"bram stoker - dracula(2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stoker Bram)

was eating it the Count asked me many question as to my journey,
and I told him by degrees all I had experienced.

By this time I had finished my supper,and by my host's desire had drawn
up a chair by the fire and begun to smoke a cigar which he offered me,
at the same time excusing himself that he did not smoke.
I had now an opportunity of observing him, and found him of a
very marked physiognomy.

His face was a strong, a very strong, aquiline, with high bridge of
the thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils, with lofty domed forehead,
and hair growing scantily round the temples but profusely elsewhere.
His eyebrows were very massive, almost meeting over the nose,
and with bushy hair that seemed to curl in its own profusion.
The mouth, so far as I could see it under the heavy moustache,
was fixed and rather cruel-looking, with peculiarly sharp
white teeth. These protruded over the lips, whose remarkable
ruddiness showed astonishing vitality in a man of his years.
For the rest, his ears were pale, and at the tops extremely pointed.
The chin was broad and strong, and the cheeks firm though thin.
The general effect was one of extraordinary pallor.

Hitherto I had noticed the backs of his hands as they lay on his
knees in the firelight, and they had seemed rather white and fine.
But seeing them now close to me, I could not but notice
that they were rather coarse, broad, with squat fingers.
Strange to say, there were hairs in the centre of the palm.
The nails were long and fine, and cut to a sharp point.
As the Count leaned over me and his hands touched me, I could
not repress a shudder. It may have been that his breath was rank,
but a horrible feeling of nausea came over me, which, do what
I would, I could not conceal.

The Count, evidently noticing it, drew back. And with a grim sort
of smile, which showed more than he had yet done his protruberant teeth,
sat himself down again on his own side of the fireplace.
We were both silent for a while, and as I looked towards
the window I saw the first dim streak of the coming dawn.
There seemed a strange stillness over everything. But as I listened,
I heard as if from down below in the valley the howling of many wolves.
The Count's eyes gleamed, and he said.

"Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make!"
Seeing, I suppose, some expression in my face strange to him, he added,
"Ah, sir, you dwellers in the city cannot enter into the feelings
of the hunter." Then he rose and said.

"But you must be tired. Your bedroom is all ready,
and tomorrow you shall sleep as late as you will. I have
to be away till the afternoon, so sleep well and dream well!"