



Carmilla

by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

Copyright 1872


Contents

 PROLOGUE
 CHAPTER I. An Early Fright
 CHAPTER II. A Guest
 CHAPTER III. We Compare Notes
 CHAPTER IV. Her Habits—A Saunter
 CHAPTER V. A Wonderful Likeness
 CHAPTER VI. A Very Strange Agony
 CHAPTER VII. Descending
 CHAPTER VIII. Search
 CHAPTER IX. The Doctor
 CHAPTER X. Bereaved
 CHAPTER XI. The Story
 CHAPTER XII. A Petition
 CHAPTER XIII. The Woodman
 CHAPTER XIV. The Meeting
 CHAPTER XV. Ordeal and Execution
 CHAPTER XVI. Conclusion




PROLOGUE


Upon a paper attached to the Narrative which follows, Doctor Hesselius
has written a rather elaborate note, which he accompanies with a
reference to his Essay on the strange subject which the MS.
illuminates. This mysterious subject he treats, in that Essay, with his usual
learning and acumen, and with remarkable directness and condensation. It will form but one volume of the series of that extraordinary man’s
collected papers. As I publish the case, in this volume, simply to interest the “laity,”
I shall forestall the intelligent lady, who relates it, in nothing; and
after due consideration, I have determined, therefore, to abstain from
presenting any précis of the learned Doctor’s reasoning, or extract
from his statement on a subject which he describes as “involving, not
improbably, some of the profoundest arcana of our dual existence, and
its intermediates.”

I was anxious on discovering this paper, to reopen the correspondence
commenced by Doctor Hesselius, so many years before, with a person so
clever and careful as his informant seems to have been. Much to my
regret, however, I found that she had died in the interval. She, probably, could have added little to the Narrative which she
communicates in the following pages, with, so far as I can pronounce,
such conscientious particularity. I. An Early Fright


In Styria, we, though by no means magnificent people, inhabit a castle,
or schloss. A small income, in that part of the world, goes a great
way. Eight or nine hundred a year does wonders. Scantily enough ours
would have answered among wealthy people at home. My father is English,
and I bear an English name, although I never saw England. But here, in
this lonely and primitive place, where everything is so marvelously
cheap, I really don’t see how ever so much more money would at all
materially add to our comforts, or even luxuries. My father was in the Austrian service, and retired upon a pension and
his patrimony, and purchased this feudal residence, and the small
estate on which it stands, a bargain. Nothing can be more picturesque or solitary. It stands on a slight
eminence in a forest. The road, very old and narrow, passes in front of
its drawbridge, never raised in my time, and its moat, stocked with
perch, and sailed over by many swans, and floating on its surface white
fleets of water lilies. Over all this the schloss shows its many-windowed front; its towers,
and its Gothic chapel. The forest opens in an irregular and very picturesque glade before its
gate, and at the right a steep Gothic bridge carries the road over a
stream that winds in deep shadow through the wood. I have said that
this is a very lonely place. Judge whether I say truth. Looking from
the hall door towards the road, the forest in which our castle stands
extends fifteen miles to the right, and twelve to the left. The nearest
inhabited village is about seven of your English miles to the left. The
nearest inhabited schloss of any historic associations, is that of old
General Spielsdorf, nearly twenty miles away to the right. I have said “the nearest _inhabited_ village,” because there is, only
three miles westward, that is to say in the direction of General
Spielsdorf’s schloss, a ruined village, with its quaint little church,
now roofless, in the aisle of which are the moldering tombs of the
proud family of Karnstein, now extinct, who once owned the equally
desolate chateau which, in the thick of the forest, overlooks the
silent ruins of the town. Respecting the cause of the desertion of this striking and melancholy
spot, there is a legend which I shall relate to you another time. I must tell you now, how very small is the party who constitute the
inhabitants of our castle. I don’t include servants, or those
dependents who occupy rooms in the buildings attached to the schloss. Listen, and wonder! My father, who is the kindest man on earth, but
growing old; and I, at the date of my story, only nineteen. Eight years
have passed since then. I and my father constituted the family at the schloss. My mother, a
Styrian lady, died in my infancy, but I had a good-natured governess,
who had been with me from, I might almost say, my infancy. I could not
remember the time when her fat, benignant face was not a familiar
picture in my memory. This was Madame Perrodon, a native of Berne, whose care and good nature
now in part supplied to me the loss of my mother, whom I do not even
remember, so early I lost her. She made a third at our little dinner
party. There was a fourth, Mademoiselle De Lafontaine, a lady such as
you term, I believe, a “finishing governess.” She spoke French and
German, Madame Perrodon French and broken English, to which my father
and I added English, which, partly to prevent its becoming a lost
language among us, and partly from patriotic motives, we spoke every
day. The consequence was a Babel, at which strangers used to laugh, and
which I shall make no attempt to reproduce in this narrative. And there
were two or three young lady friends besides, pretty nearly of my own
age, who were occasional visitors, for longer or shorter terms; and
these visits I sometimes returned. These were our regular social resources; but of course there were
chance visits from “neighbors” of only five or six leagues distance. My
life was, notwithstanding, rather a solitary one, I can assure you. My gouvernantes had just so much control over me as you might
conjecture such sage persons would have in the case of a rather spoiled
girl, whose only parent allowed her pretty nearly her own way in
everything. The first occurrence in my existence, which produced a terrible
impression upon my mind, which, in fact, never has been effaced, was
one of the very earliest incidents of my life which I can recollect. Some people will think it so trifling that it should not be recorded
here. You will see, however, by-and-by, why I mention it. The nursery,
as it was called, though I had it all to myself, was a large room in
the upper story of the castle, with a steep oak roof. I can’t have been
more than six years old, when one night I awoke, and looking round the
room from my bed, failed to see the nursery maid. Neither was my nurse
there; and I thought myself alone.