Clarimonde by Theophile Gautier, Fiction, Classics, Fantasy, Fairy Tales, Folk Tales, Legends & Mythology

From that night my nature seemed to have become halved -- and there were two men within me, neither of whom knew the other. At one moment I believed myself a priest who dreamed nightly that he was a gentleman -- at another, that I was a gentleman who dreamed he was a priest. I could no longer distinguish the dream from the reality, nor could I discover where the reality began or where ended the dream! By day he was a priest of the Lord, occupied with prayer and sacred things . . . by night, a young nobleman, a fine connoisseur of women, dogs, and horses -- gambling, drinking, and blaspheming! Theophile Gautier (1811-1872), one of the French masters of the Romantic novel, wrote one of the early masterpieces of vampire fiction, in the sensuous Clarimonde, or La Morte Amoureuse. "Never gaze upon a woman! Walk abroad with eyes ever fixed upon the ground," says the priest, "for however chaste and watchful one may be, the error of a single moment is enough to make one lose eternity!"