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crucifix round my neck! for it is a comfort and a strength

      to me whenever I touch it. It is odd that a thing which I have

      been taught to regard with disfavour and as idolatrous should

      in. a time of loneliness and trouble be of help. Is it that there is

      something in the essence of the thing itself, or that it is a medium,

      a tangible help, in conveying memories of sympathy and com-

      fort? Some time, if it may be, I must examine this matter and try

      to make up my mind about it. In the meantime I must find out

      all I can about Count Dracula, as it may help me to understand.

      To-night he may talk of himself, if I turn the conversation that

      way. I must be very careful, however, not to awake his suspicion.

      Midnight. I have had a long talk with the Count. I asked

      him a few questions on Transylvania history, and he warmed

      up to the subject wonderfully. In his speaking of things and

      people, and especially of battles, he spoke as if he had been pres-

      ent at them all. This he afterwards explained by saying that to

      a boyar the pride of his house and name is his own pride, that

      their glory is his glory, that their fate is his fate. Whenever he

      spoke of his house he always said «we,» and spoke almost in the

      plural, like a king speaking. I wish I could put down all he said

      exactly as he said it, for to me it was most fascinating. It seemed

      to have in it a whole history of the country. He grew excited as

      he spoke, and walked about the room pulling his great white

      moustache and grasping anything on which he laid his hands

      as though he would crush it by main strength. One thing he said

      which I shall put down as nearly as I can; for it tells in its way

      the story of his race:

      «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 intent on the seaboards of Europe, ay, and of Asia and

      Africa too, till the peoples thought that the were-wolves them-

      selves 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, who, expelled from Scythia 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 held

      up his arms. «Is it a wonder that we were a conquering race;

      that we were proud; that when the Magyar, the Lombard the

      28 Dracula

      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 east-

      ward, 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 we throughout

      the Four Nations received the ' bloody sword, ' or at its warlike

      call flocked quicker to the standard of the King? When was re-

      deemed that great shame of my nation, the shame of Cassova,

      when the flags of the Wallach and the Magyar went down be-

      neath 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 himself. Bah! what good are peasants without a

      leader? Where ends the war without a brain and heart to con-

      duct it? Again, when, after the battle of Mohacs> we threw off

      the Hungarian yoke, we of the Dracula blood were amongst

      their leaders, for our spirit would not brook that we were not

      free. Ah, young sir, the Szekelys and the Dracula as their

      heart’s blood, their brains, and their swords can boast a rec-

      ord that mushroom growths like the Hapsburgs and the Roman-

      offs can never reach. The warlike days are over. Blood is too

      precious a thing in these days of dishonourable peace; and the

      glories of the great races are as a tale that is told.»

      It was by this time close on morning, and we went to bed.

      (Mem., this diary seems horribly like the beginning of the «Ara-

      bian Nights,» for everything has to break off at cockcrow or

      like the ghost of Hamlet’s father.)

      12 May. Let me begin with facts bare, meagre facts, veri-

      fied by books and figures, and of which there can be no doubt.

      Jonathan Harker’s Journal 29

      I must not confuse them with experiences which will have to

      rest on my own observation, or my memory of them. Last eve-

      ning when the Count came from his room he began by asking me

      questions on legal matters and on the doing of certain kinds of

      business. I had spent the day wearily over books, and, simply

      to keep my mind occupied, went over some of the matters I

      had been examined in at Lincoln’s Inn. There was a certain

      method

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