The Mammoth Book of Dracula Read Online Free

into a private lunatic asylum. It is not, however, visible from the grounds.”
     
    DRACULA: I am glad that it is old and big. I myself am of an old family, and to
live in a new house would kill me. A house cannot be made habitable in a day; and, after all, how few days go to make up a century. I rejoice also that there is a chapel of old times. We Transylvanian nobles love not to think that our bones may be amongst the common dead. I seek not gaiety nor mirth, not the bright voluptuousness of much sunshine and sparkling waters which please the young and gay. I am no longer young; and my heart, through weary years of mourning over the dead, is not attuned to mirth. Moreover, the walls of my castle are broken; the shadows are many, and the wind breathes cold through the broken battlements and casements. I love the shade and the shadow, and would be alone with my thoughts when I may.
     
    DRACULA PORES OVER PAPERS AND HARKER LOOKS AT ATLAS.
     
    HARKER: (Aside) I wonder what these rings mean drawn round particular
places. There are only three, I notice, that one is near London on the east side, manifestly where his new estate is situated; the other two are Exeter, and Whitby, on the Yorkshire coast.
     
    COUNT PUTS DOWN PAPERS ON TABLE.
     
    HARKER: (Aloud) I notice Count that when you speak of your race you do so as
    if they were present.
     
    DRACULA: To a boyar the pride of his House and Name is his own pride; their
    glory is his glory; their fate is his fate.
     
We Szekelys have a right to be proud, for in our veins flows the blood of many brave races who fought as the lion fights for lordship. Here, in the whirlpool of European races, the Ugric tribe bore down from Iceland the fighting spirit which Thor and Wodin gave them, which their Berserkers displayed to such fell extent on the seaboards of Europe, ay, and of Asia and Africa too, till the peoples thought that the were-wolves themselves had come. Here, too, when they came, they found the Huns, whose warlike fury had swept the earth like a living flame, till the dying peoples held that in their veins ran the blood of those old witches that had been expelled from Scythia, who had mated with the devils in the desert. Fools, fools! What devil or what witch was ever so great as Attila, whose blood is in these veins?
     
    HE HOLDS UP HIS ARMS.
     
    Is it a wonder that we were a conquering race; that we were proud; that
when the Magyar, the Lombard, the Avar, the Bulgar, or the Turk poured his thousands on our frontiers, we drove them back? Is it strange that when Arpad and his legions swept through the Hungarian fatherland he found us here when he reached the frontier; that the Honfoglalas was completed there? And when the Hungarian flood swept eastward, the Szekelys were claimed as kindred by the victorious Magyars, and to us for centuries was trusted the guarding of the frontier of Turkey-land, ay, and more than that, endless duty of the frontier guard, for, as the Turks say, “water sleeps, and enemy is sleepless.” Who more gladly than us throughout the four nations received the “bloody sword,” or at its warlike call flocked quicker to the standard of the King? When was redeemed that great shame of my nation, the shame of Cassova, when the flags of the Wallach and the Magyar went down beneath the Crescent? Who was it but one of my own race who as Voivode crossed the Danube and beat the Turk on his own ground? This was a Dracula indeed! Woe was it that his own unworthy brother when he had fallen sold his people to the Turk and brought the shame of slavery on them! Was it not this Dracula indeed who inspired that other of his race who in a later age again and again brought his forces over the great river into Turkey-land, who when he was beaten back came again, and again, and again, though he had to come alone from the bloody field where his troops were being slaughtered, since he knew that he alone could ultimately triumph? They said that he thought only of