Those stories are not fables.

Such men live.
Their delight is to increase the unhallowed circle of wretches like themselves.

If their proselytes fail in the ordeal, the demon seizes them, even in this life, as it hath seized me!--if they succeed, woe, yea, a more lasting woe! There is another life, where no spells can charm the evil one, or allay the torture.

I have come from a scene where blood flows in rivers,--where Death stands by the side of the bravest and the highest, and the one monarch is the Guillotine; but all the mortal perils with which men can be beset, are nothing to the dreariness of the chamber where the Horror that passes death moves and stirs!" It was then that Glyndon, with a cold and distinct precision, detailed, as he had done to Adela, the initiation through which he had gone.

He described, in words that froze the blood of his listener, the appearance of that formless phantom, with the eyes that seared the brain and congealed the marrow of those who beheld.