Jonathan
Harker's JournalMidnight 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 game 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 claimed as kindred by the victorious Magyars,
and to us for centuries was trusted the guarding of the frontier of Turkeyland.
Aye, and more than that, endless duty of the frontier guard, for as the Turks
say, `water sleeps, and the 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 redeemed that great shame of my nation,
the shame of Cassova, when the flags of the Wallach and the Magyar went down beneath
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 Turkeyland, who, when he was beaten back, came 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 conduct 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 record that mushroom growths like the Hapsburgs
and the Romanoffs 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
"Arabian Nights," for everything has to break off at cockcrow, or like
the ghost of Hamlet's father.) |
