Carmilla / In a Glass Darkly

You will no doubt be surprised, my dear friend, at the subject of the following narrative. What had I to do with Schalken, or Schalken with me? He had returned to his native land, and was probably dead and buried, before I was born; I never visited Holland nor spoke with a native of that country

It is not worth telling, this story of mine⁠—at least, not worth writing. Told, indeed, as I have sometimes been called upon to tell it, to a circle of intelligent and eager faces, lighted up by a good after-dinner fire on a winter’s evening, with a cold wind rising and wailing outside, and all snug and cosy within, it has gone off⁠—though I say it, who should not⁠—indifferent well

The Rev. Mr. Jennings is tall and thin. He is middle-aged, and dresses with a natty, old-fashioned, high-church precision

now to perceive an outline of something black, and I soon saw with tolerable distinctness the outline of a small black monkey, pushing its face forward in mimicry to meet mine; those were its eyes, and I now dimly saw its teeth grinning at me

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

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

But after all these proceedings according to law,” he continued⁠—“so many graves opened, and so many vampires deprived of their horrible animation⁠—the village was not relieved

Captain Barton was apparently some two or three-and-forty years of age.