Le Marchand de Sable : le podcast pour s'endormir · Engle

Dracula - Bram Stoker - Chapitre 4/27

·40 min·3 clips

A woman beats at Dracula's castle gate screaming 'Give me back my child!' — and the Count summons a pack of wolves to silence her.

1. 'Le Marchand de Sable' reads Chapter 4 of Bram Stoker's Dracula, narrated through Jonathan Harker's journal entries from May 18 to June 30. 2. Jonathan Harker is the sole voice throughout — a young English solicitor imprisoned in Count Dracula's castle in Transylvania. 3. The chapter's core question is whether Harker can find a way to escape or communicate with the outside world before the Count erases all evidence of his existence. 4. On May 19, Dracula asks Harker to write three letters back-dated to June 12, June 19, and June 29, covering up the timeline of Harker's stay; Harker writes: 'I now know the time I have left to live.' 5. Harker attempts to smuggle letters to Mina and his employer Mr. Hawkins via gypsies camping in the courtyard, throwing coins wrapped with letters from his window. 6. The Count intercepts both letters and burns the unsigned one (to Mina, written in shorthand); he returns the one to Hawkins with a polite request that Harker re-seal it himself. 7. On June 17, Harker watches Slovaks deliver large empty wooden boxes to the castle courtyard — which he later discovers are to be filled with Transylvanian earth, Dracula's transport for the journey to England. 8. On June 24, Harker watches Dracula crawl head-first down the castle's outer wall wearing Harker's own travelling clothes, a detail that reveals the Count's plan to impersonate him before witnesses. 9. A woman appears at the castle gate that same night screaming 'Monster! Give me back my child!' — the Count summons wolves from the tower and she is silenced; Harker concludes death was a mercy. 10. Dracula tries to release Harker on June 29 by opening the front door — which has no key — but has stationed wolves outside; when Harker recoils and shouts 'Close the door! I will wait!', Dracula shuts it and departs with a smile 'which Judas could have been proud of.' 11. The three vampire women appear behind Harker's door that night; the Count's voice tells them: 'This night belongs to me. The next one will be yours.' 12. On June 30, Harker finds the front door unlocked but sealed — he concludes it was locked after he slept and scales the wall again to search the Count's room for a key. 13. He descends through a ruined chapel and finds the Count in one of the earth-boxes: hair now iron-grey, face flushed, lips dripping fresh blood from the corners of his mouth. 14. Harker seizes a shovel, raises it, but meets the Count's open eyes — 'such an expression of hatred' — and his arms fail; the blow grazes the forehead only. 15. The lid falls back, the shovel is lost in the box, and Harker flees as gypsies and Slovaks arrive to carry the boxes away; he is once again locked in. 16. The chapter ends with Harker writing his journal entry as the boxes are carried out, the gypsies' song fading, until he is alone with the three women. 17. The narration is slow and atmospheric, suited to sleep listening; long journal-entry passages in first person create an intimate, claustrophobic tension. 18. The episode is a solo reading with no commentary, music, or editorial framing — purely the Stoker text. 19. Listeners who enjoy classic gothic horror, Victorian prose, or bedtime serialised fiction will find this chapter compelling. 20. Listeners who prefer action-heavy horror or modern pacing may find the journal format slow.

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