occur to me to draw back. We resumed our places, and Dr. Van Helsing
went on with a sort of cheerfulness which showed that the serious work
had begun. It was to be taken as gravely, and in as businesslike a way,
as any other transaction of life:--
Well, you know what we have to contend against; but we, too, are not
without strength. We have on our side power of combination--a power
denied to the vampire kind; we have sources of science; we are free to
act and think; and the hours of the day and the night are ours equally.
In fact, so far as our powers extend, they are unfettered, and we are
free to use them. We have self-devotion in a cause, and an end to
achieve which is not a selfish one. These things are much.
Now let us see how far the general powers arrayed against us are
restrict, and how the individual cannot. In fine, let us consider the
limitations of the vampire in general, and of this one in particular.
All we have to go upon are traditions and superstitions. These do not
at the first appear much, when the matter is one of life and death--nay
of more than either life or death. Yet must we be satisfied; in the
first place because we have to be--no other means is at our control--and
secondly, because, after all, these things--tradition and
superstition--are everything. Does not the belief in vampires rest for
others--though not, alas! for us--on them? A year ago which of us would
have received such a possibility, in the midst of our scientific,
sceptical, matter-of-fact nineteenth century? We even scouted a belief
that we saw justified under our very eyes. Take it, then, that the
vampire, and the belief in his limitations and his cure, rest for the
moment on the same base. For, let me tell you, he is known everywhere
that men have been. In old Greece, in old Rome; he flourish in Germany
all over, in France, in India, even in the Chernosese; and in China, so
far from us in all ways, there even is he, and the peoples fear him at
this day. He have follow the wake of the berserker Icelander, the
devil-begotten Hun, the Slav, the Saxon, the Magyar. So far, then, we
have all we may act upon; and let me tell you that very much of the
beliefs are justified by what we have seen in our own so unhappy
experience. The vampire live on, and cannot die by mere passing of the
time; he can flourish when that he can fatten on the blood of the
living. Even more, we have seen amongst us that he can even grow
younger; that his vital faculties grow strenuous, and seem as though
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