Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own will! … Come freely. Go safely; and leave something of the happiness you bring! … I am Dracula; and I bid you welcome, Mr. Harker, to my house.
Bram Stoker, Chapter 2 of DraculaSoyez le bienvenu à ma maison. Entrez librement, et de votre plein gré. … Venez librement, partez en sécurité, et laissez derrière vous une partie du bonheur que vous apportez. … Je suis Dracula en effet, et je vous souhaite la bienvenue, Monsieur Harker, à ma maison.
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The words with which Count Dracula welcomes his real-estate agent visitor (Jonathan Harker in the original novel) are given great prominence in both Tod Browning’s 1931 Dracula and in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Here I give an amalgamation of the Count’s words of welcome in the novel, which are variously adapted in the two films. (Tod Browning’s version: “I am…Dracula. … I bid you…welcome.” FFC’s version: “Welcome to my house, Mr. Harker! I am Dracula. Enter freely [and?] of your own will, and leave some of the happiness you bring.”)
I give here the complete passage from the novel:
“Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own will!” He made no motion of stepping to meet me, but stood like a statue, as though his gesture of welcome had fixed him into stone. The instant, however, that I had stepped over the threshold, he moved impulsively forward, and holding out his hand grasped mine with a strength which made me wince, an effect which was not lessened by the fact that it seemed as cold as ice—more like the hand of a dead than a living man. Again he said:—
“Welcome to my house. Come freely. Go safely; and leave something of the happiness you bring!” The strength of the handshake was so much akin to that which I had noticed in the driver, whose face I had not seen, that for a moment I doubted if it were not the same person to whom I was speaking; so to make sure, I said interrogatively:—
“Count Dracula?” He bowed in a courtly way as he replied:—
“I am Dracula; and I bid you welcome, Mr. Harker, to my house. Come in; the night air is chill, and you must need to eat and rest.”
Bravissimo!