as rich and ironical, more filled with meaning than she could have guessed.
  " `Yes,' I said softly to him, `that is the crowning evil, that we can even go so far 
as to love each other, you and I. And who else would show us a particle of love, a 
particle of compassion or mercy? Who else, knowing us as we know each other, could do 
anything but destroy us? Yet we can love each other.'
  "And for a long moment, he stood there looking at me, drawing nearer, his head 
gradually inclining to one side, his lips parted as if he meant to speak. But then he 
only smiled and shook his head gently to confess he didn't understand.
  "But I wasn't thinking of him anymore. I had one of those rare moments when it seemed I 
thought of nothing. My mind had no shape. I saw that the rain had stopped. I saw that the 
air was clear and cold. That the street was luminous. And I wanted to enter the Louvre. I 
formed words to tell Armand this, to ask him if he might help me do what was necessary to 
have the Louvre till dawn.
  "He thought it a very simple request. He said only he wondered why I had waited so 
long."
  "We left Paris very soon after that. I told Armand that I wanted to return to the 
Mediterranean-not to Greece, as I had so long dreamed. I wanted to go to Egypt. I wanted 
to see the desert there and, more importantly, I wanted to see the pyramids and the 
graves of the kings. I wanted to make contact with those grave-thieves who know snore of 
the graves than do scholars, and I wanted to go down into the graves yet unopened and see 
the kings as they were buried, see those furnishings and works of art stored with them, 
and the paintings on their walls. Armand was more than willing. And we took leave of 
Paris early one evening by carriage without the slightest hint of ceremony.
  "I had done one thing which I should note. I had gone back to my rooms in the hotel 
Saint-Gabriel. It was my purpose to take up some things of Claudia and Madeleine and put 
them into coffins and have graves prepared for them in the cemetery of Montmartre. I did 
not do this. I stayed a short while in the rooms, where all was neat and put right by the 
staff, so that it seemed Madeleine and Claudia might return at any time. Madeleine's 
embroidery ring lay with her bundles of thread on a chair-side table. I looked at that 
and at everything else, and my task seemed meaningless. So I left.
  "But something had occurred to me there; or, rather, something I had already been aware 
of merely became clearer. I had gone to the Louvre that night to lay down my soul, to 
find some transcendent pleasure that would obliterate pain and make me utterly forget 
ever! myself. I'd been upheld in this. As I stood on the sidewalk before the doors of the 
hotel waiting for the carriage that would take me to meet Armand, I saw the people who 
walked there-the restless boulevard crowd of well-dressed ladies and gentlemen, the 
hawkers of papers, the carriers of luggage, the drivers of carriages-all these in a new 
light. Before, all art had held for me the promise of a deeper understanding of the human 
heart. Now the human heart meant nothing. I did not denigrate it. I simply forgot it. The 
magnificent paintings of the Louvre were not for me intimately connected with the hands 
that had painted them. They were cut loose and dead like children turned to stone. Like 
Claudia, severed from her mother, preserved for decades in pearl and hammered gold. Like 
Madeleine's dolls. And of course, like Claudia and Madeleine and myself, they could all 
be reduced to ashes."
  
  PART IV
  
  "And that is the end of the story, really.
  "Of course, I know you wonder what happened to us afterwards. What became of Armand? 
Where did I go? What did I do? But I tell you nothing really happened. Nothing that 
wasn't merely inevitable. And my journey through the Louvre that last night I've 
described to you, that was merely prophetic.
  "I never changed after that. I sought for nothing in the one great source of change 
which is humanity. And even in my love and absorption with the beauty of the world, I 
sought to learn nothing that could be given back to humanity. I drank of the beauty of 
the world as a vampire drinks. I was satisfied. I was filled to the brim. But I was dead. 
And I was changeless. The story ended in Paris, as I've said.
  "For a long time I thought that Claudia's death had been the cause of the end of 
things. That if I had seen Madeleine and Claudia leave Paris safely, things might have 
been different with me and Armand. I might have loved again and desired again, and sought 
some semblance of mortal life which would have been rich and varied, though unnatural. 
But now I have come to see that was false. Even if Claudia had not died, even if I had 
not despised Armand for letting her die, it would have all turned out the same. Coming 
slowly to know his evil, or being catapulted into it . . . was all the same. I wanted 
none of it finally. And, deserving nothing better, I closed up like a spider in the flame 
of a match. And even Armand who was my constant companion, and my only companion, existed 
at a great distance from me, beyond that veil which separated me from all living things, 
a veil which was a form of shroud.
  "But I know you are eager to hear what became of Armand. And the night is almost ended. 
I want to tell you this because it is very important. The story is incomplete without it.
  "We traveled the world after we left Paris, as I've told you; first Egypt, then Greece, 
then Italy, Asia Minor-wherever I chose to lead us, really, and wherever my pursuit of 
art led me. Time ceased to exist on any meaningful basis during these years, and I was 
often absorbed in very simple things-a painting in a museum, a cathedral window, one 
single beautiful statue-for long periods of time.
  "But all during these years I had a vague but persistent desire to return to New 
Orleans. I never forgot New Orleans. And when we were in tropical places and places of 
those flowers and trees that grow in Louisiana, I would think of it acutely and I would 
feel for my home the only glimmer of desire I felt for anything outside my endless 
pursuit of art. And, from time to time, Armand would ask me to take him there. And I, 
being aware in a gentlemanly manner that I did little to please him and often went for 
long periods without really speaking to him or seeking him out, wanted to do this because 
he asked me. It seemed his asking caused me to forget some vague fear that I might feel 
pain in New Orleans, that I might experience again the pale shadow of my former 
unhappiness and longing. But I put it off. Perhaps the fear was stronger than I knew. We 
came to America and lived in New York for a long time. I continued to put it off. Then, 
finally, Armand urged me in another way. He told me something he'd concealed from me 
since the time we were in Paris.
  "Lestat had not died in the Theatre des Vampires. I had believed him to be dead, and 
when I asked Armand about those vampires, he told me they all had perished. But he told 
me now that this wasn't so. Lestat had left the theater the night I had run away from 
Armand and sought out the cemetery in Montmartre. Two vampires who had been made with 
Lestat by the same master had assisted him in booking passage to New Orleans.
  "I cannot convey to you the feeling that came over me when I heard this. Of course, 
Armand told me he had protected me from this knowledge, hoping that I would not undertake 
a long journey merely for revenge, a journey that would have caused me pain and grief at 
the time. But I didn't really care. I hadn't thought of Lestat at all the night I'd 
torched the theater. I'd thought of Santiago and Celeste and the others who had destroyed 
Claudia. Lestat, in fact, had aroused in me feelings which I hadn't wished to confide in 
anyone, feelings I'd wished to forget, despite Claudia's death. Hatred had not been one