"Polidori_The Vampyre" - читать интересную книгу автора (Polidori John William)

model for a painter, wishing to portray on canvass the promised hope of the
faithful in Mahomet's paradise, save that her eyes spoke too much mind for
any one to think she could belong to those who had no souls. As she danced
upon the plain, or tripped along the mountain's side, one would have thought
the gazelle a poor type of her beauties; for who would have exchanged her
eye, apparently the eye of animated nature, for that sleepy luxurious look
of the animal suited but to the taste of an epicure. The light step of
Ianthe often accompanied Aubrey in his search after antiquities, and often
would the unconscious girl, engaged in the pursuit of a Kashmere butterfly,
show the whole beauty of her form, boating as it were upon the wind, to the
eager gaze of him, who forgot the letters he had just decyphered upon an
almost effaced tablet, in the contemplation of her sylph-like figure. Often
would her tresses falling, as she flitted around, exhibit in the sun's ray
such delicately brilliant and swiftly fading hues, as might well excuse the
forgetfulness of the antiquary, who let escape from his mind the very object
he had before thought of vital importance to the proper interpretation of a
passage in Pausanias. But why attempt to describe charms which all feel, but
none can appreciate? -- It was innocence, youth, and beauty, unaffected by
crowded drawing-rooms and stifling balls. Whilst he drew those remains of
which he wished to preserve a memorial for his future hours, she would stand
by, and watch the magic effects of his pencil, in tracing the scenes of her
native place; she would then describe to him the circling dance upon the
open plain, would paint to him in all the glowing colours of youthful
memory, the marriage pomp she remembered viewing in her infancy; and then,
turning to subjects that had evidently made a greater impression upon her
mind, would tell him all the supernatural tales of her nurse. Her
earnestness and apparent belief of what she narrated, excited the interest
even of Aubrey; and often as she told him the tale of the living vampyre,
who had passed years amidst his friends, and dearest ties, forced every
year, by feeding upon the life of a lovely female to prolong his existence
for the ensuing months, his blood would run cold, whilst he attempted to
laugh her out of such idle and horrible fantasies; but Ianthe cited to him
the names of old men, who had at last detected one living among themselves,
after several of their near relatives and children had been found marked
with the stamp of the fiend's appetite; and when she found him so
incredulous, she begged of him to believe her, for it had been remarked,
that those who had dared to question their existence, always had some proof
given, which obliged them, with grief and heartbreaking, to confess it was
true. She detailed to him the traditional appearance of these monsters, and
his horror was increased by hearing a pretty accurate description of Lord
Ruthven; he, however, still persisted in persuading her, that there could be
no truth in her fears, though at the same time he wondered at the many
coincidences which had all tended to excite a belief in the supernatural
power of Lord Ruthven.

Aubrey began to attach himself more and more to Ianthe; her innocence, so
contrasted with all the affected virtues of the women among whom he had
sought for his vision of romance, won his heart and while he ridiculed the
idea of a young man of English habits, marrying an uneducated Greek girl,
still he found himself more and more attached to the almost fairy form