“Not so!” exclaimed the patient. “I call God to witness that I have seen with my own eyes the being of whom I speak, and I have touched her with my hands. I am awake, and in the full possession of my faculties, when I see this woman before me. I feel her as she attacks me, and I try to contend with her, but fear, anxiety, and languor prevent me. I have been to every one asking for aid to bear up against my horrible fate, and, among others, I have consulted an old woman, who has the reputation of being very skillful, and something of a sorceress. She directed me to urinate toward daylight, and to immediately cover the _pot de chambre_ with the boot of my right foot. She assured me that on the very day I would do this the woman would pay me a visit. “Although this seemed to me very ridiculous, and although my religion was altogether against my making any such experiment, I was finally induced, by reflecting on my sufferings, to follow the advice I had received. I did so, and, sure enough, on the same day the wicked woman who had so tormented me came to my apartment, complaining of a horrible pain in the bladder. All my entreaties and threats, however, were unavailing to induce her to cease her nocturnal visits.” Jansen at first could not turn this gentleman from his insane idea, but, finally, after two hours’ conversation, he made him have some just conception of the nature of his disease, and inspired him with the hope of a cure. Epidemics of nightmare have been noticed, and it likewise sometimes prevails endemically under certain peculiar forms. Thus vampirism, a belief in which exists in different parts of the world, is nothing but a kind of nightmare. Charles Nodier[105] gives some interesting details on this point, which I do not hesitate to transcribe. In Morlachia there is scarcely a hamlet which has not several _vukodlacks_ or vampires, and there are some, every family of which has its _vukodlack_, just as every Alpine family has its cretin. The cretin, however, has a physical infirmity, and with it a morbid state of the brain and nervous system, which destroys his reason, and prevents him appreciating his degraded condition. The _vukodlack_, on the contrary, appreciates all the horror of his morbid perception; he fears and detests it; he combats it with all his power; he has recourse to medicine, to prayers, to division of a muscle, to the amputation of a limb, and sometimes even to suicide. He demands that after his death his children shall pierce his heart with a spike, and fasten his corpse to the coffin, so that his dead body, in the sleep of death, may not be able to follow the instinct of the living body. The _vukodlack_ is, moreover, often a man of note, often the chief of the tribe, the judge, or the poet.