Clarimonde

Publisher Marketing: 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 Contributor Bio:  Gautier, Theophile Theophile Gautier, ne a Tarbes le 30 aout 1811 et mort a Neuilly-sur-Seine le 23 octobre 1872, est un poete, romancier et critique d'art francais. Contributor Bio:  Hearn, Lafcadio Born in Greece to an Irish soldier and a Greek mother, Lafcadio Hearn emigrated to the United States at the age of nineteen. While working as a newspaperman in Cincinnati, Ohio, Hearn married a black woman, which was then illegal, and fled to New Orleans to escape prosecution. Once there, he began to work for the New Orleans Item. During his time in New Orleans, Hearn published several books while continuing his work as a journalist.