I walked away silently through the vineyards. In a little while the monks would 
discover that their Father Superior, their genius, their saint, had died at his work.
  I looked back in amazement to discover that the figure of straw remained, organized, 
assuming the posture of an upright being, watching me.
  "I will not believe in you!" I shouted back to this man of straw. "I will not search 
with you for any answer! But know this: if you would become an organized being as you see 
in me, love all mankind and womankind and all their children. Do not take your strength 
from blood! Do not feed on suffering. Do not rise like a god above crowds chanting in 
adoration. Do not lie!"
  It listened. It heard. It remained still.
  I ran. I ran and ran up the rocky slopes and through the forests of Calabria until I 
was far far away from it. Under the moon, I saw the sprawling majesty of Vivarium with 
its cloisters and sloped roofs as it surrounded the shores of its shimmering inlet from 
the sea.
  I never saw the straw creature again. I don't know what it was. I don't want you to ask 
me any question about it.
  You tell me spirits and ghosts walk. We know such beings exist. But that was the last I 
saw of that being.
  And when next I drifted through Italy, Vivarium had been long destroyed. The 
earthquakes had shaken loose the last of its walls. Had it been sacked first by the next 
wave of ignorant tall men of Northern Europe, the Vandals? Was it an earthquake that 
brought about its ruin?
  No one knows. What survives of it are the letters that Cassiodorus sent to others.
  Soon the classics were declared profane. Pope Gregory wrote tales of magic and 
miracles, because it was the only way to convert thousands of superstitious uncatechized 
Northern tribes to Christianity in great en masse baptisms.
  He conquered the warriors Rome could never conquer.
  The history of Italy for one hundred years falls into absolute darkness after 
Cassiodorus. How do the books put it? For a century, nothing is heard from Italy.
  Ah, what a silence!
  Now David, as you come to these final pages, I must confess, I have left you. The 
smiles with which I gave you these notebooks were deceptive. Feminine wiles, Marius would 
call them. My promise to meet with you tomorrow night here in Paris was a lie. I will 
have left Paris by the time you come to these lines. I go to New Orleans.
  It's your doing, David. You have transformed me. You have given me a desperate faith 
that in narrative there is a shadow of meaning. I now know a new strident energy. You 
have trained me through your demand upon my language and my memory to live again, to 
believe again that some good exists in this world.
  I want to find Marius. Thoughts of other immortals fill the air. Cries, pleas, strange 
messages...
  One who was believed gone from us is now apparently known to have survived.
  I have strong reason to believe that Marius has gone to New Orleans, and I must be 
reunited with him. I must seek out Lestat, to see this fallen brat Prince lying on the 
chapel floor unable to speak or move.
  Come join me, David. Don't fear Marius! I know he will come to help Lestat. I do the 
same.
  Come back to New Orleans.
  Even if Marius is not there, I want to see Lestat. I want to see the others again. What 
have you done, David? I now contain - with this new curiosity, with this flaming capacity 
to care once more, with reborn capacity to sing - I now contain the awful capacity to 
want and to love.
  For that, if for nothing else, and there is indeed much more, I shall always thank you. 
No matter what suffering is to come, you have quickened me. And nothing you do or say 
will ever cause the death of my love for you.
  
  
  
  
  
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