w
a ring into the salt springs that run into the bay of Eleusis. If
we may trust Polidori's account, Byron intended that the
survivor, on his return to England, should be startled to behold
his companion moving in society, and making love to his sister.
On this foundation Polidori constructed _The Vampyre_. The story
opens with the description of a nobleman, Lord Ruthven, whose
appearance and character excite great interest in London society.
His face is remarkable for its deadly pallor, and he has a "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
workings of the heart, but fell upon the cheek with a leaden ray
that laid (_sic_) upon the skin it could not pass." A young man
named Aubrey, who arrives in London about the same time, becomes
deeply interested in the study of Ruthven's character. When he
joins him on a tour abroad he discovers that his companion takes
a fiendish delight in ruining the innocent at the gaming-table;
and, after receiving a warning of Ruthven's reputation, decides
to leave him, but to continue to watch him closely. He succeeds
in foiling his designs against a young Italian girl in Rome.
Aubrey next travels to Greece, where he falls in love with
Ianthe. One day, in spite of warnings that the place he purposes
to visit is frequented by vampires, Aubrey sets off on an
excursion. Benighted in a lonely forest, he hears the
terror-stricken cries of a woman in a hovel, and, on attempting
to rescue her, finds himself in the grasp of a being of
superhuman strength, who cries: "Again baffled!" When light
dawns, Aubrey makes the terrible discovery that Ianthe has become
the prey of a vampire. He carries away from the spot a
blood-stained dagger. In the delirious fever, which ensues on his
discovery of Ianthe's fate, Aubrey is nursed by Lord Ruthven.
While they are travelling in Greece, Ruthven is shot in the
shoulder by a robber, and, before dying, exacts from Aubrey a
solemn oath that he will not reveal for a year and a day what he
knows of his crimes or death. In accordance with a promise made
to Ruthven, his body is conveyed to a mountain to be exposed to
the rays of the moon. The corpse disappears. Among Ruthven's
possessions Aubrey finds a sheath, into which the dagger he has
found in the hovel fits exactly. On passing through Rome he
learns that the girl he had once saved from Ruthven has vanished.
When he returns t