Original title: La Vampire (1856).
The particular gift of Countess Addhema was to be reborn as beautiful and young as love itself every time she could apply to the hideous bareness of her skull a living head of hair. I mean a scalp, torn from the head of a living victim. This was why her tomb was full of the skulls of young women and adolescent girls.
Written in 1856 – over 40 years before Bram Stoker's Dracula – The Vampire Countess is one of three classic vampire stories penned by Paul Féval, along with Knightshade and Vampire City.
Paul Henri Corentin Féval, père (1816–1887) was a French novelist and dramatist. He was the author of popular swashbuckler novels such as Le Loup Blanc and the perennial best-seller Le Bossu. He also penned the seminal vampire fiction novels Le Chevalier Ténèbre, La Vampire and La Ville Vampire and wrote several celebrated novels about his native Brittany and Mont Saint-Michel such as La Fée des Grèves.
