in the Forum Bovarium at Rome because when Hercules was handing the flesh to the priests he had prayed aloud to the Fly-catcher. It may be noted that when the demon, under whatsoever guise or name he might be adored, had received those divine honours he ever covets and filches to himself by so woefully deceiving his worshippers he withdraws his emissaries the tormenting flies who are often his imps in the form of insect. By their means he has striven to vex and molest the Saints—S . Bernard, by excommunicating the flies that buzzed about him struck them all down dead upon the floor of the church.
It now remains to inquire how the grave of a Vampire may be recognized, and in what way this terror may be checked and destroyed.
In this connexion it will not be impertinent to give a letter “d’un fort honnête homme et fort instruit de ce qui regarde les Revenants” which is cited at length by Dom Calmet. The letter is addressed to a near relative of the writer. “It is your wish, my dear cousin, that I should give you exact details of what has been happening in Hungary with regard to certain apparitions, who so often molest and slay people in that part of the world. I am in a position to afford you this information, for I have been living for some years in those very districts, and I am naturally of an inquiring disposition. From the time when I was a mere boy I have heard numbers of stories of ghosts and witches, but not once in a thousand have I believed one of them; it seems to me that it is almost impossible to be too careful in the investigation of matters where it is so easy to be mistaken or deliberately tricked. However there are certain facts so well vouched for that one cannot but accept them as true. As to the apparitions of Hungary this is the usual account. A person is attached by a great languor and weariness, he loses all appetite, he visibly wastes and grows thin, and at the end of a week or ten days, may be a fortnight, he dies without any other symptom save anæmia and emaciation.
“In Hungary they say that a Vampire has attacked him and sucked his blood. Many of those who fall ill in this way declare that a white spectre is following them and cleaves to them as close as a shadow. When we were in our Kalocsa-Bacs quarters in the County of Temesvar[99] two officers of
