fair only attracted his attention that he might by a look quell it, and throw fear into those breasts where thoughtlessness reigned. Those who felt this sensation of awe, could not explain whence it arose; some attributed it to the dead grey eye, which fixing upon the object’s face, did not seem to penetrate, and at one glance to pierce through to the inward working of the heart; but fell upon the cheek with a leaden ray that weighed upon the skin it could not pass.” This original is invited to every house, and in the course of the winter he meets “a young gentleman of the name of Aubrey” he was an orphan left with an only sister in the possession of great wealth, by parents who died while he was yet in childhood.” Aubrey is greatly fascinated by Lord Ruthven, for this is the name of the mysterious nobleman, and intending to travel upon the Continent he mentions this intention to my Lord, and is “surprised to receive from him a proposal to join him. Flattered by such a mark of esteem from him who, apparently, had nothing in common with other men, he gladly accepted it, and in a few days they had passed the circling waters.”
As they travelled from town to town, Aubrey notices the peculiar conduct of his companion who bestows largess upon the most worthless characters, broken gamblers and the like, but refuses a doit to the deserving and virtuous poor. However the recipients of this charity “inevitably found that there was a curse upon it, for they all were either led to the scaffold or sunk to the lowest and the most abject misery.” Eventually the travellers arrive at Rome, and here Aubrey receives letters from his guardians who require him immediately to leave his companion as since their departure from London the most terrible scandals, adulteries and seductions, have come to light. At Rome Aubrey is able to foil Lord Ruthven’s plans, frustrating an intrigue designed to ruin a heedless young girl, and then he “directed his steps towards Greece, and, crossing the Peninsula, soon found himself at Athens.” Here he lodges in the house of a Greek, whose daughter Ianthe is a paragon of the most exquisite beauty. As he sketches the ruins of the city she is wont to entertain him with Greek legend and tradition, and “often, as she told him the tale of the living vampyre, who had passed years amidst his friends, and dearest ties, forced every year, by feeding upon the life of a
