Bless that good, good woman who hung the 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 comfort?  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.  Tonight 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 present 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, aye, and of Asia and Africa too, till the peoples thought that the werewolves themselves 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 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 eastward, the Szekelys were