I wished to get her home at once

— Fortune favored us

When I bent over her I could see that she was still asleep. Her lips were parted, and she was breathing, not softly as usual with her, but in long, heavy gasps, as though striving to get her lungs full at every breath. As I came close, she put up her hand in her sleep and pulled the collar of her nightdress close around her, as though she felt the cold. I flung the warm shawl over her, and drew the edges tight around her neck, for I dreaded lest she should get some deadly chill from the night air, unclad as she was.

I feared to wake her all at once, so, in order to have my hands free to help her, I fastened the shawl at her throat with a big safety pin. But I must have been clumsy in my anxiety and pinched or pricked her with it, for by-and-by, when her breathing became quieter, she put her hand to her throat again and moaned. When I had her carefully wrapped up I put my shoes on her feet, and then began very gently to wake her.

At first she did not respond, but gradually she became more and more uneasy in her sleep, moaning and sighing occasionally. At last, as time was passing fast, and for many other reasons, I wished to get her home at once. I shook her forcibly, till finally she opened her eyes and awoke. She did not seem surprised to see me, as, of course, she did not realize all at once where she was.

Lucy always wakes prettily, and even at such a time, when her body must have been chilled with cold, and her mind somewhat appalled at waking unclad in a churchyard at night, she did not lose her grace. She trembled a little, and clung to me. When I told her to come at once with me home, she rose without a word, with the obedience of a child. As we passed along, the gravel hurt my feet, and Lucy noticed me wince. She stopped and wanted to insist upon my taking my shoes, but I would not. However, when we got to the pathway outside the churchyard, where there was a puddle of water, remaining from the storm, I daubed my feet with mud, using each foot in turn on the other, so that as we went home, no one, in case we should meet any one, should notice my bare feet.

Fortune favored us, and we got home without meeting a soul.

—Bram Stoker, Dracula

Painting: Amedeo Modigliani, Portrait of Jeanne Hébuterne


Editor's Note:  Jeanne Hébuterne was a French artist. She was the frequent subject and common-law wife of Amedeo Modigliani.

The Sunless Earth

Thus, when the night comes down in this calm, changeless realm, nothing indicates its approach; the sun pursuing his path of fire, appears suddenly to hear some mysterious mandate summoning him to abandon his dominion, and, drunk with his own glory, he seems impelled to perish as he lived, in radiance unendurable, for, rushing headlong down the steep blue vault, he plunges suddenly below the dark horizon and is seen no more!

One moment his beams stretch across the heaven, like the great bars of the golden gate of paradise, then he draws them after him and leaves the empire to his rival–Night.

She meanwhile rises in her gloomy garments, as though to be his great chief mourner, and ascends with swiftest tread the ethereal vault, devouring as she moves along the ruins of the sunshine, whilst from her deepening shadows, brightest stars are born—in token that the Eternal can cause the darkness to bring forth light. Then when like a queen she has taken her throne in heaven, she stretches out her heavy mourning veil and lets it fall upon the sunless earth, over whose shrouded beauty she sits brooding till the dawn.

–Felicia Skene (1821–1899)

Painting: Claude Monet, Cathedral at Rouen