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Desolation Dolly http://desolationdolly.blogspot.com/
CARMILLA
J. Sheridan Le Fanu
PROLOGUE
Upon a paper attached to the Narrative, which follows, Doctor Hesselius has written a rather
elaborate note, which he accompanies with a reference to his Essay on the strange subject, which
the MS illuminates.
This mysterious subject he treats, in that Essay, with his usual learning and acumen, and with
remarkable directness and condensation. It will form but one volume of the series of that
extraordinary man's collected papers.
As I publish the case, in these volumes, simply to interest the 'laity', I shall forestall the intelligent
lady, who relates it, in nothing; and, after due consideration, I have determined, therefore, to
abstain from presenting any précis of the learned Doctor's reasoning, or extract from his statement
on a subject which he describes as "involving, not improbably, some of the profoundest arcana of
our dual existence, and its intermediates".
I was anxious, on discovering this paper, to re-open the correspondence commenced by Doctor
Hesselius, so many years before, with a person so clever and careful as his informant seems to have
been. Much to my regret, however, I found that she had died in the interval.
She, probably, could have added little to the Narrative, which she communicates in the following
pages, with, so far as I can pronounce, such a conscientious particularity.
CHAPTER I - AN EARLY FRIGHT
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. Scantily
enough ours would have answered among wealthy people at home. My father is English, and I bear
an English name, although I never saw England. But here, in this lonely and primitive place, where
everything is so marvelously cheap, I really don't see how ever so much more money would at all
materially add to our comforts, or even luxuries.
My fathe