Dracula's Guest

Draculas Guest



The Family of the Vourdalak

Vienna. 1815. While the Congress had been in session, the city had attracted all the most distinguished Europe an intellectuals, the fashion leaders of the day, and, of course, members of the highest diplomatic elite. But the Congress of Vienna was no longer in session.

Royalist emigres were preparing to return to their country chateaux (hoping to stay there this time); Russian soldiers were anxiously awaiting the time when they could return to their abandoned homes; and discontented Poles - still dreaming of liberty - were wondering whether their dreams would come true, back in Cracow, under the protection of the precarious “in de pen dence” that had been arranged for them by the trio of Prince Metternich, Prince Hardenberg, and Count Nesselrode.

It was as if a masked ball were coming to an end. Of the assembled “guests,” only a select few had stayed behind and delayed packing their bags in the hope of still finding some amusement, preferably in the company of the charming and glamorous Austrian ladies.

This delightful group of people (of which I was a member) met twice a week in a chateau belonging to Madame the dowager Princess of Schwarzenberg. It was a few miles from the city centre, just beyond a little hamlet called Hitzing. The splendid hospitality of our hostess, as well as her amiability and intellectual brilliance, made any stay at her chateau extremely agreeable.

Our mornings were spent ‡ la promenade; we lunched all together either at the chateau or somewhere in the grounds; and in the evenings, seated around a welcoming fi reside, we amused ourselves by gossiping and telling each other stories. A rule of the house was that we should not talk about anything to do with politics. Everyone had had enough of that subject. So our tales were based either on legends from our own countries or else on our own experiences.

One evening, when each of us had told a tale and when our spirits were in that tense state which darkness and silence usually create, the Marquis d’Urfe, an elderly emigre we all loved dearly for his childish gaiety and for the piquant way in which he reminisced about his past life and good fortunes, broke the ominous silence by saying, “Your stories, gentlemen, are all out of the ordinary, of course, but it seems to me that each one lacks an essential ingredient - I mean authenticity; for I am pretty sure that none of you has seen with his own eyes the fantastic incidents that he has just narrated, nor can he vouch for the truth of his story on his word of honour as a gentleman.”

We all had to agree with this, so the elderly gentleman continued, after smoothing down his jabot: “As for me, gentlemen, I know only one story of this kind, but it is at once so strange, so horrible, and so authentic that it will suffice to strike even the most jaded of imaginations with terror.