"At Spalatro. I was lodging with a good man of sixty-two. He died. Three days after his burial, he appeared to his son, in the night, and asked for something to eat: the son gave him all he wanted; he ate it, and then vanished. The next day the son told me what had happened, telling me he felt certain his father would not return once only, and asking me to place myself, the following night, at a window to see him enter and go out. I was very anxious to see a vampire. I stood at the window, but that night he did not come. The son then told me, fearing lest I should be discouraged, that he would probably come on the following night. On the following night I placed myself again at my window, and sure enough, towards midnight, the old man appeared, and I recognised him perfectly. He came from the direction of the cemetery; he walked at a brisk pace, but his steps made no sound. When he reached the door, he knocked; I counted three raps: the knocks sounded hard on the oak, as though it were struck with a bone and not with a finger. The son opened the door and the old man entered...." I listened to this story with the greatest attention, and I began to prefer the intervals to the melodrama. "My curiosity was too highly excited for me to leave my window," continued my neighbour; "there I stayed. Half an hour later, the old man came out; he returned whence he had come--that is to say, in the direction of the cemetery. He disappeared round the corner of a wall. At the same moment, almost, my door opened. I turned round quickly and saw the son. He was very pale. 'Well,' I said,'so your father came?' 'Yes ... did you see him enter?' 'Enter and come out.... What did he do to-day?' 'He asked me for food and drink, as he did the other day.' 'And did he eat and drink?' 'He ate and drank.... But that is not all ... this is what troubles me. He said to me ...' 'Ah!' he said something else than a mere request for food and drink?' 'Yes, he said to me, "This is the second time I have come and eaten with thee. It is now thy turn to come and eat with me."' 'The devil!...' 'I am to expect him the same hour the day after to-morrow.' 'The deuce you are!' 'Yes, yes, that is just what worries me.' The day but one after, he was found dead in his bed! The same day two or three other people in the same village who had also seen the old man, and to whom he had spoken, fell ill and died too. It was then recognised that the old man was a vampire. I was questioned; I told all I had seen and heard. Justice demanded an examination of the graveyard. They opened the tombs of all those who had died during the previous six weeks: every corpse was in a state of decomposition. But when they came to Kisilowa's tomb--that was the old man's name--they found him with his eyes open, his lips red, his lungs breathing properly, although he was as rigid as if in death. They drove a stake through his heart; he uttered a loud cry and