VAMPIRES 
401 
other of supreme importance to the continuity of life. When 
you can get these still alive to their function, it is best of all. 
That is why it is not so highly recommended to tear out and 
devour the heart and liver of your next-door neighbour ; you 
have gone far to destroy just that which is of most 
importance to you to keep alive. 
Doubtless you will reply with some apparent justice , 
indeed most plausible is such ratiocination, that by taking 
into your own body , and so preserving the life of, his heart 
and liver, the whole of his "vital energies" will desert the 
sinking ship of the physical tissue, and rush to the lifeboat 
provided by the vampire. Never forget that you confer an 
inestimable benefit upon the victim by absorbing his lower 
form of Energy into your higher. Read your Magick, Chapter 
XII! 
You say this strongly , my dear Sister in the Lord; your 
thesis is impeccably stated , your arguments are cogent, 
plangent , not to be repeated . But-this I put to you most 
solemnly-what experimental evidence do you adduce? How 
many hearts , how many livers, have been your spiritual 
sustenance? Have you excluded every source of error? Have 
you-here , you know the routine; write it all down and send 
it along to be vetted! 
Be that as it may, I once knew a lady of some seventy 
summers. She came of a noble Polish family; she was short, 
sturdy , rather plump but singularly agile; good-looking in a 
brutal sort of way. But-her eyes! For fifty years she had 
lived nearly all the year round in her chateau in Touraine. 
She had plenty of money, and had always surrounded herself 
with a dozen or more boys and young men. (By young I 
mean up to forty .) She not only looked twenty-five but she 
lived twenty-five. It was a genuine , natural , spontaneous 
twenty-five, not a gallant effort. She would dance the night 
through and go a long walk in the morning. You may apply 
to her for details of the treatment ; I dare say she is still 
about, though I did hear that she moved to South America 
when she saw 1914 coming. In any case, you have had some