Carmilla

J. Sheridan LeFanu

Copyright 1872

Upon a paper attached to the Narrative which follows,Doctor Hesselius has written a rather elaborate note, whichhe accompanies with a reference to his Essay on the strangesubject which the MS. illuminates.

This mysterious subject he treats, in that Essay, with hisusual learning and acumen, and with remarkable directnessand condensation. It will form but one volume of the seriesof that extraordinary man's collected papers.

As I publish the case, in this volume, simply to interest the"laity," I shall forestall the intelligent lady, who relates it, innothing; and after due consideration, I have determined,therefore, to abstain from presenting any précis of the learnedDoctor's reasoning, or extract from his statement on a subjectwhich he describes as "involving, not improbably, some of theprofoundest arcana of our dual existence, and its intermediates."

I was anxious on discovering this paper, to reopen thecorrespondence commenced by Doctor Hesselius, so many yearsbefore, with a person so clever and careful as his informantseems to have been. Much to my regret, however, I found thatshe had died in the interval.

She, probably, could have added little to the Narrativewhich she communicates in the following pages, with, so faras I can pronounce, such conscientious particularity.

I

An Early Fright

In Styria, we, though by no means magnificent people,inhabit a castle, or schloss. A small income, in thatpart of the world, goes a great way. Eight or ninehundred a year does wonders. Scantily enough ourswould have answered among wealthy people at home.My father is English, and I bear an English name,although I never saw England. But here, in this lonelyand primitive place, where everything is so marvelouslycheap, I really don't see how ever so much more moneywould at all materially add to our comforts, or evenluxuries.

My father was in the Austrian service, and retiredupon a pension and his patrimony, and purchased thisfeudal residence, and the small estate on which itstands, a bargain.

Nothing can be more picturesque or solitary. Itstands on a slight eminence in a forest. The road, veryold and narrow, passes in front of its drawbridge, neverraised in my time, and its moat, stocked with perch,and sailed over by many swans, and floating on itssurface white fleets of water lilies.

Over all this the schloss shows its many-windowedfront; its towers, and its Gothic chapel.

The forest opens in an irregular and very picturesqueglade before its gate, and at the right a steep Gothicbridge carries the road over a stream that winds in deepshadow through the wood. I have said that this is avery lonely place. Judge whether I say truth. Lookingfrom the hall door towards the road, the forest in whichour castle stands extends fifteen miles to the right, andtwelve to the left. The nearest inhabited village is aboutseven of your English miles to the left. The nearestinhabited schloss of any historic associations, is thatof old General Spielsdorf, nearly twenty miles away tothe right.

I have said "the nearest inhabited village," becausethere is, only three miles westward, that is to say in thedirection of General Spielsdorf's schloss, a ruined village,

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