"Bram Stoker - Dracula" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stoker Bram)

conceivable subject, hour after hour. I felt that it was
getting very late indeed, but I did not say anything, for I
felt under obligation to meet my host's wishes in every way.
I was not sleepy, as the long sleep yesterday had fortified me,
but I could not help experiencing that chill which comes
over one at the coming of the dawn, which is like, in its way,
the turn of the tide. They say that people who are near death
die generally at the change to dawn or at the turn of the tide.
Anyone who has when tired, and tied as it were to his post,
experienced this change in the atmosphere can well believe it.
All at once we heard the crow of the cock coming up with
preternatural shrillness through the clear morning air.

Count Dracula, jumping to his feet, said, "Why there is the morning again!
How remiss I am to let you stay up so long. You must make your
conversation regarding my dear new country of England less interesting,
so that I may not forget how time flies by us," and with a courtly bow,
he quickly left me.

I went into my room and drew the curtains, but there was little to notice.
My window opened into the courtyard, all I could see was the warm grey
of quickening sky. So I pulled the curtains again, and have written
of this day.


8 May.--I began to fear as I wrote in this book that I
was getting too diffuse. But now I am glad that I went
into detail from the first, for there is something so strange
about this place and all in it that I cannot but feel uneasy.
I wish I were safe out of it, or that I had never come.
It may be that this strange night existence is telling on me,
but would that that were all! If there were any one to talk
to I could bear it, but there is no one. I have only the Count
to speak with, and he--I fear I am myself the only living soul
within the place. Let me be prosaiac so far as facts can be.
It will help me to bear up, and imagination must not run riot
with me. If it does I am lost. Let me say at once how I stand,
or seem to.

I only slept a few hours when I went to bed,and feeling that I
could not sleep any more, got up. I had hung my shaving glass
by the window, and was just beginning to shave. Suddenly I felt
a hand on my shoulder, and heard the Count's voice saying to me,
"Good morning." I started, for it amazed me that I had not seen him,
since the reflection of the glass covered the whole room behind me.
In starting I had cut myself slightly, but did not notice
it at the moment. Having answered the Count's salutation,
I turned to the glass again to see how I had been mistaken.
This time there could be no error, for the man was close to me,
and I could see him over my shoulder. But there was no reflection