Once again...welcome to my house. Come freely. Go safely; and leave something of the happiness you bring.

This line is spoken by Count Dracula as he receives Jonathan Harker at Castle Dracula early in Bram Stoker’s novel. Harker, a young English solicitor, has traveled to Transylvania on business to assist the Count with a property purchase in England. The greeting is delivered at the threshold of the castle, a moment staged like a formal act of hospitality even as the setting and the Count’s manner signal danger. Stoker draws on Victorian travel writing and Eastern European folklore to heighten the contrast between civilized etiquette and predatory intent, making the welcome both ceremonious and unsettling.

On the surface, the sentence performs old-world courtesy: the host invites the guest to enter without constraint and depart unharmed, asking only that the visitor leave behind some of the joy he brings. In Dracula’s mouth, however, the language becomes ironic and ominous. “Come freely” hints at the theme of consent and invitation that governs vampiric access, while “Go safely” reads as a promise the Count cannot—or will not—keep. The final clause twists hospitality into extraction: Dracula will indeed take something from his guest, but not merely “happiness.” The quote encapsulates the novel’s tension between manners and menace.