Die Versuchung des Vampyrs

Matthew Phipps Shiell is remembered mostly for supernatural and scientific romances. His work was published as serials, novels, and as short stories. The Purple Cloud (1901; 1929) remains his most famous and often reprinted novel. Never without grief and pain could I remember the fate of Prince Zaleski -- victim of a too importunate, too unfortunate Love, which the fulgor of the throne itself could not abash; exile perforce from his native land, and voluntary exile from the rest of men! But during the time that what was called the "Pharanx labyrinth" was exercising many of the heaviest brains in the land, my thought turned repeatedly to him; and even when the affair had passed from the general attention, a bright day in Spring, combined perhaps with a latent mistrust of the denoument of that dark plot, drew me to his place of hermitage. I reached the gloomy abode of my friend as the sun set. . . .