"stoker-dracula-168" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stoker Bram)

"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 gave them, which
their Berserkers displayed to such fell intent on the seaboards of
Europe, ay, and of Asia and Africa too, till the peoples thought
that the were wolves 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 Turkey-land; ay and more than that,
endless duty of the frontier guard, for, as the Turks say, 'water
sleeps, and 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
Turkey-land; who, when he was beaten back, came again, and 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