And that my English-speaking victims find my blandishments so pretty, accented as they 
are, and yield to my soft lustrous Italian pronunciations, is a constant source of bliss 
for me. But I am not happy. Don't think so. I wouldn't write a book to tell you that a 
vampire was happy.
  I have a brain as well as a heart, and there hovers about me an etheric visage of 
myself, created most definitely by some Higher Power, and entangled completely within the 
intangible weave of that etheric visage is what men call a soul. I have such. No amount 
of blood can drown away its life and leave me but a thriving revenant.
  Okay. No problem. Yes, yes. Thank you! - as everybody in the entire world can say in 
English. We're ready to begin.
  Except I want to give you a quote from an obscure but wonderful writer, Sheridan Le 
Fanu, a paragraph spoken in extreme angst by a haunted character in one of his many 
exquisitely written ghost stories. This author, a native of Dublin, died in 1873, but 
mark how fresh is this language, and how horrifying the expression of the character 
Captain Barton in the story called "The Familiar":
  Whatever may be my uncertainty as to the authenticity of what we are taught to call 
revelation, of one fact I am deeply and horribly convinced, that there does exist beyond 
this a spiritual world - a system whose workings are generally in mercy hidden from us - 
a system which may be, and which is sometimes, partially and terribly revealed. I am sure 
- I know... that there is a God - a dreadful God - and that retribution follows guilt, in 
ways the most mysterious and stupendous - by agencies the most inexplicable and terrific 
- there is a spiritual system - great God, how I have been convinced! - a system 
malignant, and implacable, and omnipotent, under whose persecutions I am, and have been, 
suffering the torments of the damned!
  What do you think of that?
  I am myself rather mortally struck by it. I don't think I am prepared to speak of our 
God as "dreadful" or our system as "malignant," but there seems an eerie inescapable ring 
of truth to these words, written in fiction but obviously with much emotion.
  It matters to me because I suffer under a terrible curse, quite unique to me, I think, 
as a vampire. That is, the others don't share it. But I think we all - human, vampire, 
all of us who are sentient and can weep - we all suffer under a curse, the curse that we 
know more than we can endure, and there is nothing, absolutely nothing, we can do about 
the force and the lure of this knowledge.
  At the end, we can take this up again. See what you make of my story.
  It's early evening here. The brave remnant of my father's highest tower still rises 
boldly enough against the sweetly star-filled heavens for me to see from the window the 
moonlighted hills and valleys of Tuscany, aye, even as far as the twinkling sea below the 
mines of Carrara. I smell the flowering green of the steep undiscovered country round 
where the irises of Tuscany still break out in violent red or white in sunny beds, to be 
found by me in the silky night.
  And so embraced and protected, I write, ready for the moment when the full yet ever 
obscure moon leaves me for the hideaway of clouds, to light the candles that stand ready, 
some six, ensconced within the thick ruggedly worked silver of the candelabra which once 
stood on my father's desk, in those days when he was the old-style feudal lord of this 
mountain and all its villages, and the firm ally in peace and war of the great city of 
Florence and its unofficial ruler, when we were rich, fearless, curious and wondrously 
contented. Let me speak now of what has vanished.
  
  
  2
  MY SMALL MORTAL LIFE, THE BEAUTY OF FLORENCE, THE GLORY OF OURSMALL COURT - WHAT IS 
VANISHED
  
   I WAS sixteen years old when I died. I have good height, thick brown hair down to the 
shoulders, hazel eyes that I are far too vulnerable to behold, giving me the appearance 
of an androgyne in a way, and a desirable narrow nose with unremarkable nostrils, and a 
medium-sized mouth which is neither voluptuous nor stingy. A beautiful boy for the time. 
I wouldn't be alive now if I hadn't been.
  That's the case with most vampires, no matter who says otherwise. Beauty carries us to 
our doom. Or, to put it more accurately, we are made immortal by those who cannot sever 
themselves from our charms.
  I don't have a childish face, but I have an almost angelic one. My eyebrows are strong, 
dark, high enough over my eyes to allow them entirely too much luster. My forehead would 
be a little too high if it wasn't so straight, and if I didn't have so much thick brown 
hair, making as it does a curly, wavy frame for the whole picture. My chin is slightly 
too strong, too squared off for the rest. I have a dimple in it.
  My body is overmuscular, strong, broad-chested, my arms powerful, giving an impression 
of manly power. This rather rescues my obdurate-looking jaw and allows to me to pass for 
a full-fledged man, at least from a distance.
  This well-developed physique I owe to tremendous practice with a heavy battle sword in 
the last years of my life, and ferocious hunting with my falcons in the mountains, up and 
down which I ran often on foot, though I had already four horses of my own by that age, 
including one of that special majestic breed made to support my weight when I wore my 
full suit of armor.
  My armor is still buried beneath this tower. I never used it in battle. Italy was 
seething with war in my time, but all of the battles of the Florentines were being fought 
by mercenaries.
  All my father had to do was declare his absolute loyalty to Cosimo, and let no one 
representing the Holy Roman Empire, the Duke of Milan or the Pope in Rome move troops 
through our mountain passes or stop in our villages.
  We were out of the way. It was no problem. Enterprising ancestors had built our castle 
three hundred years before. We went back to the time of the Lombards, or those barbarians 
who had come down from the North into Italy, and I think we had their blood in us. But 
who knows? Since the Fall of ancient Rome, so many tribes had invaded Italy.
  We had interesting pagan relics lying about; alien tombstones most ancient were 
sometimes found in the fields, and funny little stone goddesses which the peasants still 
cherished if we didn't confiscate them. Beneath our towers were vaults that some said 
went back to the days even before the Birth of Christ, and I know now that is true. These 
places belonged to the people known to history as the Etruscans.
  Our household, being of the old feudal style, scorning trade and requiring of its men 
that they be bold and brave, was full of treasure acquired through wars without count or 
record - that is, old silver and gold candelabra and sconces, heavy chests of wood with 
Byzantine designs encrusted on them, the usual Flemish tapestries, and tons of lace, and 
bed hangings hand-trimmed with gilt and gems, and all of the most desirable finery.
  My father, admiring the Medici as he did, bought up all kinds of luxury items on his 
trips to Florence. There was little bare stone in any important room, because flowered 
wool carpets covered all, and every hallway or alcove had its own towering armoire filled 
with rattling, rusting battle dress of heroes whose names nobody even remembered.
  We were incalculably rich: this I had more or less overheard as a child, and there was 
some hint that it had to do as much with valor in war as with secret pagan treasure.