Dracula's Guest: A Connoisseur's Collection of Victorian Vampire Stories (12 page)

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 nightwanderer, 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 awakening, 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 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 battlefield. 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 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.

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 being 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 sumptuous 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, and his grief be proportionately increased. At his earnest request, the stranger consented to stay seven days, 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 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. 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!”

Théophile Gautier

(1811–1872)

A
MAN ADMIRED BY
writers as diverse as Oscar Wilde and the brothers Goncourt, Théophile Gautier was, in the words of fellow critic Albert de La Fizelière, “the most authoritative and popular writer in the field of art criticism.” He knew everyone from Balzac to Ingres; Baudelaire dedicated
Les Fleurs du Mal
to him. Friendly but opinionated, an enemy of bourgeois thinking in every category, Gautier was larger-than-life. He wore flowing capes with hats that were worthy of them and once notoriously wore a shocking red vest to the premiere of a drama by his friend Victor Hugo.

Lucky Parisian artists might find themselves invited to Gautier’s Thursday-night soirees, where he lounged on cushions, stroked his purring cats, and smoked a hookah. One of his portraits by the now legendary photographer Nadar shows a bearded, long-haired Gautier leaning against a bureau, managing to radiate insouciant authority even while gazing off into space in a studied artsy pose. He supported himself with journalism, writing especially as a theater critic for
La Presse
and
Le Figaro
and other periodicals, and only gradually developed his influential career as an art critic. He was one of the first critics to recognize talent in Édouard Manet and became an important promoter of the Impressionists. Nowadays, when his books are read at all, commentators seem to admire his stylish, cultured travel memoirs as much as anything else.

Gautier’s own fiction, influenced especially by E. T. A. Hoffmann, the German master of the grotesque, often leaned toward the aberrant and supernatural. He published “La morte amoureuse” in 1843, early in his career. When the French critic F. C. de Sumichrast published his translation of the story in 1900, as part of his ongoing translation of Gautier’s collected works, he chose simply to title it “The Vampire.” Such a title wouldn’t narrow it down much within these pages, so here it has one closer to the original. Gautier has a great deal of irreverent fun with his narrator, who fears women more than he fears vampires.

The Deathly Lover

Y
OU ASK ME, BROTHER,
if I have ever loved. I have. It is a strange story, and though I am sixty, I scarce venture to stir the ashes of that remembrance. I mean to refuse you nothing, but to no soul less tried than yours would I tell the story. The events are so strange that I can hardly believe they did happen. I was for more than three years the plaything of a singular and diabolical illusion. I, a poor priest, I led in my dreams every night—God grant they were dreams only!—the life of the damned, the life of the worldly, the life of Sardanapalus. A single glance, too full of approval, cast upon a woman, nearly cost me the loss of my soul. But at last, by the help of God and of my holy patron, I was able to drive away the evil spirit which had possessed me. My life was complicated by an entirely different nocturnal life. During the day I was a priest of God, chaste, busied with prayers and holy things; at night, as soon as I had closed my eyes, I became a young nobleman, a connoisseur of women, of horses and dogs, gambling, drinking, and cursing, and when at dawn I awoke, it seemed to me rather that I was going to sleep and dreaming of being a priest. Of that somnambulistic life there have remained in my remembrance things and words I cannot put away, and although I have never left the walls of my presbytery, you will be apt to think, on hearing me, that I am a man who, having worn out everything and having given up the world and entered religion, means to end in the bosom of God days too greatly agitated, rather than a humble student in a seminary, who has grown old in a forgotten parish in the depths of a forest, and who has never had anything to do with the things of the day.

Yes, I have loved, as no one on earth ever loved, with an insensate and furious love, so violent that I wonder it did not break my heart. Ah! what nights what nights I have had! From my youngest childhood I felt the vocation to the priesthood and all my studies were therefore bent in that direction. My life until the age of twenty-four was nothing but one long novitiate. Having finished my theological studies, I passed successfully through the minor orders, and my superiors considered me worthy, in spite of my youth, of crossing the last dread limit. The day of my ordination was fixed for Easter week. I had never gone into the world. The world, to me, lay within the walls of the college and of the seminary. I knew vaguely that there was something called a woman, but my thoughts never dwelt upon it; I was utterly innocent. I saw my old, infirm mother but twice a year; she was the only connection I had with the outer world. I regretted nothing; I felt not the least hesitation in the presence of the irrevocable engagement I was about to enter into; nay, I was joyous and full of impatience. Never did a young bridegroom count the hours with more feverish ardour. I could not sleep; I dreamed that I was saying Mass; I saw nothing more glorious in the world than to be a priest. I would have refused, had I been offered a kingdom, to be a king or a poet instead, for my ambition conceived nothing finer.

What I am telling you is to show you that what happened to me ought not to have happened, and that I was the victim of the most inexplicable fascination.

The great day having come, I walked to the church with so light a step that it seemed to me that I was borne in the air, or that I had wings on my shoulders; I thought myself an angel, and I was amazed at the sombre and preoccupied expression of my companions,—for there were several of us. I had spent the night in prayer, and was in a state bordering on ecstasy. The bishop, a venerable old man, seemed to me like God the Father bending from eternity, and I beheld the heavens through the vault of the dome.

You are acquainted with the details of the ceremony: the benediction, the Communion in both kinds, the anointing of the palms of the hands with the oil of the catechumens, and finally the sacred sacrifice offered in conjunction with the bishop. I will not dwell on these things. Oh! how right was Job, “Imprudent is he who has not made a covenant with his eyes”! I happened to raise my head, which until then I had kept bent down, and I saw before me, so close that I might have touched her, although in reality she was a long way off, on the other side of the railing, a young woman of wondrous beauty dressed with regal magnificence. It was as though scales had fallen from my eyes. I felt like a blind man suddenly recovering his sight. The bishop, so radiant but now, was suddenly dimmed, the flame of the tapers on their golden candlesticks turned pale like stars in the morning light, and the whole church was shrouded in deep obscurity. The lovely creature stood out against this shadow like an angelic revelation. She seemed illumined from within, and to give forth light rather than to receive it. I cast down my eyes, determined not to look up again, so as to avoid the influence of external objects, for I was becoming more and more inattentive and I scarcely knew what I was about. Yet a moment later I opened my eyes again, for through my eyelids I saw her dazzling with the prismatic colours in a radiant penumbra, just as when one has gazed upon the sun.

Oh, how beautiful she was! The greatest painters had never approached this fabulous reality, even when, pursuing ideal beauty in the heavens, they brought back to earth the divine portrait of the Madonna. Neither the verse of the poet nor the palette of the painter can give you an idea of her. She was rather tall, with the figure and the port of a goddess. Her hair, of a pale gold, was parted on her brow and flowed down her temples like two golden streams; she looked like a crowned queen. Her forehead, of a bluish whiteness, spread out broad and serene over the almost brown eyebrows, a singularity which added to the effect of the sea-green eyes, the brilliancy and fire of which were unbearable. Oh, what eyes! With one flash they settled a man’s fate. They were filled with a life, a limpidity, an ardour, a moist glow, which I have never seen in any other human eyes. From them flashed glances like arrows, which I distinctly saw striking my heart. I know not whether the flame that illumined them came from heaven or hell, but undoubtedly it came from one or the other place. That woman was an angel or a demon, perhaps both. She certainly did not come from the womb of Eve, our common mother. Teeth of the loveliest pearl sparkled through her rosy smile, and little dimples marked each inflection of her mouth in the rosy satin of her adorable cheeks. As to her nose, it was of regal delicacy and pride, and betrayed the noblest origin. An agate polish played upon the smooth, lustrous skin of her half-uncovered shoulders, and strings of great fair pearls, almost similar in tone to her neck, fell upon her bosom. From time to time she drew up her head with the undulating movement of an adder or of a peacock, and made the tall embroidered ruff that surrounded her like a silver trellis tremble slightly. She wore a dress of orange-red velvet, and out of the broad, ermine-lined sleeves issued wondrously delicate patrician hands, with long, plump fingers, so ideally transparent that the light passed through them as through the fingers of Dawn.

All these details are still as vivid to me as if I had seen her but yesterday, and although I was a prey to the greatest agitation, nothing escaped me; the faintest tint, the smallest dark spot on the corner of the chin, the scarcely perceptible down at the corners of the lips, the velvety brow, the trembling shadow of the eyelashes on her cheeks,—I noted all with astonishing lucidity.

As I gazed at her, I felt open within me doors hitherto fast-closed; passages obstructed until now were cleared away in every direction and revealed unsuspected prospects; life appeared in a new guise; I had just been born into a new order of ideas. Frightful anguish clutched my heart, and every minute that passed seemed to me a second and an age. Yet the ceremony was proceeding, and I was being carried farther from the world, the entrance to which was fiercely besieged by my nascent desires. I said “Yes,” however, when I meant to say “no,” when everything in me was revolting and protesting against the violence my vow was doing to my will. An occult force dragged the words from my mouth in spite of myself.

It is perhaps just what so many young girls do when they go to the altar with a firm resolve to boldly refuse the husband forced upon them. Not one carries out her intention. It is no doubt the same thing which makes so many poor novices take the veil, although they are quite determined to tear it to pieces at the moment of speaking their vows. No one dares to cause such a scandal before everybody, nor to deceive the expectations of so many present. The numerous wills, the numerous glances, seem to weigh down on one like a leaden cloak. And then, every precaution is so carefully taken, everything is so well settled beforehand in a fashion so evidently irrevocable that thought yields to the weight of fact and completely gives way.

The expression of the fair unknown changed as the ceremony progressed. Her glance, tender and caressing at first, became disdainful and dissatisfied as if to reproach me with dullness of perception. I made an effort, mighty enough to have overthrown a mountain, to cry out that I would not be a priest, but I could not manage it; my tongue clove to the roof of my mouth and it was impossible for me to express my will by the smallest negative sign. I was, although wide-awake, in a state similar to that of nightmare, when one seeks to call out a word on which one’s life depends, and yet is unable to do so.

She seemed to understand the martyrdom I was suffering, and as if to encourage me, she cast upon me a look full of divine promise. Her eyes were a poem, her every glance was a canto; she was saying to me, “If you will come with me, I will make you more happy than God Himself in Paradise. The angels will be jealous of you. Tear away the funeral shroud in which you are about to wrap yourself. I am beauty and youth and love; come to me, and together we shall be Love. What can Jehovah offer you in compensation? Our life shall pass like a dream, and will be but one eternal kiss. Pour out the wine in that cup and you are free. We will go away to unknown isles and you shall sleep on my bosom on a bed of massive gold under a pavilion of silver. For I love you and mean to take you from your God, before whom so many youthful hearts pour out floods of love that never reach Him.”

It seemed to me that I heard these words on a rhythm of infinite sweetness, for her glance was almost sonorous, and the phrases her eyes sent me sounded within my heart as if invisible lips had breathed them. I felt myself ready to renounce God, but my hand was mechanically accomplishing the formalities of the ceremony. The beauty cast upon me a second glance so beseeching, so despairing that sharp blades pierced my heart, and I felt more swords enter my breast than did the Mother of Sorrows.