Dracula

by Bram Stoker

As he spoke he smiled, and the lamplight fell on a hard-looking mouth, with very red lips and sharp-looking teeth, as white as ivory. One of my companions whispered to another the line from Burger’s “Lenore”. “Denn die Todten reiten Schnell.” (“For the dead travel fast.”)

Within, stood a tall old man, clean shaven save for a long white moustache, and clad in black from head to foot, without a single speck of colour about him anywhere.

“Welcome to my house! Enter freely. Go safely, and leave something of the happiness you bring!”

The light and warmth and the Count’s courteous welcome seemed to have dissipated all my doubts and fears.

What meant the giving of the crucifix, of the garlic, of the wild rose, of the mountain ash?

But my very feelings changed to repulsion and terror when I saw the whole man slowly emerge from the window and begin to crawl down the castle wall over the dreadful abyss, face down with his cloak spreading out around him like great wings.

25 June.--No man knows till he has suffered from the night how sweet and dear to his heart and eye the morning can be.

For life be, after all, only a waitin’ for somethin’ else than what we’re doin’, and death be all that we can rightly depend on.

Ah, it is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all, and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing to explain.