The End of the Story

"The End of the Story" is a short story by Clark Ashton Smith, the first of his stories set in the pseudo-historical French region of Averoigne. It was first published in the May 1930 issue of Weird Tales.
==Synopsis==
The plot concerns a young law student named Christophe Morand, who stays at the Abbey of Perigon in Averoigne. There, he reads a manuscript about Gerard de Venteillon, a knight who was seduced by a lamia who lives in the ruins of the Chateau des Faussesflammes, near Perigon. Reading the story, Morand becomes similarly obsessed and seems to meet the same fate.
==Characters==
Christophe Morand: A "young law-student of Tours" who unaccountably disappearance after a stopping at the abbey of Périgon on his way to his father’s estate near Moulins in November 1789.
Hilaire: The abbot of Périgon, proud of the abbey's library. He rescues Morand from the lamia and warns of her seductive danger, to no avail. 
Nycea: A lamia that inhabits the Chateau des Faussesflammes. It's implied that she is one of those "abominable hags whose bodies terminate in serpentine coils," though she appears as "a woman of goddess-like beauty."
Gerard de Venteillon: The Comte of Venteillon, "a knightly youth of indisputably proven valor" and "a true Christian". After meeting a satyr, however, he becomes obsessed with finding "the pagan ecstasies," and disappears into the ruins of Faussesflammes.
Eleanor des Lys: A "renowned and beautiful demoiselle" who is engaged to Gerard, she is stood up by him at the altar of the cathedral of Vyônes when he disappears.
Category:Clark Ashton Smith works
Category:Lovecraft Circle Works
Category:Averoigne Cycle