But behind his voice I heard the joy drained from him.
  I buried my face against him. When the carriage stopped I leapt out and fled to the 
door of my little house. I looked back. He stood in the street.
  He was sad and weary, and slowly he nodded and made a gesture of acceptance. "May I 
wait it out?" he asked. "Is there hope you'll change your mind? I'll wait here forever!"
  "It's not my mind!" I said. "I leave this city tonight. Forget me. Forget you ever saw 
me!"
  "My love," he said softly. "My only love."
  I ran inside, shutting the door. I heard the carriage pull away. I went wild, as I had 
not since mortal life, beating the was with my fists, trying to restrain my immense 
strength and trying not to let loose the howls and cries that wanted to break from me.
  Finally I looked at the dock. Three hours left until dawn.
  I sat down at the desk and wrote to him:
  
  Marius,
  At dawn we will be taken to Moscow. The very coffin in which I rest is to carry me many 
miles the first day. Marius, I am dazed. I can't seek shelter in your house, beneath the 
same roof as the ancient ones. Please, Marius, come to Moscow. Help me to free myself of 
this predicament. Later you can judge me and condemn me. I need you. Marius, I shall 
haunt the vicinity of the Czar's palace and the Great Cathedral until you come. Marius, I 
know I ask of you that you make a great journey, but please come. I am a slave to this 
blood drinker's will.
  
  I love you,
  Pandora
  
  Running back out in the street, I hurried in the direction of his house, trying to 
retrace the path which I had so stupidly ignored.
  But what about the heartbeat'? I would hear it, that ghastly sound! I had to run past 
it, run through it, long enough to give Marius this letter, perhaps to let him grasp me 
by the wrist and force me to some safe place, and drive away before dawn the Asian 
vampire who kept me.
  Then the very carriage appeared, carrying in it my fellow blood drinker from the ball.
  He stopped for me at once.
  I took the driver aside. "The man who brought me home," I said. "We went to his house, 
a huge palace."
  "Yes, Count Marius," said the driver. "I just took him back to his own home."
  "You must take this letter to him. Hurry! You must go to his house and put it in his 
hands! Tell him I had no money to give you, that he must pay you, I demand that you tell 
him. He will pay you. Tell him the letter is from Pandora. You must find him!"
  "Who are you speaking of''' demanded my Asian companion.
  I motioned to the driver to leave! "Go!" Of course my consort was outraged. But the 
carriage was already on its way.
  Two hundred years passed before I learned the very simple truth: Marius never received 
that letter!
  He had gone back to his house, packed up his belongings and, the following night, left 
Dresden in sorrow, only finding the letter long after, as he related it to the Vampire 
Lestat, "a fragile piece of writing," as he called it, "that had fallen to the bottom of 
a cluttered traveling case."
  When did I see him again'?
  In this modern world. When the ancient Queen rose from her throne and demonstrated the 
limits of her wisdom, her will and her power.
  Two thousand years after, in our Twentieth Century still full of Roman columns and 
statues and pediments and peristyles, buzzing with computers and warmth-giving 
television, with Cicero and Ovid in every public library, our Queen, Akasha, was wakened 
by the image of Lestat on a television screen, in the most modern and secure of shrines, 
and sought to reign as a goddess, not only over us, but over humankind.
  In the most dangerous hour, when she threatened to destroy us all if we did not follow 
her lead - and she had already slaughtered many - it was Marius with his reasoning, his 
optimism, his philosophy who talked to her, tried to calm her and divert her, who stalled 
her destructive intent until an ancient enemy came to fulfill an ancient curse, and 
struck her down with ancient simplicity.
  David, what have you done to me in prodding me to write this narrative?
  You have made me ashamed of the wasted years. You have made me acknowledge that no 
darkness has been ever deep enough to extinguish my personal knowledge of love, love from 
mortals who brought me into the world, love for goddesses of stone, love for Marius,
  Above all, I cannot deny the resurgence of this love for Marius.
  And all around me in this world I see evidence of love, Behind the image of the Blessed 
Virgin and her Infant Jesus, behind the image of the Crucified Christ, behind the 
remembered basalt image of Isis. I see love. I see it in the human struggle. I see its 
undeniable penetration in all that humans have accomplished in their poetry, their 
painting, their music, their love of one another and refusal to accept suffering as their 
lot.
  Above all, however, I see it in the very fashioning of the world which outshines all 
art, and cannot by sheer randomness have accumulated such beauty.
  Love. But whence comes this love? Why is it so secretive about its source, this love 
that makes ram and trees and has scattered the stars over us as the gods and goddesses 
once claimed to do?
  So Lestat, the brat Prince, woke the Queen; and we survived her destruction. So Lestat, 
the brat Prince, had gone to Heaven and Hell and brought back disbelief, horror and the 
Veil of Veronica! Veronica, an invented Christian name which means vera ikon, or true 
icon. He found himself plunged into Palestine during the very years that I lived, and 
there saw something that has shattered the faculties in humans which we cherish so much: 
faith, reason.
  I have to go to Lestat, look into his eyes. I have to see what he saw!
  Let the young sing songs of death. They are stupid.
  The finest thing under the sun and the moon is the human soul. I marvel at the small 
miracles of kindness that pass between humans, I marvel at the growth of conscience, at 
the persistence of reason in the face of all superstition or despair. I marvel at human 
endurance.
  I have one more story to tell you. I don't know why I want to record it here. But I do. 
Perhaps it's because I feel you - a vampire who sees spirits - will understand this, and 
understand perhaps why I remained so unmoved by it.
  Once in the Sixth Century - that is, five hundred years after the birth of Christ and 
three hundred years since I had left Marius - I went wandering in barbarian Italy. The 
Ostrogoths had long ago overrun the peninsula.
  Then other tribes swept down on them, looting, burning, carrying off stones from old 
Temples.
  It was like walking on burning coals for me to go there.
  But Rome did struggle with some conception of itself, its principles, trying to blend