"Now let us see how far the general powers arrayed against us are
restrict, and how the individual cannot. In fine, let us consider the
limitations of the vampire in general, and of this one in particular.
"All we have to go upon are traditions and superstitions. These do
not at the first appear much, when the matter is one of life and
death, nay of more than either life or death. Yet must we be
satisfied, in the first place because we have to be, no other means is
at our control, and secondly, because, after all these things,
tradition and superstition, are everything. Does not the belief in
vampires rest for others, though not, alas! for us, on them? A year
ago which of us would have received such a possibility, in the midst
of our scientific, sceptical, matter-of-fact nineteenth century? We
even scouted a belief that we saw justified under our very eyes. Take
it, then, that the vampire, and the belief in his limitations and his
cure, rest for the moment on the same base. For, let me tell you, he
is known everywhere that men have been. In old Greece, in old Rome,
he flourish in Germany all over, in France, in India, even in the
Chermosese, and in China, so far from us in all ways, there even is
he, and the peoples for him at this day. He have follow the wake of
the berserker Icelander, the devil-begotten Hun, the Slav, the Saxon,
the Magyar.
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