" But now Claudia has released you, yet still yon stay with her, and stay bound to her as your paramour,' he said.

"'No, she's no paramour of mine; you don't understand,' I said.'Rather, she's my child, and I don't know that she can release me.... ' These were thoughts I'd gone over and over in my mind.'I don't knew if the child possesses the power to release the parent. I don't know that I won't be bound to her for as long as she '

"I stopped. I was gong to say,'for as long as she lives.' But I realized it was a hollow mortal clicle6. She would live forever, as I would live forever. But wasn't it so for mortal fathers? Their daughters live forever because these fathers die first. I was at a loss suddenly; but conscious all the while of how Armand listened: that he listened in the way that we dream of others listening, his face seeming to reflect on every thing said. He did not start forward to seize on my slightest pause, to assert an understanding of something before the thought was finished, or to argue with a swift, irresistible impulse-the things which often make dialogue impossible.

"And after a long interval he said,'I want you. I want you more than anything in the world.'

"For a moment I doubted what I'd heard. It struck me as unbelievable. And I was hopelessly disarmed by it, and the wordless vision of our living together expanded and obliterated every other consideration in my mind.

"'I said that I want you. I want you more than anything in the world,' he repeated, with only a subtle change of expression. And then he sat waiting, watching. His face was as tranquil as always, his smooth, white forehead beneath the shock of his auburn hair without a trace of care, his large eyes reflecting on me, his lips still.

"'You want this of me, yet you don't come to me,' he said:'There are things you want to know, and you don't ask. You see Claudia slipping away from you, yet you seem powerless to prevent it, and then you would hasten it, and yet you do nothing.!

" 'I don't understand my own feelings. Perhaps they are clearer to you than they are to me.... '

"'You don't begin to know what a mystery you are!' he said.

"'But at least you know yourself thoroughly. I can't claim that,' I said.'I love her, yet I am not close to her. I mean that when I am with you as I am now, I know that I know nothing of her, nothing of anyone.'

"'She's an era for you, an era of your life. If and when you break with her, you break with the only one alive who has shared that time with you. You fear that, the isolation of it, the burden, the scope of eternal life.'

"'Yes, that's true, but that's only a small part of it. The era, it doesn't mean much to me. She made it mean something. Other vampires must experience this and survive it, the passing of a hundred eras.'

"'But they don't survive it,' he said.'The world would be choked with vampires if they survived it. How do you think I come to be the eldest here or anywhere?' he asked.

"I thought about this. And then I ventured,'They die by violence?'

"'No, almost never. It isn't necessary. How many vampires do you think have the stamina for immortality? They have the cost dismal notions of immortality to begin with. For in becoming immortal they want all the forms of their life to be fined as they are and incorruptible: carriages made in the same dependable fashion, clothing of the cut which suited their prime, men attired and speaking in the manner they have always understood and valued. When, in fact, all things change except the vampire himself; everything except the vampire is subject to constant corruption and distortion. Soon, with an inflexible mind, and often even with the most flexible mind, this immortality becomes a penitential sentence in a madhouse of figures and forms that are hopelessly unintelligible and without value. One evening a vampire rises and realizes what he has feared perhaps for decades, that he simply wants no more of life at any cost. That whatever style or fashion or shape of existence made immortality attractive to him has been swept off the face of the earth. And nothing remains to offer freedom from despair except the act of killing. And that vampire goes out to die. No one will find his remains. No one will know where he has gone. And often no one around him-should he still seek the company of other vampires--no one will know that he is in despair. He will have ceased long ago to speak- of himself or of anything. He will vanish.'

"I sat back impressed by the obvious truth of it, and yet at the same time, everything in me revolted against that prospect. I became aware of the depth of my hope and my terror; how very different those feelings were from the alienation that he described, how very different from that awful wasting despair. There was something outrageous and repulsive in that despair suddenly. I couldn't accept it.

"'But you wouldn't allow such a state of mind in yourself. Look at you,' I found myself answering.'If there weren't one single work of art left in this world... and there are thousands... if there weren't a single natural beauty... if the world were reduced to one empty cell and one fragile candle, I can't help but see you studying that candle, absorbed in the flicker of its light, the change of its colors... how long could that sustain you... what possibilities would it create? Am I wrong? Am I such a crazed idealist?'

"'No,' he said. There was a brief smile on his lips, an evanescent flush of pleasure. But then he went on simply.'But you feel an obligation to a world you love because that world for you is still intact. It is conceivable your own sensitivity might become the instrument of madness. You speak of works of art and natural beauty. I wish I had the artist's power to bring alive for you the Venice of the fifteenth century, my master's palace there, the love I felt for him when I was a mortal boy, and the love he felt for me when he made me a vampire. Oh, if I could make those times come alive for either you or me... for only an instant! What would that be worth? And what a sadness it is to me that time doesn't dim the memory of that period, that it becomes all the richer and more magical in light of the world I see today.'

"'Love?' I asked.'There was love between you and the vampire who made you?' I leaned forward.

"'Yes,' he said.'A love so strong he couldn't allow me to grow old and die. A love that waited patiently until I was strong enough to be born to darkness. Do you mean to tell me there was no bond of love between you and the vampire who made you?'

"'None,' I said quickly. I couldn't repress a bitter smile.

"He studied me.'Why then did he give you these powers?' he asked.

"I sat back.'You see these powers as a gift!' I said.'Of course you do. Forgive me, but it amazes me, how in your complexity you are so profoundly simple.' I laughed.

"'Should I be insulted?" he smiled. And his whole manner only confirmed me in what rd just said. He seemed so innocent. I was only beginning to understand him.

"'No, not by me,' I said, my pulse quickening as I looked at him.'You're everything I dreamed of when I became a vampire. You see these powers as a gift!' I repeated it.'But tell me... do you now feel love for this vampire who gave you eternal life? Do you feel this now?'

"He appeared to be thinking, and then he sand slowly,'Why does this matter?' But went on:'I don't think I've been fortunate in feeling love for many people or many things. But yes, I love him. Perhaps I do not love him as you mean. It seems you confuse me, rather effortlessly. You are a mystery. I do not need him, this vampire, anymore.'

"'I was gifted with eternal life, with heightened perception, and with the need to kill,' I quickly explained,'because the vampire who made me wanted the house I owned and my money. Do you understand such a thing?' I asked.'Ah, but there is so much else behind what I say. It makes itself known to me so slowly, so incompletely! You see, it's as if you've cracked a door for me, and light is streaming from that door and I'm yearning to get to it, to push it back, to enter the region you say exists beyond it! When, in fact, I don't believe it! The vampire who made me was everything that I truly believed evil to be: he was as dismal, as literal, as barren, as inevitably eternally disappointing as I believed evil had to be! I know that now. But you, you are something totally beyond that conception! Open the door for me, push it back all the way. Tell me about this palace in Venice, this love affair with damnation. I want to understand it'

"'You trick yourself. The palace means nothing to you,' he said.'The doorway you see leads to me, now. To your coming to live with me as I am. I am evil with infinite gradations and without guilt.'

"'Yes, exactly,' I murmured.

"'Arid this makes you unhappy,' he said.'You, who came to me in my cell and said there was only one sin left, the willful taking of an innocent human life.'

"'Yes... ' I said.'How you must have been laughing at me.... '

"'I never laughed at you,' he said.'I cannot afford to laugh at you. It is through you that I can save myself from the despair which I've described to you as our death. It is through you that I must make my link with this nineteenth century and come to understand it in a way that will revitalize me, which I so desperately need It is for you that I've been waiting at the Theatre des Vampires. If I knew a mortal of that sensitivity, that pain, that focus, I would make him a vampire in an instant. But such can rarely be done. No, I've had to wait and watch for you. And now I'll fight for you. Do you see how ruthless I am in love? Is this what you meant by love?'

"'Oh, but you'd be making a terrible mistake,' I said, looking him in the eyes. His words were only slowly sinking in. Never had I felt my all-consuming frustration to be so clear. I could not conceivably satisfy him. I could not satisfy Claudia. I'd never been able to satisfy Lestat. And my own mortal brother, Paul: how dismally, mortally I had disappointed him!

"'No. I must make contact with the age,' he said to me calmly.'And I can do this through you... not to learn things from you which I can see in a moment in an art gallery or read in an hour in the thickest books... you are the spirit, you are the heart,' he persisted.

"'No, no.' I threw up my hands. I was on the point of a bitter, hysterical laughter.'Don't you see? I'm not the spirit of any age. I'm at odds with everything and always have been! I have never belonged anywhere with anyone at any time!' It was too painful, too perfectly true.

"But his face only brightened with an irresistible smile. He seemed on the verge of laughing at .me, and then his shoulders began to move with this laughter.'lout Louis,' he said softly.'This is the very spirit of your age. Don't you see that? 'Everyone else feels as you feel. Your fall from grace and faith has been the fall of a century.'

"I was so stunned by this, that for a long time I sat there staring into the fire. It had all but consumed the wood and was a wasteland of smoldering ash, a gray and red landscape that would have collapsed at the touch of the poker. Yet it was very warm, and still gave off powerful light. I saw my life in complete perspective

"'And the vampires of the Theatre... : I asked softly.

"'They reflect the age in cynicism which cannot comprehend the death of possibilities, fatuous sophisticated indulgence in the parody of the miraculous, decadence whose last refuge is self-ridicule, a mannered helplessness. You saw them; you've known them all your life. You reflect your age differently. You reflect its broken heart.'

"'This is unhappiness. Unhappiness you don't begin to understand.'

"'I don't doubt it. Tell me what you feel now, what makes you unhappy. Tell me why for a period of seven days you haven't come to me, though you were burning to come. Tell me what holds you still to Claudia and the other woman.'

"I shook my head.'You don't know what you ask. You see, it was immensely difficult for me to perform the act of making Madeleine into a vampire. I broke a promise to myself that I would never do this, that my own loneliness would never drive me to do it. I don't see our life as powers and gifts. I see it as a curse. I haven't the courage to die. But to make another vampire! To bring this suffering on another, and to condemn to death all those men and women whom that vampire must subsequently kill! I broke a grave promise. And in so doing... '

"'But if it's any consolation to you... surely you realize I had a hand in it.'

"'That I did it to be free of Claudia, to be free to come to you... yes, I realize that. But the ultimate responsibility lies with me!' I said.

"'No. I mean, directly. I made you do it! I was near you the night you did it. I exerted my strongest power to persuade you to do it. Didn't you know this?' Woe.

"I bowed my head.

" 'I would have made this woman a vampire,' he said softly.'But I thought it best you have a hand in it. Otherwise you would not give Claudia up. You must know you wanted it....

"'I loathe what I did!' I said.

"'Then loathe me, not yourself.'

"'No. You don't understand. You nearly destroyed the thing you value in me when this happened! I resisted you with all my power when I didn't even know it was your force which was working on me. Something nearly died in me! Passion nearly died in me! I was all but destroyed when Madeleine was created!'

"'But that thing is no longer dead, that passion, that humanity, whatever you wish to name it. If it were not alive there wouldn't be tears in your eyes now. There wouldn't be rage in your voice,' he said.

"For the moment, I couldn't answer. I only nodded. Then I struggled to speak again.'You must never force me to do something against my will! You must never exert such power... ' I stammered.

"'No,' he said at once.'I must not. My power stops somewhere inside you, at some threshold. There I am powerless, however... this creation of Madeleine is done. You are free.'

"'And you are satisfied,' I said, gaining control of myself.'I don't mean to be harsh. You have me. I love you. But I'm mystified. You're satisfied?'

"'How could I not be?' he asked.'I am satisfied, of course.'