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Cruel Painter-George MacDonald · Six Stories

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Speaker 1: Recording by Ned Troxell The Cruel Painter by George MacDonald
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Speaker 1: Section 1 Among the young men assembled at the University
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Speaker 1: of Prague in the year 1590 was one called Karl
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Speaker 1: von Wolkenlicht. A somewhat careless student, he yet held a
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Speaker 1: fair position in the estimation of both professors and men.
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Speaker 1: because he could hardly look at a proposition without understanding it.
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Speaker 1: Where such proposition, however, had to do with anything relating
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Speaker 1: to the deeper insights of the nature, he was quite
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Speaker 1: content that for him it should remain a proposition. Which, however,
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Speaker 1: he laid up in one of his mental cabinets, and
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Speaker 1: was ready to reproduce at a moment's notice. This mental
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Speaker 1: agility was more than matched by the corresponding corporeal excellence.
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Speaker 1: and both aided in producing results in which his remarkable
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Speaker 1: strength was equally apparent. In all games, depending upon the
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Speaker 1: combination of muscle and skill, he had scarce rivalry enough
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Speaker 1: to keep him in practice. His strength, however, was embodied
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Speaker 1: in such a softness of muscular outline, such a rare
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Speaker 1: Greek-like style of beauty, and associated with such a gentleness
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Speaker 1: of manner and behavior, that, partly from the truth of
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Speaker 1: the resemblance, partly from the absurdity of the contrast, He
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Speaker 1: was known throughout the university by the diminutive of the
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Speaker 1: feminine form of his name, and was always called Lachen.
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Speaker 1: I say, Lachen, said one of his fellow students, called Richter.
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Speaker 1: Across the table in a wine cellar they were in
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Speaker 1: the habit of frequenting. Do you know Heinrich Hohenrachen here
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Speaker 1: says that he saw this morning, with mortal eyes, whom
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Speaker 1: do you think?
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Speaker 2: Lilith.
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Speaker 1: Adam's first wife? asked Lachen. with an attempt at carelessness,
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Speaker 1: while his face flushed like a maiden's. None of your chaff,
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Speaker 1: said Richter. Your face is honester than your tongue, and
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Speaker 1: confesses what you cannot deny, that you would give your
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Speaker 1: chance of salvation, a small one to be sure, but
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Speaker 1: all that you've got, for one peep at Lilith, wouldn't
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Speaker 1: you now, Lutjan? Go to the devil, was all Lutjan's
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Speaker 1: answer to his tormentor, but he turned to Heinrich. to
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Speaker 1: whom the students had given the surname above mentioned because
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Speaker 1: of the enormous width of his jaws, and said with
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Speaker 1: eagerness and envy, disguising them as well as he could
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Speaker 1: under the appearance of curiosity, You don't mean it, Heinrich.
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Speaker 1: You have been taking the beggar in. Confess now.
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Speaker 2: Not I.
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Speaker 1: I saw her with my two eyes. Notwithstanding the different
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Speaker 1: planes of their orbits, suggested Richter.
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Speaker 2: Yes, notwithstanding the fact that I can get a parallax
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Speaker 2: to any of the fixed stars in a moment with
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Speaker 2: only the breadth of my nose for the.
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Speaker 1: Base, answered Heinrich, responding at once to the fun and
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Speaker 1: careless of the personal defect insinuated.
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Speaker 2: She was near enough for even me to see her perfectly. When?
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Speaker 1: Where? How? asked Lutchen.
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Speaker 2: Two hours ago, in the churchyard of St. Stephen's, by
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Speaker 2: a lucky chance, Any more little questions, my child? answered Hullenrocken.
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Speaker 2: What could have taken her there, who is seen nowhere?
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Speaker 2: said Richter. She was seated on a grave. After she left,
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Speaker 2: I went to the place, but it was a new-made grave.
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Speaker 2: There was no stone up. I asked the sexton about her.
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Speaker 2: He said he supposed she was the daughter of the
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Speaker 2: woman buried there last Thursday week. I knew it was Lilith.
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Speaker 1: Her mother dead, said Lutchen musingly. Then he thought with himself,
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Speaker 1: she will be going there again then. But he took
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Speaker 1: care that this ghost thought should wander unembodied. But how
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Speaker 1: did you know her, Heinrich? You never saw her before.
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Speaker 1: How do you come to be head and ears in
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Speaker 1: love with her, Lutchen, and you haven't seen her at all,
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Speaker 1: interposed Richter.' Will you or will you not go to
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Speaker 1: the devil?' rejoined Lutchen, with a comic crescendo, to which
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Speaker 1: the other replied with a laugh.
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Speaker 2: No one could miss knowing her,' said Heinrich.
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Speaker 1: Is she so very like, then?
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Speaker 2: It is always herself, her very self.
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Speaker 1: A fresh flask of wine, turning out to be not
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Speaker 1: up to the mark, brought the current of the conversation
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Speaker 1: against itself, not much to the dissatisfaction of Lutchen. who
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Speaker 1: had already resolved to be in the churchyard of St.
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Speaker 1: Stephen's at sundown the following day, in the hope that he, too,
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Speaker 1: might be favored with a vision of Lilith. This resolution
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Speaker 1: he carried out. Seated in a porch of the church,
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Speaker 1: not knowing in what direction to look for the apparition
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Speaker 1: he hoped to see, and desirous as well of not
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Speaker 1: seeming to be on the watch for one, he was
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Speaker 1: gazing at the fallen rose-leaves of the sunset, withering away
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Speaker 1: upon the sky, When glancing aside by an involuntary movement,
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Speaker 1: he saw a woman seated upon a new-made grave, not
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Speaker 1: many yards from where he sat, with her face buried
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Speaker 1: in her hands, and apparently weeping bitterly. Carl was in
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Speaker 1: the shadow of the porch and could see her perfectly,
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Speaker 1: without much danger of being discovered by her, so he
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Speaker 1: sat and watched her. She raised her head for a moment,
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Speaker 1: and the rose flush of the west fell over it,
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Speaker 1: shining on the tears with which it was wet, and
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Speaker 1: giving the whole a bloom which did not belong to it,
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Speaker 1: for it was always pale, and now pale as death.
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Speaker 1: It was indeed the face of Lilith, the most celebrated
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Speaker 1: beauty of Prague. Again she buried her face in her hands,
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Speaker 1: and Karl sat with a strange feeling of helplessness, which
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Speaker 1: grew as he sat, and the longing to help her
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Speaker 1: whom he could not help drew his heart towards her,
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Speaker 1: with a trembling reverence which was quite new to him.
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Speaker 1: She wept on. The western roses withered slowly away, and
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Speaker 1: the clouds blended with the sky, and the stars gathered
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Speaker 1: like drops of glory sinking through the vault of night,
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Speaker 1: and the trees about the churchyard grew black, and Lilith
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Speaker 1: almost vanished in the wide darkness. At length she lifted
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Speaker 1: her head, and seeing the night around her, gave a
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Speaker 1: little broken cry of dismay. The minutes had swept over
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Speaker 1: her head, not through her mind, and she did not
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Speaker 1: know that the dark had come. Hearing her cry, Carl
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Speaker 1: rose and approached her. She heard his footsteps and started
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Speaker 1: to her feet. Carl spoke. Do not be frightened, he said.
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Speaker 1: Let me see you home. I will walk behind you.
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Speaker 1: Who are you?
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Speaker 2: She rejoined.
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Speaker 1: Carl Volkenlicht. I have heard of you, thank you, I
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Speaker 1: can go home alone. Yet, as if in a half-dreamy,
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Speaker 1: half-unconscious mood, she accepted his offered hand to lead her
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Speaker 1: through the graves, and allowed him to walk beside her till,
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Speaker 1: reaching the corner of a narrow street, she suddenly bade
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Speaker 1: him good-night and vanished. He thought it better not to
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Speaker 1: follow her, so he returned her good-night and went home.
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Speaker 1: How to see her again was his first thought the
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Speaker 1: next day, as, in fact, how to see her at
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Speaker 1: all had been his first thought for many days. She
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Speaker 1: went nowhere that ever he heard of. She knew nobody
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Speaker 1: that he knew. She was never seen at church or
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Speaker 1: at market, never seen in the street. Her home had
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Speaker 1: a dreary, desolate aspect. It looked as if no one
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Speaker 1: ever went out or in. It was like a place
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Speaker 1: on which decay had fallen, because there was no indwelling spirit.
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Speaker 1: The mud of years was baked upon its door, and
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Speaker 1: no faces looked out of its dusty windows. How then
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Speaker 1: could she be the most celebrated beauty of Prague? How
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Speaker 1: then was it that Heinrich Hohenrachen knew her the moment
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Speaker 1: he saw her? Above all, how was it that Karl
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Speaker 1: Wolkenlicht had, in fact, fallen in love with her before
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Speaker 1: he ever saw her? It was thus. Her father was
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Speaker 1: a painter. Belonging thus to the public, it had taken
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Speaker 1: the liberty of renaming him. Everyone called him Teufelsbrust, or
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Speaker 1: Devil's Brush. It was a name with which, to judge
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Speaker 1: from the nature of his representations, he could hardly fail
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Speaker 1: to be pleased. For, not as a nightmare dream, which
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Speaker 1: may alternate with the loveliest visions, but as his ordinary
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Speaker 1: everyday work, he delighted to represent human suffering. Not an
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Speaker 1: aspect of human woe or torture, as expressed in countenance
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Speaker 1: or limb, came before his willing imagination, but he bore
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Speaker 1: it straightway to his easel. In the moments that precede sleep,
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Speaker 1: WHEN THE BLACK SPACE BEFORE THE EYES OF THE POET
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Speaker 1: TEAMS WITH LOVELY FACES, OR DAWNS INTO A SPIRIT LANDSCAPE,
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Speaker 1: FACE AFTER FACE OF SUFFERING IN ALL VARIETIES OF EXPRESSION
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Speaker 1: WOULD CROWD AS IF COMPELLED BY THE ACCOMPANYING FIENS TO
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Speaker 1: PRESENT THEMSELVES IN AWFUL LEVY BEFORE THE INNER EYE OF
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Speaker 1: THE EXPECTANT MASTER. THEN HE WOULD RISE, LIGHT HIS LAMP,
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Speaker 1: AND WITH RAPID HAND MAKE NOTES OF HIS VISIONS. recording
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Speaker 1: with swift successive sweeps of his pencil every individual face
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Speaker 1: which had rejoiced his evil fancy. Then he would return
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Speaker 1: to his couch and, well satisfied, fall asleep to dream
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Speaker 1: yet further embodiments of human ill. What wrong could man
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Speaker 1: or mankind have done him to be thus fearfully pursued
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Speaker 1: by the vengeance of the artist's hate? Another characteristic of
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Speaker 1: the faces and form which he drew was that they
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Speaker 1: were all beautiful in the original idea. The lines of
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Speaker 1: each face, however distorted by pain, would have been, in rest,
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Speaker 1: absolutely beautiful. And the whole of the execution bore witness
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Speaker 1: to the fact that upon this original beauty the painter
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Speaker 1: had directed the artillery of anguish to bring down the
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Speaker 1: sky-soaring heights of its divinity to the level of a
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Speaker 1: hated existence. To do this, he worked in perfect accordance
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Speaker 1: with artistic law, falsifying no line of the original forms.
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Speaker 1: It was the suffering, rather than his pencil, that wrought
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Speaker 1: the change. The latter was the willing instrument to record
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Speaker 1: what the imagination conceived with a cruelty composed enough to
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Speaker 1: be correct. To enhance the beauty he had thus distorted,
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Speaker 1: and so to enhance yet further the suffering that produced
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Speaker 1: the distortion, he would often represent attendant demons whom he
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Speaker 1: made as ugly as his imagination could compass, avoiding, however,
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Speaker 1: all grotesqueness beyond what was sufficient to indicate that they
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Speaker 1: were demons and not men. Their ugliness rose from hate, envy,
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Speaker 1: and all evil passions, amongst which he especially delighted to
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Speaker 1: represent demons a gloating exultation over human distress. And often
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Speaker 1: in the midst of his clouds of demon faces would
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Speaker 1: some one who knew him recognize the painter's own likeness,
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Speaker 1: such as the mirror might have presented it to him
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Speaker 1: when he was busiest over the incarnation of some exquisite torture.
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Speaker 1: But apparently, with the wish to avoid being supposed to
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Speaker 1: choose such representations for their own sakes, he always found
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Speaker 1: a story, often in the histories of the Church, whose
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Speaker 1: name he gave to the painting, and which he pretended
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Speaker 1: to have inspired the pictorial conception. No one, however, who
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Speaker 1: looked upon his suffering martyrs could suppose for a moment
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Speaker 1: that he honored their martyrdom. They were but the vehicles
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Speaker 1: for his hate of humanity. He was the torturer, and
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Speaker 1: not Diocletian or Nero. But, stranger yet to tell, there
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Speaker 1: was no picture, whatever its subject, into which he did
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Speaker 1: not introduce one form of placid and harmonious loveliness. In this, however,
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Speaker 1: his fierceness was only more fully displayed, for in no
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Speaker 1: case did this form manifest any relation either to the
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Speaker 1: actors or the endures in the picture. Hence, its very
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Speaker 1: loveliness became almost hateful to those who beheld it. Not
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Speaker 1: a shade crossed the still sky of that brow, not
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Speaker 1: a ripple disturbed the still sea of that cheek. She
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Speaker 1: did not hate, she did not love the sufferers. The
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Speaker 1: painter would not have her hate, for that would be
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Speaker 1: to the injury of her loveliness. Would not have her love,
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Speaker 1: for he hated. Sometimes she floated above as a still,
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Speaker 1: unobservant angel, Her gaze turned upward, dreaming along, careless as
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Speaker 1: a white summer cloud across the blue. If she looked
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Speaker 1: down on the scene below, it was only that the
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Speaker 1: beholder might see that she saw and did not care,
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Speaker 1: that not a feather of her outspread pinions would quiver
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Speaker 1: at the sight. Sometimes she would stand in the crowd,
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Speaker 1: as if she had been copied there from another picture
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Speaker 1: and had nothing to do with this one, nor any
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Speaker 1: right to be in it at all. or when the
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Speaker 1: red blood was trickling drop by drop from the crushed limb,
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Speaker 1: she might be seen standing nearest, smiling over a primrose
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Speaker 1: or the bloom on a peach. Some had said that
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Speaker 1: she was the painter's wife, that she had been false
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Speaker 1: to him, that he had killed her, and, finding that
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Speaker 1: was no sufficing revenge, thus half in love and half
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Speaker 1: in deepest hate, immortalized his vengeance. but it was now
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Speaker 1: universally understood that it was his daughter, of whose loveliness
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Speaker 1: extravagant reports went abroad, though all said, doubtless reading this
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Speaker 1: from her father's pictures, that she was a beauty without
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Speaker 1: a heart. Strange theories of something else supplying its place
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Speaker 1: were rife among the anatomical students. With the girl in
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Speaker 1: the pictures, the wild imagination of Lok Chin, probably in
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Speaker 1: part from her apparently absolute unattainableness and her undisputed heartlessness,
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Speaker 1: had fallen in love, as far as the mere imagination
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Speaker 1: can fall in love. But again, how was he to
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Speaker 1: see her? He haunted the house night after night. Those
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Speaker 1: blue eyes never met his. No step responsive to his
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Speaker 1: came from that door. It seemed to have been so
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Speaker 1: long unopened that it had grown as fixed and hard
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Speaker 1: as the stones that held its bolts in their passive clasp.
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Speaker 1: He dared not watch in the daytime, and with all
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Speaker 1: his watching at night, he never saw father or daughter
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Speaker 1: or domestic cross the threshold. Little he thought that, from
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Speaker 1: a shot window near the door, a pale of blue eyes,
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Speaker 1: like Lilith's, but paler and colder, were watching him. just
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Speaker 1: as a spider watches the fly that is likely ere
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Speaker 1: long to fall into his toils. And into those toils
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Speaker 1: Carl soon fell, for her form darkened the page. Her
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Speaker 1: form stood on the threshold of sleep, and when, overcome
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Speaker 1: with watching, he did enter its precincts, her form entered
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Speaker 1: with him and walked by his side. He must find her,
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Speaker 1: or the world might go to the bottomless pit for him.
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Speaker 1: But how? Yes, he would be a painter. Teufelsbrust would
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Speaker 1: receive him as a humble apprentice. He would grind his colors,
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Speaker 1: and Teufelsbrust would teach him the mysteries of the science,
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Speaker 1: which is the handmaiden of art. Then he might see her,
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Speaker 1: and that was all his ambition. In the clear morning
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Speaker 1: light of a day in autumn, when the leaves were
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Speaker 1: beginning to fall seared from the hand of that death
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Speaker 1: which has his dance in the chapels of nature as
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Speaker 1: well as in the cathedral aisles of men, he walked
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Speaker 1: up and knocked at the dingy door. The spider-painter opened
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Speaker 1: it himself. He was a little man, meager and pallid,
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Speaker 1: with those faded blue eyes, a low nose in three
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Speaker 1: distinct divisions, and thin, curveless, cruel lips. He wore no
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Speaker 1: hair on his face, but long gray locks, long as
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Speaker 1: a woman's, were scattered over his shoulders and hung down
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Speaker 1: on his breast. When Wolkenlicht had explained his errand, he
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Speaker 1: smiled a smile in which hypocrisy could not hide the
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Speaker 1: cunning and Volkenlich's heart bounded with delight, which he tried
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Speaker 1: to hide. The second smile of Teufelsbrust might have shown
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Speaker 1: him that he had ill succeeded. The fact that he
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Speaker 1: was not a native of Prague, but coming from a
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Speaker 1: distant part of the country, was entirely his own master
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Speaker 1: in the city, rendered this condition perfectly easy to fulfill.
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Speaker 1: And that very afternoon he entered the studio of Teufelsbrust
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Speaker 1: as his scholar and servant. It was a great room,
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Speaker 1: filled with the appliances and results of art. Many pictures,
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Speaker 1: festooned with cobwebs, were hung carelessly on the dirty walls. Others, half-finished,
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Speaker 1: leaned against them on the floor. Several, in different stages
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Speaker 1: of progress, stood upon easels. But all spoke the cruel
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Speaker 1: bent of the artist's genius. In one corner, a lay
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Speaker 1: figure was extended on a couch, covered with a pall
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Speaker 1: of black velvet. Through its folds, the form beneath was
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Speaker 1: easily discernible, and one hand and forearm protruded from beneath
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Speaker 1: it at right angles to the rest of the frame.
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Speaker 1: Lutzen could not help shuddering when he saw it. Although
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Speaker 1: he overcame the feeling in a moment, he felt a
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Speaker 1: great repugnance to seating himself with his back towards it,
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Speaker 1: as the arrangement of an easel, at which Teufelsborst wished
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Speaker 1: him to draw, rendered necessary. He contrived to edge himself round,
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Speaker 1: so that when he lifted his eyes he should see
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Speaker 1: the figure and be sure it could not rise without
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Speaker 1: his being aware of it but his master saw and
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Speaker 1: understood his altered position and under some pretense about the
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Speaker 1: light compelled him to resume the position in which he
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Speaker 1: had placed him at first after which he sat watching
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Speaker 1: over the top of his picture the expression of his
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Speaker 1: countenance as he tried to draw reading in it the
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Speaker 1: horrid fancy that the figure under the pall had risen
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Speaker 1: and was stealthily approaching to look over his shoulder but
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Speaker 1: lutchin resisted the feeling and being already no contemptible draughtsman
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Speaker 1: was soon interested enough to forget it and then any
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Speaker 1: moment she might enter now began a system of slow
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Speaker 1: torture for the chance of which the painter had been
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Speaker 1: long on the watch especially since he had first seen
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Speaker 1: Carl lingering about the house. His opportunities of seeing physical
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Speaker 1: suffering were nearly enough, even for the disease. necessities of
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Speaker 1: his art. But now he had one in his power,
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Speaker 1: on whom, his own will fettering him, he could try
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Speaker 1: any experiments he pleased for the production of a kind
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Speaker 1: of suffering, in the observation of which he did not
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Speaker 1: consider that he had yet sufficient experience. He would hold
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Speaker 1: the very heart of the youth in his hand, and
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Speaker 1: wring it and torture it to his own content. And
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Speaker 1: lest Carl should be strong enough to prevent those expressions
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Speaker 1: of pain for which he lay on the watch, he
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Speaker 1: would make use of further means known to himself and
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Speaker 1: known to few besides. All that day Carl saw nothing
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Speaker 1: of Lilith, but he heard her voice once, and that
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Speaker 1: was enough for one day. The next, she was sitting
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Speaker 1: to her father the greater part of the day, and
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Speaker 1: he could see her as often as he dared glance
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Speaker 1: up from his drawing. She had looked at him when
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Speaker 1: she entered, but had shown no sign of recognition, and
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Speaker 1: all day long she took no further notice of him.
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Speaker 1: He hoped at first that this came of the intelligence
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Speaker 1: of love. but he soon began to doubt it, for
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Speaker 1: he saw that, with the holy shadow of sorrow, all
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Speaker 1: that distinguished the expression of her countenance from that which
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Speaker 1: the painter so constantly reproduced had vanished likewise. It was
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Speaker 1: the very face of the unheeding angel whom, as often
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Speaker 1: as he lifted his eyes higher than hers, he saw
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Speaker 1: on the wall above her, playing on a psaltery in
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Speaker 1: the smoke of the torment ascending forever from burning Babylon.
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Speaker 1: The power of the painter had not merely wrought for
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Speaker 1: the representation of the woman of his imagination. It had
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Speaker 1: had scope as well in realizing her. Carl soon began
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Speaker 1: to see that communication, other than of the eyes, was
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Speaker 1: all but hopeless, and to any attempt in that way
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Speaker 1: she seemed altogether indisposed to respond. Nor, if she had
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Speaker 1: wished it, would it have been safe, for as often
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Speaker 1: as he glanced toward her, Instead of hers, he met
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Speaker 1: the blue eyes of the painter gleaming upon him like
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Speaker 1: winter lightning. His tones, his gestures, his words seemed kind.
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Speaker 1: His glance and his smile refused to be disguised. The
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Speaker 1: first day he dined alone in the studio, waited upon
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Speaker 1: by an old woman. The next he was admitted to
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Speaker 1: the family table with Teufelsbrust and Lilith. The room offered
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Speaker 1: a strange contrast to the study. As far as handicraft,
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Speaker 1: directed by a sumptuous taste, could construct a house-paradise, this
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Speaker 1: was one. But it seemed rather a paradise of demons,
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Speaker 1: for the walls were covered with Teufelsbrust's paintings. During the dinner,
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Speaker 1: Lilith's gaze scarcely met that of Wolkenlicht, and once or twice,
22:48
Speaker 1: when their eyes did meet, her glance was so perfectly
22:51
Speaker 1: unconcerned that Carl wished he might look at her forever
22:55
Speaker 1: without the fear of her looking at him again. She
22:59
Speaker 1: seemed like one whose love had rushed out glowing with
23:02
Speaker 1: seraphic fire to be frozen to death in more than
23:05
Speaker 1: wintry cold. She now walked lonely without her love. In
23:10
Speaker 1: the evenings he was expected to continue his drawing by lamplight,
23:15
Speaker 1: and at night he was conducted by Teufelsbrust to his chamber.
23:20
Speaker 1: Not once did he allow him to proceed thither alone,
23:24
Speaker 1: and not once did he leave him there without locking
23:27
Speaker 1: and bolting the door on the outside. But he felt
23:30
Speaker 1: nothing except the coldness of Lilith. Day after day she
23:35
Speaker 1: sat to her father in every variety of costume that
23:39
Speaker 1: could best show the variety of her beauty. How much
23:43
Speaker 1: greater that beauty might be if it ever blossomed into
23:46
Speaker 1: a beauty of soul Volkenlicht never imagined. for he soon
23:51
Speaker 1: loved her enough to attribute to her all the possibilities
23:54
Speaker 1: of her face as actual possessions of her being to
23:58
Speaker 1: account for everything that seemed to contradict this perfection his
24:02
Speaker 1: brain was prolific in inventions till he was compelled at
24:05
Speaker 1: last to see that she was in the condition of
24:08
Speaker 1: a rose-bud which on the point of blossoming had been
24:13
Speaker 1: chilled into a changeless bud by the cold of an
24:16
Speaker 1: untimely frost For one day, after the father and daughter
24:21
Speaker 1: had become a little more accustomed to his silent presence,
24:24
Speaker 1: a conversation began between them, which went on until he
24:27
Speaker 1: saw that Teufelsbrust believed in nothing except his art. How
24:32
Speaker 1: much of his feeling for that could be dignified by
24:34
Speaker 1: the name of belief, seeing its objects were such as
24:38
Speaker 1: they were, might have been questioned. It seemed to Wolkenlicht
24:42
Speaker 1: to amount only to this, that amidst a thousand distaste's,
24:47
Speaker 1: It was a pleasant thing to reproduce on the canvas
24:50
Speaker 1: the forms he beheld around him, modifying them to express
24:54
Speaker 1: the prevailing feelings of his own mind. A more desolate
24:58
Speaker 1: communication between souls than that which then passed between father
25:02
Speaker 1: and daughter could hardly be imagined. The father spoke of
25:06
Speaker 1: humanity and all its experiences in a tone of the
25:10
Speaker 1: bitterest scorn. He despised men and himself amongst them, and
25:15
Speaker 1: rejoiced to think that the generations rose and vanished, brood
25:19
Speaker 1: after brood, as the crops of corn grew and disappeared. Lilith,
25:26
Speaker 1: who listened to it all unmoved, taking only an intellectual
25:29
Speaker 1: interest in the question, remarked that even the corn had
25:33
Speaker 1: more life than that, for, after its death, it rose
25:37
Speaker 1: again in the new crop. Whether she meant that the
25:40
Speaker 1: corn was therefore superior to man, forgetting that the superior
25:44
Speaker 1: can produce being without losing its own, or only advanced
25:49
Speaker 1: in objection to her father's argument, Wolkenlicht could not tell.
25:54
Speaker 1: But Teufelsbrust laughed like the sound of a saw, and said,
25:59
Speaker 1: Follow out the analogy, my Lilith, and you will see
26:03
Speaker 1: that man is like the corn that springs again after
26:06
Speaker 1: it is buried. But unfortunately the only result we know
26:11
Speaker 1: of' is a vampire.'' Volkenlich looked up' and saw a
26:17
Speaker 1: shudder pass through the frame' and over the pale thin
26:20
Speaker 1: face of the painter.' This he could not account for,'
26:24
Speaker 1: but Teufelsbrust could have explained it,' for there were strange
26:29
Speaker 1: whispers abroad,' and they had reached his ear,' and his
26:33
Speaker 1: philosophy was not quite enough for them.' But the laugh
26:37
Speaker 1: with which Lilith 'met this frightful attempt at wit grated
26:41
Speaker 1: dreadfully on Volkenlich's feeling. With her, too, however, a reaction
26:45
Speaker 1: seemed to follow, for, turning round a moment after and
26:50
Speaker 1: looking at the picture on which her father was working,
26:53
Speaker 1: the tears rose in her eyes, and she said,' Oh, father,
26:58
Speaker 1: how like my mother you have made me this time!'' Child,'
27:02
Speaker 1: retorted the painter with a cold fierceness,' you.
27:05
Speaker 3: Have no mother!' That which is gone out is gone out.
27:10
Speaker 3: Put no name in my hearing on that which is not.
27:14
Speaker 3: Where no substance is, how can there.
27:17
Speaker 1: Be a name? Lilith rose and left the room. Volkenlicht
27:24
Speaker 1: now understood that Lilith was a frozen bud and could
27:28
Speaker 1: not blossom into a rose. But pure love lives by faith.
27:34
Speaker 1: it loves the vaguely beheld and unrealized ideal. It dares
27:40
Speaker 1: believe that the loved is not all that she ever seemed.
27:44
Speaker 1: It is in virtue of this that love loves on.
27:48
Speaker 1: And it was in virtue of this that Volkenlicht loved
27:52
Speaker 1: Lilith yet more after he discovered what a grave of
27:56
Speaker 1: misery her unbelief was digging for her within her own soul.
28:02
Speaker 1: For her sake, he would bear anything, bear even with
28:06
Speaker 1: calmness the torments of his own love. He would stay on,
28:10
Speaker 1: hoping and hoping. The text, that we know not what
28:14
Speaker 1: a day may bring forth, is just as true of
28:17
Speaker 1: good things as of evil things, and out of time's
28:21
Speaker 1: womb the facts must come. But with the birth of
28:26
Speaker 1: this resolution to endure, his suffering abated, his face grew
28:31
Speaker 1: more calm. His love, no less earnest, was less imperious,
28:37
Speaker 1: and he did not look up so often from his
28:39
Speaker 1: work when Lilith was present. The master could see that
28:42
Speaker 1: his pupil was more at ease, and that he was
28:45
Speaker 1: making rapid progress in his art. This did not suit
28:50
Speaker 1: his designs, and he would betake himself to his further schemes.
28:57
Speaker 1: For this purpose, he proceeded first to simulate a friendship
29:00
Speaker 1: for Wolkenlicht, the manifestations of which he gradually increased until,
29:05
Speaker 1: after a day or two, he asked him to drink
29:08
Speaker 1: wine with him in the evening. Carl readily agreed. The
29:13
Speaker 1: painter produced some of his best, but took care not
29:16
Speaker 1: to allow Lilith to taste it, for he had cunningly
29:19
Speaker 1: prepared and mingled with it a decoction of certain herbs
29:24
Speaker 1: and other ingredients. exercising specific actions upon the brain and
29:29
Speaker 1: tending to the inordinate excitement of those portions of it
29:32
Speaker 1: which are principally under the rule of the imagination. By
29:36
Speaker 1: the reaction of the brain during the operation of these stimulants,
29:40
Speaker 1: the imagination is filled with suggestions and images. The nature
29:44
Speaker 1: of these is determined by the prevailing mood of the time.
29:48
Speaker 1: They are such as the imagination would produce of itself,
29:52
Speaker 1: but increased in number and intensity. Teufelsporst, without philosophizing about it,
29:59
Speaker 1: called his preparation simply a love-filter, a concoction well known
30:04
Speaker 1: by name, but the composition of which was the secret
30:07
Speaker 1: of only a few. Wolkenlicht had, of course, not the
30:11
Speaker 1: least suspicion of the treatment to which he was subjected.
30:15
Speaker 1: Teufelsbrust was, however, doomed to fresh disappointment. Not that his
30:20
Speaker 1: potion failed in the anticipated effect, for now Karl's real
30:24
Speaker 1: sufferings began— But that such was the strength of Karl's will,
30:29
Speaker 1: and his fear of doing anything that might give a
30:32
Speaker 1: pretext for banishing him from the presence of Lilith, that
30:35
Speaker 1: he was able to conceal his feelings far too successfully
30:39
Speaker 1: for the satisfaction of Teufelsbrust's art. Yet he had to
30:43
Speaker 1: fetter himself with all the restraints that self-exhortation could load
30:47
Speaker 1: him with to refrain from falling at the feet of
30:50
Speaker 1: Lilith and kissing the hem of her garment. For that,
30:54
Speaker 1: as the lowliest part of all that surrounded her, itself
30:57
Speaker 1: kissing the earth, seemed to come nearest within the reach
31:01
Speaker 1: of his ambition, and therefore to draw him the most.
31:06
Speaker 1: No doubt the painter had experience and penetration enough to
31:09
Speaker 1: perceive that he was suffering intensely, but he wanted to
31:13
Speaker 1: see the suffering embodied in outward signs, bringing it within
31:17
Speaker 1: the region over which his pencil held sway. He kept on, therefore,
31:21
Speaker 1: trying one thing after another, and rousing the poor youth
31:25
Speaker 1: to agony, till to his other sufferings were added, at length,
31:29
Speaker 1: those of failing health, a fact which noted itself evidently
31:33
Speaker 1: enough even for Teufelswurst, though its signs were not of
31:37
Speaker 1: the sort he chiefly desired. But Karl endured all bravely. Meantime,
31:44
Speaker 1: for various reasons, he scarcely ever left the house. I
31:59
Speaker 1: must now interrupt the course of my story to introduce
32:02
Speaker 1: another element. A few years before the period of my tale,
32:07
Speaker 1: a certain shoemaker of the city had died under circumstances
32:11
Speaker 1: more than suggestive of suicide. He was buried, however, with
32:15
Speaker 1: such precautions that six weeks elapsed before the rumor of
32:19
Speaker 1: the facts broke out, upon which rumor, not before, the
32:23
Speaker 1: most fearful reports began to be circulated, supported by what
32:27
Speaker 1: seemed to the people of Prague incontestable evidence. A spectrum
32:33
Speaker 1: of the deceased appeared to multitudes of persons, playing horrible
32:37
Speaker 1: pranks and occasioning indescribable consternation throughout the whole town. This
32:43
Speaker 1: went on till at last, about eight months after his burial,
32:47
Speaker 1: the magistrates caused his body to be dug up, when
32:50
Speaker 1: it was found in just the condition of the bodies
32:53
Speaker 1: of those who in the eastern countries of Europe are
32:56
Speaker 1: called vampires. They buried the corpse under the gallows, but
33:02
Speaker 1: neither the digging up nor the reburying were of avail
33:05
Speaker 1: to banish the spectre. Again the spade and pickaxe were
33:08
Speaker 1: set to work, and the dead man, being found considerably
33:12
Speaker 1: improved in condition since his last interment, was, with various
33:18
Speaker 1: horrible indignities, burnt to ashes, after which the spectrum was
33:23
Speaker 1: never seen more. And a second epidemic of the same
33:27
Speaker 1: nature had broken out a little before the period to
33:29
Speaker 1: which I have brought my story. About midnight, After a
33:33
Speaker 1: calm frosty day, for it was now winter, a terrible
33:37
Speaker 1: storm of wind and snow came on. The tempest howled
33:41
Speaker 1: frightfully about the house of the painter, and Volkenlicht found
33:44
Speaker 1: some solace in listening to the uproar, for his troubled
33:47
Speaker 1: thoughts would not allow him to sleep. It raged on
33:51
Speaker 1: all the next three days, till about noon on the
33:53
Speaker 1: fourth day, when it suddenly fell and all was calm.
33:58
Speaker 1: The following night, lying awake heard unaccountable noises in the
34:03
Speaker 1: next house as of things thrown about of kicking and
34:06
Speaker 1: fighting horses and of opening and shutting gates flinging wide
34:11
Speaker 1: his lattice and looking out the noise of howling dogs
34:14
Speaker 1: came to him from every quarter of the town the
34:17
Speaker 1: moon was bright and the air was still in a
34:20
Speaker 1: little while he heard the sounds of a horse going
34:22
Speaker 1: at full gallop round the house so that it shook
34:25
Speaker 1: as if it would fall and the flashes of light
34:28
Speaker 1: shone into his room. How much of this may have
34:31
Speaker 1: been owing to the effect of the drugs on poor
34:33
Speaker 1: Luxon's brain, I leave my readers to determine, but when
34:37
Speaker 1: the family met at breakfast in the morning, Teufelsbrust, who
34:41
Speaker 1: had been already out of doors, reported that he had
34:43
Speaker 1: found the marks of strange feet in the snow all
34:47
Speaker 1: about the house and through the garden at the back, stating,
34:50
Speaker 1: as his belief, that the tracks must be continued over
34:53
Speaker 1: the roofs, for there was no passage otherwise. and there
34:57
Speaker 1: was a wicked gleam in his eye as he spoke,
35:00
Speaker 1: and Lilith believed that he was only trying an experiment
35:03
Speaker 1: on Carl's nerves. He persisted that he had never seen
35:07
Speaker 1: any footprints of the sort before. Carl informed him of
35:10
Speaker 1: his experiences during the night, upon which Teufelsbrust looked a
35:14
Speaker 1: little graver still, and proceeded to tell them that the storm,
35:18
Speaker 1: whose snow was still covering the ground, had arisen the
35:21
Speaker 1: very moment their next-door neighbor died. and had ceased as
35:25
Speaker 1: suddenly the moment he was buried, though it had raved
35:29
Speaker 1: furiously all the time of the funeral, so that it
35:32
Speaker 1: made men's bodies quake, and their teeth chatter in their heads.
35:37
Speaker 1: Carl had heard that the man, whose name was John Kuntz,
35:41
Speaker 1: was dead and buried. He knew that he had been
35:44
Speaker 1: a very wealthy, and therefore most respectable, alderman of the town.
35:49
Speaker 1: He had been very fond of horses, and he had
35:51
Speaker 1: died in consequence of a kick received from one of
35:54
Speaker 1: his own, as he was looking at his hoof. But
35:57
Speaker 1: he had not heard that, just before he died, a
36:00
Speaker 1: black cat opened the casement with her nails, ran to
36:04
Speaker 1: his bed, and violently scratched his face and the bolster,
36:08
Speaker 1: as if she endeavored by force to remove him out
36:11
Speaker 1: of the place where he lay. But the cat afterwards
36:14
Speaker 1: was suddenly gone, and she was no sooner gone, but
36:17
Speaker 1: he breathed his last. So said Teufelsporst, as the reporter
36:22
Speaker 1: of the town talked, Lilith looked very pale and terrified,
36:26
Speaker 1: and it was perhaps owing to this that the painter
36:29
Speaker 1: brought no more tales home with him. There were plenty
36:32
Speaker 1: to bring, but he heard them all and said nothing.
36:36
Speaker 1: The fact was that the philosopher himself could not resist
36:40
Speaker 1: the infection of the fear that was literally raging in
36:43
Speaker 1: the city, and perhaps the reports that he himself had
36:45
Speaker 1: sold himself to the devil had sufficient response from his
36:49
Speaker 1: own evil conscience to add to the influence of the
36:52
Speaker 1: epidemic upon him. THE WHOLE PLACE WAS INFESTED WITH THE
36:56
Speaker 1: PRESENCE OF THE DEAD KUNTS, TILL SCARCE A MAN OR
37:00
Speaker 1: WOMAN WOULD DARE TO BE ALONE. HE STRANGLED OLD MEN,
37:03
Speaker 1: INSULTED WOMEN, SQUEEZED CHILDREN TO DEATH, KNOCKED OUT THE BRAINS
37:07
Speaker 1: OF DOGS AGAINST THE GROUND, PULLED UP POSTS, TURNED MILK
37:11
Speaker 1: INTO BLOOD, NEARLY KILLED THE WORTHY CLERGYMAN BY BREATHING UPON
37:15
Speaker 1: HIM THE INTOLERABLE AIRS OF THE GRAVE, COLD AND MALIGNANT
37:19
Speaker 1: AND NOISOME, AND IN SHORT, filled the city with a
37:22
Speaker 1: perfect madness of fear so that every report was believed
37:26
Speaker 1: without the smallest doubt or investigation though teufelsbrst brought home
37:32
Speaker 1: no more of the town talk the old servant was
37:35
Speaker 1: a faithful purveyor and frequented the news mart assiduously indeed
37:40
Speaker 1: she had some nightmare experiences of her own that she
37:43
Speaker 1: was proud to add to the stock of horrors which
37:45
Speaker 1: the city enjoyed with such a hearty community of goods
37:49
Speaker 1: for those regions were not far removed from the birthplace
37:52
Speaker 1: and home of the vampire the belief in vampires is
37:55
Speaker 1: the quintessential concentration and embodiment of all the passion of
37:59
Speaker 1: fear in hungary and the adjacent regions nor of all
38:04
Speaker 1: the other inventions of the human imagination has there ever
38:07
Speaker 1: been one so perfect in crawling terror as this lilith
38:11
Speaker 1: and karl were quite familiar with the popular ideas on
38:14
Speaker 1: the subject it did not require to be explained to
38:18
Speaker 1: them that a vampire was a body retaining a kind
38:21
Speaker 1: of animal life after the soul had departed. If any
38:25
Speaker 1: relation existed between it and the vanished ghost, it was
38:28
Speaker 1: only sufficient to make it restless in its grave. Possessed
38:33
Speaker 1: of vitality enough to keep it uncorrupted and pliant, its
38:37
Speaker 1: only instinct was a blind hunger for the soul food
38:40
Speaker 1: which could keep its awful life persistent, living human blood.
38:46
Speaker 1: Hence it, or if not it, A sort of semi-material
38:50
Speaker 1: exhalation or essence of it, retaining its form and material relations,
38:55
Speaker 1: crept from its tomb and went roaming about till it
38:58
Speaker 1: found someone asleep, towards whom it had an attraction founded
39:02
Speaker 1: on old affection. It sucked the blood of this unhappy being,
39:06
Speaker 1: transferring so much of its life to itself as a
39:09
Speaker 1: vampire could assimilate. Death was the certain consequence. If suspicion
39:15
Speaker 1: conjectured aright, and they opened the proper grave, the body
39:20
Speaker 1: of the vampire would be found perfectly fresh and plump,
39:23
Speaker 1: sometimes indeed of rather florid complexion, with grown hair, eyes
39:28
Speaker 1: half open, and the stains of recent blood about its greedy,
39:31
Speaker 1: leech-like lips. Nothing remained but to consume the corpse to ashes,
39:36
Speaker 1: upon which the vampire would show itself no more. But
39:40
Speaker 1: what added infinitely to the horror was the certainty that
39:43
Speaker 1: whoever died from the mouth of the vampire, wrinkled grandsire
39:48
Speaker 1: or delicate maiden, must in turn rise from the grave
39:52
Speaker 1: and go forth a vampire to suck the blood of
39:54
Speaker 1: the dearest left behind. This was the generation of the
39:58
Speaker 1: vampire brood. Lilith trembled at the very name of the creature.
40:03
Speaker 1: Carl was too much in love to be afraid of anything.
40:07
Speaker 1: Yet the evident fear of the unbelieving painter took a
40:10
Speaker 1: hold of his imagination, and under the influence of the
40:13
Speaker 1: potions of which he still partook unwittingly, when he was
40:17
Speaker 1: not thinking about Lilith, he was thinking about the vampire. Meantime,
40:23
Speaker 1: the conditions of things in the painter's household continued much
40:26
Speaker 1: the same for Wolkenlicht. Work all day, no communication between
40:30
Speaker 1: the young people, the dinner and the wine, silent reading
40:34
Speaker 1: when work was done, with stolen glances many over the
40:37
Speaker 1: top of the book, glances that were never returned, the
40:41
Speaker 1: cold good night, the locking of the door, the wakeful
40:45
Speaker 1: night and the drowsy morning, but at length a change
40:49
Speaker 1: came and sooner than any of the party had expected
40:53
Speaker 1: for whether it was that the impatience of teufelsbrust had
40:57
Speaker 1: urged him to yet more dangerous experiments or that the
41:00
Speaker 1: continuance of those he had been so long employing had
41:03
Speaker 1: overcome at length the vitality of wolkenlicht one afternoon as
41:07
Speaker 1: he was sitting at his work he suddenly dropped from
41:09
Speaker 1: his chair and his master hurrying to him in some
41:12
Speaker 1: alarm found him rigid and apparently lifeless lilith was not
41:17
Speaker 1: in the study when this took place in justice to
41:20
Speaker 1: teufelsbrst it must be confessed that he employed all the
41:23
Speaker 1: skill he was a master of which for beneficent purposes
41:26
Speaker 1: was not very great to restore the youth but without
41:29
Speaker 1: avail at last hearing the footsteps of lilith he desisted
41:34
Speaker 1: in some consternation and that she might escape being shocked
41:37
Speaker 1: by the sight of a dead body where she had
41:39
Speaker 1: been accustomed to see a living one he removed the
41:42
Speaker 1: lay figure from the couch and laid karl in its
41:45
Speaker 1: place' covering him with a black velvet pall.' He was
41:49
Speaker 1: just in time.' She started at seeing no one in
41:52
Speaker 1: Carl's place and said,' Where is your pupil, father?'' Gone home,'
41:58
Speaker 1: he answered with a kind of convulsive grin.' She glanced
42:03
Speaker 1: round the room,' caught sight of the lay figure where
42:05
Speaker 1: it had not been before.' looked at the couch and
42:08
Speaker 1: saw the pall yet heaved up from beneath opened her
42:11
Speaker 1: eyes till the entire white sweep around the iris suggested
42:15
Speaker 1: a new expression of consternation to teufelsbrst though from a
42:19
Speaker 1: quarter whence he did not desire or look for it
42:22
Speaker 1: and then without a word sat down to a drawing
42:25
Speaker 1: she had been busy upon the day before but her
42:28
Speaker 1: father glancing at her now as wolkenlicht had used to
42:31
Speaker 1: do could not help seeing that she was frightfully pale
42:35
Speaker 1: She showed no other signs of uneasiness. As soon as
42:38
Speaker 1: he released her, she withdrew with one more glance as
42:41
Speaker 1: she passed at the couch and the figure blocked out
42:44
Speaker 1: in black upon it. She hastened to her chamber, shut
42:48
Speaker 1: and locked the door, sat down on the side of
42:50
Speaker 1: the couch, and fell, not a weeping, but a thinking.
42:55
Speaker 1: Was he dead? What did it matter? They would all
42:59
Speaker 1: be dead soon. Her mother was dead already. It was
43:03
Speaker 1: only that the earth could not bear more children except
43:06
Speaker 1: she devoured those to whom she had already given birth.
43:09
Speaker 1: But what if they had to come back in another
43:12
Speaker 1: form and live another sad, hopeless, loveless life over again?
43:18
Speaker 1: And so she went on questioning, and receiving no replies,
43:21
Speaker 1: while through all her thoughts passed and repassed the eyes
43:24
Speaker 1: of Volkenlicht, which she had so often felt to be
43:27
Speaker 1: upon her when she did not see them, wild with
43:30
Speaker 1: repressed longing, the light of their love shining through the
43:33
Speaker 1: veil of diffused tears, ever gathering and never overflowing. Then
43:38
Speaker 1: came the pale face, so worshipping, so distant in its
43:41
Speaker 1: self-withdrawn devotion, slowly dawning out of the vapors of her reverie.
43:46
Speaker 1: When it vanished, she tried to see it again. It
43:49
Speaker 1: would not come when she called it. But when her
43:51
Speaker 1: thoughts left knocking at the door of the lost and
43:54
Speaker 1: wandered away, out came the pale, troubled, silent face again,
43:58
Speaker 1: gathering itself up from some unknown nook in her world
44:01
Speaker 1: of fantasy, and once more, when she tried to steady
44:05
Speaker 1: it by the fixedness of her regard, fading back into
44:08
Speaker 1: the mist. So the phantasm of the dead drew near
44:13
Speaker 1: and wooed as the living had never dared. What if
44:16
Speaker 1: there were any good in loving? What if men and
44:19
Speaker 1: women did not all die out, but some dim shade
44:21
Speaker 1: of each, like that pale mind-ghost of Wolkenlicht, floated through
44:26
Speaker 1: the eternal vapors of chaos? And what if they might
44:29
Speaker 1: sometimes cross each other's path, meet, know they had met,
44:32
Speaker 1: love on? Would not that revive the withered memory, fix
44:36
Speaker 1: the fleeting ghost, give a new habitation, a body even,
44:40
Speaker 1: to the poor, unhoused wanderers, frozen by the eternal frosts,
44:46
Speaker 1: no longer thinking beings, but thoughts wandering through the brain
44:50
Speaker 1: of the melancholy mass? Back with the thought came the
44:54
Speaker 1: face of the dead Carl, and the maiden threw herself
44:57
Speaker 1: on her bed in a flood of bitter tears. She
45:01
Speaker 1: could have loved him if he had only lived. She
45:04
Speaker 1: did love him, for he was dead. But even in
45:07
Speaker 1: the midst of the remorse that followed, for had not
45:11
Speaker 1: she killed him? life seemed a less hard and hopeless
45:14
Speaker 1: thing than before, for it is love itself, and not
45:18
Speaker 1: its responses or results, that is the soul of life
45:22
Speaker 1: and its pleasures. Two hours passed ere she could again
45:27
Speaker 1: show herself to her father, from whom she seemed in
45:30
Speaker 1: some new way divided by the new feeling in which
45:33
Speaker 1: he did not and could not share. But at last,
45:37
Speaker 1: lest he should seek her and finding her should suspect
45:40
Speaker 1: her thoughts, she descended and sought him. for there is
45:43
Speaker 1: a maidenliness in sorrow that wraps her garments close around her.
45:48
Speaker 1: But he was not to be seen. The door of
45:51
Speaker 1: the study was locked. A shudder passed through her as
45:54
Speaker 1: she thought of what her father, who lost no opportunity
45:57
Speaker 1: of furthering his all but perfect acquaintance with the human
46:00
Speaker 1: form and structure, might be about with a figure which
46:02
Speaker 1: she knew lay dead beneath that velvet pall, but which
46:05
Speaker 1: had risen to haunt the hollow caves and cells of
46:08
Speaker 1: her living brain. She rushed away, and up once more
46:12
Speaker 1: to her silent room, through the darkness which had now
46:14
Speaker 1: settled down in the house, threw herself again on her bed,
46:17
Speaker 1: and lay almost paralyzed with horror and distress. But Teufelsbrust
46:22
Speaker 1: was not about anything so frightful as she supposed, though
46:25
Speaker 1: something frightful enough. I have already implied that Wolkenlicht was,
46:29
Speaker 1: in form, as fine an embodiment of youthful manhood as
46:32
Speaker 1: any old Greek republic could have provided one of its
46:35
Speaker 1: sculptors with as model for an Apollo. It is true
46:39
Speaker 1: that to the eye of a Greek artist he would
46:40
Speaker 1: not have been more acceptable in consequence of the regiment
46:43
Speaker 1: he had been going through for the last few weeks,
46:45
Speaker 1: but the emaciation of Wolkenlicht's frame... and the consequent prominence
46:49
Speaker 1: of the muscles, indicating the pain he had gone through,
46:53
Speaker 1: were peculiarly attractive to Teufelswurst. He was busy preparing to
46:57
Speaker 1: take a cast of the body of his dead pupil,
47:00
Speaker 1: that it might aid to the perfection of his future labors.
47:04
Speaker 1: He was deep in the artistic enjoyment of a form,
47:07
Speaker 1: at the same time so beautiful and strong, yet with
47:09
Speaker 1: the lines of suffering in every limb and feature, when
47:13
Speaker 1: his daughter's hand was laid on the latch. He started,
47:16
Speaker 1: flung the velvet drapery over the body, and went to
47:18
Speaker 1: the door. But Lilith had vanished. He returned to his labors.
47:22
Speaker 1: The operation took a long time, for he performed it
47:25
Speaker 1: very carefully. Towards midnight he had finished encasing the body
47:29
Speaker 1: in a close-clinging shell of plaster, which, when broken off
47:32
Speaker 1: and fitted together, would be the matrix to the form
47:35
Speaker 1: of the dead Vulcanlicht. Before leaving it to harden till
47:38
Speaker 1: the morning... He was just proceeding to strengthen it with
47:41
Speaker 1: an additional layer all over, when a flash of lightning,
47:44
Speaker 1: reflected in all its dazzle from the snow without, almost
47:48
Speaker 1: blinded him. A peal of long-drawn thunder followed. The wind rose,
47:53
Speaker 1: and just such a storm came on as had risen
47:55
Speaker 1: some time before the death of Kuntz, whose spectre was
47:59
Speaker 1: still tormenting the city. The gnomes of terror, deep hidden
48:02
Speaker 1: in the caverns of Teufelspor's nature, broke out jubilant. With
48:06
Speaker 1: trembling hands he tried to cast the pall over the
48:09
Speaker 1: awful white chrysalis, failed, and fled to his chamber. And
48:14
Speaker 1: there lay the studio naked to the eyes of the lightning,
48:17
Speaker 1: with its tortured forms throbbing out of the dark and quivering,
48:20
Speaker 1: as with life, in the almost continuous palpitations of the light,
48:24
Speaker 1: while on the couch lay the motionless mass of whiteness,
48:27
Speaker 1: gleaming blue in the lightning, almost more terrible in its
48:30
Speaker 1: crude indications of the human form than that which it enclosed.
48:34
Speaker 1: It lay there as if dropped from some tree of chaos,
48:37
Speaker 1: haggard with the snows of eternity, a huge, misshapen nut,
48:42
Speaker 1: with a corpse for its kernel. But the lightning would
48:46
Speaker 1: soon have revealed a more terrible sight still, had there
48:48
Speaker 1: been any eyes to behold it. At midnight, while a
48:51
Speaker 1: peal of thunder was just dying away in the distance,
48:54
Speaker 1: the crust of death flew asunder, rending in all directions, and,
48:58
Speaker 1: pale as his investiture, glaring with ghastly eyes the form
49:02
Speaker 1: of karl started up sitting on the couch had he
49:05
Speaker 1: not been far beyond ordinary men in strength he could
49:09
Speaker 1: not have thus rent his sepulchre indeed had teufelsbrst been
49:14
Speaker 1: able to finish his task by the additional layer of
49:16
Speaker 1: gypsum which he contemplated he must have died the moment
49:20
Speaker 1: life revived, although, so long as the trance lasted, neither
49:23
Speaker 1: the exclusion from the air, nor the practical solidification of
49:27
Speaker 1: the walls of his chest, could do him any injury.
49:30
Speaker 1: He had lain unconscious throughout the operations of Teufelsborst. but
49:34
Speaker 1: now the catalepsy had passed away, possibly under the influence
49:38
Speaker 1: of the electric condition of the atmosphere. Very likely the
49:42
Speaker 1: strength he now put forth was intensified by a convulsive
49:46
Speaker 1: reaction of all the powers of life, as is not
49:49
Speaker 1: infrequently the case in sudden awakenings from similar interruptions of
49:52
Speaker 1: vital activity. The coming to himself and the bursting of
49:56
Speaker 1: his case were simultaneous. he sat staring about him with
50:00
Speaker 1: of all his mental faculties only his imagination awake from
50:04
Speaker 1: which the thoughts that occupied it when he fell senseless
50:06
Speaker 1: had not yet faded these thoughts had been compounded of
50:09
Speaker 1: feelings about lilith and the speculations about the vampire that
50:13
Speaker 1: haunted the neighbourhood and the fumes of the last drug
50:16
Speaker 1: of which he had partaken still hovering in his brain
50:19
Speaker 1: combined with these thoughts and fancies to generate the delusion
50:23
Speaker 1: that he had just broken from the embrace of his
50:25
Speaker 1: coffin and risen the last-born of the vampire race the
50:30
Speaker 1: sense of unavoidable obligation to fulfil his doom was yet
50:34
Speaker 1: mingled with a faint flutter of joy for he knew
50:37
Speaker 1: that he must go to lilith With a deep sigh,
50:40
Speaker 1: he rose, gathered up the pall of black velvet, flung
50:44
Speaker 1: it around him, stepped from the couch, and left the
50:47
Speaker 1: study to find her. Meantime, Teufelsbrust had sufficiently recovered to
50:54
Speaker 1: remember that he had left the door of the studio unfastened,
50:57
Speaker 1: and that anyone entering would discover in what he had
50:59
Speaker 1: been engaged, which, in the case of his getting into
51:02
Speaker 1: any difficulty about the death of Karl, would tell powerfully
51:05
Speaker 1: against him. He was at the farther end of a
51:08
Speaker 1: long passage, LEADING FROM THE HOUSE TO THE STUDIO ON
51:11
Speaker 1: HIS WAY TO MAKE ALL SECURE, WHEN CARL APPEARED AT
51:14
Speaker 1: THE DOOR AND ADVANCED TOWARD HIM. THE PAINTER, SEIZED WITH
51:18
Speaker 1: INVINCIBLE TERROR, TURNED AND FLED. HE REACHED HIS ROOM AND
51:22
Speaker 1: FELL SENSELESS ON THE FLOOR. THE PHANTOM HELD ON ITS WAY, HEADLESS. LILITH,
51:28
Speaker 1: ON GAINING HER ROOM THE SECOND TIME, HAD THROWN HERSELF
51:31
Speaker 1: ON HER BED AS BEFORE AND HAD WEPT HERSELF INTO
51:34
Speaker 1: A TRAVELED SLUMBER. SHE LAY DREAMING, AND DREADFUL DREAMS Suddenly
51:39
Speaker 1: she awoke in one of those peals of thunder which
51:41
Speaker 1: tormented the high regions of the air as a storm
51:44
Speaker 1: billows the surface of the ocean. She lay awake and listened.
51:48
Speaker 1: As it died away, she thought she heard, mingling with
51:51
Speaker 1: its last muffled murmurs, the sound of moaning. She turned
51:55
Speaker 1: her face towards the room in keen terror, but she
51:58
Speaker 1: saw nothing. Another light, long-drawn sigh reached her ear, and
52:03
Speaker 1: at the same moment a flash of lightning illumined the room.
52:07
Speaker 1: In the corner, farthest from her bed, she spied a
52:09
Speaker 1: white face, nothing more. She was dumb and motionless with fear.
52:14
Speaker 1: Utter darkness followed, a darkness that seemed to enter her
52:17
Speaker 1: very brain, yet she felt that the face was slowly
52:20
Speaker 1: crossing the black gulf of the room and drawing near
52:23
Speaker 1: to where she lay. The next flash revealed, as it
52:27
Speaker 1: bended over her, the ghastly face of Carl, down which
52:30
Speaker 1: flowed fresh tears. The rest of his form was lost
52:34
Speaker 1: in blackness. Lilith did not faint, but it was the
52:37
Speaker 1: very force of her fear that seemed to keep her alive.
52:41
Speaker 1: It became for the moment the atmosphere of her life.
52:44
Speaker 1: She lay trembling and staring at the spot in the
52:46
Speaker 1: darkness where she supposed the face of Carl still to be,
52:50
Speaker 1: but the next flash showed her the face far off,
52:53
Speaker 1: looking at her through the panes of her lattice window.
52:57
Speaker 1: For Lachan, as soon as he saw Lilith, seemed to
52:59
Speaker 1: himself to go through a second stage of awaking. Her
53:03
Speaker 1: face made him doubt whether he could be a vampire
53:05
Speaker 1: after all. for, instead of wanting to bite her arm
53:08
Speaker 1: and suck the blood, he all but fell down at
53:11
Speaker 1: her feet in a passion of speechless love. The next
53:14
Speaker 1: moment he became aware that his presence must be at
53:17
Speaker 1: least very undesirable to her, and in an instant he
53:20
Speaker 1: had reached her window, which he knew looked upon a
53:23
Speaker 1: lower roof that extended between the two different parts of
53:25
Speaker 1: the house, and before the next flash came he had
53:28
Speaker 1: stepped through the lattice and closed it behind him. Believing
53:31
Speaker 1: his own room to be attainable from this quarter, he
53:34
Speaker 1: proceeded along the roof in the direction he judged best.
53:37
Speaker 1: The cold winter air, by degrees, restored him entirely to
53:40
Speaker 1: his right mind, and he soon comprehended the whole of
53:43
Speaker 1: the circumstances in which he found himself. Peeping through a
53:46
Speaker 1: window he was passing, to see whether it belonged to
53:49
Speaker 1: his room, he spied Teufelsbrust, who, at the very moment,
53:53
Speaker 1: was lifting his head from the faint into which he
53:55
Speaker 1: had fallen at the first sight of Lutschen. The moon
53:58
Speaker 1: was shining clear, and in its light the painter saw,
54:01
Speaker 1: to his horror, the pale face staring in at his window.
54:05
Speaker 1: He thought it had been there ever since he had fainted,
54:07
Speaker 1: and dropped again in a deeper swoon than before. Karl
54:10
Speaker 1: saw him fall, and the truth flashed upon him that
54:13
Speaker 1: the wicked artist took him for what he had believed
54:16
Speaker 1: himself to be when he first recovered from his trance,
54:18
Speaker 1: namely the vampire of the former Karl Wolkenlicht. The moment
54:23
Speaker 1: he comprehended it, he resolved to keep up the delusion
54:25
Speaker 1: if possible. Meantime, HE WAS INNOCENTLY PREPARING A NEW INGREDIENT
54:30
Speaker 1: FOR THE POPULAR DISH OF HORRORS TO BE SERVED AT
54:32
Speaker 1: THE ORDINARY OF THE CITY THE NEXT DAY, FOR THE
54:35
Speaker 1: OLD SERVANTS WERE NOT THE ONLY EYES THAT HAD SEEN
54:37
Speaker 1: HIM BESIDES THOSE OF TOYFELSPORST. WHAT COULD BE MORE LIKE
54:40
Speaker 1: A VAMPIRE DRAGGING HIS PAW AFTER HIM THAN THIS APPARITION
54:44
Speaker 1: OF POOR, HALF-FROZEN LUTCHEN CRAWLING ACROSS THE ROOF? CARL REMEMBERED
54:49
Speaker 1: AFTERWARDS THAT HE HAD HEARD THE DOGS HOWLING AWFULLY IN
54:52
Speaker 1: EVERY DIRECTION AS HE CREPT ALONG. but this was hardly
54:55
Speaker 1: necessary to make those who saw him conclude that it
54:57
Speaker 1: was the same phantasm of john coontz which had been
55:01
Speaker 1: infesting the whole city and especially the house next door
55:04
Speaker 1: to the painter's which had been the dwelling of the
55:06
Speaker 1: respectable alderman who had degenerated into this most disreputable of
55:11
Speaker 1: moneyless vagabonds What added to the consternation of all who
55:15
Speaker 1: heard of it was the sickening conviction that the extreme
55:18
Speaker 1: measures which they had resorted to in order to free
55:21
Speaker 1: the city from the ghoul, beyond which nothing could be done,
55:24
Speaker 1: had been utterly unavailing, successful as they had proved in
55:28
Speaker 1: every other known case of the kind. For, urged as
55:31
Speaker 1: well by various horrid signs about his grave, which not
55:35
Speaker 1: even its close proximity to the altar could render a
55:37
Speaker 1: place of repose, They had opened it, had found in
55:40
Speaker 1: the body every peculiarity belonging to a vampire, had pulled
55:44
Speaker 1: it out with the greatest difficulty on account of a
55:47
Speaker 1: quite supernatural ponderosity, which rendered the horse which had killed
55:51
Speaker 1: him a strong animal, all but unable to drag it along,
55:55
Speaker 1: and had at last, after cutting it in pieces and
55:57
Speaker 1: expending on the fire two hundred and sixteen great billets,
56:01
Speaker 1: succeeded in conquering its incombustibleness and reducing it to ashes. Such,
56:07
Speaker 1: at least, was the story which had reached the painter's household,
56:10
Speaker 1: and was believed by many, and if all this did
56:12
Speaker 1: not compel the perturbed corpse to rest, what more could
56:16
Speaker 1: be done? When Carl had reached his room, and was
56:20
Speaker 1: dressing himself, the thought struck him that something might be
56:23
Speaker 1: made of the report of the extreme weight of the
56:25
Speaker 1: body of old Kuntz, to favor the continuance of the
56:28
Speaker 1: delusion of Teufelsbrust, although he hardly knew yet to what
56:31
Speaker 1: use he could turn this delusion. He was convinced that
56:34
Speaker 1: he would have made no progress however long he might
56:37
Speaker 1: have remained in his house, and that he would have
56:39
Speaker 1: more chance of favor with Lilith if he were to
56:41
Speaker 1: meet her in any other circumstances whatever than those in
56:44
Speaker 1: which he invariably saw her, namely, surrounded by her father's
56:47
Speaker 1: influences and watched by her father's cold blue eyes. As
56:52
Speaker 1: soon as he was dressed, he crept down to the studio,
56:55
Speaker 1: which was now quiet enough, the storm being over, and
56:58
Speaker 1: the moon filling it with her steady shine. in the
57:00
Speaker 1: corner lay in all directions the fragments of the mould
57:03
Speaker 1: which his own body had formed and filled the bag
57:06
Speaker 1: of plaster and the bucket of water which the painter
57:09
Speaker 1: had been using stood beside locchen gathered all the pieces
57:13
Speaker 1: together and then making his way to an outhouse where
57:15
Speaker 1: he had seen various odds and ends of rubbish lying
57:18
Speaker 1: chose from the heap as many pieces of old iron
57:20
Speaker 1: and other metal as he could find to these he
57:23
Speaker 1: added a few large stones from the garden WHEN HE
57:26
Speaker 1: HAD GOT ALL INTO THE STUDIO, HE LOCKED THE DOOR,
57:29
Speaker 1: AND PROCEEDED TO FIT TOGETHER THE PARTS OF THE MOLD,
57:31
Speaker 1: FILLING UP THE HOLLOW AS HE WENT, WITH THE HEAVIEST
57:33
Speaker 1: THINGS HE COULD GET INTO IT, AND SOLIDIFYING THE WHOLE
57:36
Speaker 1: BY POURING IN PLASTER, TILL, HAVING AT LENGTH COMPLETED IT,
57:40
Speaker 1: AND OBLITERATED AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE THE MARKS OF JOINING,
57:43
Speaker 1: HE LEFT IT TO HARDEN, WITH THE CONVICTION THAT NOW
57:45
Speaker 1: IT WOULD MAKE A CONSIDERABLE IMPRESSION ON TEUFELSPORTS' IMAGINATION, AS
57:50
Speaker 1: WELL AS ON HIS MUSCULAR SENSE. He then left everything
57:54
Speaker 1: else as nearly undisturbed as he could, and, knowing all
57:57
Speaker 1: the ways of the house, was soon in the street
57:59
Speaker 1: without leaving any signs of his exit. Carl soon found
58:11
Speaker 1: himself before the house in which his friend Høllenrocken resided.
58:15
Speaker 1: Knowing his studious habits, he had hoped to see his
58:18
Speaker 1: light still burning, nor was he disappointed. He contrived to
58:22
Speaker 1: bring him to his window, and a moment after, the
58:25
Speaker 1: door was cautiously opened.
58:27
Speaker 2: Why, Lachin, where do you come from?
58:31
Speaker 1: From the grave, Heinrich, or next door to it.
58:34
Speaker 2: Come in and tell me all about it. We thought
58:37
Speaker 2: the old painter had made a model of you and
58:39
Speaker 2: tortured you to death.
58:42
Speaker 1: Perhaps you were not far wrong, but get me a
58:44
Speaker 1: horn of ale, for even a vampire is thirsty, you know.
58:46
Speaker 2: A vampire?
58:48
Speaker 1: Exclaimed Heinrich. retreating apace and involuntarily putting himself upon his guard.
58:54
Speaker 1: Carl laughed. My hand was warm, was it not, old fellow?
58:58
Speaker 1: he said. Vampires are cold, all but the blood. What
59:02
Speaker 1: a fool I am, rejoined Heinrich.
59:04
Speaker 2: But you know, we have been hearing such horrors lately
59:07
Speaker 2: that a fellow may be excused for shuddering a little.
59:10
Speaker 2: when a pale-faced apparition tells him at two o'clock in
59:13
Speaker 2: the morning that he is a vampire and thirsty, too.
59:17
Speaker 1: Carl told him the whole story, and the mental process
59:20
Speaker 1: of regarding it for the sake of telling it revealed
59:22
Speaker 1: to him pretty clearly some of the treatment of which
59:24
Speaker 1: he had been unconscious at the time. Heinrich was quite
59:27
Speaker 1: sure that his suspicions were correct.' And now the question was,
59:31
Speaker 1: what was to be done next? At all events, said Heinrich,
59:36
Speaker 1: we must keep you out of the way for some time.
59:38
Speaker 1: I will represent to my landlady that you are in
59:41
Speaker 1: hiding from enemies, and her heart will rule her tongue.
59:45
Speaker 1: She can let you have a garret room, I know,
59:47
Speaker 1: and I will do as well as I can to
59:49
Speaker 1: bear you company. We shall have time, then, to invent
59:52
Speaker 1: some plan of operation. To this proposal, Carl agreed with
59:57
Speaker 1: hearty thanks, and soon all was arranged. THE ONLY CONCLUSION
1:00:01
Speaker 1: THEY COULD YET ARRIVE AT WAS THAT SOMEHOW OR OTHER
1:00:03
Speaker 1: THE OLD DEMON PAINTER MUST BE TAMED. MEANTIME, HOWE FAIRED
1:00:08
Speaker 1: IT WITH LILLITH. SHE TOO HAD NO DOUBT THAT SHE
1:00:11
Speaker 1: HAD SEEN THE BODY GHOST OF POOR CARL, AND THAT
1:00:14
Speaker 1: THE VAMPIRE HAD, ACCORDING TO RULE, PAID HER THE FIRST
1:00:17
Speaker 1: VISIT BECAUSE HE LOVED HER BEST. THIS WAS HORRIBLE ENOUGH
1:00:21
Speaker 1: IF THE VAMPIRE WERE NOT REALLY THE PERSON HE REPRESENTED,
1:00:24
Speaker 1: BUT IF IN ANY SENSE IT WERE CARL HIMSELF. at
1:00:28
Speaker 1: least it gave some expectation of a more prolonged existence
1:00:31
Speaker 1: than her father had taught her to look for. And
1:00:33
Speaker 1: if love, anything like her mother's, still lasted, even along
1:00:37
Speaker 1: with the habits of a vampire, then there was something
1:00:39
Speaker 1: to hope for in the future. And then, though he
1:00:43
Speaker 1: had visited her, he had not, as far as she
1:00:45
Speaker 1: was aware, deprived her of a drop of blood. She
1:00:48
Speaker 1: could not be certain that he had not bitten her,
1:00:51
Speaker 1: for she had been in such a strange condition of
1:00:53
Speaker 1: mind that she might not have felt it. but she
1:00:56
Speaker 1: believed that he had restrained the impulses of his vampire nature,
1:00:59
Speaker 1: and had left her, lest he should yet yield to them.
1:01:02
Speaker 1: She fell fast asleep, and, when morning came, there was not,
1:01:06
Speaker 1: as far as she could judge, one of those triangular
1:01:09
Speaker 1: leech-like perforations to be found upon her whole body. Will
1:01:13
Speaker 1: it be believed that the moment she was satisfied of this,
1:01:16
Speaker 1: she was seized by a terrible jealousy? Lest Carl should
1:01:19
Speaker 1: have gone and bitten someone else?' Most people will wonder
1:01:24
Speaker 1: that she should not have gone out of her senses
1:01:26
Speaker 1: at once, but there was all the difference between a
1:01:28
Speaker 1: visit from a real vampire and a visit from a
1:01:31
Speaker 1: man she had begun to love, even although she took
1:01:34
Speaker 1: him for a vampire. All the difference does not lie
1:01:37
Speaker 1: in a name. They were very different causes, and the
1:01:41
Speaker 1: effects must be very different. When Teufelsbrust came down in
1:01:45
Speaker 1: the morning, he crept into the studio like a murderer.
1:01:49
Speaker 1: There lay the awful white block, seeming to his eyes
1:01:52
Speaker 1: just the same as he had left it. What was
1:01:54
Speaker 1: to be done with it? He dared not open it.
1:01:57
Speaker 1: Mold and model must go together. But whither? If inquiry
1:02:02
Speaker 1: should be made after Volkenlicht, and this were discovered anywhere
1:02:05
Speaker 1: on his premises, would it not be enough to bring
1:02:07
Speaker 1: him at once to the gallows? Therefore it would be
1:02:10
Speaker 1: dangerous to bury it in the garden, or in the cellar. Besides,
1:02:14
Speaker 1: thought he, with a shudder, that would be to fix
1:02:17
Speaker 1: the vampire as a guest for ever, and the horrors
1:02:20
Speaker 1: of the past night rushed back upon his imagination with
1:02:22
Speaker 1: renewed intensity what would it be to have the dead
1:02:26
Speaker 1: karl crawling about his house for ever now inside now
1:02:29
Speaker 1: out now sitting on the stairs now staring in at
1:02:32
Speaker 1: the windows he would have dragged it to the bottom
1:02:34
Speaker 1: of his garden past which the moldau flowed and plunged
1:02:38
Speaker 1: it into the stream But then, should the spectre continue
1:02:41
Speaker 1: to prove troublesome, it would be almost impossible to reach
1:02:44
Speaker 1: the body so as to destroy it by fire, besides
1:02:47
Speaker 1: which he could not do it without assistance and the
1:02:50
Speaker 1: probability of discovery. If, however, the apparition should turn out
1:02:54
Speaker 1: to be no vampire, but only a respectable ghost, they
1:02:57
Speaker 1: might manage to endure its presence till it should be
1:03:00
Speaker 1: weary of haunting them. He resolved at last to convey
1:03:03
Speaker 1: the body for the meantime into a concealed cellar in
1:03:06
Speaker 1: the house, seeing something must be done before his daughter
1:03:08
Speaker 1: came down. Proceeding to remove it, his consternation as greatly
1:03:12
Speaker 1: increased when he discovered how the body had grown in
1:03:14
Speaker 1: weight since he had thus disposed of it, leaving on
1:03:17
Speaker 1: his mind scarcely a hope that it could turn out
1:03:20
Speaker 1: not to be a vampire after all. He could scarcely
1:03:23
Speaker 1: stir it, and there was but one whom he could
1:03:25
Speaker 1: call to his assistance, the old woman who acted as
1:03:28
Speaker 1: his housekeeper and servant. He went to her room. roused her,
1:03:32
Speaker 1: and told her the whole story. Devoted to her master
1:03:35
Speaker 1: for many years, and not quite so sensitive to fearful
1:03:38
Speaker 1: influences as when less experienced in horrors, she showed immediate
1:03:42
Speaker 1: readiness to render him assistance. Utterly unable, however, to lift
1:03:46
Speaker 1: the mass between them, they could only drag and push
1:03:49
Speaker 1: it along, and such a slow toil was it that
1:03:52
Speaker 1: there was no time to remove the traces of its
1:03:54
Speaker 1: track before Lilith came down and saw a broad white
1:03:58
Speaker 1: line leading from the door of the studio down the
1:04:00
Speaker 1: cellar stairs. She knew in a moment what it meant,
1:04:04
Speaker 1: but not a word was uttered about the matter, and
1:04:06
Speaker 1: the name of Karl Wolkenlicht seemed to be entirely forgotten.
1:04:11
Speaker 1: But how could the affairs of a house go on
1:04:13
Speaker 1: all the same when every one of the household knew
1:04:15
Speaker 1: that a dead body lay in the cellar? Name more,
1:04:17
Speaker 1: that although it lay still and dead enough all day,
1:04:21
Speaker 1: it would come half alive at nightfall, and, turning the
1:04:24
Speaker 1: whole house into a sepulchre by its presence, go creeping
1:04:27
Speaker 1: about like a cat all over it in the dark.
1:04:30
Speaker 1: perhaps with phosphorescent eyes. So it was not surprising that
1:04:34
Speaker 1: the painter abandoned his studio early and that the three
1:04:37
Speaker 1: found themselves together in the gorgeous room formerly described as
1:04:41
Speaker 1: soon as twilight began to fall. Already Teufelsbrust had begun
1:04:46
Speaker 1: to experience a kind of shrinking from the horrid faces
1:04:48
Speaker 1: in his own pictures and to feel disgusted at the
1:04:51
Speaker 1: abortions of his own mind. But all that he and
1:04:54
Speaker 1: the old woman now felt was an increasing fear as
1:04:57
Speaker 1: the night drew on. a kind of sickening and paralyzing terror.
1:05:02
Speaker 1: The thing down there would not lie quiet, at least
1:05:05
Speaker 1: its phantom in the cellars of their imagination would not.
1:05:08
Speaker 1: As much as possible, however, they avoided alarming Lilith, who,
1:05:12
Speaker 1: knowing all they knew, was as silent as they, but
1:05:15
Speaker 1: her mind was in a strange state of excitement, partly
1:05:19
Speaker 1: from the presence of a new sense of love, the
1:05:22
Speaker 1: pleasure of which all the atmosphere of grief into which
1:05:24
Speaker 1: it grew could not totally quench. It comforted her, somehow,
1:05:29
Speaker 1: as a child may comfort when his father is away.
1:05:32
Speaker 1: Bedtime came, and no one made a move to go.
1:05:35
Speaker 1: Without a word spoken on the subject, the three remained
1:05:38
Speaker 1: together all night, the elders nodding and slumbering occasionally, and
1:05:42
Speaker 1: Lilith getting some share of repose on a couch. All
1:05:45
Speaker 1: night the shape of death might be somewhere about the house.
1:05:49
Speaker 1: but it did not disturb them. They heard no sound,
1:05:52
Speaker 1: saw no sight, and when the morning dawned, they separated,
1:05:55
Speaker 1: chilled and stupid, and for the time, beyond fear, to
1:05:58
Speaker 1: seek repose in their private chambers. There they remained equally undisturbed.
1:06:03
Speaker 1: But when the painter approached his easel a few hours after,
1:06:06
Speaker 1: looking more pale and haggard still than he was wont,
1:06:09
Speaker 1: from the fears of the night, a new bewilderment took
1:06:13
Speaker 1: possession of him. He had been busy with a fresh
1:06:16
Speaker 1: embodiment of his favorite subject, into which he had sketched
1:06:19
Speaker 1: the form of the student as the sufferer. He had
1:06:22
Speaker 1: represented poor Wolkenlicht as just beginning to recover from a trance,
1:06:26
Speaker 1: while a group of surgeons, unaware of the signs of
1:06:29
Speaker 1: returning life, were absorbed in a minute dissection of one
1:06:32
Speaker 1: of the limbs. At an open door he had painted
1:06:35
Speaker 1: Lilith passing, with her face buried in a bunch of
1:06:38
Speaker 1: sweet peas, but when he came to the picture he found,
1:06:41
Speaker 1: to his astonishment and terror, that the face of one
1:06:44
Speaker 1: of the group was now turned towards that of the victim,
1:06:47
Speaker 1: regarding his revival with demoniac satisfaction, and taking pains to
1:06:52
Speaker 1: prevent the others from discovering it. The face of this
1:06:55
Speaker 1: prince of torturers was that of Teufelsforst himself. Lilith had
1:07:00
Speaker 1: altogether vanished, and in her place stood the dim vampire
1:07:04
Speaker 1: reiteration of the body that lay extended on the table,
1:07:07
Speaker 1: staring greedily at the assembled company. With trembling hands, the
1:07:11
Speaker 1: painter removed the picture from the easel and turned its
1:07:14
Speaker 1: face to the wall. Of course, this was the work
1:07:19
Speaker 1: of Lotchin. When he left the house, he took with
1:07:22
Speaker 1: him the key of a small private door which was
1:07:24
Speaker 1: so seldom used that, while it remained closed, the key
1:07:27
Speaker 1: would not be missed, perhaps for many months. Watching the windows,
1:07:32
Speaker 1: he had chosen a safe time to enter, and had
1:07:34
Speaker 1: been hard at work all night on these alterations. Teufelsbrust
1:07:38
Speaker 1: attributed them to the vampire and left the picture as
1:07:41
Speaker 1: he found it, not daring to put brush to it again.
1:07:44
Speaker 1: The next night was passed much after the same fashion,
1:07:47
Speaker 1: but the fear had begun to die away a little
1:07:49
Speaker 1: in the hearts of the women who did not know
1:07:51
Speaker 1: what had taken place in the studio on the previous night.
1:07:55
Speaker 1: It burrowed, however, with gathered force in the vitals of Teufelsbrust,
1:07:59
Speaker 1: but this night likewise passed in peace. and before it
1:08:03
Speaker 1: was over the old woman had taken to speculating in
1:08:05
Speaker 1: her own mind as to the best way of disposing
1:08:07
Speaker 1: of the body, seeing it was not at all likely
1:08:10
Speaker 1: to be troublesome. But when the painter entered his studio
1:08:13
Speaker 1: in trepidation the next morning, he found that the form
1:08:17
Speaker 1: of the lovely Lilith was painted out of every picture
1:08:19
Speaker 1: in the room. This could not be concealed, and Lilith
1:08:23
Speaker 1: and the servant became aware that the studio was the
1:08:25
Speaker 1: portion of the house in haunting which the vampire left
1:08:28
Speaker 1: the rest in peace. Carl recounted all the tricks he
1:08:33
Speaker 1: had played to his friend Heinrich, who begged to be
1:08:35
Speaker 1: allowed to bear him company the following night. To this
1:08:38
Speaker 1: Carl consented, thinking that it would be considerably more agreeable
1:08:41
Speaker 1: to have a companion. So they took a couple of
1:08:44
Speaker 1: bottles of wine and some provisions with them, and before
1:08:48
Speaker 1: midnight found themselves snug in the studio. They sat very
1:08:51
Speaker 1: quiet for some time, for they knew that if they
1:08:53
Speaker 1: were seen, two vampires would not be so terrible as one,
1:08:57
Speaker 1: and might occasion discovery. But at length, Heinrich could bear
1:09:01
Speaker 1: it no longer.
1:09:02
Speaker 2: I say, Lachin, let's go and have a look, for
1:09:05
Speaker 2: your dead body. What has the old beggar done with it?
1:09:09
Speaker 1: I think I know. Stop, let me peep out. All right,
1:09:13
Speaker 1: come along. With a lamp in his hand, he led
1:09:16
Speaker 1: the way to the cellars, and after searching about a little,
1:09:19
Speaker 1: they discovered it.
1:09:21
Speaker 2: It looks horrid enough, said Heinrich, but think a drop
1:09:25
Speaker 2: or two of wine would brighten it up a little.
1:09:28
Speaker 1: So he took a bottle from his pocket, and after
1:09:30
Speaker 1: they had had a glass apiece, he dropped a third
1:09:33
Speaker 1: in blots all over the plaster. Being red wine, it
1:09:37
Speaker 1: had the effect Hüllenrachen desired.
1:09:40
Speaker 2: When they visit it next, they will know that the
1:09:42
Speaker 2: vampire can find the food he prefers, said he.
1:09:47
Speaker 1: In a corner close by the plaster they found the
1:09:49
Speaker 1: clothes Carl had worn. Hello, said Heinrich. We'll make something
1:09:54
Speaker 1: of this find. So he carried them with him to
1:09:57
Speaker 1: the studio. There he got hold of the lay figure.
1:10:01
Speaker 1: What are you about, Heinrich?
1:10:03
Speaker 2: Going to make a scarecrow to keep the ravens off
1:10:06
Speaker 2: old Teufel's.
1:10:07
Speaker 1: Pictures, answered Heinrich as he went on dressing the lay
1:10:10
Speaker 1: figure in Carl's clothes. He next seated the creature at
1:10:14
Speaker 1: an easel with its back to the door so that
1:10:16
Speaker 1: it should be the first thing the painter should see
1:10:18
Speaker 1: when he entered. Carl meant to remove this before he went,
1:10:22
Speaker 1: for it was too comical to fall in with the
1:10:24
Speaker 1: rest of his proceedings. But the two sat down to
1:10:26
Speaker 1: their supper, and by the time they had finished the wine,
1:10:29
Speaker 1: they thought they should like to go to bed. So
1:10:31
Speaker 1: they got up and went home, and Carl forgot the
1:10:34
Speaker 1: lay figure, leaving it in busy motionlessness all night before
1:10:37
Speaker 1: the easel. When Teufelsbrust saw it, he turned and fled
1:10:41
Speaker 1: with a cry that brought his daughter to his help.
1:10:44
Speaker 1: He rushed past her, able only to articulate, The vampire!
1:10:48
Speaker 2: The vampire! Painting!
1:10:51
Speaker 1: Far more courageous than he, because her conscience was more peaceful,
1:10:55
Speaker 1: Lilith passed on to the studio. She too recoiled a
1:10:58
Speaker 1: step or two when she saw the figure, but with
1:11:01
Speaker 1: the sight of the back of Carl, as she supposed
1:11:03
Speaker 1: it to be, came the longing to see the face
1:11:05
Speaker 1: that was on the other side, so she crept round
1:11:08
Speaker 1: and round by the wall, as far off as she could.
1:11:11
Speaker 1: The figure remained motionless. It was a strange kind of
1:11:15
Speaker 1: shock that she experienced when she saw the face, disgusting
1:11:18
Speaker 1: from its inanity. The absurdity next struck her, and with
1:11:22
Speaker 1: the absurdity flashed into her mind the conviction that this
1:11:25
Speaker 1: was not the doing of a vampire, for of all
1:11:28
Speaker 1: creatures under the moon, he could not be expected to
1:11:31
Speaker 1: be a humorist. A wild hope sprang up in her
1:11:34
Speaker 1: mind that Carl was not dead. Of this she soon
1:11:38
Speaker 1: resolved to make herself sure. She closed the door of
1:11:41
Speaker 1: the studio, in the strength of her new hope, undressed
1:11:44
Speaker 1: the figure, put it in its place, concealed the garments,
1:11:47
Speaker 1: all the work of a few minutes, and then, finding
1:11:50
Speaker 1: her father just recovering from the worst of his fear,
1:11:53
Speaker 1: told him there was nothing in the studio but what
1:11:55
Speaker 1: ought to be there, and persuaded him to go and see.
1:11:59
Speaker 1: He not only saw no one, but found that no
1:12:01
Speaker 1: further liberties had been taken with his pictures. Reassured, He
1:12:05
Speaker 1: soon persuaded himself that the spectre in this case had
1:12:08
Speaker 1: been the offspring of his own terror-haunted brain, but he
1:12:11
Speaker 1: had no spirit for painting now. He wandered about the house,
1:12:15
Speaker 1: himself haunting it like a restless ghost. When night came,
1:12:19
Speaker 1: Lilith retired to her own room. The waters of fear
1:12:22
Speaker 1: had begun to subside in the house, but the painter
1:12:25
Speaker 1: and his old attendant did not yet follow her example.
1:12:28
Speaker 1: As soon, however, as the house was quite still, Lilith
1:12:31
Speaker 1: glided noiselessly down the stairs, went into the studio, where
1:12:35
Speaker 1: as yet there assuredly was no vampire, and concealed herself
1:12:38
Speaker 1: in a corner. As it would not do for an
1:12:42
Speaker 1: earnest student like Heinrich to be away from his work
1:12:45
Speaker 1: very often, he had not asked to accompany Lachin this time,
1:12:48
Speaker 1: and indeed Karl himself, a little anxious about the result
1:12:51
Speaker 1: of the scarecrow, greatly preferred going alone. While she was
1:12:55
Speaker 1: waiting for what might happen, the conviction grew upon Lilith
1:12:59
Speaker 1: as she reviewed all the past of the story that
1:13:01
Speaker 1: these phenomena were the work of the real Carl and
1:13:04
Speaker 1: of no vampire. In a few moments, she was still
1:13:07
Speaker 1: more sure of this. Behind the screen where she had
1:13:09
Speaker 1: taken refuge hung one of the pictures out of which
1:13:12
Speaker 1: her portrait had been painted the night before last. She
1:13:15
Speaker 1: had taken a lamp with her in the studio with
1:13:17
Speaker 1: the intention of extinguishing it the moment she heard any
1:13:20
Speaker 1: sign of approach. But as the vampire lingered, she began
1:13:23
Speaker 1: to occupy herself with examining the picture beside her. She
1:13:27
Speaker 1: had not looked at it long before she wetted the
1:13:29
Speaker 1: tip of her forefinger and began to rub away at
1:13:31
Speaker 1: the obliteration. Her suspicions were instantly confirmed. The substance employed
1:13:36
Speaker 1: was only a gummy wash over the paint. The delight
1:13:40
Speaker 1: she experienced at the discovery threw her into a mischievous humor.'
1:13:44
Speaker 1: I will see,' she said to herself.' Whether I cannot
1:13:48
Speaker 1: match Karl Wolkenlicht at this game,' In a closet in
1:13:52
Speaker 1: the room hung a number of costumes, which Lilith had
1:13:55
Speaker 1: at different times worn for her father. Among them was
1:13:58
Speaker 1: a large white drapery, which she easily disposed as a shroud.
1:14:03
Speaker 1: With the help of some chalk, she soon made herself
1:14:05
Speaker 1: ghastly enough, and then placing her lamp on the floor
1:14:08
Speaker 1: behind the screen and setting a chair over it so
1:14:11
Speaker 1: that it should throw no light in any direction, she
1:14:14
Speaker 1: waited once more for the vampire. Nor had she much
1:14:17
Speaker 1: longer to wait. She soon heard a door move. the
1:14:20
Speaker 1: sound of which she hardly knew, and then the studio
1:14:23
Speaker 1: door opened. Her heart beat dreadfully, not with fear lest
1:14:29
Speaker 1: it should be a vampire after all, but with hope
1:14:31
Speaker 1: that it was Carl. To see him once more was
1:14:34
Speaker 1: too great joy. Would she not make up to him
1:14:37
Speaker 1: for all her coldness? But would he care for her now?
1:14:42
Speaker 1: Perhaps he had been quite cured of his longing for
1:14:45
Speaker 1: a hard heart like hers. She peeped. It was he,
1:14:49
Speaker 1: sure enough. looking as handsome as ever. He was holding
1:14:53
Speaker 1: his light to look at her last work, and the
1:14:55
Speaker 1: expression of his face, even in regarding her handiwork, was
1:14:58
Speaker 1: enough to let her know that he loved her still.
1:15:02
Speaker 1: If she had not seen this, she dared not have
1:15:04
Speaker 1: shown herself from her hiding place. Taking the lamp in
1:15:08
Speaker 1: her hand, she got upon the chair and looked over
1:15:11
Speaker 1: the screen, letting the light shine from below her face.
1:15:14
Speaker 1: She then made a slight noise to attract Carl's attention.
1:15:18
Speaker 1: He looked up, evidently rather startled, and saw the face
1:15:21
Speaker 1: of Lilith in the air. He gave a stifled cry,
1:15:25
Speaker 1: threw himself on his knees with his arms stretched towards her,
1:15:28
Speaker 1: and moaned, I have killed her! I have killed her!
1:15:33
Speaker 1: Lilith descended and approached him noiselessly. He did not move.
1:15:39
Speaker 1: She came close to him and said, Are you Karl Wolkenlicht?
1:15:44
Speaker 1: His lips moved, but no sound came. If you are
1:15:49
Speaker 1: a vampire, and I am a ghost, she said. But
1:15:53
Speaker 1: a low, happy laugh alone concluded the sentence. Carl sprang
1:15:58
Speaker 1: to his feet. Lilith's laugh changed into a burst of
1:16:01
Speaker 1: sobbing and weeping, and in another moment the ghost was
1:16:05
Speaker 1: in the arms of the vampire. Lilith had no idea
1:16:09
Speaker 1: how far her father had wronged Carl. and though, from
1:16:12
Speaker 1: thinking over the past, he had no doubt that the
1:16:15
Speaker 1: painter had drugged him, he did not wish to pain
1:16:18
Speaker 1: her by imparting this conviction. But Lilith was afraid of
1:16:22
Speaker 1: a reaction of rage and hatred in her father after
1:16:25
Speaker 1: the terror was removed, and Carl saw that he might
1:16:28
Speaker 1: thus be deprived of all further intercourse with Lilith, and
1:16:32
Speaker 1: all chance of softening the old man's heart towards him,
1:16:36
Speaker 1: while Lilith would not hear of forsaking him who had
1:16:39
Speaker 1: banished all the human race but herself. they managed at
1:16:43
Speaker 1: length to agree upon a plan of operation. The first
1:16:47
Speaker 1: thing they did was to go to the cellar where
1:16:49
Speaker 1: the plaster mass lay, Carl carrying with him a great
1:16:53
Speaker 1: axe used for cleaving wood. Lilith shuddered when she saw it,
1:16:57
Speaker 1: stained as it was with the wine Heinrich had spilt
1:17:00
Speaker 1: over it, and almost believed herself the midnight companion of
1:17:03
Speaker 1: a vampire after all, visiting with him the terrible corpse
1:17:06
Speaker 1: in which he lived all day. But Carl soon reassured her,
1:17:10
Speaker 1: and a few good blows of the axe revealed a
1:17:12
Speaker 1: very different core to that which Teufelsburg supposed to be
1:17:15
Speaker 1: in it. Carl broke it into pieces, and, with Lilith's help,
1:17:20
Speaker 1: who insisted on carrying her share, the hole was soon
1:17:24
Speaker 1: at the bottom of the moldau, and every trace of
1:17:27
Speaker 1: its ever having existed removed. Before morning, too, the form
1:17:31
Speaker 1: of Lilith had dawned anew in every picture. there was
1:17:35
Speaker 1: no time to restore to its former condition the one
1:17:38
Speaker 1: Carl had first altered, for in it the changes were
1:17:41
Speaker 1: all that they had seemed, nor indeed was he capable
1:17:44
Speaker 1: of restoring it in the master's style, but they put
1:17:47
Speaker 1: it quite out of the way, and hoped that sufficient
1:17:49
Speaker 1: time might elapse before the painter thought of it again.
1:17:54
Speaker 1: When they had done, and Lilith, for all his entreaties,
1:17:56
Speaker 1: would remain with him no longer, Carl took his former
1:17:59
Speaker 1: clothes with him, and having spent the rest of the
1:18:02
Speaker 1: night in his old room, dressed in them in the morning.
1:18:05
Speaker 1: When Teufelsbrust entered his studio the next day, there sat
1:18:09
Speaker 1: Karl as if nothing had happened, finishing the drawing at
1:18:12
Speaker 1: which he had been at work when the fit of
1:18:13
Speaker 1: insensibility came upon him. The painter started, stared, rubbed his eyes,
1:18:19
Speaker 1: thought it was another spectral illusion, and was on the
1:18:22
Speaker 1: point of yielding to his terror when Karl rose and
1:18:25
Speaker 1: approached him with a smile. The healthy, sunshiny countenance of
1:18:29
Speaker 1: Karl let him be ghost or goblin could not fail
1:18:33
Speaker 1: to produce somewhat of a tranquilizing effect on teufelsbrst he
1:18:37
Speaker 1: took his offered hand mechanically his countenance utterly vacant with
1:18:40
Speaker 1: idiotic bewilderment karl said i was not well and thought
1:18:45
Speaker 1: it better to pay a visit to a friend for
1:18:47
Speaker 1: a few days but i shall soon make up for
1:18:49
Speaker 1: lost time for I am all right now. He sat
1:18:52
Speaker 1: down at once, taking no notice of his master's behavior,
1:18:55
Speaker 1: and went on with his drawing. Teufelsbrust stood staring at
1:18:59
Speaker 1: him for some minutes without moving, then suddenly turned and
1:19:02
Speaker 1: left the room. Carl heard him hurrying down the cellar stairs.
1:19:06
Speaker 1: In a few moments he came up again. Carl stole
1:19:10
Speaker 1: a glance at him. There he stood in the same spot,
1:19:13
Speaker 1: no doubt more full of bewilderment than ever, but it
1:19:16
Speaker 1: was not possible that his face should express more. At
1:19:19
Speaker 1: last he went to his easel, and sat down with
1:19:22
Speaker 1: a long-drawn sigh as if of relief. But though he
1:19:26
Speaker 1: sat at his easel, he painted none that day, and
1:19:29
Speaker 1: as often as Carl ventured a glance, he saw him
1:19:32
Speaker 1: still staring at him, The discovery that his pictures were
1:19:35
Speaker 1: restored to their former condition aided, no doubt, in leading
1:19:38
Speaker 1: him to the same conclusion as the other facts, whatever
1:19:41
Speaker 1: that conclusion might be, probably that he had been the
1:19:44
Speaker 1: sport of some evil power, and had been for the
1:19:46
Speaker 1: greater part of a week utterly bewitched. Lilith had taken
1:19:50
Speaker 1: care to instruct the old woman, with whom she was all-powerful, and,
1:19:55
Speaker 1: as neither of them showed the smallest traces of astonishment,
1:19:58
Speaker 1: which seemed to be slowly vitrifying his own brain, he
1:20:01
Speaker 1: was at last perfectly satisfied that things had been going
1:20:04
Speaker 1: on all right everywhere but in his inner man. And
1:20:07
Speaker 1: in this conclusion he was certainly not far wrong in
1:20:10
Speaker 1: more senses than one. But when all was restored again
1:20:14
Speaker 1: to the old routine, it became evident that the peculiar
1:20:17
Speaker 1: direction of his art in which he had hitherto indulged
1:20:20
Speaker 1: had ceased to interest him. The shock had acted chiefly
1:20:24
Speaker 1: upon that part of his mental being which had been
1:20:26
Speaker 1: so absorbed and He would sit for hours without doing anything,
1:20:30
Speaker 1: apparently plunged in meditation. Several weeks elapsed without any change,
1:20:36
Speaker 1: and both Lilith and Carl were getting dreadfully anxious about him.
1:20:40
Speaker 1: Carl paid him every attention, and the old man, for
1:20:43
Speaker 1: he now looked much older than before, submitted to receive
1:20:47
Speaker 1: his services as well as those of Lilith. At length
1:20:51
Speaker 1: one morning he said in a slow, thoughtful tone, Carl Wurkenlicht.
1:20:57
Speaker 1: I should like to paint you. Certainly, sir, answered Carl,
1:21:01
Speaker 1: jumping up. Where would you like me to sit? So
1:21:06
Speaker 1: the ice of silence and inactivity was broken, and the
1:21:09
Speaker 1: painter drew and painted. And the spring of his art
1:21:12
Speaker 1: flowed once more, and he made a beautiful portrait of Carl,
1:21:16
Speaker 1: a portrait without evil or suffering. And as soon as
1:21:19
Speaker 1: he had finished Carl, he began once more to paint Lilith.
1:21:24
Speaker 1: And when he had painted her, he composed a picture
1:21:27
Speaker 1: for the very purpose of introducing them together, and in
1:21:30
Speaker 1: this picture there was neither ugliness nor torture, but human
1:21:34
Speaker 1: feeling and human hope instead. Then Carl knew that he
1:21:39
Speaker 1: might speak to him of Lilith, and he spoke, and
1:21:42
Speaker 1: was heard with a smile. But he did not dare
1:21:46
Speaker 1: to tell the truth of the vampire story till one
1:21:48
Speaker 1: day the Teufelsporst was lying on the floor of a
1:21:52
Speaker 1: room in Carl's ancestral castle, half smothered in grandchildren, when
1:21:57
Speaker 1: the only answer it drew from the old man was
1:21:59
Speaker 1: a kind of shuddering laugh and the words, Don't speak
1:22:03
Speaker 1: of it, Carl, my boy.