in which he could see like a cat, the darkened bars in which sailors slept with their 
heads on the table, great high-ceilinged hotel rooms where a lone figure might sit, her 
feet upon an embroidered cushion, her legs covered with a lace counterpane, her head bent 
under the tarnished light of a single candle, never seeing the great shadow move across 
the plaster flowers of the ceiling, never seeing the long white finger reached to press 
the fragile flame.
  "Remarkable, if for nothing else, because of this, that all of those men and women who 
stayed for any reason left behind them some monument, some structure of marble and brick 
and stone that still stands; so that even when the gas lamps went out and the planes came 
in and the office buildings crowded the blocks of Canal Street, something irreducible of 
beauty and romance remained; not in every street perhaps, but in so many that the 
landscape is for me the landscape of those times always, and walking now in the starlit 
streets of the Quarter or the Garden District I am in those times again. I suppose that 
is the nature of the monument. Be it a small house or a mansion of Corinthian columns and 
wrought-iron lace. The monument does not say that this or that man walked here. No, that 
what he felt in one time in one spot continues. The moon that rose over New Orleans then 
still rises. As long as the monuments stand, it still rises. The feeling, at least here . 
. . and there . . . it remains the same."
  The vampire appeared sad. He sighed, as if he doubted what he had just said. "What was 
it?" he asked suddenly as if he were slightly tired. "Yes, money. Lestat and I had to 
make money. And I was telling you that he could steal. But it was investment afterwards 
that mattered. What we accumulated we must use. But I go ahead of myself. I killed 
animals. But I'll get to that in a moment. Lestat killed humans all the time, sometimes 
two or three a night, sometimes more. He would drink from one just enough to satisfy a 
momentary thirst, and then go on to another. The better the human, as he would say in his 
vulgar way, the more he liked it. A fresh young girl, that was his favorite food the 
first of the evening; but the triumphant kill for Lestat was a young man. A young man 
around your age would have appealed to him in particular."
  "Me?" the boy whispered. He had leaned forward on his elbows to peer into the vampire's 
eyes, and now he drew up.
  "Yes," the vampire went on, as if he hadn't observed the boy's change of expression. 
"You see, they represented the greatest loss to Lestat, because they stood on the 
threshold of the maximum possibility of life. Of course, Lestat didn't understand this 
himself. I came to understand it. Lestat understood nothing.
  "I shall give you a perfect example of what Lestat liked. Up the river from us was the 
Freniere plantation, a magnificent spread of land which had great hopes of making a 
fortune in sugar, just shortly after the refining process had been invented. I presume 
you know sugar was refined in Louisiana. There is something perfect and ironic about it, 
this land which I loved producing refined sugar. I mean this more unhappily than I think 
you know. This refined sugar is a poison. It was like the essence of life in New Orleans, 
so sweet that it can be fatal, so richly enticing that all other values are forgotten . . 
. . But as I was saying up river from us lived the Frenieres, a great old French family 
which had produced in this generation five young women and one young man. Now, three of 
the young women were destined not to marry, but two were young enough still and all 
depended upon the young man. He was to manage the plantation as I bad done for my mother 
and sister; he was to negotiate marriages, to put together dowries when the entire 
fortune of the place rode precariously on the next year's sugar crop; he was to bargain, 
fight, and keep at a distance the entire material world for the world of Freniere. Lestat 
decided he wanted him. And when fate alone nearly cheated Lestat, he went wild. He risked 
his own life to get the Freniere boy, who had become involved in a duel. He had insulted 
a young Spanish Creole at a ball. The whole thing was nothing, really; but like most 
young Creoles this one was willing to die for nothing. They were both willing to die for 
nothing. The Freniere household was in an uproar. You must understand, Lestat knew this 
perfectly. Both of us had hunted the Freniere plantation, Lestat for slaves and chicken 
thieves and me for animals."
  "You were killing only animals?"
  "Yes. But I'll come to that later, as I said. We both knew the plantation, and I had 
indulged in one of the greatest pleasures of a vampire, that of watching people 
unbeknownst to them. I knew the Freniere sisters as I knew the magnificent rose trees 
around my brother's oratory. They were a unique group of women. Each in her own way was 
as smart as the brother; and one of them, I shall call her Babette, was not only as smart 
as her brother, but far wiser. Yet none had been educated to care for the plantation; 
none understood even the simplest facts about its financial state. All were totally 
dependent upon young Freniere, and all knew it. And so, larded with their love for him, 
their passionate belief that he hung the moon and that any conjugal love they might ever 
know would only be a pale reflection of their love for him, larded with this was a 
desperation as strong as the will to survive. If Freniere died in the duel, the 
plantation would collapse. Its fragile economy, a life of splendor based on the perennial 
mortgaging of the next year's crop, was in his hands alone. So you can imagine the panic 
and misery in the Freniere household the night that the son went to town to fight the 
appointed duel. And now picture Lestat, gnashing his teeth like a comic-opera devil 
because he was not going to kill the young Freniere."
  "You mean then . . . that you felt for the Freniere women?"
  "I felt for them totally," said the vampire. "Their position was agonizing. And I felt 
for the boy. That night he locked himself in his father's study and made a will. He knew 
full well that if he fell under the rapier at four A.M. the next morning, his family 
would fall with him. He deplored his situation and yet could do nothing to help it. To 
run out on the duel would not only mean social ruin for him, but would probably have been 
impossible. The other young man would have pursued him until he was forced to fight. When 
he left the plantation at midnight, he was staring into the face of death itself with the 
character of a man who, having only one path to follow, has resolved to follow it with 
perfect courage. He would either kill the Spanish boy or die; it was unpredictable, 
despite all his skill. His face reflected a depth of feeling and wisdom I'd never seen on 
the face of any of Lestat's struggling victims. I had my first battle with Lestat then 
and there. I'd prevented him from killing the boy for months, and now he meant to kill 
him before the Spanish boy could.
  "We were on horseback, racing after the young Freniere towards New Orleans, Lestat bent 
on overtaking him, I bent on overtaking Lestat. Well, the duel, as I told you, was 
scheduled for four A.M. On the edge of the swamp just beyond the city's northern gate. 
And arriving there just shortly before four, we had precious little time to return to 
Pointe du Lac, which meant our-own lives were in danger: I was incensed at Lestat as 
never before, and he was determined to get the boy. `Give him his chance!' I was 
insisting, getting hold of Lestat before he could approach the boy. It was midwinter, 
bitter-cold and damp in the swamps, one volley of icy rain after another sweeping the 
clearing where the duel was to be fought. Of course, I did not fear these elements in the 
sense that you might; they did not numb me, nor threaten me with mortal shivering or 
illness. But vampires feel cold as acutely as humans, and the blood of the kill is often 
the rich, sensual alleviation of that cold. But what concerned me that morning was not 
the pain I felt, but the excellent cover of darkness these elements provided, which made 
Freniere extremely vulnerable to Lestat's attack. All he need do would be step away from