom, second to the king. Immediately after being established, it served as a model for the setting up in 1409 of the Spanish order of Calatrava. Into this prestigious European chivalic institution, which was symbolized by the dragon, was admitted the aspirant to the Wallachian throne, Vlad (Dracul) in February 1431, in his position of vassal of Sigismund of Luxemburg, according to the statute of the Order. <br /> Admission was into the superior class of the order. The symbol of this class evolved up to 1431 in two phases: the first one, as it has been reminded earlier, was a dragon with a cross drawn on his back, between its wings, from the base of the neck to its tail and lasted from 1408 to 1418; the second one, until the death of Sigismund of Luxembourg, was completed with another cross perpendicular to the coiled up dragon, having on the equal sides of the cross the writing “O quam misericors est Deus” (vertical) and “Justus et paciens” (horizontal). This sign was worn on a sash, like in the portrait of Dichters Oswald von Wallenstein in 1432. The necklace of the order was made of two gold chains joined by the sign, a Hungarian cross with a double bar above the coiled up dragon. But on the seal, another dragon was represented, with a big body, with dented wings, not coiled, only two feet with a free tail, with a very small Greek cross on its chest. Sigismund of Luxembourg himself introduced in 1433 the seal for the Order of the Dragon of this type, one of the last seals he made as a Roman-German emperor. Unfortunately, the symbol that Vlad Dracul had wasn’t kept. But the elements of the symbol of the Order of the Dragon on his royal seal of 1437 clearly show that Vlad Dracul was the possessor of the Order of the Dragon necklace: the Hungarian double cross, instead of the Latin cross; the dragon illustrated on the reverse of the six silver and bronze coins that were beat by Vlad at Sighisoara in Transylvania (or after his occupation of the Wallachian throne) is similar to the dragon in Paolo Uccello’s picture, St. George and the dragon; and the coat-of-arms from the episcopacy built by him at Curtea de Arges. Furthermore, he transformed the dragon from the seal to his personal coat-of-arms, not directly but as an original heraldry composition. This coat-of-arms was carved from stone, and represented the dragon attacking a lion, the headed snake, the dragon, emerging victoriously from this battle, therefore illustrating metaphorically Psalm 90 (“You will step on lions and on vipers and walk over lion cubs and snakes”). This phrase’s purpose was to symbolize the victory of Christianity and that of Vlad Dracul over his enemies. In this case the dragon was a benefic symbol, and the picture of Vlad with his name (Dracul, Draculea-Dracula) had a positive meaning which was only common in Wallachia during his reign.<br /> The spreading of the image of the dragon by Vlad Dracul through the large circulation of seal, small coins and heraldic stone carving had a powerful impression on its Romanian subjects. This was increased by the Order of the Dragon necklace, which no other Romanian ruler had worn, and even more so the ceremonial costume of the Order of the Dragon knights - red garments and green mantle. Thus, Vlad Dracul, the father of Vlad Tepes, has forever remained in a bond with both versions of his nickname. This paradox has been interpreted incorrectly.<br /> The dragon of the order with the same name was not an evil element during the fifteenth century, but a positive symbol of knighthood. The dragon choking itself with its own tail, which in Occidental St. George heraldry and iconography, from where it originates, represented the defeated Satan, becomes, in the absence of the saint and of the cross, a Christian chivalry order of positive significance. The circular dragon, strangled by its own tail, is represented on the coat-of-arms of many noble families in the Hungarian kingdom who were the descendants of some of the knights who were part of the Order of the Dragon during the reign of Sigismund, until the seventeenth century. This supports the fact that the Order of the Dragon enjoyed great prestige throughout the first half of the fifteenth century. In Transylvania, it also appeared in the coats-of-arms of the families Bathory, Bocskay, Bethlen, Szathmary, Rakoczi and many others, even though the Order of the Dragon had lost its importance after the death of Sigismund of Luxembourg in 1437 and it practically disappeared with the demise of the members who had been admitted by him.<br /> Over five millennia of the dragon’s universal existence, it went through many transformations until the fifteenth century and it was known as a fabulous creature, sometimes with the head of a vulture, other times like the animal represented on the Order of the Dragon, with the body of a snake and the wings of a bat. The European Dragon had a lot of sources: Greek mythology (dracon), Roman_Greek tradition, Celtic mythology, the Bible, the Apocalypse, the lives of saints and Oriental influences. During pre-Christian times, the dragon often had a beneficial meaning (often connected with fecundity) and perpetuated in folklore until the late Middle Ages. However, in literature, culture and clerical Christianity, starting from Bibical text, it takes on a different role, and in the fifth century it becomes a symbol of Satan -- “draco iste significat diabolum” (Le Goff 58). This dragon, identified with Satan, was defeated and was dominated by spiritual forces but was not killed; rather, according to the symbolism of Celtic folklore, at some extent, “they even became allied with it” (Le Goff 45), by numerous saints and bishops of the Occident. In the art of Roman influence, the crutch of the bishop often has a defeated and twisted dragon at its tip. Both St. Michael and St. George, whose cult began to spread from the Bizant during the eighth and throughout the tenth, and respectively eleventh centuries, defeated the dragon physically in a fight.<br /> In Occidental heraldry, the physical strength of the dragon was said to have been in his head, but also in its big and strong tail, which in the nineteenth century was considered the illustrative element of the dragon. All this European clerical and folklore heraldry, strengthened in a millenary existence (from the fifth century to the fifteenth century) can be identified in the basic illustration of the Order of the Dragon, the snake-like dragon that is strangling himself with his own tail, which, according to tradition, is twisted three times around the dragon’s neck, signifying that he had been subdued by means of Christian spiritual powers, and the dragon with big paws and wings was the symbol of the one who was defeated by the Saints Michael and George. However, we must also remember the fact that, despite the fact that it had been defeated and subdued, the snake-like dragon and the flying dragon still were evil and the symbols of Satan.<br /> In the Romanian space to which Vlad Dracul and his son Vlad Tepes belonged, the dragon, named “balaur”, a thraco_dacian word, or “zmeu”, a slavonic word, had its roots in geto-dacian antiquity, whose military flag was representing a snake with the head of a wolf, included the large category of dragons used as flags, which one finds from the times of the Greeks and Romans until the fifteenth century. This divinity represented on the “geto-dacian” flag, became known in the time of the Roman ruling of Dacia as “draco” (in Romanian “drac” (meaning devil). Along with Christianity, it spread all throughout Europe, and came to symbolize Satan. However in pagan terms, as the Romanian historian Vasile Parvan observed, “out of all the Romance languages, the Romanian language was the only one in which ‘draco’ has the meaning of an evil spirit, demon or devil, whereas in others, the word only has the meaning of snake or dragon” (228-30). In Romanian folklore, even the snake, which in certain conditions, has the ability to turn into a dragon, has a strong malefic meaning.<br /> If “Dracul” and “Draculea” have a positive meaning in connection with the Order of the Dragon during Vlad Dracul’s time and later on during Vlad Tepes’ reign, the same words have an exclusively negative, diabolical meaning, synonymous to the Romanian word “dracul” (the devil), without doubt in connection to the bloody and law_enforcing character of Vlad. In 1459, the aspirant Dan III, accused his rival “Draculea” (Vlad Tepes) of collaborating with the Turks, aided and guided by the devil (Tocilescu 71-2), and in 1460 mentioned “the law-offender and barbaric tyrant, unfaithful and the devil that is Vlad Voievod” (Harmuzeki 53). During Vlad Tepes’ captivity in Hungary (1462-1475), the representative of the pope in Buda, Nicolaede Madrussa, declared that he saw “their tyrant Dracul, a name which they [Romanians] use for the Devil” Papacostea (164). In 1486, the author of the Novel about Dracula voievod, translated in Russian, referred to “Dracula in Romanian, and in our language - devil, that’s how evil he was” (Panaitescu 200, 207).<br /> Although Vlad Tepes and his descendants have never used the symbol of the Order of the Dragon, he has inherited the nickname of his father Draculea/Dracula, which has become a family name (outside the country). And his successors in Transylvania, the Dracula (Draculea) family kept this name until the seventeenth century, settling in the sixteenth century among the “secui,” not far from the place where in 1897, Bram Stoker, located the setting of his novel and the Transylvania castle of “Count Dracula.” This way, over a long period of time, from the name of a small pagan deity (Greek, dracos, Latin draco), by means of the name of the Order of the Dragon (in German Drachenordens, Latin Societas draconistarum) to the fifteenth century Romanian nickname of Dracul/Draculea from which the nickname and then the family name, Dracula, comes and was used in 1897 by Bram Stoker, at the suggestion of the Hungarian Jewish orientalist, well known scholar of his time (Florescu & McNally 142-3).<br /> If the Order of the Dragon did not exist, with all its symbols and its being awarded to a Romanian Ruler, the name “Dracula” would not be famous today.<br /><br /><br />Works Cited:<br /><br /><br />Andreescu, Stefan. Vlad Tepes (Dracula) intre legenda si adevar istoric. Bucharest, 1976.<br />Calatori straini despre tarile romane. Bucharest, 1970.<br />Cronici turcesti privind tarile romana. Bucharest 1966.<br />Documenta Romaniae Historica. Bucharest, 1977.<br />Florescu, Radu & Raymond McNally. In cautarea lui Dracula. Bucharest, 1992.<br />Harmizachi, Eudoxiu. Documente privitoare la istoria romanilor. Bucharest, 1911.<br />Le Goff, Jacques. “Cultura ecleziastica si sultura folclorica in evul mediu.” Pentru un alt evmediu, II. Bucharest, 1986.<br />Nandris, Grigore. “A Philological Analysis of Dracula and Romanian Place-names and Masculine Personal Names in -a, -ea.” The Slavonic and East European Review. 36 (1959): 370-77.<br />Panaitescu, P P (ed), Cronicile slavo-romane din sec. XV-XVI publicate de Ion Bogdan. Bucharest, 1959.<br />Papacostea, Serban. “Cu privire la geneza si raspandirea povestirilor despre factele lui Vlad Tepes.” Romanoslavica 13 (1966).<br />Parvan, Vasile. “Contributii epigrafice la istoria crestinismului daco-roman.” Studii de istoria culturii antice. Bucharest, 1992.<br />Stoicescu, Nicolae. Vlad Tepes. Bucharest, 1976.<br />Tocilescu, Gr G. 534 documente istorice slavo-romane din Tara Romaneasca si Moldova pirvitoare la legaturile cu Ardealul 1346-1603.Bucharest, 1931.<br /><br /><br />NOTES<br /> For a bibliography on Vlad Tepes, see Rezachevici, “Vlad Tepes: Chronology and Historical Bubliography” in Dracula: Essays on the Life and Times of Vlad Tepes, ed Kurt Treptow. Iasi, 1991. <br /> See Aurel Radutiu, “Despre numele ‘Drakula’.” Anuarul Institului de Istorie Cluj-Napoca 35 (1996): 25-37.<br /> For details on the Order, see Akos Timon, Ungarische Verfassung - und Rechtsgeschichte. Berlin, 1904, and Georg Fejar, Codex diplomaticus Hungariae ecclesiasticus ac civilis. Buda, 1841.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4883301247675127291.post-26256092692897946802011-03-12T08:00:00.000-08:002011-03-12T08:01:30.293-08:00The Vampire by Rudyard Kipling<img src="http://i200.photobucket.com/albums/aa246/V-Empire/VR/vampire_1898.jpg" alt="Photobucket" border="0" /><br /><br /><br />A fool there was and he made his prayer<br />(Even as you or I!)<br />To a rag and a bone and a hank of hair,<br />(We called her the woman who did not care),<br />But the fool he called her his lady fair--<br />(Even as you or I!)<br /><br />Oh, the years we waste and the tears we waste,<br />And the work of our head and hand<br />Belong to the woman who did not know<br />(And now we know that she never could know)<br />And did not understand!<br /><br />A fool there was and his goods he spent,<br />(Even as you or I!)<br />Honour and faith and a sure intent<br />(And it wasn't the least what the lady meant),<br />But a fool must follow his natural bent<br />(Even as you or I!)<br /><br />Oh, the toil we lost and the spoil we lost<br />And the excellent things we planned<br />Belong to the woman who didn't know why<br />(And now we know that she never knew why)<br />And did not understand!<br /><br />The fool was stripped to his foolish hide,<br />(Even as you or I!)<br />Which she might have seen when she threw him aside--<br />(But it isn't on record the lady tried)<br />So some of him lived but the most of him died--<br />(Even as you or I!)<br /><br />``And it isn't the shame and it isn't the blame<br />That stings like a white-hot brand--<br />It's coming to know that she never knew why<br />(Seeing, at last, she could never know why)<br />And never could understand!''Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4883301247675127291.post-48159966439173804802011-03-12T07:59:00.000-08:002011-03-12T08:00:19.937-08:00THE BLOOD COUNTESS by Andrei CodrescuTHE BLOOD COUNTESS<br />(Dell Books, 1996)<br /><br />"Andrei Codrescu has written a fascinating first novel based on the life of his real-life ancestor, Elizabeth Bathory, the legendary Blood Countess. Codrescu expertly weaves together two stories in this neo-gothic work: that of the 16th century Hungarian Countess Elizabeth Bathory, a beautiful and terrifying woman who bathes in the blood of virgin girls; and of her distant descendant, a contemporary journalist who must return to his native Hungary and come to terms with his bloody and disturbing past.<br /><br />Drake Bathory-Kereshbur, a Hungarian-born journalist who has lived in the United States, returns to his native Hungary, only to be the target for recruitment among a patriotic group that wants to restore the glory - and the honor - of the Hungarian aristocracy. As a descendant of the Countess Elizabeth Bathory, he is heir to all that is wonderful and terrible about his country and his family's past. Codrescu brilliantly explores Drake's anguish, as he realizes the truth behind his gruesome family history. But more importantly, Codrescu also creates a convincing and historically accurate picture of a sadistic woman obsessed with youth, vigor, beauty, and blood...a woman with enough power to order the deaths of 650 virgins so that she could bathe in their blood.<br /><br />The Blood Countess is a bizarre and compelling book about the horrors of the past, shown so effectively in the monstrous yet attractive personality of Elizabeth, and what pull these horrors have on those who live now."<br /><br /><center><br /><img src="http://i200.photobucket.com/albums/aa246/V-Empire/VR/elisabeth20bathory-1.jpg" alt="Photobucket" border="0" /><br /><br /><br />***</center><br /><br />"An extraordinary work of fiction ... The Blood Countess is hypnotic and lyrical, with both the concentrated poetic power of the great fairy tales and the playful expansiveness of postmodern fiction."<br />- San Francisco Chronicle Book Review<br /><br />"Beautifully written and meticulously researched ... a book of high gothic drama"<br />- Entertainment Weekly<br /><br />"The Blood Countess offers stylish entertainment that starts on Page One...Codrescu is nervously alert for recurrent patterns of evil and its handmaiden, absolute authority."<br />- R.Z. Sheppard, Time<br /><br />"The most valuable work on political manipulation since Orwell's 1984 ...Codrescu peels layers of complexity from an important historical event to reveal the ghastly."<br />- George Czicsery, San Jose Mercury News<br /><br />"As compellingly readable as it is thoughtfully intelligent...The Blood countess is that rarest of things, a new American novel of serious literary merit that is actually about something."<br />- San Jose Mercury News<br /><br />"A brilliant work that reveals much about power and politics and obsession."<br />- St. Petersburg Times<br /><br />"Codrescu's writing is rich...suspensful and chilling...a fascinating book."<br />- The Bellingham Herald<br /><br />"A juicy and gushing story that overflows with horror and, surprisingly, humor...Codrescu brilliantly parallels Elizabeth's saga with the modern-day court testimony of her direct descendant, Drake Bathory-Kreshtur."<br />- Williamette Week<br /><br />"Codrescu's hallucinatory reconstructions of Elixabeth's bloody deeds reads like the Brothers Grimm as revised by the Marquis de Sade...[The novel] serves disturbingly as a personal vision of the persistence of evil."<br />- The Boston Sunday Globe<br /><br />From Booklist, April 15, 1995:<br />The fact that the author of this disturbing novel is a National Public Radio correspondent and a writer of considerable experience will create demand. How will readers react? That depends on whether they enjoy pages and pages of unrelenting cruelty and can overlook a big drawback in execution - that the two story lines, which are intended to link past and present, don't. Codrescu parallels a true story from the sixteenth century, about the bizarre Hungarian countess Elizabeth Bathory, who was reputed to have murdered 650 virgins in order to bathe in their blood, with the fictitious story of Hungarian American Drake Bathory-Kreshtur, a descendant of the countess, who fled Hungary in 1956 and was recently sent back to his homeland by the newspaper he works for to cover its emergence from behind the iron curtain. Drake relates his tale to a judge in new York, and it takes the form of a confession in which he reveals his involvement in a murder and admits to the dark-soul legacy of his horrible ancestor, from which he can't seem to escape. The past story is simply gruesome, the present-day story has the ring of filler to give this novel publishable length. People will be asking for the book, though, so order as demand dictates.<br />- Brad Hooper ©1995, American Library Association. All Rights Reserved.<br /><br />From Publisher's Weekly:<br />Codrescu, journalist, poet, NPR commentator and filmmaker, has now written an ambitious first novel based on the fantastically grotesque character of a real-life Hungarian aristocrat. The novel tells two stories: the third-person tale of 16th-century Countess Elizabeth Bathory, a magisterial, beautiful and terrifying woman who bathes in the blood of virgin girls to preserve her youth; and the first-person narrative of her distant descendant, a journalist returning to his native Hungary to confront his feelings of guilt amid the sociopolitical turmoil of post-Soviet Central Europe. Told in alternating chapters or passages, the two stories merge violently near novel's end in a scene of feverish melodrama. Europe's social, political, intellectual and religious histories are skillfully interwoven with the more slippery threads of magic and myth in this intimate account of Countess Bathory's bizarre and sadistic obsessions, resulting in a neo-gothic tale as revealing as it is disarmingly horrific. Moving forward at a quick clip against a detailed period backdrop, the language graphically depicts erotic bodily functions and acts of physical torture while drawing a rich psychological portrait of a precocious and insatiably curious girl who evolves into a figure of monstrous complexity, at once insightful and manipulative, erudite yet pathologically superstitious, part psychotic and part seeker. Finally, Elizabeth becomes pure literary symbol, a ghostly figure "from whose ashes has risen the modern world and all its horrors." That is an enormous burden for any character to bear, and Codrescu is less persuasive in connecting his journalist's interpretations to his fable-like reconstruction of Elizabeth's life. Fortunately, the bulk of the narrative concerns the blood-soaked realm of the countess, conjuring a historically rooted nightmare that is hard to resist.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4883301247675127291.post-85806754801422185942011-03-12T07:58:00.000-08:002011-03-12T07:59:16.194-08:00vampire reflexion<b><br /><b><span class="divider"></span> </b><br /></b><br /><center><img src="http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y238/ladygothic/simonevampire.gif" /></center><br /><br />"The latest slant on this myth - Vampires do not cast a reflection in a mirror because (in times past) mirrors were made by placing a thin film of silver on the back of a pane of glass. And because Vampires have an allergic reaction to silver, they can't cast a reflection in a mirror.<br /><br />Along comes the camera. One of the first ways to produce film was using a solution of silver nitrate , There's that silver again. Vampires and silver don't mix - so you can't photograph vampires.<br /><br />Now - 21st century photography is predominantly digital. So the latest slant is that you CAN photograph a Vampire PROVIDING you use a digital camera - because the process to produce the image doesn't involve silver."<br /><br /><center><table width="95%"><tbody><tr><td align="right"><br /></td></tr></tbody></table></center>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4883301247675127291.post-39197936633862051782011-03-12T07:57:00.000-08:002011-03-12T07:58:22.227-08:00Repulsive Pariah or Romantic Prince?Repulsive Pariah or Romantic Prince?<br />Transforming Monstrosity in Bram Stoker’s and Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula<br /><br />Vrunda Stampwala Sahay<br /><br />[Vrunda Stampwala Sahay is a PhD candidate at the University of California, Riverside. This article is based on a paper given at the Uses of Popular Culture Conference at the University of Rhode Island, Kingston.]<br /><br /><img src="http://i200.photobucket.com/albums/aa246/V-Empire/3c6a98f9.jpg" alt="Photobucket" border="0" /><br /><br />"We’re not just afraid of predators, we’re transfixed by them, prone to weave stories and fables and chatter endlessly about them, because fascination creates preparedness, and preparedness, survival. In a deeply tribal sense, we love our monsters." (E O Wilson, qtd in Benchley 7)<br /><br />In his introduction to the collected essays, Monster Theory: Reading Culture, Jeffrey J Cohen argues that “the monster is best understood as an embodiment of difference, a breaker of category, and a resistant Other known only through process and movement, never through dissection-table analysis” (10). Perhaps the best example of this notion of knowledge derived from observation of an animated entity fluctuating and transforming itself over time is Stoker’s Dracula. Since its publication over one hundred years ago, this tale of a notorious vampire has been through countless re-interpretations which have created an otherness that embodies society’s evolving fears about itself. As a result, Dracula is not just simply a monster, but rather a “technology of monstrosity” (Halberstam 88). One of the most important elements of this technology lies in society’s simultaneous yearning for and fear of sexual desire. A consensus exists in modern scholarship that vampirism in Dracula both expresses and distorts an originally sexual energy. That distortion, the representation of desire within the guise of monstrosity, reveals a fundamental psychological ambivalence between fear and desire. <br />Then, if we are to consider literature and film as mirrors for a culture’s belief systems while we maintain that monstrosity can be understood in a state of process, we can see a psychological and philosophical shift between the character of Dracula in Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel and that of Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 film version. Certainly, what was Stoker’s monstrous sexual predator for the late Victorian era becomes the fragmented, romanticized, and possibly redeemable Other for late twentieth-century sensibilities. Recently, Dracula has begun to receive serious critical attention from scholars who focus on late Victorian sexual, intellectual, and political tensions in this classic retelling of the vampire myth. If we take this notion into modernity and the rise of cinema, we find that many mainstream movies have gained cultural influence in that the identities and circumstances portrayed become part of popular culture. I would argue that both Stoker’s and Coppola’s versions of Dracula reflect the cultural fears or attitudes of their respective time periods where sexuality plays a powerful role in problematizing the relationship between love and carnal, violent desires that cannot be restrained.<br />I will first explore the ways in which Stoker’s text plays upon Victorian anxieties concerning physical representation, identity, and morphology to construct an Otherness embodied in Dracula whose origins are unexplainable and whose evil is irredeemable. Then, I move forward almost a hundred years and claim that cultural attitudes towards Otherness have shifted in ways represented by Coppola’s vision of Dracula. Twentieth-century culture embodies a sense of isolation and fragmentation that creates an individualism in which people see themselves as outsiders and often feel misunderstood by their society. Coppola exploits this sentiment in a film that tantalizes the viewer into a romance with Dracula, the ultimate outsider. Hence, the film version reveals the postmodern sensibility of Dracula himself as a fragmented, multi-dimensional man-beast who must sexually prey upon Lucy as an expression of his monstrosity yet deeply loves Mina as an expression of his humanity. Moreover, popular notions of true love coupled with the concept of reincarnation serve to romanticize and humanize the Otherness of Dracula thereby dispelling much of the effects of his monstrosity. Whereas Stoker’s Dracula is a thing to be abhorred, Coppola’s Dracula is a man to be admired because he’s a survivor.<br />During the 1890s when Stoker was planning and drafting Dracula, the ruling paradigm in the human sciences, in biology, psychology, and social theory, was concerned with the pathologies of natural selection -- what we might call Darwinism and its discontents -- particularly the fear of a slide back down the evolutionary chain (Glover 251). In fact, certain contemporary portraits of the degenerative condition were key referents for Stoker’s description of the vampire. This degeneration threatens the security of respectable middle-class society, precisely the world of doctors, lawyers and teachers that is under siege in the novel (Glover 257). As Jonathan Harker begins his journey to Transylvania, he immediately imbibes the eastern landscape with Otherness and this marker then extends to his understanding of Dracula himself strictly based on his physical appearance. In his first journal, Harker notes with dramatic emphasis his passage from west to east into the “wildest and least known portions of Europe” filled with “peasants” and “barbarians,” some of whom look like “some old Oriental band of brigands” who are however “very harmless and rather wanting in natural self-assertion” (Stoker 1-3). The Otherness that Harker constructs of the inhabitants of the Carpathians extends to Dracula himself as Harker provides a most unpleasant physical appearance. <br /><br />His face was a strong -- a very strong -- aquiline, with high bridge of the thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils; with lofty domed forehead, and hair growing scantily round the temples, but profusely elsewhere. His eyebrows were very massive, almost meeting over the nose, and with bushy hair that seemed to curl in its own profusion. The mouth so far as I could see it under the heavy moustache, was fixed and rather cruel looking, with peculiarly sharp white teeth; these protruded over the lips, whose remarkable ruddiness showed astonishing vitality in a man of his years…. Strange to say, there were hairs in the centre of his palm. The nails were long and fine, and cut to a sharp point. As the Count leaned over me and his hands touched me, I could not repress a shudder.... A horrible feeling of nausea came over me, which do what I would, I could not conceal. (17) <br /><br />Harker’s description of the Count resembles a hybrid of human and beast and certainly gives manifestation to the suspicions that humans can, indeed, degenerate lower on the evolutionary ladder. It is interesting to note that only those human beings who exist in the pre-modern world outside of western civilization appear to manifest this shocking quality. Hence, Stoker depicts Dracula as more creature than human being and certainly antithetical to the hairless, well groomed, and proper middle-class British gentleman that Harker represents. These physical differences immediately place Harker in a state of discomfort as he suspects that he has come to serve a barbarian. <br />Stoker then further problematizes the construction of Dracula by playing upon techniques of Victorian morphology, the science concerned with the problems of form, function and transformation in matter. In The Imperial Archive: Knowledge and the Fantasy of Empire, Thomas Richards states that “morphology put all beings on the same imperial family tree. In the heyday of Victorian morphology, there were no longer any singular beings in the universe other than those which human beings created themselves; as in Mary Shelley’s novel, the Victorian monster is made, not born” (45). Yet, Stoker disrupts this notion by creating Dracula as an organic entity that has no human maker and who Harker begins to suspect is timeless. The notion of immortality becomes a frightening possibility because while Dracula’s physical description suggests his place on the evolutionary ladder as beneath human, his longevity suggests a being superior to the English gentleman. The Count nostalgically prides himself on his noble lineage of ancestors who trace back to Attila the Hun, who “fought for lordship” and who “were a conquering race” (25). Dracula defines his family through a series of battles and invasions and Harker notes that the Count “spoke as if he had been present at them all” (26). For Dracula, the imperial family tree proves irrelevant because he alone can persevere long after generations of humans have died. Unlike humans, Dracula has the power of creation through a different type of reproduction. He does not reproduce from birth, nor from artificial means, but transforms humans through death. In effect, Lucy’s body dies, but she is reborn as an un-dead. <br />Yet, the reader is informed only of the Count’s nobility, not of the origins of his vampirism other than Van Helsing’s claim that his ancestors had “dealing with the Evil One” (200). While Van Helsing validates scientific reason, he does not underestimate the power of the supernatural. The English scientist’s use of crucifix and holy wafer mediates ideological and cultural positions: “the occult does not oppose reason and progress here, reason and progress are absorbed by the occult” (Boone 81). Moreover, Stoker’s narrative insinuates that their very reliance on scientific rationality makes the English vulnerable to Dracula’s threat. The author’s primary mouthpiece on this point is Van Helsing who argues that scientists lack an open mind since they believe that what “they can see and prove constitutes the whole of reality” (Stoker 274). Hence, Van Helsing is the only proponent of the modern world that understands the morphology at play:<br /><br />He [Dracula] is brute, and more than brute;… he can, within limitations, appear at will when, and where, and in any of the forms that are to him; he can within his range; direct the elements: the storm, the fog, the thunder; he can command all the meaner things: the rat and the owl and the bat -- the moth, and the fox, and the wolf; he can grow and become small; and he can at times vanish and come unknown. (197) <br /><br />Essentially, mutants are the height of monstrosity because they are capable of sudden and catastrophic changes in form. They were threats to the global claim of Darwinism, disrupting human order. As a result, institutional science is especially ineffectual in dealing with the supernatural. Harker becomes frustrated that “the old centuries had a power in Transylvania that even modernity cannot kill” (36). Vampirism transforms people into more bestial versions of themselves by erasing human identity and spreads like a disease, always threatening to undermine the culture that believes too uncritically in its progress (Boone 80). Hence, Stoker succeeds in creating a form of monstrosity that cannot be catalogued by science and is received by nineteenth-century century audiences as an irredeemable Other whose motivations are purely evil.<br />As Harker spends more time with the Count, he begins to alter his negative views as his host reveals western sensibilities in his tremendous admiration for England and his hope to assimilate himself into British society: “Well I know that, did I move and speak in your London, none there are who would not know me for a stranger. That is not enough for me. Here I am noble; the common people know me, and I am master. But a stranger in a strange land, he is no one” (19). Through these words, Dracula both asserts his nobility and reveals his vulnerability as a “stranger” from a pre-modern world who wishes to partake in the greatness of the west. Certainly, these words appease Harker for they pamper his sense of western superiority while veiling the vampire’s inherent evil and baseness under the guise of nobility and family lineage. This leads us to the late Victorian anxieties about identity and the fear of the Other. According to H L Malchow, the typical gothic story of the late nineteenth century “revolves around the problem of confused, vulnerable, or secret identities, fear of exposure, evil masquerading as respectability, or respectability built upon a hidden corruption” (126). Deeply impressed by the vampire’s business acumen, Harker proves quite taken with the Count and imagines that Dracula “would have made a wonderful solicitor.” Little does Harker know that the Count’s only purpose for coming to Great Britain is to instigate an act of “revenge” through reverse colonization. The “crowded streets of mighty England” (18) are filled with human blood donors that Dracula seeks to make into “my creatures, to do my bidding and to be my jackals when I want to feed” (255). Thus, under the guise of assimilation into the British Empire, the Count’s true vision is a nation of blood donors and possible legions of vampires.<br />Moreover, if the earlier gothic was often occupied with the liberation of the physical self from the unjust imprisonment and degradation, stories in the late nineteenth century frequently revolve around the preservation of one’s individual identity, the conscious self, from disintegrating internal conflict (Malchow 126). As Van Helsing points out, Dracula represents a new form of monstrosity that arises to outwit science, rationality, and Darwinism. When Dracula forces Harker to remain with him for a month, the young solicitor realizes his imprisonment with the “dread of this horrible place overpowering [me] and there is no escape” (Stoker 30). While the claustrophobia of the castle begins to diminish Harker’s mental state, what pushes him to the brink of insanity are the manifestations of monstrosity which prove inexplicable by his rational intellect. Initially, by recording his experiences in the journal in a scientific manner even while experiencing the supernatural, Harker desperately seizes the fragments of his rationality: “Let me begin with facts- bare, meagre facts, verified by books and figures, and of which there can be no doubt. I must not confuse them with experiences which will have to rest on my own observation or my memory of them” (27).<br />Harker tries to understand, order, and control his experiences by relying on reason. When he sees Dracula crawling down the castle’s steep walls “as a lizard,” the internal conflict between the rational and the supernatural begins to disintegrate Harker’s mind into tremendous turmoil and conflict. Furthermore, his encounter with the vampire sisters proves particularly disturbing because it surfaces the deep sexual desires that Harker must keep restrained as a well-mannered English gentleman. Jonathan feels in his “heart a wicked, burning desire that they would kiss me with those red lips” (33). So, immobilized by the competing imperatives of “wicked desire” and deadly fear,” Harker awaits an erotic fulfillment that entails the dissolution of the boundaries of the self. Thus, his failure to accept these experiences on their own supernatural terms means that he cannot actively comprehend them, and instead they eventually transform Harker as his conscious self slips away in a surreal state whereby an illusive reality envelopes and ravages his identity.<br />Less than one hundred years after Dracula was published, in 1992, Francis Ford Coppola released his own film version of it entitled Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Although much of the details of the original text was reproduced in visually stunning ways, Coppola transformed Dracula himself into a modern definition of Otherness by rendering a far more complex portrait of monstrosity than Stoker’s initial vision. In the late twentieth century, monstrosity becomes acceptable in popular culture when there are reasons behind it that surpass the purely one-dimensional evil of Victorian texts. In effect, Coppola’s postmodern vision delineates Dracula as a complex, multi-dimensional entity; a deeply emotional persona perched on the delicate boundary between man and beast, struggling between the incessantly carnal needs of the predator and the longing of an unrealized and possibly redeeming love. Hence, utilizing the popular myths of true love and reinforcing it with “new age” beliefs in reincarnation, Coppola’s film represents Count Dracula as a redeemable soul whose humanized Otherness dispels much of his monstrosity. <br />According to Coppola, Dracula’s origins were not monstrous; he becomes evil after he is robbed of his wife and true love Elizabeta. Unlike Stoker, Coppola shows Dracula as a human being from the beginning. His Count is actually Vlad the Impaler, who leaves Elizabeta to fight in the crusades. Elizabeta commits suicide after reading a false note that Dracula has been killed in battle. When Dracula returns to find his beloved wife dead, he renounces Christianity and becomes the immortal, un-dead vampire. So, from the onset, Coppola constructs Dracula as a tragic anti-hero whose passionate nature and thirst for true love lead him to evil. Hence, Coppola’s Dracula dramatizes a romantic version of sexuality in his obsession for romantic love. Although he retains all aspects of Otherness that Stoker initially gave him, the audience senses Dracula’s humanity precisely because he is capable of feeling love. This results in a paradigmatic shift of the notions of monstrosity. While Dracula must still be destroyed for all the same reasons as before, the sentiment regarding his annihilation shifts from relief over the destruction of evil to sadness for a lost soul redeemed by his release from monstrosity. Hence, popular culture’s faith in the fantasy of true love and romantic passion results to a certain extent in the audience’s acceptance for and forgiveness of Dracula’s monstrosity.<br />Another popular cultural belief that Coppola relies upon to construct Dracula as a sympathetic character is that of reincarnation. This notion, the belief that souls are immortal and thus reborn into new bodies after they die, derives from eastern religious tradition and has always been considered anti-Christian. Certainly, such a notion was unacceptable amidst the morphology and Darwinism of the Victorian era. Yet, in the latter part of the twentieth century, the concept of reincarnation, usually labeled as a “new age” belief, has developed into a non-religious, popular cultural phenomenon. According to a sociological study of England published in 1999, survey data indicate a substantial minority of westerners with no attachment to Eastern or New Age religion who nevertheless believe in reincarnation:<br /><br />Many of them hold reincarnation alongside Christian belief; Most are less than dogmatic about their belief and some entertain the possibility of reincarnation because of experience (first or second hand). For others reincarnation solves intellectual problems, e.g., concerning theodicy; in that they see bodily incarnations in the context of long term spiritual progress, and they value spirit over body. Their belief in reincarnation has rather little effect on the rest of their lives. It is concluded that rising belief in reincarnation heralds neither a spiritual nor a moral revolution, but fits easily into the privatized religion that characterizes contemporary western societies, and England in particular. (Walter 187)<br /> <br />Thus Coppola capitalizes on this aspect of popular culture to inform and change the original canonical text of Dracula. Mina is the reincarnation of Elizabeta in this film and Dracula travels to London not so much to colonize it for vampirism as to regain his lost love. <br />Coppola remains true to his postmodern take by countering Dracula’s relationship with Mina with that of his violence towards Lucy. Dracula must dispel his monstrosity and evil upon Lucy so that he might sustain and nourish his love for Mina. In Stoker’s original text, the representation of women and sexuality can be traced back to Victorian anxieties regarding disease, infection, and cultural invasion:<br /><br />The women represent potential for transformation; they are the place through which threats to cultural stability can enter. The metaphor of entry is a sexual one so that “Woman” must remain soul not body, a transcendent value not open to transformation- women must not become sexual. For the characters in the novel, sexual desire leads to and is mingled with horror. (Boone 83)<br /><br />Coppola himself has stated that “vampires seduce us and take us to dark places and awaken us sexually in ways that are taboo” (Coppola and Hart 136). Moreover, vampirism is constructed in opposition to purity and righteousness, and thus as a threat to society. In the beginning of the film, Sadie Frost portrays Lucy as an overtly promiscuous woman who revels in the sexual conquest of her three suitors and to a certain extent influences Mina to become sexually adventurous. While Winona Ryder’s Mina represents the purity, chastity, and propriety of the good Englishwoman, it is a state that she cannot fully sustain. In a sense, the women are inviting Dracula’s seduction when they fantasize about sexual pleasures and eventually become his mistress and wife, the vessels in which he deposits both his violent and loving tendencies (Corbin 42). <br />In both Stoker and Coppola’s visions, although more overtly in the latter, Mina and Lucy represent the complex forces at war in Dracula’s soul. In the film, Dracula tortures Harker after he discovers Mina’s photograph and recognizes her as Elizabeta. He comes to England and immediately victimizes the lustful Lucy whose aroused sexuality makes her an easy target. He ravages her in the form of a beast but is painfully ashamed when discovered in the act by Mina. In order to “protect” her, Dracula wills Mina to forget the violent sexuality she witnessed. Instead, he appears to her as an eastern prince and woos her with gentle, loving gestures. Yet, in order to satisfy the monster within, Dracula continually preys upon Lucy to unleash the raw carnality that defines much of his being. The violence toward Lucy increases as Dracula realizes that Mina will indeed marry Harker and he will lose her again. In fact, as they wed, Dracula fatally attacks Lucy in the form of a wolf thereby causing her “death” and subsequent rebirth as a vampire. Thus, in the twentieth century, even though Dracula may acquire emotions and the capacity to love, his monstrosity and propensity towards violent, evil acts cannot be obliterated. Instead of the one-dimensional evil of Stoker’s novel, Coppola’s Dracula is multi-faceted, tortured, and completely at odds with the jagged dichotomies that characterize his existence. <br />Furthermore, the Otherness constructed by Stoker in his original motive of re-colonization for the vampire’s migration to England are overshadowed in Coppola’s version by Mina’s realization of her life as Elizabeta. Even though she initially pronounces herself as “unclean, unclean” (Stoker 247), Mina realizes her love for Dracula and seeks to embrace his otherness and become like him. Waking to find Dracula in her bed, Mina says, “I’ve wanted this to happen. I know that now. I want to be with you always.” Even though she knows that he killed Lucy, Mina cannot stop loving Dracula. “I want to be what you are; see what you see; love what you love,” she says. And Dracula discloses the requirements of his love: “To walk with me you must die to your present life and be reborn into mine.” Mina accepts the conditions stating, “you are my love and my life always” to which Dracula responds, “then I give you life eternal, everlasting love, the power of the storm and the beasts of the earth. Walk with me to be my loving wife forever.” Yet, when Mina attempts to drink his blood, Dracula stops her saying, “I love you too much to condemn you.” He must accept that a union with Mina cannot occur because of his existence as a being outside of human definition or understanding. So, even in Coppola’s rather sympathetic version, monstrosity of Dracula’s magnitude must be destroyed because of its overwhelming threat to humanity. Unlike Stoker’s version where the vampire is mercilessly annihilated, Coppola offers the monster salvation through love. With Dracula’s acceptance of failure comes a desire for release from his tortured immortality. After a loving goodbye, he asks Mina to behead him. Upon doing so, she beholds his former visage: a young, handsome, man with an innocent face and a peaceful expression in death. Thus, almost a century later, the monstrous Other who disgusts and repels becomes something to be accepted and loved regardless of its faults.<br />In Dracula, Stoker diligently and systematically combined all notions of otherness as defined in physical appearance and identity in order to present a horrific picture of monstrosity. Stoker probably never imagined that some day the otherness and monstrosity that was so rejected and feared by both the greatest intellects and popular masses of his era would come to be accepted; that less than a century later, popular culture may not only look past monstrosity, but relate to and glorify it in deeply psychological ways. Certainly, there is an identification with and respect for those who rebel against the status quo. Post-modernism reveals the fragmented realities of our existence and makes us acknowledge that there are multiple layers of complexities within each human being. We all have goodness and we also retain shades of darkness within us. The Dracula of the nineteenth century was a one-dimensional being who motivations for evil were never quite clear. Yet, he became a cultural icon precisely because of the continuing love affair with predators and his longevity attests to the notion that, as Wilson contends, we truly do love our monsters. Stoker’s creation has allowed us as a society to problematize and re-interpret the notion of monstrosity. In many ways, Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula enhances the vampire’s exoticism and transcendence over time through the construction of internal complexity supported by popular notions of true love and reincarnation. As a result, a feared monster of the nineteenth century becomes a humanized, redeemable, and romantic man in the twentieth-century popular imaginationUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4883301247675127291.post-14308252736189123722011-03-12T07:56:00.001-08:002011-03-12T07:56:38.291-08:00About the Romanian vampires"Tales of vampiric entities were also found among the ancient Romans and the Romanized inhabitants of eastern Europe, Romanians (known as Vlachs in historical context). Romania is surrounded by Slavic countries, so it is not surprising that Romanian and Slavic vampires are similar.<br /><br /><center><img src="http://i200.photobucket.com/albums/aa246/V-Empire/VR/ancient_cross.jpg" alt="Photobucket" border="0" /></center><br /><br />In Romanian lore, the names for an undead vampire include:<br /><br /> * Strigoi (plural: Strigoi)<br /> * Moroi (plural: Moroii)<br /> * Varcolac (plural: Varcolaci)<br /> * Pricolic (plural: Pricolici)<br /><br />All six of these names can be used to mean an undead vampire who periodically leaves his grave to prey upon the living and returns to his grave to rest. But each term also has a special meaning.<br /><br />A person born with a caul, extra nipple, extra hair, born too early, black cat crossed the mother's path, born with a tail, born out of wedlock, one who died an unnatural death, or died before baptism, was doomed to become a vampire, as was the seventh child of the same sex in a family, the child of a pregnant woman who did not eat salt or who was looked at by a vampire or a witch. Moreover, being bitten by vampire meant certain condemnation to a vampiric existence after death.<br /><br />The vampire was usually first noticed when it attacked family and livestock, or threw things around in the house. Vampires, along with witches, were believed to be most active on the Eve of St George's Day (April 22 Julian, May 4 Gregorian calendar), the night when all forms of evil were supposed to be abroad. St George's Day is still celebrated in Europe.<br /><br />A vampire in the grave could be discerned by holes in the earth, an undecomposed corpse with a red face, or having one foot in the corner of the coffin. Living vampires were identified by distributing garlic in church and seeing who did not eat it.<br /><br />Graves were often opened three years after the death of a child, five years after the death of a young person, or seven years after the death of an adult to check for vampirism.<br /><br />Measures to prevent a person from becoming a vampire included removing the caul from a newborn and destroying it before the baby could eat any of it, careful preparation of dead bodies, including preventing animals from passing over the corpse, placing a thorny branch of wild rose in the grave, and placing garlic on windows and rubbing it on cattle, especially on St George's and St Andrew's day.<br /><br />To destroy a vampire, a stake was driven through the body, followed by decapitation and placing garlic in the mouth. By the 19th century, one would also shoot a bullet through the coffin.<br /><br />When a vampire was believed to be the cause of a plague or a disease which slowly infected its living former family or relatives, the heart, and occasionally also the liver, of the exhumed corpse were sometimes burned and the ashes of these were mixed with water. This mixture was then drunk as a medicine by those who were suffering from the disease inflicted by the vampire and others who feared that they were also victims of the vampire. Also, the people might fumigate themselves by standing in the smoke of the burning heart.<br /><br />Examples of this can be found in The Vampire in Europe by Montague Summers, mostly in the form of excerpts from the old Romanian journal of folklore, Ion Creanga. Quite the same practice occurred also in Poland and, rather oddly, New England."<br /><br />source:<br />http://vampires.monstrous.com/romanian_vampires.htmUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4883301247675127291.post-14037612997403867762011-03-12T07:54:00.000-08:002011-03-12T07:55:28.861-08:00The VampyreCompylt into Meeter<br />By James Clerk Maxwell<br />1845<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><img src="http://i200.photobucket.com/albums/aa246/V-Empire/VR/vampires.jpg" alt="Photobucket" border="0" /><br /><br /><br /><br />Thair is a knichte rydis through the wood,<br /> And a douchty knichte is hee,<br />And sure hee is on a message sent,<br /> He rydis sae hastilie.<br />Hee passit the aik, and hee passit the birk,<br /> And hee passit monie a tre,<br />Bot plesant to him was the saugh sae slim,<br /> For beneath it hee did see<br /><br /><br />The boniest ladye that ever he saw,<br /> Scho was sae schyn and fair.<br />And there scho sat, beneath the saugh,<br /> Kaiming hir gowden hair.<br />And then the knichte - "Oh ladye brichte,<br /> What chance hes broucht you here,<br />But say the word, and ye schall gang<br /> Back to your kindred dear."<br />Then up and spok the Ladye fair -<br /> "I have nae friends or kin,<br />Bot in a littel boat I live,<br /> Amidst the waves' loud din."<br />Then answered thus the douchty knichte -<br /> "I'll follow you through all,<br />For gin ye bee in a littel boat,<br /> The world to it seemis small."<br />They gaed through the wood, and through the wood<br /> To the end of the wood they came:<br />And when they came to the end of the wood<br /> They saw the salt sea faem.<br />And they they saw the wee, wee boat,<br /> That daunced on the top of the wave,<br />And first got in the ladye fair,<br /> And then the knichte sae brave;<br /><br /><br />They got into the wee, wee boat,<br /> And rowed wi' a' their micht;<br />When the knichte sae brave, he turnit about,<br /> And lookit at the ladye bricht;<br />He lookit at her bonie cheik,<br /> And hee lookit at hir twa bricht eyne,<br />Bot hir rosie cheik growe ghaistly pale,<br /> And scho seymit as scho deid had been.<br />The fause fause knichte growe pale wi frichte,<br /> And his hair rose up on end,<br />For gane-by days cam to his mynde,<br /> And his former luve he kenned.<br />Then spake the ladye, - "Thou, fause knichte,<br /> Hast done to mee much ill,<br />Thou didst forsake me long ago,<br /> Bot I am constant still;<br />For though I ligg in the woods sae cald,<br /> At rest I canna bee<br />Until I sucke the gude lyfe blude<br /> Of the man that gart me dee."<br />Hee saw hir lipps were wet wi' blude,<br /> And hee saw hir lyfelesse eyne,<br />And loud hee cry'd, "Get frae my syde,<br /> Thou vampyr corps uncleane!"<br /><br /><br />Bot no, hee is in hir magic boat,<br /> And on the wyde wyde sea;<br />And the vampyr suckis his gude lyfe blude,<br /> Sho suckis hym till hee dee.<br />So now beware, whoe're you are,<br /> That walkis in this lone wood;<br />Beware of that deceitfull spright,<br /> The ghaist that suckis the blude.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4883301247675127291.post-56546447271233075712011-03-12T07:52:00.000-08:002011-03-12T07:53:25.406-08:00Vampire case in Romania: January 2004<b><center>THE REAL VAMPIRE SLAYERS<br /><br /><br /><br />In 2004, Romanian police were called to investigate the desecration of a grave in a remote village just south of Transylvania. What they discovered there could have come straight from a Hammer Horror film. Here, renowned cannibalism expert Dr Timothy Taylor revisits the scene of the crime.</center></b><br /><br />Sunday, 28 October 2007<br /><br /><br /><br />My first trip to the Romanian province of Transylvania in 1981 was a subject of wonder to many of my friends. They assumed it to be as fictional as Anthony Hope's Ruritania, made up by Hammer Horror as a pastiche of the dark heart of Europe and shot, day-for-night, in a Forestry Commission plantation near Elstree. The reality, with Ceausescu in power and an oppressed peasantry, cocksure secret police force, rampant criminality, simmering ethnic problems, little or no food, bears, wild boar, wolves, truly vicious dogs with spiked collars of medieval design, and unspoilt mountain meadows of breathtaking beauty was... well, quite clearly another reality. I was captivated, and returned several times up until 1988, making friends, getting in fixes, and attempting to steep myself in the language and culture.<br /><br />I mention this as a preamble to an account of something that happened in a country cemetery in 2004, and my experiences interviewing those involved, because it might be easy to think that I have some mission to depict primitivism and reveal barbaric practices. In fact, what I will describe is deeply cultural and appears rough and brutal only to our insulated and sometimes rather vacuous sensibilities.<br /><br />As an archaeologist specialising in things visceral, such as human sacrifice and cannibalism, I was travelling with my anthropological colleague, Professor Kathryn Denning, and a film crew, making a documentary about the sources of Bram Stoker's iconic vampire, Count Dracula. This meant encounters with haematologists, the lawyers of convicted blood-drinking psychopaths, London Zoo's dentist (a world expert on fangs), cultists in a New York S&M club and vampire bats in Brazil. The Romanian leg of our investigation was, in part, to reveal the true "Dracula", the 15th-century warlord, Vlad the Impaler, whose name Stoker stole for his anti-hero, and partly to visit a sleepy village in the Romanian plains which had briefly been, unwillingly, in the media spotlight.<br /><br />Before telling the tale of the Toma family, from the village of Marotinu de Sus, and what was done to the corpse of Petre Toma, the head of the clan, it is worth noting a few things about vampires – what they are and are not; what vampire specialists argue about, and the universal fears and behaviours embodied in the myth and the reality.<br /><br />Folklorists agree that there was an outbreak of vampirism in Eastern Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries. Individuals committing strange and/or aggressive behaviours, from earth-eating to rape, terrorised communities. Some people later claimed to have seen the perpetrators as living corpses, continuing the same activities after their recorded deaths. The Spanish neurologist Juan Gomez-Alonso believes that a rabies outbreak caused the panic, as the disease increases sexual aggression as well as causing hydrophobia and sensitivity to light; a more esoteric theory points to the rare blood disease porphyria, which restricts sufferers to solely nocturnal activities. In any case, the scares became a mass hysteria which the church authorities, compromised by their need not to undermine belief in the possibility of actual physical resurrection, were ill-equipped to counter. At times, indeed, they joined in the disinterment and staking of the " problematic" dead.<br /><br />Fear of the dead, and of people who cannot die properly because they were not born – or did not live – is found in ' many places around the world, as are beliefs that blood is an animating force. And corpses – as every forensic pathologist knows – are not always tractable outside a climate-controlled morgue. They swell and bloat and bleed and change colour; mouths gape; teeth bare themselves; the skin recedes from fingernails and sinks in around stubble giving a semblance of continued vitality; the dead may clench their fists and, by degrees, sit up. Sometimes they even explode, a feature that requires a degree of circumspection from any stake-wielding wannabe Buffy. Perhaps because of this, there is more than one way to deal with a vampire.<br /><br />There is no agreement on the etymology of the word vampire. It may come from an old Tartar word, umpyr, meaning a witch or demon, or it may be a Slavic word meaning a nocturnal flying spirit. In any case, the Romanians prefer not to have vampires: they have enough to be getting on with with the local strigoi and moroi (two forms of undead), and the varcolak (essentially a ravening lycanthropist).<br /><br />Petre Toma died just before Christmas 2003. Often there are reasons to believe that a man, and less often a woman, is in danger of becoming a strigoi. As a child, they may have cut their upper teeth before the lower ones; or a cat may have leapt over, or a bat flown over the newly dead corpse as it was left out, under vigil, in the family kitchen. In Toma's case there were no prior signs, though neighbours' and family accounts of his life vary: a good family man, but also (hardly unusual in the rural depths) a heavy drinker with a temper. After his death, his niece suffered nightmares and appeared seriously ill. She claimed that her uncle was visiting her at night and feeding from her heart; that he was a strigoi. Toma's brother determined to act. The sequence of events was normal for Marotinu de Sus but, through a constellation of circumstances to do with urbanisation and Romania's imminent acceptance into the EU, became rapidly notorious.<br /><br />There were many newspaper reports, all equally lurid, and each with plausible features, but their information was often contradictory. So Kathryn and I were lucky to arrive in Marotinu de Sus with the Romanian social anthropologist Mihai Fifor. We were also lucky, as it turned out, that the local constabulary had instructed Petre Toma's brother not to talk to us (local TV footage, which we viewed later, depicted a very intemperate-looking man). This left us in the cemetery at the edge of the village nearly, but not quite, alone.<br /><br />Fifor proved a good guide, and we wandered through the graves, taking care not to fall into them. This was not always easy, as the form of the cemetery allows easy access to corpses. Wide cracks and gaps in concrete capstones reveal skulls and long bones spilling from broken coffins. Most graves are for couples, and some are preparatory, with the names engraved but the dead absent. The filled graves are marked by sometimes elaborate stone crosses (modelled on the posh cemeteries in town), but only ever in addition to the wooden ones, recalling Christ's, the sine qua non of proper burial. I asked Fifor why many of the graves had little hearths in front of them, with the remains of cooked food and sometimes a wine glass. "Well," he replied, "this is where the village women light fires on the three nights from Maundy Thursday – it's to give the dead some light. The dead are cold and afraid of the dark, and they are often hungry and thirsty." The dead of this cemetery are diligently cared for during the first seven years. After that, the skeleton is washed in wine and returned to become increasingly disarticulated; the soul is presumed to be in heaven, nourished by prayer.<br /><br />Even more critical than the first seven years are the first 40 days. During this period, a corpse may be an unquiet strigoi, moving in its grave and travelling at night in a not quite re-embodied form, to feed off the blood of the living. After 40 days it will morph into moroi – the actual, incarnate, walking dead, able to appear during the day and mount vicious attacks. As Fifor explained the theoretical background, we were challenged by an old fellow brandishing a very large scythe.<br /><br />There is nothing like fear and anxiety for prompting the recall of useful foreign phrases, and my rather rusty Romanian began to creak into action. My greeting allayed the swearing about foreigners and the demand that we get out of the cemetery. Ten minutes later there was a handshake, and then a long and increasingly engaged conversation. I had good malt in my pocket which, produced at an appropriate moment, extended the cultural meeting further than I had reckoned. It ended in a very wet, full-on-the-lips, kiss.<br /><br />If I had known in advance that I'd have to snog an old man in a cemetery, I probably could not have imagined a more decent partner than Niculae Pedescu – at 76 or 78 years old (he's not sure) he had the steady eye of a man who has learnt enough to not care about anything other than the truth. He had been present at more than one event where strigoi were dealt with. He had not been at Toma's grave in 2003, but the proceedings had apparently gone to form, at least at first.<br /><br />After the niece became ill, he said, Petre's brother had had to wait, because he could not act within the 12 days of Christmas. On 8 January, the corpse was checked and deemed to be a strigoi. At midnight the next day, six men disinterred it and cut open the chest. I asked Niculae what they used for this and he looked at me as if I was mad, before brandishing his scythe again. Apparently, the chest was cut crosswise with a scythe tip, and the heart removed through the ribcage. Again, I asked what tools had been used. This time we needed help to interpret the words and gestures. It was with a growing image of James Whale's 1931 classic Frankenstein that I understood Fifor to say, as neutrally as possible, "He says it was with a pitchfork. Yes." The subsequent description failed utterly to dispel my horror-film image. The men took the heart, spiked aloft, to the crossroads outside the village. There they roasted it over a brazier and, as far as I could understand, stuffed glowing coals into the ventricles. Held up in the night sky, the heart shed charred flakes that were caught in a tea towel. These were taken to the niece's house, ground up and mixed in a glass of water. "The niece drank it," Fifor confirmed, "and in the morning she said she felt better... in this way she was cured."<br /><br />None of this would have come to public attention had it not been for a family rift. One of Toma's daughters, who had married an urbanite, was outraged. She alerted the police who dug Toma up again in full view of the public and media. His body was examined in a procedure one would be hard-pushed to call forensic. Although in village terms, this was desecration, that was what the court found Toma's brother guilty of, and he received a prison sentence. It was only through the intervention of Fifor, who was able to articulate the logic of peasant traditions, that this was commuted, although not quashed.<br /><br />After Niculae left with his trophy from Scotland, Kathryn and I wandered in the cemetery while the crew took pictures. We met two women, one quite old, and one so old that she was blind and scared of us. She seemed to think that Kathryn was some kind of visiting angel. She and Kathryn drifted off leaving me with the other woman, who told me about how her husband had himself been in danger of becoming a strigoi. Tending his grave with drink and flowers, she chatted to him in a three-way conversation, deferring to him on particular facts. As a child, he had suckled his mother while she slept, and the mother had therefore told her daughter-in-law, my collocutor, to be sure to put a silver needle through his heart when he died. He had made her promise to do this to allow him peaceful rest, and she confirmed to me that she had done so. Her matter-of-factness no longer surprised me, but I was taken aback when she asked me whether I would like to go with her and " make pee-pee" behind the graves. The twinkle in her eye and a taunting laugh at the dead man interred under a few inches of mould beneath us left me in no doubt that this was a come-on.<br /><br />In England, before we set out, I'd had a T-shirt made for Kathryn which I thought might be a fun thing to use when we were filming; in the end, the sentiment did not suit the breezy format of the Real Vampires show. The slogan read: Iar umbra fetei stravezii/ E alba ca de ceara-/ Un mort frumos cu ochii vii/ Ce scînteie-n afara. The words are from "Lucifer", one of the greatest poems of Mihai Eminescu, and mean something like: " His shadowed and translucent gaze/ Is white as candle wax/ A handsome corpse with living eyes/ Flickering like hot embers". The events in Marotinu de Sus, and the things that were said to me in the cemetery, were unforgettably lively and vital. There was no denial of death in the eyes of the old people tending the dead. But sadness was leavened with wit and gallows-humour. And above and behind all that, there was a sure sense of the art of living as souls within wayward bodies. *<br /><br />Dr Timothy Taylor is reader in archaeology at the University of Bradford.<br /><br />http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/the-real-vampire-slayers-397874.htmlUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0