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    Carmilla
    Carmilla
    Carmilla
    Ebook112 pages3 hours

    Carmilla

    By Sheridan Le Fanu

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    First published in 1872, Carmilla is a classic gothic novella and one of the earliest examples of vampire fiction.

    Fast-paced and gripping, the story follows the protagonist Laura, who lives in a secluded castle in the woods with her father. One day, a carriage accident brings a young woman named Carmilla into their lives, and she is taken in as a guest. As time goes on, Laura becomes increasingly drawn to Carmilla, despite her strange behavior and the eerie occurrences happening in the castle. As their relationship deepens, Laura begins to suspect that Carmilla may not be who she seems, and that her presence may be linked to a series of mysterious deaths in the surrounding area.

    Carmilla has had a significant influence on the image of the vampire in popular culture, especially in its depiction of same-sex desire. The novel's depiction of the relationship between Carmilla and Laura, which is both sensual and dangerous, was considered subversive for its time and Carmilla is now considered the original prototype for the lesbian vampire. With elements of horror, mystery, and the supernatural, Carmilla is a gripping tale of love and terror that remains celebrated and influential today.

    ABOUT THE SERIES: The Arcturus Classics series brings together high-quality paperback editions of classics works, presented with contemporary graphic cover designs. Together they make a wonderful collection which is perfect for any home library.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcturus Publishing
    Release dateJul 1, 2023
    ISBN9781398833654
    Author

    Sheridan Le Fanu

    J. Sheridan Le Fanu (1814–1873) was an Irish writer who helped develop the ghost story genre in the nineteenth century. Born to a family of writers, Le Fanu released his first works in 1838 in Dublin University Magazine, which he would go on to edit and publish in 1861. Some of Le Fanu’s most famous Victorian Gothic works include Carmilla, Uncle Silas, and In a Glass Darkly. His writing has inspired other great authors of horror and thriller literature such as Bram Stoker and M. R. James.

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    Reviews for Carmilla

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      I read this slim novel during college, and forgot how much I enjoyed it. I'm a big fan of gothic fiction, and so the slow build up of this novel doesn't bother me, I quite enjoy it. That being said, what I would consider the "meat" of the novel was contained in the last ten pages, which might put some readers off. I read this in a class called "The Others": a class about the otherizing of marginalized peoples--in this case I think we were exploring the stereotypes of women in literature.If you enjoy gothic fiction, or vampires, and want to read one of the pre-Dracula vampire stories, it is an enjoyable, quick read.
    • 2/5
      too old-fashioned for me. (and me an Austen-Stan)
    • 5/5
      Pre-Dracula, female vampire story. It's short (more of a novella than a novel), but all the nuts and bolts are there. Lesbian overtones are well-played for 1872. Now must watch the movie adaptations.
    • 5/5
      This is a beautifully illustrated book, which I have never read before. If your a fan of older creepy stories about vampires, then you will certainly love this book, it is a must have. The story is really fascinating and hypnotic to read, I couldn't stop reading it.(The version of the book that I wrote this review for has a different cover) Carmilla: A Pomegranate Vintage Vampire Edition is the version of the book that I brought, it is illustrated.
    • 5/5
      Rating: 4.5* of fiveThe Publisher Says: Carmilla is the original vampire story, steeped in the sexual tension between two young women and gothic romance.A deluxe gift edition of the cult classic that predated and greatly influenced Dracula and much vampire literature that followed, including Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles.In an isolated castle deep in the Austrian forest, teenaged Laura leads a solitary life with only her father, attendant and tutor for company. Until one moonlit night, a horse-drawn carriage crashes into view, carrying an unexpected guest—the beautiful Carmilla.So begins a feverish friendship between Laura and her entrancing new companion, one defined by mysterious happenings and infused with an implicit but undeniable eroticism. As Carmilla becomes increasingly strange and volatile, prone to eerie nocturnal wanderings, Laura finds herself tormented by nightmares and growing weaker by the day...My Review: You know the story already, even if you've never read it. You've seen a Dracula movie. Same stuff, different dresses. It's pretty, um, humid, and the device of anagramming "Carmilla" is lame as all hell, but frankly if you expect modern writing from someone working in the 1870s you're ill-advised to pick it up in the first place. It's an acquired taste. Let the language and the attitudes...considered old-fashioned when the tale came out...subsume your 21st-century-ness and take a mental vacation.Lesbian Dracula story with built-in plausible deniability. LeFanu insisted his vampyre couldn't be lesbian because she was dead therefore by definition incapable of sexual activity. Great dodge, Sheridan! I can just see the tut-tutting moralists trying to figure out a response to this. Like people complaining about nudity in Maus, it's a smoke-screen for imposing *their* view of what's "nice" on others.Don't like something? Move along! No one's making you focus on it. And your kids seeing it? Lock 'em up if you want to prevent the world from having its way with them. *SPOILER ALERT* It does not work. Stop trying, rely on your parenting to warp them into the shape you want. And leave normal people alone.The deluxe (and is it ever!) hardcover for your Goth belovèd is available from the publisher.
    • 4/5
      This is the first time in a while a classic has interested me this much. I got it as an All Hallow’s Read present from my mom and it was a fascinating read. Very quick, very spooky, and interesting to see where some of the vampire lore came from. I’d love to read it again more carefully through the lens of a queer theorist.
    • 4/5
      This was surprisingly good!
    • 4/5
      I was intrigued by the idea of a lesbian vampire story that predated Dracula, but once I started reading it I triple faked myself out. First, there was the modern introduction that provided a Gothic framing for the story -- written as a modern academic providing evidence that while this story was perceived as fiction when first released, recent diaries, etc., have suggested that the entire thing could have been based on real accounts the author personally knew! This introduction was perhaps far too clever and had opposite its intended effect. Paired with the fact that the only author photo and bio on the back cover was that of the modern author of the introduction, and not Le Fanu himself, I developed this conviction that the entire thing was a con. That Machado had written it all. Even visiting the Wikipedia pages for the book and Le Fanu couldn't shake my feeling of unreality. Add on the very modern illustrations, and I just couldn't read this as a pre-Dracula Gothic tale, but it felt modern throughout.Which isn't necessarily a bad thing? After I emerged from the mists of this novel and dug a little deeper on the research, it became clear that this book was what it said it was. (Minus the gloss of it being a true if barely obscured account of a real vampire. Probably.) And that's kind of fascinating -- that it could have still felt so modern. Maybe just because so little period fiction with lesbian sensibilities survived to be handed down across ages.Fun, but I would have preferred it without the introduction.
    • 4/5
      Carmilla by J. Sheridan Lefanu is one of the earliest vampire works, predating Dracula by 26 years. This is a novella length tale of Carmilla, a female vampire, who arrives at a European manor house under mysterious conditions and yet is invited to stay there for a few months. The young lady who lives at the manor, Laura, and Carmilla become fast friends. But the surrounding area seems under a curse as many young girls fall victim to a strange wasting disease that eventually takes their lives.When Laura starts showing symptoms of the same disease, her father summons medical, religious and spiritual help yet it is only when an old friend comes to visit and tells his story about how a vampire took his loved one from him, that the pieces are put together and Carmilla is exposed.Unfortunately I didn’t have a very good translation of this story so in addition to an interesting vampire tale, I also had a puzzle to solve with figuring out the strange translation. For example the word ‘candy’ was used in place of sweet, and “pricey” was used in place of dear. So the phrase my ‘pricey candy girl’ meant my dear, sweet girl. Luckily, I found this more amusing than irritating. I did enjoy the story and noticed many standard vampire traits that are still in use today. Carmilla is the prototype of female vampires and hints at the lesbianism that is so often used in stories about female vampires. She selects only female victims and often becomes emotionally involved with them. She is extremely beautiful, is able to walk through walls and has an animal alter ego as a huge black cat.Carmilla is an intriguing Gothic vampire story that still works today.
    • 4/5
      After my re-read of this classic, I would give Carmilla 3.5 stars.

      I loved the atmosphere and the language, even if I thought it was a bit too flowery at times.

      I know that it's wrong to judge a work of this age by today's standards, but man, everyone in this book seemed stupid and too naive to be believable. The whole time, I was thinking "My God, man, wake up!"

      I'm glad I re-read this one but I think that shall be it for me with Carmilla.
    • 4/5
      I listened to this on audible and loved the performance. I give that 5 stars. I loved that the narrator works hard to portray the emotions in the character(s). The story was just OK for me. I know this is a novella, but there was no character development at all and I missed that. I give the story 3 stars. Therefore, when both scores are averaged together the total is 4 stars. I did feel that the narration improved the story. I don't know if I could have finished this book in physical format.
    • 5/5
      Perfect for Halloween telling!!
    • 5/5
      CarmillaBy: Joseph Sheridan Le FanuNarrated by: Phoebe Fox, Rose Leslie, David Tennant, David Horovitch, James Wilby, Susan Wooldridge, Hannah GenesiusThis was like listening to a great play with narration! Terrific narration, great suspense, characters, a bit of lust, supernatural creepiness, all combined with a wonderful plot.
    • 3/5
      Excellent performance; okay story. The performance by the voice actors is what kept me listening; they were excellent. I love the time period and the subject material, but the story just didn't do it for me. There were places where it grabbed my attention, but mostly I couldn't really get into it. This may be one of those stories that requires a re-listen at a later date.
    • 3/5
      I got this Audible Original audiobook for free with my Audible membership. This was a decently done full dramatization audiobook. I actually liked the way the dramatization was done here, normally I am not a huge fan of this.Laura is a sheltered and loved young lady but she is lonely. When a carriage has an accident near their castle, Laura and her father take in a young girl named Carmilla while Carmilla’s mother goes for help. This is the start of a fast friendship between Laura and Carmilla. Only then things start to get a bit weird. The story was fairly short and was a very typical vampire story done in classic "Dracula" fashion. There are some small twists to the story but it is very similar to the original “Dracula” story.This story is advertised as being an erotic horror...I wouldn't really call it erotic...there are some vaguely sensual scenes in here but nothing explicit or more detailed than kisses.Overall I thought this was fine but didn't love it. It's very Gothic Victorian horror, if you enjoyed the original “Dracula” book you might enjoy this as well.
    • 3/5
      I found this interesting rather than exciting, and eerie rather than scary. The tone is a little bland for the most part, which does nothing to build suspense.Although not devoid of drama, it is in short supply, owing to the passive narrative. Without giving anything away, the ending suffers because it’s written very dryly. In other words, it’s anti-climatic.I like the narrating character, though she lacks sparkle. Carmilla is my favourite character. Quite a good read, though I feel it had potential to be much better.
    • 4/5
      Classic Vampire TaleReview of the Audible Audio dramatization (2015) of the 1872 originalThis was a sensationalized action-driven adaptation of the Sheridan Le Fanu story, but was still quite faithful to the original. The vocal performances were excellent, especially those of Rose Leslie as Laura and Phoebe Fox as Carmilla. Top-billed David Tennant performed the relatively minor Dr. Hesselius role.Carmilla was one of the free Audible Original audiobooks for members in October 2019.TriviaThe original Carmilla is part of the occult detective Dr. Hesselius casebook anthology In a Glass Darkly (1892) which is one of the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list.
    • 5/5
      Excellent! I loved every minute of this vampire classic. Certainly one of my favorite vampire reads of all time.
    • 5/5
      Before Dracula there was Carmilla!Originally published in 1872, Dracula in 1897, this chronicles the story of a young woman's susceptibility to another seemingly young woman's (Carmilla) affections. But something is very wrong and has been wrong ever since Carmilla came into the picture. Can they stop this evil before it goes too far?This is complete and utter speculation but I just want to put it out there... this could very well be the novel that Bram Stoker read that indeed inspired him to write the novel Dracula. This novel together with Bram Stoker's Irish heritage and folklore would indeed come together beautifully to create the novel that we all know and love.But enough about Dracula. Let's talk about Carmilla! I think it's absolutely fabulous that the very first vampire ever to grace the publishing world was indeed a female. Personally I found her word usage and talk of everlasting love to be so seductive that I damn near threw my arms around her in submittance. I always find it very interesting when the author of a certain sex decides to write from the point of view of the opposite sex. We find that here as the author who wrote the novel was a man and is writing from the point of view of Laura who was the victim in this tragic tale of vampirism. Nevertheless, Le Fanu pulls it off with flying colors! You really do feel as if you are reading the words of a distraught woman penning the details of a horrific occurrence.Although this novel held no secrets or mystery for me (the ever-faithful horror fanatic) it is indeed nothing less than a heart pounding page turner. This one had my heart racing and me reading through the pages as fast as I could to find out what happens next. This is a very well done novel and I can't quite understand why it hasn't gotten the praise that it deserves over the years... or should I say decades now?This is one that every true horror fan should read! Most definitely recommend! ❤️
    • 4/5
      In the rapture of my enormous humiliation I live in your warm life, and you shall die--die, sweetly die--into mine. I cannot help it; as I draw near to you, you, in your turn, will draw near to others, and learn the rapture of that cruelty, which yet is love; so, for a while, seek to know no more of me and mine, but trust me with all your loving spirit.

      Carmilla proved to be a delicious detour. Such was a GR group read. I flashed from the gate on a rather warm October evening and finished the novel in a single vault. Unlike the more famous Dracula, Carmilla maintains a sustained focus on the titular creature. Her danger is not being simply a lesbian vampire but rather someone who saddles up to victims, recognizes their insecurities, their vulnerability and pursues and cultivates such to a slow boil and unseemly ends. The Central European milieu affords a pulsating menace whereas the novel's female protagonist proceeds blindly into the wicked endeavor. Her loneliness has been seized by the vampire and she's reluctant to acknowledge her peril. The conclusion is a fitfully bloody affair and worth anyone's time
    • 5/5
      Written in 1872, this is a Gothic novella by Irish author Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu and one of the early works of vampire fiction. It is older than Bram Stoker's Dracula. Laura is a young lady living in a remote schloss or castle in Austria and a young woman named Carmilla stays with the family after a carriage accident. Carmilla and Laura develop a relationship that is both captivating and uncomfortable to Laura. This is a lesbian vampire story. "Sometimes after an hour of apathy, my strange and beautiful companion would take my hand and hold it with a fond pressure, renewed again and again; blushing softly, gazing in my face with languid and burning eyes, and breathing so fast that her dress rose and fell with the tumultuous respiration. It was like the ardour of a lover; it embarrassed me; it was hateful and yet overpowering; and with gloating eyes she drew me to her, and her hot lips travelled along my cheek in kisses; and she would whisper, almost in sobs, 'You are mine, you shall be mine, and you and I are one for ever'." (Carmilla, Chapter 4). Another quote from the book; "if your dear heart is wounded, my wild heart bleeds with yours" and "I live in your warm life, and you shall die--die, sweetly die--into mine." This novella is an example of literature addressing sexual issues of it's Victorian times and is a Gothic horror story of dangerous temptations.
    • 5/5
      Great short story detailing the beginnings of vampires.
    • 4/5
      An influential classic of the horror/vampire genre, Carmilla tells the story of a female vampire (but wait...what about the mother and the really pale servant) who preys solely on young women. There’s certainly a lesbian erotica undertone here. Nothing tediously overt, but you really can’t miss it. The narrator, Laura, is Carmilla’s main target, and her seduction of Laura is well-done and fairly compelling. Other young women in the area are falling ill and more or less wasting away, and finally Laura becomes ill.This is an early vampire tale, pre-dating the great Dracula. Many of the ideas and themes will occur again and again in later works by other authors.It was hard to rate this because so many vampire books have been written since this one. I’d give it three stars just on its own merits, but I’m jumping it up to four because of its long, long shadow in horror literature.
    • 4/5
      I decided to listen to this because:1. I wanted to listen/read to at least one "scary" book in October. 2. It was suggested by my friend Giselle Bradley. 3. I hadn't read this book in years and wanted to see if I still liked the book as much as I did when I was younger.I still liked it but not as much as I did the first time. I picked up on the parts that make people claim it's the first book with a lesbian love affair, I believe I had read an abridged version when I was younger. It was a good book, I'm glad I took Giselle's advice to re-read it. I did drop it from a 5-star to a 4-star but I think that's because I'm a bit pickier when it comes to star ratings. I probably would have given it a 3 or a 3.5 if it wasn't for the narrator. I was lucky to find an audiobook that was narrated by Megan Follows, an actress who I love, so the rating got a bump because of that. It's a great spooky read for this time of year and something lovers of Gothic classics should read.
    • 5/5
      Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla first appeared as a serial in The Dark Blue and tells the story of Carmilla, a female vampire, and her attempts to prey upon the story’s narrator, a young English ex-patriot woman who lives with her father in the Styria region of Austria. Laura, the narrator, has a vision of Carmilla while a young girl. She eventually forgets it until she learns of the death of a friend. A carriage accident results in a countess putting her daughter into Laura’s father’s care and Laura recognizes Carmilla as the girl she saw in her “dream.” Carmilla refuses to divulge her background to Laura, but alternates between extreme affection with romantic advances and melancholic distance. Girls in nearby towns begin dying of an unknown illness and Carmilla experiences pain at the sound of funerary hymns. Larua’s family, descended from the House of Karnstein, receives a shipment of restored heirlooms, including a painting of a countess named Mircalla who exactly resembles Carmilla. Laura’s friend’s father then visits and, together with Laura’s father, they visit the nearby ruins of Karnstein castle, where they open Mircalla’s tomb and find Carmilla floating in seven inches of blood. The men drive a stake through her heart, behead her, and burn the ashes.The story appeared twenty-six years before Bram Stoker published Dracula and Le Fanu apparently based part of it on a 1751 dissertation by Dom Augustin Calmet titled Traité sur les apparitions des espirits et sur les vampires ou les revenants de Hongre, de Moravie, &c.. Interestingly, the word “vampire” only appears on page 84 of this publication and it is clear that the use of the word was meant to drive home the gothic elements of the story that the reader had encountered up to that point. That said, modern readers will have noticed all of the tropes of the genre prior to this point in the story, even if they didn’t know anything about Carmilla. The portrayal of a lesbian vampire was notable for its time, though Le Fanu primarily used this to combine religious fears of the time in order to base the terror in the transgression of mores about women’s sexuality. This version reprints the complete story in a nice hardcover volume with a simple, yet evocative, cover and makes a good gift edition for the vampire aficionado, though it does not include the original illustrations by David Henry Friston and Michael Fitzgerald.
    • 5/5
      Before Dracula there was Carmilla. An excellent way to spend a rainy evening if you want horror without gore.It was the first book to get under my skin so bad it actually gave me nightmares.
    • 5/5
      While the mystery of Carmilla's true nature and origins is blatantly apparent to the modern reader, this is no way takes away from Le Fanu's classic gothic tale. Le Fanu's influence on not just [book:Dracula|17245], but the entire vampire genre (see especially: [book:The Moth Diaries|1131133]), is richly seen throughout. Le Fanu also treats us to gorgeous prose, mostly through the voice of Carmilla:

      "You will think me cruel, very selfish, but love is always selfish; the more ardent the more selfish. How jealous I am you cannot know. You must come with me, loving me, to death; or else hate me, and still come with me, and hating me through death and after. There is no such word as indifference in my apathetic nature."

      Even knowing Carmilla's true intentions towards Laura, their interactions and exchanges are eerily, darkly romantic. The lesbian themes of this book are hardly subtle, even by the constraints of the time period Le Fanu was writing in -- but it's the constraints, themselves, that make the themes and Carmilla and Laura's interactions all the more delicious.
    • 4/5


      "Read" this by listening to B.J. Harrison's rendition on the Classic Tales Podcast - which I highly recommend. This is my first exposure to Le Fanu and I was impressed. I was surprised at his frank exploration of the lesbian themes, and at least until the end I felt he was using vampirism as a way to explore the psychological and social aspects of sexual "perversion" as it was seen in his time and culture. However the ending was a huge let down. It was as if a different author took over. The rich, dark and moody story morphed into a silly docudrama on vampires. I was waiting for one last dramatic confrontation with Carmilla but instead got a moralistic monotonic reporting of events which disengaged me from the story and its protagonists. Knowing how to end a good story is what differentiates the masters from the merely good. Le Fanu falls into the latter category, at least based on this. But it does inspire me to read Uncle Silas and to watch all the camp versions of Carmilla on film.
    • 4/5
      The author of this story is an unnamed woman, a young lady at the time she writes the narrative who lives a relatively isolated life with her father. This father and daughter receive a charming pair of visitors, a mother and daughter. The mother must leave on urgent business but her daughter has been quite ill and the mother fears for her daughter's life so she makes an unusual request to the father who is a stranger to her - she asks if he will take her daughter and she will return in about a month's time. Surprisingly the father says yes mostly because his daughter is so taken with the girl. This book is considered a gothic novel and was ahead if it's time for talking about female vampires.

      Considering how old this story is the language flowed smoothly and making it easy to get into the story. It's hard to believe in these modern times that this gothic story was considered scary or scandalous. Enjoyable, quick read.
    • 5/5
      I very much enjoyed this book. I read it in eBook form, but I think I might buy a print version just to have on my shelf. The book was first published in the 1800's and it shows in the writing style, but not so much as to be difficult to read or understand. I found it an easy, fast, entertaining and enthralling read from start to finish and I would definitely recommend it. I also absolutely loved the ending, which reminded me of the first few pages and had me really thinking even after I finished it. Definitely glad that my friend recommended me this book and I would absolutely recommend it to others.

    Book preview

    Carmilla - Sheridan Le Fanu

    Prologue

    Upon a paper attached to the narrative which follows, Doctor Hesselius has written a rather elaborate note, which he accompanies with a reference to his Essay on the strange subject which the manuscript illuminates.

    This mysterious subject he treats, in that Essay, with his usual learning and acumen, and with remarkable directness and condensation. It will form but one volume of the series of that extraordinary man’s collected papers.

    As I publish the case, in this volume, simply to interest the ‘laity’, I shall forestall the intelligent lady, who relates it, in nothing; and after due consideration, I have determined, therefore, to abstain from presenting any précis of the learned Doctor’s reasoning, or extract from his statement on a subject which he describes as ‘involving, not improbably, some of the profoundest arcana of our dual existence, and its intermediates’.

    I was anxious on discovering this paper, to reopen the correspondence commenced by Doctor Hesselius, so many years before, with a person so clever and careful as his informant seems to have been. Much to my regret, however, I found that she had died in the interval.

    She, probably, could have added little to the narrative which she communicates in the following pages, with, so far as I can pronounce, such conscientious particularity.

    I

    An Early Fright

    In Styria, we, though by no means magnificent people, inhabit a castle, or schloss. A small income, in that part of the world, goes a great way. Eight or nine hundred a year does wonders. Scantily enough, ours would have answered among wealthy people at home. My father is English, and I bear an English name, although I never saw England. But here, in this lonely and primitive place, where everything is so marvellously cheap, I really don’t see how ever so much more money would at all materially add to our comforts, or even luxuries.

    My father was in the Austrian service, and retired upon a pension and his patrimony, and purchased this feudal residence, and the small estate on which it stands, a bargain.

    Nothing can be more picturesque or solitary. It stands on a slight eminence in a forest. The road, very old and narrow, passes in front of its drawbridge, never raised in my time, and its moat, stocked with perch, and sailed over by many swans, and floating on its surface white fleets of water lilies.

    Over all this the schloss shows its many-windowed front; its towers, and its Gothic chapel.

    The forest opens in an irregular and very picturesque glade before its gate, and at the right a steep Gothic bridge carries the road over a stream that winds in deep shadow through the wood. I have said that this is a very lonely place. Judge whether I say truth. Looking from the hall door towards the road, the forest in which our castle stands extends fifteen miles to the right, and twelve to the left. The nearest inhabited village is about seven of your English miles to the left. The nearest inhabited schloss of any historic associations, is that of old General Spielsdorf, nearly twenty miles away to the right.

    I have said ‘the nearest inhabited village,’ because there is, only three miles westward, that is to say in the direction of General Spielsdorf’s schloss, a ruined village, with its quaint little church, now roofless, in the aisle of which are the moldering tombs of the proud family of Karnstein, now extinct, who once owned the equally desolate chateau which, in the thick of the forest, overlooks the silent ruins of the town.

    Respecting the cause of the desertion of this striking and melancholy spot, there is a legend which I shall relate to you another time.

    I must tell you now, how very small is the party who constitute the inhabitants of our castle. I don’t include servants, or those dependants who occupy rooms in the buildings attached to the schloss. Listen, and wonder! My father, who is the kindest man on earth, but growing old; and I, at the date of my story, only nineteen. Eight years have passed since then.

    I and my father constituted the family at the schloss. My mother, a Styrian lady, died in my infancy, but I had a good-natured governess, who had been with me from, I might almost say, my infancy. I could not remember the time when her fat, benignant face was not a familiar picture in my memory.

    This was Madame Perrodon, a native of Berne, whose care and good nature now in part supplied to me the loss of my mother, whom I do not even remember, so early I lost her. She made a third at our little dinner party. There was a fourth, Mademoiselle De Lafontaine, a lady such as you term, I believe, a ‘finishing governess.’ She spoke French and German, Madame Perrodon French and broken English, to which my father and I added English, which, partly to prevent its becoming a lost language among us, and partly from patriotic motives, we spoke every day. The consequence was a Babel, at which strangers used to laugh, and which I shall make no attempt to reproduce in this narrative. And there were two or three young lady friends besides, pretty nearly of my own age, who were occasional visitors, for longer or shorter terms; and these visits I sometimes returned.

    These were our regular social resources; but of course there were chance visits from ‘neighbours’ of only five or six leagues distance. My life was, notwithstanding, rather a solitary one, I can assure you.

    My gouvernantes had just so much control over me as you might conjecture such sage persons would have in the case of a rather spoiled girl, whose only parent allowed her pretty nearly her own way in everything.

    The first occurrence in my existence, which produced a terrible impression upon my mind, which, in fact, never has been effaced, was one of the very earliest incidents of my life which I can recollect. Some people will think it so trifling that it should not be recorded here. You will see, however, by-and-by, why I mention it. The nursery, as it was called, though I had it all to myself, was a large room in the upper storey of the castle, with a steep oak roof. I can’t have been more than six years old, when one night I awoke, and looking round the room from my bed, failed to see the nursery maid. Neither was my nurse there; and I thought myself alone. I was not frightened, for I was one of those happy children who are studiously kept in ignorance of ghost stories, of fairy tales, and of all such lore as makes us cover up our heads when the door cracks suddenly, or the flicker of an expiring candle makes the shadow of a bedpost dance upon the wall, nearer to our faces. I was vexed and insulted at finding myself, as I conceived, neglected, and I began to whimper, preparatory to a hearty bout of roaring; when to my surprise, I saw a solemn, but very pretty face looking at me from the side of the bed. It was that of a young lady who was kneeling, with her hands under the coverlet. I looked at her with a kind of pleased wonder, and ceased whimpering. She caressed me with her hands, and lay down beside me on the bed, and drew me towards her, smiling; I felt immediately delightfully soothed, and fell asleep again. I was wakened by a sensation as if two needles ran into my breast very deep at the same moment, and I cried loudly. The lady started back, with her eyes fixed on me, and then slipped down upon the floor, and, as I thought, hid herself under the bed.

    I was now for the first time frightened, and I yelled with all my might and main. Nurse, nursery maid, housekeeper, all came running in, and hearing my story, they made light of it, soothing me all they could meanwhile. But, child as I was, I could perceive that their faces were pale with an unwonted look of anxiety, and I saw them look under the bed, and about the room, and peep under tables and pluck open cupboards; and the housekeeper whispered to the nurse: ‘Lay your hand along that hollow in the bed; someone did lie there, so sure as you did not; the place is still warm.’

    I remember the nursery maid petting me, and all three examining my chest,

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