I must keep writing at every chance, for I dare not stop to thinkAll, big and little, must go downPerhaps at the end the little things may teach us mostThe teaching, big or little, could not have landed Mina or me anywhere worse than we are todayHowever, we must trust and hopePoor Mina told me just now, with the tears running down her dear cheeks, that it is in trouble and trial that our faith is testedThat we must keep on trusting, and that God will aid us up to the endThe end! Oh my God! What end?? To work! To work! When DrSeward had come back from seeing poor Renfield, we went gravely into what was to be doneSeward told us that when he and DrVan Helsing had gone down to the room below they had found Renfield lying on the floor, all in a heapHis face was all bruised and crushed in, and the bones of the neck were brokenSeward asked the attendant who was on duty in the passage if he had heard anythingHe said that he had been sitting down, he confessed to half dozing, when he heard loud voices in the room, and then Renfield had called out loudly several times, "God! God! God!" After that there was a sound of falling, and when he entered the room he found him lying on the floor, face down, just as the doctors had seen himVan Helsing asked if he had heard "voices" or "a voice," and he said he could not sayThat at first it had seemed to him as if there were two, but as there was no one in the room it could have been only oneHe could swear to it, if required, that the word "God" was spoken by the patientSeward said to us, when we were alone, that he did not wish to go into the matterThe question of an inquest had to be considered, and it would never do to put forward the truth, as no one would believe itAs it was, he thought that on the attendant's evidence he could give a certificate of death by misadventure in falling from bedIn case the coroner should demand it, there would be a formal inquest, necessarily to the same result When the question began to be discussed as to what should be our next step, the very first thing we decided was that Mina should be in full confidenceThat nothing of any sort, no matter how painful, should be kept from herShe herself agreed as to its wisdom, and it was pitiful to see her so brave and yet so sorrowful, and in such a depth of despair "There must be no concealment," she said"Alas! We have had too much alreadyAnd besides there is nothing in all the world that can give me more pain than I have already endured, than I suffer now! Whatever may happen, it must be of new hope or of new courage to me!" Van Helsing was looking at her fixedly as she spoke, and said, suddenly but quietly, "But dear Madam Mina, are you not afraidNot for yourself, but for others from yourself, after what has happened?" Her face grew set in its lines, but her eyes shone with the devotion of a martyr as she answered, "Ah no! For my mind is made up!" "To what?" he asked gently, whilst we were all very still, for each in our own way we had a sort of vague idea of what she meant Her answer came with direct simplicity, as though she was simply stating a fact, "Because if I find in myself, and I shall watch keenly for it, a sign of harm to any that I love, I shall die!" "You would not kill yourself?" he asked, hoarselyIf there were no friend who loved me, who would save me such a pain, and so desperate an effort!" She looked at him meaningly as she spoke He was sitting down, but now he rose and came close to her and put his hand on her head as he said solemnly"My child, there is such an one if it were for your goodFor myself I could hold it in my account with God to find such an euthanasia for you, even at this moment if it were bestNay, were it safe! But my child?" For a moment he seemed choked, and a great sob rose in his throatHe gulped it down and went on, "There are here some who would stand between you and deathYou must not die by any hand, but least of all your ownUntil the other, who has fouled your sweet life, is true dead you must not dieFor if he is still with the quick Undead, your death would make you even as he isNo, you must live! You must struggle and strive to live, though death would seem a boon unspeakableYou must fight Death himself, though he come to you in pain or in shop joy

On November 10, 1910, Ch'ien Chung-shu, the author of Fortress Besieged, was born into a literary family in Wuhsi, Kiangsu provinceHis father Ch'ien Chi-po (1887?1957) was a renowned literary historian and university professorCh'ien was a precocious child, noted for his photographic memory and brilliance in writing Chinese verse and proseUpon graduation from grade school, he attended StJohn's University Affiliated High Schools in Soochow and WuhsiIn high school, Ch'ien excelled in EnglishWhen he sat for the matriculation examination of the prestigious Tsing-hua University, it was said that he scored very poorly in mathematics but did so well in English and Chinese composition that he passed the examination with some ~cIat At Tsing-hua, Ch'ien was known as an arrogant young man, who cut lectures and kept much to himselfAmong his few intimate friends was Achilles Fang, the "word wizard" (as Marianne Moore called him), who was then a student in the department of philosophyThere Ch'ien also met his future wife Yang ChiangAfter graduating from Tsing-hua in 1933, he accepted a teaching appointment at Kuang-hua University in Shanghai In 1935, on a Boxer Indemnity Scholarship, Ch'ien went to Exeter College, Oxford, and majored in English literatureHe read more thrillers and detective yarns than was healthy for a student devoted to serious researchHe also developed a keen interest in Hegel's philosophy and Marcel Proust's fictionPerhaps most ego deflating was his failure to pass the probationer examination in English palaeography, and he had to sit for it a second timeNonetheless, he did achieve his Bdegree from Oxford in 1937His thesis, composed of three meticulously researched chapters ("China in the English Literature of the Seventeenth Century" and "China in the English Literature of the Eighteenth Century'), was later published in the English edition of the Quarterly Bulletin of Chinese Bibliography (Tu-shu chi-k'an)Having taken his Oxford degree, he studied a year in Paris Returning to China in 1938, the second year of the second Sino-Japanese War, Ch'ien, at home in the literatures of two or three major European languages, taught at the National Southwest Associated University in Kunming; i the National Teachers College at Lan-t'ien in Pao-ching, Hunan province; Aurora Women's College of Arts and Sciences in Shanghai; and Chi-nan University in ShanghaiFrom 1946 to 1948 he was also the editor of the English language periodical Philobiblion, published by the National Central University Library in Nanking Among the small corpus of pre-Communist works by Ch'ien, the following are noteworthyAt Tsing-hua he wrote a number of short stories and vignette-type essays for Crescent Moon (Hsin yuieh) and Literary Review (Wen-hsiieh tsa-chih) magazinesIn 1941 the essays were published in Shanghai as a volume entitled Marginalia of Life (Hsieh tsai jen-sheng pien shang)Some of the short stories were anthologized in his 1946 publication entitled Men, Beasts, and Ghosts (Jen, Shou, Kuei)In 1948 he published On the Art of Poetry (T'an yi in), composed in an elegant wen-y en, or classical, style After the Communist victory in 1949, he returned to Peking to teach at Tsing-hua UniversityWhile still in Shanghai, Ch'ien had become dissatisfied with Fortress Besieged, and thought he could do betterHe began to write another novel to be called "Heart of the Artichoke" (Pai-ho hsin), after Baudelaire's phrase "Le coeur d'artichaut He had written some 3,000 to 4,000 words, but unfortunately the manuscript was lost in the mail when the Ch'iens moved from Shanghai to PekingHe has not worked on the novel since then In Peking Ch'ien first worked as a researcher in the Foreign Literature Institute of the Academy of Sciences; then he transferred to the Chinese Literature Institute of the same academySince the foundation of the Institute of Literature in the Academy of Social Sciences in 1952, he has been one of its two senior fellows, the other being Yu Ping-Po, well-known for his studies on the Dream of the Red Chamber (Hung-lou meng)Ch'ien's wife Yang Chiang is a researcher in the institute Ch'ien seems to have abandoned the writing of his earlier vitriolic works and restricted himself to literary scholarshipHis most significant post-1949 work has been Annotated Selection of Sung Poetry (Sung-shib hsiian-chu), which was published in 1958Later he headed a team of scholars responsible for the writing of the T'ang and Sung sections of a history of Chinese literatureIn 1974 it was widely rumored that he had diedHsia to write a memorial essay, "In Memory of MrCh'ien Chung-shu" (Chui-nien Ch'ien Chung-shu hsien-sheng) ~6 Ch'ien, how ever, is alive and well and has been "resurrected" after the fall of the Gang of shop Four

On November 10, 1910, Ch'ien Chung-shu, the author of Fortress Besieged, was born into a literary family in Wuhsi, Kiangsu provinceHis father Ch'ien Chi-po (1887?1957) was a renowned literary historian and university professorCh'ien was a precocious child, noted for his photographic memory and brilliance in writing Chinese verse and proseUpon graduation from grade school, he attended StJohn's University Affiliated High Schools in Soochow and WuhsiIn high school, Ch'ien excelled in EnglishWhen he sat for the matriculation examination of the prestigious Tsing-hua University, it was said that he scored very poorly in mathematics but did so well in English and Chinese composition that he passed the examination with some ~cIat At Tsing-hua, Ch'ien was known as an arrogant young man, who cut lectures and kept much to himselfAmong his few intimate friends was Achilles Fang, the "word wizard" (as Marianne Moore called him), who was then a student in the department of philosophyThere Ch'ien also met his future wife Yang ChiangAfter graduating from Tsing-hua in 1933, he accepted a teaching appointment at Kuang-hua University in Shanghai In 1935, on a Boxer Indemnity Scholarship, Ch'ien went to Exeter College, Oxford, and majored in English literatureHe read more thrillers and detective yarns than was healthy for a student devoted to serious researchHe also developed a keen interest in Hegel's philosophy and Marcel Proust's fictionPerhaps most ego deflating was his failure to pass the probationer examination in English palaeography, and he had to sit for it a second timeNonetheless, he did achieve his Bdegree from Oxford in 1937His thesis, composed of three meticulously researched chapters ("China in the English Literature of the Seventeenth Century" and "China in the English Literature of the Eighteenth Century'), was later published in the English edition of the Quarterly Bulletin of Chinese Bibliography (Tu-shu chi-k'an)Having taken his Oxford degree, he studied a year in Paris Returning to China in 1938, the second year of the second Sino-Japanese War, Ch'ien, at home in the literatures of two or three major European languages, taught at the National Southwest Associated University in Kunming; i the National Teachers College at Lan-t'ien in Pao-ching, Hunan province; Aurora Women's College of Arts and Sciences in Shanghai; and Chi-nan University in ShanghaiFrom 1946 to 1948 he was also the editor of the English language periodical Philobiblion, published by the National Central University Library in Nanking Among the small corpus of pre-Communist works by Ch'ien, the following are noteworthyAt Tsing-hua he wrote a number of short stories and vignette-type essays for Crescent Moon (Hsin yuieh) and Literary Review (Wen-hsiieh tsa-chih) magazinesIn 1941 the essays were published in Shanghai as a volume entitled Marginalia of Life (Hsieh tsai jen-sheng pien shang)Some of the short stories were anthologized in his 1946 publication entitled Men, Beasts, and Ghosts (Jen, Shou, Kuei)In 1948 he published On the Art of Poetry (T'an yi in), composed in an elegant wen-y en, or classical, style After the Communist victory in 1949, he returned to Peking to teach at Tsing-hua UniversityWhile still in Shanghai, Ch'ien had become dissatisfied with Fortress Besieged, and thought he could do betterHe began to write another novel to be called "Heart of the Artichoke" (Pai-ho hsin), after Baudelaire's phrase "Le coeur d'artichaut He had written some 3,000 to 4,000 words, but unfortunately the manuscript was lost in the mail when the Ch'iens moved from Shanghai to PekingHe has not worked on the novel since then In Peking Ch'ien first worked as a researcher in the Foreign Literature Institute of the Academy of Sciences; then he transferred to the Chinese Literature Institute of the same academySince the foundation of the Institute of Literature in the Academy of Social Sciences in 1952, he has been one of its two senior fellows, the other being Yu Ping-Po, well-known for his studies on the Dream of the Red Chamber (Hung-lou meng)Ch'ien's wife Yang Chiang is a researcher in the institute Ch'ien seems to have abandoned the writing of his earlier vitriolic works and restricted himself to literary scholarshipHis most significant post-1949 work has been Annotated Selection of Sung Poetry (Sung-shib hsiian-chu), which was published in 1958Later he headed a team of scholars responsible for the writing of the T'ang and Sung sections of a history of Chinese literatureIn 1974 it was widely rumored that he had diedHsia to write a memorial essay, "In Memory of MrCh'ien Chung-shu" (Chui-nien Ch'ien Chung-shu hsien-sheng) ~6 Ch'ien, how ever, is alive and well and has been "resurrected" after the fall of the Gang of shop Four

The first to act was Harker, who with a quick movement, threw himself before the door leading into the room in the front of the houseAs the Count saw us, a horrible sort of snarl passed over his face, showing the eyeteeth long and pointedBut the evil smile as quickly passed into a cold stare of lion-like disdainHis expression again changed as, with a single impulse, we all advanced upon himIt was a pity that we had not some better organized plan of attack, for even at the moment I wondered what we were to doI did not myself know whether our lethal weapons would avail us anything Harker evidently meant to try the matter, for he had ready his great Kukri knife and made a fierce and sudden cut at himThe blow was a powerful one; only the diabolical quickness of the Count's leap back saved himA second less and the trenchant blade had shorn through his heartAs it was, the point just cut the cloth of his coat, making a wide gap whence a bundle of bank notes and a stream of gold fell outThe expression of the Count's face was so hellish, that for a moment I feared for Harker, though I saw him throw the terrible knife aloft again for another strokeInstinctively I moved forward with a protective impulse, holding the Crucifix and Wafer in my left handI felt a mighty power fly along my arm, and it was without surprise that I saw the monster cower back before a similar movement made spontaneously by each one of usIt would be impossible to describe the expression of hate and baffled malignity, of anger and hellish rage, which came over the Count's faceHis waxen hue became greenish-yellow by the contrast of his burning eyes, and the red scar on the forehead showed on the pallid skin like a palpitating woundThe next instant, with a sinuous dive he swept under Harker's arm, ere his blow could fall, and grasping a handful of the money from the floor, dashed across the room, threw himself at the windowAmid the crash and glitter of the falling glass, he tumbled into the flagged area belowThrough the sound of the shivering glass I could hear the "ting" of the gold, as some of the sovereigns fell on the flagging We ran over and saw him spring unhurt from the groundHe, rushing up the steps, crossed the flagged yard, and pushed open the stable doorThere he turned and spoke to us "You think to baffle me, you with your pale faces all in a row, like sheep in a butcher'sYou shall be sorry yet, each one of you! You think you have left me without a place to rest, but I have moreMy revenge is just begun! I spread it over centuries, and time is on my sideYour girls that you all love are mine alreadyAnd through them you and others shall yet be mine, my creatures, to do my bidding and to be my jackals when I want to feedBah!" With a contemptuous sneer, he passed quickly through the door, and we heard the rusty bolt creak as he fastened it behind himA door beyond opened and shutThe first of us to speak was the ProfessorRealizing the difficulty of following him through the stable, we moved toward the hall "We have learnt something? much! Notwithstanding his brave words, he fears usHe fears time, he fears want! For if not, why he hurry so? His very tone betray him, or my ears deceiveWhy take that money? You follow quickYou are hunters of the wild beast, and understand it soFor me, I make sure that nothing here may be of use to him, if so that he returns As he spoke he put the money remaining in his pocket, took the title deeds in the bundle as Harker had left them, and swept the remaining things into the open fireplace, where he set fire to them with a match Godalming and Morris had rushed out into the yard, and Harker had lowered himself from the window to follow the CountHe had, however, bolted the stable door, and by the time they had forced it open there was no sign of himVan Helsing and I tried to make inquiry at the back of the houseBut the mews was deserted and no one had seen him shop depart

The first to act was Harker, who with a quick movement, threw himself before the door leading into the room in the front of the houseAs the Count saw us, a horrible sort of snarl passed over his face, showing the eyeteeth long and pointedBut the evil smile as quickly passed into a cold stare of lion-like disdainHis expression again changed as, with a single impulse, we all advanced upon himIt was a pity that we had not some better organized plan of attack, for even at the moment I wondered what we were to doI did not myself know whether our lethal weapons would avail us anything Harker evidently meant to try the matter, for he had ready his great Kukri knife and made a fierce and sudden cut at himThe blow was a powerful one; only the diabolical quickness of the Count's leap back saved himA second less and the trenchant blade had shorn through his heartAs it was, the point just cut the cloth of his coat, making a wide gap whence a bundle of bank notes and a stream of gold fell outThe expression of the Count's face was so hellish, that for a moment I feared for Harker, though I saw him throw the terrible knife aloft again for another strokeInstinctively I moved forward with a protective impulse, holding the Crucifix and Wafer in my left handI felt a mighty power fly along my arm, and it was without surprise that I saw the monster cower back before a similar movement made spontaneously by each one of usIt would be impossible to describe the expression of hate and baffled malignity, of anger and hellish rage, which came over the Count's faceHis waxen hue became greenish-yellow by the contrast of his burning eyes, and the red scar on the forehead showed on the pallid skin like a palpitating woundThe next instant, with a sinuous dive he swept under Harker's arm, ere his blow could fall, and grasping a handful of the money from the floor, dashed across the room, threw himself at the windowAmid the crash and glitter of the falling glass, he tumbled into the flagged area belowThrough the sound of the shivering glass I could hear the "ting" of the gold, as some of the sovereigns fell on the flagging We ran over and saw him spring unhurt from the groundHe, rushing up the steps, crossed the flagged yard, and pushed open the stable doorThere he turned and spoke to us "You think to baffle me, you with your pale faces all in a row, like sheep in a butcher'sYou shall be sorry yet, each one of you! You think you have left me without a place to rest, but I have moreMy revenge is just begun! I spread it over centuries, and time is on my sideYour girls that you all love are mine alreadyAnd through them you and others shall yet be mine, my creatures, to do my bidding and to be my jackals when I want to feedBah!" With a contemptuous sneer, he passed quickly through the door, and we heard the rusty bolt creak as he fastened it behind himA door beyond opened and shutThe first of us to speak was the ProfessorRealizing the difficulty of following him through the stable, we moved toward the hall "We have learnt something? much! Notwithstanding his brave words, he fears usHe fears time, he fears want! For if not, why he hurry so? His very tone betray him, or my ears deceiveWhy take that money? You follow quickYou are hunters of the wild beast, and understand it soFor me, I make sure that nothing here may be of use to him, if so that he returns As he spoke he put the money remaining in his pocket, took the title deeds in the bundle as Harker had left them, and swept the remaining things into the open fireplace, where he set fire to them with a match Godalming and Morris had rushed out into the yard, and Harker had lowered himself from the window to follow the CountHe had, however, bolted the stable door, and by the time they had forced it open there was no sign of himVan Helsing and I tried to make inquiry at the back of the houseBut the mews was deserted and no one had seen him shop depart