Clarimonde

A country priest looks back on memories that still unsettle him in old age. Théophile Gautier's short vampire story follows Romuald as he describes a life divided between daytime prayer and nights spent, in his dreams, as a young nobleman. His recollections begin with his ordination, where the sight of a richly dressed woman changes his experience of the ceremony and shakes the religious purpose that has guided him since childhood.

The woman is Clarimonde, and a later vigil beside her body brings his attachment into conflict with his understanding of life and death. Told through the priest's own recollections, the story makes uncertainty part of its atmosphere: he struggles to decide how much of his experience was real. Lafcadio Hearn's translation presents close descriptions of light, colour, dress and gesture. Readers interested in supernatural fiction can follow the tension between an outwardly settled vocation and an inward life governed by disturbing memories.