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002 - The Cruel Painter Part 2 · Six Stories

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  Speaker 1: Section two of six Stories by George mac Donald. This
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  Speaker 1: is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the
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  Speaker 1: public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit
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  Speaker 1: LibriVox dot org. Recording by Bruce Peirie. Six Stories by
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  Speaker 1: George mac Donald, Section two, The Cruel Painter, Part two.
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  Speaker 1: I must now interrupt the course of my story to
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  Speaker 1: introduce another element. A few years before the period of
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  Speaker 1: my tale, a certain shoemaker of the city had died
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  Speaker 1: under circumstances more than suggestive of suicide. He was buried, however,
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  Speaker 1: with such precautions that six weeks elapsed before the rumor
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  Speaker 1: of the facts broke out, upon which rumor not before
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  Speaker 1: the most fearful reports began to be circulated, supported by
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  Speaker 1: what seemed to the people of Prague incontestable evidence. A
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  Speaker 1: spectrum of the deceased appeared to multitudes of persons, playing
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  Speaker 1: horrible pranks and occasioning indescribable consternation throughout the whole town.
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  Speaker 1: This went on till at last, about eight months after
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  Speaker 1: his burial, the magistrates caused his body to be dug
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  Speaker 1: up when it was found in just the condition of
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  Speaker 1: the bodies of those who in the eastern countries of
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  Speaker 1: Europe are called vampires. They buried the corpse under the gallows,
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  Speaker 1: but neither the digging up nor the reburying were of
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  Speaker 1: a veil. To banish the specter again, the spade and
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  Speaker 1: pickaxe were set to work, and the dead man being
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  Speaker 1: found considerably improved in condition, since his last interment was
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  Speaker 1: with various horrible indignities, burnt to ashes, after which the
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  Speaker 1: spectrum was never seen more. And a second epidemic of
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  Speaker 1: the same nature had broken out a little before the
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  Speaker 1: period to which I have brought my story. About midnight,
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  Speaker 1: after a calm, frosty day, for it was now winter,
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  Speaker 1: a terrible storm of wind and snow oh came on.
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  Speaker 1: The tempest howled frightfully about the house of the painter,
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  Speaker 1: and Vulcan Licht found some solace and listening to the uproar,
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  Speaker 1: for his troubled thoughts would not allow him to sleep.
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  Speaker 1: It raged on all the next three days, till about
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  Speaker 1: noon on the fourth day, when it suddenly fell and
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  Speaker 1: all was calm. The following night, Vulcanlcht, lying awake, heard
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  Speaker 1: unaccountable noises in the next house, as of things thrown about,
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  Speaker 1: of kicking and fighting horses, and of opening and shutting gates.
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  Speaker 1: Flinging wide his lattice and looking out, the noise of
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  Speaker 1: howling dogs came to him from every quarter of the town.
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  Speaker 1: The moon was bright and the air was still. In
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  Speaker 1: a little while, he heard the sounds of a horse
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  Speaker 1: going at full gallop round the house, so that it
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  Speaker 1: shook as if it would fall, and flashes of light
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  Speaker 1: shone into his room. How much of this may have
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  Speaker 1: been owing to the effect of the drug on poor
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  Speaker 1: Lutkin's brain, I leave my readers to determine. But when
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  Speaker 1: the family met at breakfast in the morning, Teufelsburst, who
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  Speaker 1: had been already out of doors, reported that he had
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  Speaker 1: found the marks of strange feet in the snow all
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  Speaker 1: about the house and through the garden at the back,
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  Speaker 1: stating as his belief that the tracks must be continued
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  Speaker 1: over the roofs, for there was no passage otherwise. There
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  Speaker 1: was a wicked gleam in his eye as he spoke,
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  Speaker 1: and Lilith believed that he was only trying an experiment
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  Speaker 1: on Karl's nerves. He persisted that he had never seen
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  Speaker 1: any footprints of the sort before Carl informed him of
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  Speaker 1: his experiences during the night, upon which Teufelsbuerst looked a
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  Speaker 1: little graver still, and proceeded to tell them that the storm,
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  Speaker 1: whose snow was still covering the ground, had arisen the
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  Speaker 1: very moment that their next door neighbor died, and had
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  Speaker 1: ceased as suddenly the moment he was buried, though it
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  Speaker 1: had raved furiously all the time of the funeral, so
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  Speaker 1: that it made men's bodies quake and their teeth chatter
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  Speaker 1: in their heads. Karl had heard that the man, whose
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  Speaker 1: name was John Coons was dead and buried. He knew
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  Speaker 1: that he had been a very wealthy and therefore most
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  Speaker 1: respectable alderman of the town, that he had been very
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  Speaker 1: fond of horses, and that he had died in consequence
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  Speaker 1: of a kick received from one of his own as
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  Speaker 1: he was looking at his hoof. But he had not
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  Speaker 1: heard that just before he died, a black cat opened
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  Speaker 1: the casement with her nails, ran to his bed, and
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  Speaker 1: violently scratched his face and the bolster, as if she
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  Speaker 1: endeavored by force to remove him out of the place
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  Speaker 1: where he lay. But the cat afterwards was suddenly gone,
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  Speaker 1: and she was no sooner gone. But he breathed his last,
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  Speaker 1: so said Teufelsburst, as the reporter of the town talk.
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  Speaker 1: Lilith looked very pale and terrified. And it was perhaps
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  Speaker 1: owing to this that the painter brought no more tales
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  Speaker 1: home with him. There were plenty to bring, but he
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  Speaker 1: heard them all and said nothing. The fact was that
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  Speaker 1: the philosopher himself could not resist the infection of the
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  Speaker 1: fear that was literally raging in the city, and perhaps
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  Speaker 1: the reports that he himself had sold himself to the
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  Speaker 1: devil had sufficient response from his own evil conscience to
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  Speaker 1: add to the influence of the epidemic upon him. The
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  Speaker 1: whole place was infested with the presence of the dead
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  Speaker 1: counts till scarce a man or woman would dare to
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  Speaker 1: be alone. He strangled old men, insulted women, squeezed children
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  Speaker 1: to death, knocked out the brains of dogs against the ground,
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  Speaker 1: pulled up posts, turned milk into blood, nearly killed a
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  Speaker 1: worthy clergyman by breathing upon him the intolerable airs of
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  Speaker 1: the grave, cold and malignant and noisome, and in short,
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  Speaker 1: filled the city with a perfect madness of fear, so
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  Speaker 1: that every report was believed without the smallest doubt or investigation,
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  Speaker 1: though Teufelsbwurst brought home no more of the town talk.
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  Speaker 1: The old servant was a faithful purveyor and frequented the
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  Speaker 1: news marked assiduously. Indeed, she had some nightmare experiences of
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  Speaker 1: her own that she was proud to add to the
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  Speaker 1: stock of horrors which the city enjoyed with such a
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  Speaker 1: hearty community of goods. For those regions were not far
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  Speaker 1: removed from the birthplace and home of the vampire. The
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  Speaker 1: belief in vampires is the quintessential concentration and embodiment of
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  Speaker 1: all the passion of fear in Hungary and the adjacent regions,
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  Speaker 1: Nor of all the other inventions of the human imagination.
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  Speaker 1: Has there ever been one so perfect in crawling terror
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  Speaker 1: as this. Lilith and Karl were quite familiar with the
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  Speaker 1: popular ideas on the subject. It didn't not required to
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  Speaker 1: be explained to them that a vampire was a body
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  Speaker 1: retaining a kind of animal life after the soul had departed.
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  Speaker 1: If any relation existed between it and the vanished ghost,
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  Speaker 1: it was only sufficient to make it restless in its grave,
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  Speaker 1: possessed of vitality enough to keep it uncorrupted and pliant.
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  Speaker 1: Its only instinct was a blind hunger for the sole
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  Speaker 1: food which could keep its awful life persistent, living human blood,
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  Speaker 1: hence it, or if not it, a sort of semi
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  Speaker 1: material exhalation or essence of it retaining its form and
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  Speaker 1: material relations, crept from its tomb and went roaming about
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  Speaker 1: till it found someone asleep towards whom it had an
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  Speaker 1: attraction founded on old affection. It sucked the blood of
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  Speaker 1: this unhappy being, transferring so much of its life to
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  Speaker 1: itself as a vampire could assimilate. Death was the certain
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  Speaker 1: consequence if suspicion conjectured aright and they opened the proper grave,
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  Speaker 1: the body of the vampire would be found perfectly fresh
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  Speaker 1: and plump, sometimes indeed of rather florid complexion, with grown hair,
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  Speaker 1: eyes half open, and the stains of recent blood about
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  Speaker 1: its greedy, leech like lips. Nothing remained but to consume
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  Speaker 1: the corpse to ashes, upon which the vampire would show
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  Speaker 1: itself no more. But what added infinitely to the horror
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  Speaker 1: was the certainty that whoever died from the mouth of
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  Speaker 1: the vampire, wrinkled grandsire or delicate maiden, must in turn
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  Speaker 1: rise from the grave and go forth a vampire to
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  Speaker 1: suck the blood of the dearest left behind. This was
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  Speaker 1: the generation of the vampire brood. Lilith trembled at the
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  Speaker 1: very name of the creature. Karl was too much in
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  Speaker 1: love to be afraid of anything, Yet the evident fear
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  Speaker 1: of the unbelieving painter took a hold of his imagination,
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  Speaker 1: and under the influence of the potions of which he
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  Speaker 1: still partook unwittingly. When he was not thinking about Lilith,
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  Speaker 1: he was thinking about the vampire. Meantime, the condition of
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  Speaker 1: things in the painter's household continued much the same for
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  Speaker 1: vulcan Licht. Work all day, no communication between the young people,
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  Speaker 1: the dinner and the wine, silent reading when work was done,
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  Speaker 1: with stolen glances many over the top of the book,
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  Speaker 1: glances that were never returned, the cold good night, the
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  Speaker 1: locking of the door, the wakeful night, and the drowsy morning.
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  Speaker 1: But at length a change came, and sooner than any
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  Speaker 1: of the party had expected. For whether it was that
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  Speaker 1: the impatience of Teufelsbuerst had urged him too yet more
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  Speaker 1: dangerous experiments, or that the continuance of those he had
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  Speaker 1: been so long employing had overcome at length the vitality
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  Speaker 1: of Vulcanlecht. One afternoon, as he was sitting at his work,
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  Speaker 1: he suddenly dropped from his chair, and his master, hurrying
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  Speaker 1: to him in some alarm, found him rigid and apparently lifeless.
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  Speaker 1: Lilith was not in the study when this took place.
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  Speaker 1: In justice to Teufelsbuerst, it must be confessed that he
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  Speaker 1: employed all the skill he was master, of which, for
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  Speaker 1: beneficent purposes, was not very great, to restore the youth,
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  Speaker 1: but without avail. At last, hearing the footsteps of Lilith,
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  Speaker 1: he desisted in some consternation, and that she might escape
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  Speaker 1: being shocked by the sight of a dead body where
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  Speaker 1: she had been accustomed to see a living one. He
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  Speaker 1: removed the lay figure from the couch and laid Karl
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  Speaker 1: in its place, covering him with a black velvet pall.
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  Speaker 1: He was just in time. She started at seeing no
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  Speaker 1: one in Karl's place, and said, where is your pupil?
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  Speaker 1: Father gone home? He answered with a kind of convulsive grin.
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  Speaker 1: She glanced round the room, caught sight of the lay
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  Speaker 1: figure where it had not been before, looked at the
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  Speaker 1: couch and saw the pall. Yet heaved up from beneath,
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  Speaker 1: opened her eyes till the entire white sweep around the
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  Speaker 1: iris suggested a new expression of consternation to Teufelsbuerst, though
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  Speaker 1: from a quarter whence he did not desire or look
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  Speaker 1: for it, and then, without a word, sat down to
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  Speaker 1: a drawing. She had been busy upon the day before,
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  Speaker 1: but her father, glancing at her now as vulcan Licht
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  Speaker 1: had used to do, could not help seeing that she
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  Speaker 1: was frightfully pale. She showed no other sign of uneasiness.
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  Speaker 1: As soon as he released her, she withdrew with one
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  Speaker 1: more glance as she passed at the couch, and the
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  Speaker 1: figure blocked out in black upon it. She hastened to
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  Speaker 1: her chamber, shut and locked the door, sat down on
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  Speaker 1: the side of the couch, and fell not a weeping
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  Speaker 1: but a thinking. Was he dead? What did it matter?
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  Speaker 1: They would all be dead soon? Her mother was dead already.
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  Speaker 1: It was only that the earth could not bear more children,
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  Speaker 1: except she devoured those to whom she had already given birth.
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  Speaker 1: But what if they had to come back in another
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  Speaker 1: form and live another sad, hopeless, loveless life over again?
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  Speaker 1: And so she went on questioning and receiving no replies,
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  Speaker 1: while through all her thoughts passed and repassed the eyes
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  Speaker 1: of Vulcanlicht, which she had often felt to be upon
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  Speaker 1: her when she did not see them, wild with repressed longing,
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  Speaker 1: the light of their love shining through the veil of
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  Speaker 1: diffused tears, ever gathering and never overflowing. Then came the
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  Speaker 1: pale face, so worshiping, so distant in its self, withdrawn devotion,
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  Speaker 1: slowly dawning out of the vapors of her reverie. When
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  Speaker 1: it vanished, she tried to see to gain it would
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  Speaker 1: not come when she called it. But when her thoughts
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  Speaker 1: left knocking at the door of the lost and wandered away,
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  Speaker 1: out came the pale, troubled, silent face, again, gathering itself
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  Speaker 1: up from some unknown nook in her world of fantasy,
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  Speaker 1: And once more, when she tried to steady it by
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  Speaker 1: the fixedness of her own regard, fading back into the mist.
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  Speaker 1: So the phanfasm of the dead drew near and wood
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  Speaker 1: as the living had never dared. What if there were
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  Speaker 1: any good in loving? What if men and women did
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  Speaker 1: not die all out, but some dim shade of each,
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  Speaker 1: Like that pale mind ghost of Volcndlicht, floated through the
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  Speaker 1: eternal vapors of chaos, And what if they might sometimes
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  Speaker 1: cross each other's path, meet, know that they met love
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  Speaker 1: on Would that not revive the withered memory, fix the
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  Speaker 1: fleeting ghost, give a new habitation, a body, even to
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  Speaker 1: the poor unhe housed, wanderers frozen by the eternal frosts,
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  Speaker 1: no longer thinking beings but thoughts wandering through the brain
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  Speaker 1: of the melancholy mass. Back with the thought came the
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  Speaker 1: face of the dead Carl, and the maiden threw herself
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  Speaker 1: on her bed in a flood of bitter tears. She
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  Speaker 1: could have loved him if he had only lived. She
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  Speaker 1: did love him, for he was dead. But even in
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  Speaker 1: the midst of the remorse that followed, for had she
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  Speaker 1: not killed him, life seemed a less hard and hopeless
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  Speaker 1: thing than before. For it is love itself, and not
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  Speaker 1: its responses or results, that is the soul of life
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  Speaker 1: and its pleasures. Two hours passed ere she could again
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  Speaker 1: show herself to her father, from whom she seemed in
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  Speaker 1: some new way, divided by the new feeling in which
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  Speaker 1: he did not and could not share. But at last,
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  Speaker 1: lest he should seek her, and finding her should suspect
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  Speaker 1: her thoughts, she descended and sought him for there is
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  Speaker 1: a maidenliness in sorrow that wraps her garments close around her.
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  Speaker 1: But he was not to be seen. The door of
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  Speaker 1: the study was locked. A shudder passed through her as
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  Speaker 1: she thought of what her father, who lost no opportunity
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  Speaker 1: of furthering his all but perfect acquaintance with the human
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  Speaker 1: form and structure, might be about with the figure which
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  Speaker 1: she knew lay dead beneath that velvet pall, but which
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  Speaker 1: had arisen to haunt the hollow caves and cells of
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  Speaker 1: her living brain. She rushed away and up once more
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  Speaker 1: to her silent room, through the darkness which had now
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  Speaker 1: settled down in the house, threw herself again on her bed,
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  Speaker 1: and lay almost paralyzed with horror and distress. But teufelsburst
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  Speaker 1: was not about anything so frightful as she supposed, though
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  Speaker 1: something frightful enough. I have already implied that Vulcanlicht was
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  Speaker 1: in form as fine an embodiment of youthful manhood as
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  Speaker 1: any old Greek republic could have provided one of its
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  Speaker 1: sculptors with as model for an apollo. It is true
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  Speaker 1: that to the eye of a Greek artist he would
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  Speaker 1: not have been more acceptable. In consequence of the regimen
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  Speaker 1: he had been going through for the last few weeks,
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  Speaker 1: but the emaciation of Vulcanlicht's frame and the consequent prominence
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  Speaker 1: of the muscles indicating the pain he had gone through,
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  Speaker 1: were peculiarly attractive to Teufelsbuerst. He was busy preparing to
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  Speaker 1: take a cast of the body of his dead pupil
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  Speaker 1: that it might aid to the perfection of his future labors.
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  Speaker 1: He was deep in the artistic enjoyment of a form
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  Speaker 1: at the same time so beautiful and strong, yet with
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  Speaker 1: the lines of suffering in every limb and feature. When
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  Speaker 1: his daughter's hand was laid on the latch, he started,
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  Speaker 1: flung the velvet drapery over the body and went to
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  Speaker 1: the door, but Lilith had vanished. He returned to his labors.
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  Speaker 1: The operation took a long time, for he performed it
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  Speaker 1: very carefully. Towards midnight, he had finished encasing the body
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  Speaker 1: in a close clinging shell of plaster, which, when broken
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  Speaker 1: off and fitted together, would be the matrix to the
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  Speaker 1: form of the dead Vulcan Licht, before leaving it to
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  Speaker 1: hearten till the morning. He was just proceeding to strengthen
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  Speaker 1: it with an additional layer. All over, when a flash
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  Speaker 1: of lightning, reflected in all its dazzle from the snow without,
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  Speaker 1: almost blinded him. A peal of long drawn thunder followed,
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  Speaker 1: the wind rose, and just such a storm came on,
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  Speaker 1: as had risen some time before at the death of Kuntz,
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  Speaker 1: whose specter was still tormenting the city, the gnomes of
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  Speaker 1: terror deep hidden in the caverns of Teufelsburst's nature broke out,
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  Speaker 1: jubilant with trembling hands. He tried to cast the pall
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  Speaker 1: over the awful white chrysalis, failed, and fled to his chamber.
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  Speaker 1: And there lay the studio, naked to the eyes of
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  Speaker 1: the lightning, with its tortured forms, throbbing out of the
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  Speaker 1: dark and quivering as with life in the almost continuous
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  Speaker 1: palpitations of the light, while on the couch lay the
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  Speaker 1: motionless mass of whiteness, gleaming blue in the lightning, almost
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  Speaker 1: more terrible in its crude indications of the human form
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  Speaker 1: than that which it enclosed. It lay there, as if
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  Speaker 1: dropped from some tree of chaos, haggard with the snows
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  Speaker 1: of eternity, a huge misshapen nut with a corpse for
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  Speaker 1: its kernel. But the lightning would soon have revealed a
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  Speaker 1: more terrible sight still, had there been any eyes to
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  Speaker 1: behold it. At midnight, while a peal of thunder was
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  Speaker 1: just dying away in the distance, the crust of death
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  Speaker 1: flew asunder, rending in all directions, and pale as his investiture.
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  Speaker 1: Staring with ghastly eyes, the form of Karl started up
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  Speaker 1: sitting on the couch. Had he not been far beyond
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  Speaker 1: ordinary men in strength, he could not thus have rent
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  Speaker 1: his sepulcher. Indeed, had Tweufelsburst been able to finish his
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  Speaker 1: task by the additional layer of gypsum which he contemplated,
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  Speaker 1: he must have died the moment life revived, although so
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  Speaker 1: long as the translasted, neither the exclusion from the air
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  Speaker 1: nor the practical solidification of the walls of his chest
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  Speaker 1: could do him any injury. He had lain unconscious throughout
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  Speaker 1: the operations of Teufelsbuerst, but now the catalepsy had passed away,
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  Speaker 1: possibly under the influence of the electric condition of the atmosphere.
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  Speaker 1: Very likely, the strength he now put forth was intensified
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  Speaker 1: by a convulsive reaction of all the powers of life,
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  Speaker 1: as is not infrequently the case in sudden awakenings from
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  Speaker 1: similar interruptions of vital activity. The coming to himself and
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  Speaker 1: the bursting of his case were simultaneous. He sat staring
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  Speaker 1: about him, with of all his mental faculties, only his
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  Speaker 1: imagination awake, from which the thoughts that occupied it when
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  Speaker 1: he fell senseless had not yet faded. These thoughts had
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  Speaker 1: been compounded of feelings about Lilith and speculations about the
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  Speaker 1: vampire that haunted the neighborhood, and the fumes of the
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  Speaker 1: last drug of which he had partaken, still hovering in
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  Speaker 1: his brain, combined with these thoughts and fancies to generate
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  Speaker 1: the delusion that he had just broken from the embrace
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  Speaker 1: of his coffin and risen the last born of the
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  Speaker 1: vampire race. The sense of unavoidable obligation to fulfill his
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  Speaker 1: doo doome was yet mingled with a faint flutter of joy,
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  Speaker 1: for he knew that he must go to Lilith. With
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  Speaker 1: a deep sigh, he rose, gathered up the pall of
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  Speaker 1: black velvet, flung it about him, stepped from the couch,
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: and left the study to find her. Meantime, Teufelsbuerst had
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: sufficiently recovered to remember that he had left the door
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: of the studio unfastened, and that anyone entering would discover
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: in what he had been engaged, which, in the case
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: of his getting into any difficulty about the death of Karl,
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: would tell powerfully against him. He was at the farther
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: end of a long passage leading from the house to
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: the studio, on his way to make all secure, when
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: Carl appeared at the door and advanced towards him. The painter,
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: seized with invincible terror, turned and fled. He reached his
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: room and fell senseless on the floor. The phantom held
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: on its way needless. Lilith, on gaining her room the
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: second time, had thrown herself on her bed as before,
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: and had wept herself into a troubled slumber. She lay
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: dreaming and dreadful dreams. Suddenly she awoke in one of
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: those peals of thunder which tormented the high regions of
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: the air as a storm billows the surface of the ocean.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: She lay awake and listened as it died away. She
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: thought she heard mingling with its last muffled murmurs, the
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: sound of moaning. She turned her face towards the room
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: in keen terror, but she saw nothing another light, long
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: drawn sigh reached her ear, and at the same moment,
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: a flash of lightning illumined the room. In the corner
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: farthest from her bed, she spied a white face, nothing more.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: She was dumb and motionless with fear. Utter darkness followed
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: at darkness, it seemed to enter into her very brain.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: Yet she felt that the face was slowly crossing the
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: black gulf of the room and drawing near to where
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: she lay. The next flash revealed, as it bended over her,
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: the ghastly face of Karl, down which flowed fresh tears.
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: The rest of his form was lost in blackness. Lilith
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: did not faint, but it was the very force of
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: her fear that seemed to keep her alive. It became,
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: for the moment the atmosphere of her life. She lay,
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: trembling and staring at the spot in the darkness where
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: she supposed the face of Karl still to be. But
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: the next flash showed her the face far off, looking
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: at her through the panes of her lattice window. For Latkin,
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: as soon as he saw Lilith, seemed to himself to
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: go through a second stage of awaking. Her face made
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: him doubt whether he could be a vampire after all,
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: for instead of wanting to bite her arm and suck
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: the blood, he all but fell down at her feet
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: in a passion of speechless love. The next moment he
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: became aware that his presence must be at least very
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: undesirable to her, and in an instant he had reached
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: her window, which he knew looked upon a lower roof
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: that extended between two different parts of the house. And
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: before the next flash came, he had stepped through the
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: lattice and closed it behind him. Believing his own room
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: to be attainable from this quarter, he proceeded along the
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: roof in the direction he judged betht The cold winter
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: air by degrees restored him entirely to his right mind,
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: and he soon comprehended the whole of the circumstances in
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: which he found himself. Peeping through a window he was
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: passing to see whether it belonged to his room, he
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: spied Teufelsbuerst, who at the very moment was lifting his
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: head from the faint into which he had fallen. At
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: the first sight of Lutkin, the moon was shining clear,
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: and in its light the painter saw, to his horror
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: the pale face staring in at his window. He thought
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: it had been there ever since. He had fainted and
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: dropped again in a deeper swoon than before. Karl saw
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: him fall, and the truth flashed upon him that the
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: wicked artist took him for what he had believed himself
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: to be when he first recovered from his trance, namely,
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: the vampire of the former Karl Volcanlcht. The moment he
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: comprehended it, he resolved to keep up the delusion if possible. Meantime,
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: he was innocently preparing a new ingredient for the popular
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: dish of horrors to be served at the ordinary of
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: the city the next day. For the old servants were
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: not the only eyes that had seen him besides those
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: of Teufelsbuerst. What could be more like a vampire dragging
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: his pall after him than this apparition of poor half
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: frozen latkin crawling across the road. Karl remembered afterwards that
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: he had heard the dogs howling awfully in every direction
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: as he crept along, but this was hardly necessary to
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: make those who saw him conclude that it was the
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: same phantasm of John Counts which had been infesting the
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: whole city, and especially the house next door to the painters,
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: which had been the dwelling of their respectable aldermen, who
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: had degenerated into this most disreputible of moneyless vagabonds. What
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: added to the consternation of all who heard of it
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: was the sickening conviction that the extreme measures which they
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: had resorted to in order to free the city from
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: the ghoul, beyond which nothing could be done, had been
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: utterly unavailing successful, as they had proved in every other
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: known case of the kind. For urged as well by
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: various horrid signs about his grave, which not even its
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: close proximity to the altar could render a place of repose.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: They had opened it, had found in the body every
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: peculiarity belonging to a vampire, had pulled it out with
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: the greatest difficulty on account of a quite supernatural ponderosity,
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: which rendered the horse which had killed him a strong animal,
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: all but unable to drag it along, and had, at last,
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: after cutting it in pieces and expending on the fire
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: two hundred and sixteen great billets, succeeded in conquering its
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: incombustibleness and reducing it to ashes. Such, at least was
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: the story which had reached the painter's household and was
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: believed by many. And if all this did not compel
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: the perturbed corpse to rest, what more could be done?
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: End of Section two.