“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 Chersonese; and in China, so far from us in all ways, there even is he, and the peoples fear him at this day. He have follow the wake of the berserker Icelander, the devil-begotten Hun, the Slav, the Saxon, the Magyar.