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

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.)


12 May.--Let me begin with facts, bare, meager facts,
verified by books and figures, and of which there can be no doubt.
I must not confuse them with experiences which will have
to rest on my own observation, or my memory of them.
Last evening when the Count came from his room he began
by asking me questions on legal matters and on the doing
of certain kinds of business. I had spent the day wearily
over books, and, simply to keep my mind occupied, went over
some of the matters I had been examined in at Lincoln's Inn.
There was a certain method in the Count's inquiries, so I shall
try to put them down in sequence. The knowledge may somehow
or some time be useful to me.

First, he asked if a man in England might have two solicitors or more.
I told him he might have a dozen if he wished, but that it would not
be wise to have more than one solicitor engaged in one transaction,
as only one could act at a time, and that to change would be certain
to militate against his interest. He seemed thoroughly to understand,
and went on to ask if there would be any practical difficulty in having one
man to attend, say, to banking, and another to look after shipping, in case
local help were needed in a place far from the home of the banking solicitor.
I asked to explain more fully, so that I might not by any chance mislead him,