"And you saw vampires there?"
"Illyria, you must know, is the historic ground of vampires like Hungary, Servia and Poland."
"No, I did not know.... I do not know anything. Where were the vampires you saw?"
"At Spalatro. I was lodging with a good man of sixty-two. He died. Three days after his burial, he appeared to his son, in the night, and asked for something to eat: the son gave him all he wanted; he ate it, and then vanished. The next day the son told me what had happened, telling me he felt certain his father would not return once only, and asking me to place myself, the following night, at a window to see him enter and go out. I was very anxious to see a vampire. I stood at the window, but that night he did not come. The son then told me, fearing lest I should be discouraged, that he would probably come on the following night. On the following night I placed myself again at my window, and sure enough, towards midnight, the old man appeared, and I recognised him perfectly. He came from the direction of the cemetery; he walked at a brisk pace, but his steps made no sound. When he reached the door, he knocked; I counted three raps: the knocks sounded hard on the oak, as though it were struck with a bone and not with a finger. The son opened the door and the old man entered...."
I listened to this story with the greatest attention, and I began to prefer the intervals to the melodrama.
"My curiosity was too highly excited for me to leave my window," continued my neighbour; "there I stayed. Half an hour later, the old man came out; he returned whence he had come—that is to say, in the direction of the cemetery. He disappeared round the corner of a wall. At the same moment, almost, my door opened. I turned round quickly and saw the son. He was very pale. 'Well,' I said,'so your father came?' 'Yes ... did you see him enter?' 'Enter and come out.... What did he do to-day?' 'He asked me for food and drink, as he did the other day.' 'And did he eat and drink?' 'He ate and drank.... But that is not all ... this is what troubles me. He said to me ...' 'Ah!' he said something else than a mere request for food and drink?' 'Yes, he said to me, "This is the second time I have come and eaten with thee. It is now thy turn to come and eat with me."' 'The devil!...' 'I am to expect him the same hour the day after to-morrow.' 'The deuce you are!' 'Yes, yes, that is just what worries me.' The day but one after, he was found dead in his bed! The same day two or three other people in the same village who had also seen the old man, and to whom he had spoken, fell ill and died too. It was then recognised that the old man was a vampire. I was questioned; I told all I had seen and heard. Justice demanded an examination of the graveyard. They opened the tombs of all those who had died during the previous six weeks: every corpse was in a state of decomposition. But when they came to Kisilowa's tomb—that was the old man's name—they found him with his eyes open, his lips red, his lungs breathing properly, although he was as rigid as if in death. They drove a stake through his heart; he uttered a loud cry and blood gushed out from his mouth: then they laid him on a stack of wood, reduced him to ashes and scattered the ashes to the four winds.... I left the country soon after. I never heard if his son turned into a vampire too."
"Why should he have become a vampire too?" I asked.
"Ah! because it is the custom of those who die from a vampire's bite to become vampires."
"Really, you say this as though it were a known fact."
"But indeed it is a known, registered and well established fact! Do you doubt it?... Read Don Calmet's Traité des apparitions, vol ii. pp. 41 et sqq.; you will find a record signed by the hadnagi Barriavar and the ancient heïduques; further by Battiw, first lieutenant of the regiment of Alexander of Wurtemberg; by Clercktinger, surgeon-major of the Fürstenberg regiment; by three other surgeons of the company and by Goltchitz, captain at Slottats, stating that in the year 1730, a month after the death of a certain heïduque, who lived in Medreiga, named Arnold-Paul, who had been crushed by the fall of a hay waggon, four people died suddenly, and, from the nature of their death, according to the traditions of the country, it was evident that they had been the victims of vampirism; they then called to mind that, during his life, this Arnold-Paul had often related how, in the neighbourhood of Cossova, on the Turko-Servian frontier, he had been worried by a Turkish vampire,—for they too hold the belief that those who have been passive vampires during their lives become active vampires after their death,—but that he had found a cure in the eating of earth from the vampire's grave, and in rubbing himself with its blood— precautions which did not prevent him from becoming a vampire after his death; for, four persons having died, they thought the deed was due to him, and they exhumed his body forty days after his burial: he was quite recognisable, and his body bore the colour of life; his hair, his nails and his beard had grown; his veins were filled with a bloody fluid, which exuded from all parts of his body upon the shroud in which he was wrapped round: the hadnagi, or bailiff of the place, in the presence of those who performed the act of exhumation, and who was a man experienced in cases of vampirism, caused a very sharp stake to be driven through the heart of the said Arnold-Paul, after the usual custom, piercing his body through and through, a frightful cry escaping from his lips, as though he were alive; this act accomplished, they cut off his head, burned him to ashes, and did the same with the corpses of the four or five other victims of vampirism, lest they, in their turn, should cause the deaths of others; but none of these precautions prevented the same wonders from being renewed, five years later, about the year 1735, when seventeen people, belonging to the same village, died from vampirism, some without any previous illness, others after having languished two or three days; among others a young person, named Stranoska, daughter of the heïduque Jeronitzo, went to bed in perfect health, waked up in the middle of the night, trembling all over, uttering fearful shrieks, and saying that the son of the heïduque Millo, who had died nine weeks before, had tried to strangle her during her sleep; she languished from that instant, and died in three days' time: since what she had said of the son of Millo led them to suspect him of being a vampire, they exhumed him, and found him in a state which left no doubt of the fact of vampirism; they discovered, in short, after prolonged investigation, that the defunct Arnold-Paul had not only killed the four persons already referred to, but also many animals, of which fresh vampires, and particularly Millo's son, had eaten; on this evidence, they decided to disinter all who had died since a certain date, and among about forty corpses they discovered seventeen which bore evident signs of vampirism; so they pierced their hearts, cut off their heads, then burnt them and threw their bodies into the river."