The Project Gutenberg EBook of Carmilla, by J. Sheridan LeFanu

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Title: Carmilla

Author: J. Sheridan LeFanu

Release Date: November 7, 2003 [EBook #10007]
[Date last updated: December 1, 2004]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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CARMILLA

J. Sheridan LeFanu

1872

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 precis 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 m