When I went into the dining room, breakfast was prepared, but I could not find the Count anywhere.  So I breakfasted alone.  It is strange that as yet I have not seen the Count eat or drink.  He must be a very peculiar man!  After breakfast I did a little exploring in the castle.  I went out on the stairs, and found a room looking towards the South.

The view was magnificent, and from where I stood there was every opportunity of seeing it.  The castle is on the very edge of a terrific precipice.  A stone falling from the window would fall a thousand feet without touching anything!  As far as the eye can reach is a sea of green tree tops, with occasionally a deep rift where there is a chasm.  Here and there are silver threads where the rivers wind in deep gorges through the forests.

But I am not in heart to describe beauty, for when I had seen the view I explored further.  Doors, doors, doors everywhere, and all locked and bolted.  In no place save from the windows in the castle walls is there an available exit.  The castle is a veritable prison, and I am a prisoner!

CHAPTER 3

Jonathan Harker’s Journal Continued

When I found that I was a prisoner a sort of wild feeling came over me.  I rushed up and down the stairs, trying every door and peering out of every window I could find, but after a little the conviction of my helplessness overpowered all other feelings.  When I look back after a few hours I think I must have been mad for the time, for I behaved much as a rat does in a trap.  When, however, the conviction had come to me that I was helpless I sat down quietly, as quietly as I have ever done anything in my life, and began to think over what was best to be done.  I am thinking still, and as yet have come to no definite conclusion.  Of one thing only am I certain.  That it is no use making my ideas known to the Count.  He knows well that I am imprisoned, and as he has done it himself, and has doubtless his own motives for it, he would only deceive me if I trusted him fully with the facts.  So far as I can see, my only plan will be to keep my knowledge and my fears to myself, and my eyes open.  I am, I know, either being deceived, like a baby, by my own fears, or else I am in desperate straits, and if the latter be so, I need, and shall need, all my brains to get through.

I had hardly come to this conclusion when I heard the great door below shut, and knew that the Count had returned.  He did not come at once into the library, so I went cautiously to my own room and found him making the bed.  This was odd, but only confirmed what I had all along thought, that there are no servants in the house.  When later I saw him through the chink of the hinges of the door laying the table in the dining room, I was assured of it.  For if he does himself all these menial offices, surely it is proof that there is no one else in the castle, it must have been the Count himself who was the driver of the coach that brought me here.  This is a terrible thought, for if so, what does it mean that he could control the wolves, as he did, by only holding up his hand for silence?  How was it that all the people at Bistritz and on the coach had some terrible fear for me?  What meant the giving of the crucifix, of the garlic, of the wild rose, of the mountain ash?