Читать книгу Writers on... Death (A Book of Quotes, Poems and Literary Reflections) - Amelia Carruthers - Страница 23
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Later in the day the doctor came, and was closeted with papa for some time. He was a skilful man, of sixty and upwards, he wore powder, and shaved his pale face as smooth as a pumpkin. He and papa emerged from the room together, and I heard papa laugh, and say as they came out:
“Well, I do wonder at a wise man like you. What do you say to hippogriffs and dragons?”
The doctor was smiling, and made answer, shaking his head—
“Nevertheless life and death are mysterious states, and we know little of the resources of either.”
And so they walked on, and I heard no more. I did not then know what the doctor had been broaching, but I think I guess it now.
– Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814 - 1873), 'Chapter IV', from Carmilla, first published in 1871 as a serial narrative in The Dark Blue. It tells the story of a young woman's susceptibility to the attentions of a female vampire named Carmilla – predating Bram Stoker's Dracula by twenty-six years. Sheridan Le Fanu was an Irish writer of gothic tales and mystery novels, central to the development of the genre in the Victorian era.
