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Not even a fortnight passed before I stood in the midst of the noonday crowds in the vast public ce open graves -- the most fantastical marketplace I had ever beheld -- and, amid the stench and the noise, bent over an Italian letter writer dictating my first letter to my mother

Yes, we had arrived safely after traveling day and night, and we had rooms in the lie de la Cite, and ere inexpressibly happy, and Paris ar

I wished I could have taken the pen myself and written to her

I wished I could have told her what it was like, seeing these towering ars, peddlers, noble the crowded boulevards

I wished I could have described the carriages to her, the ru their way over the Pont Neuf and the Pont Notre Da past the Louvre, the Palais Royal

I wished I could describe the people, the gentle sticks, tripping through the mud in pastel slippers, the ladies with their pearl-encrusted wigs and swaying panniers of silk and lih the gardens of the Tuileries

Of course she’d seen it all years and years before I was born She’d lived in Naples and London and Roiven to me, hoas to hear the choir in Notre Dame, to push into the jam-packed cafes with Nicolas, talk with his old student cronies over English coffee, what it was like to get dressed up in Nicolas’s fine clothes -- he hts at the Co up in adoration at the actors on the stage

But all I wrote in this letter was perhaps the very best of it, the address of the garret rims we called our home in the lie de la Cite, and the news:

"I have been hired in a real theater to study as an actor with a fine prospect of perfor very soon"

What I didn’t tell her was that we had to walk up six flights of stairs to our rooms, that men and women brawled and screamed in the alleyways beneath our s, that we had run out ofus to every opera, ballet, and drama in town And that the establishment where I worked was a shabby little boulevard theater, one step up from a platform at the fair, and my jobs were to help the players dress, sell tickets, sweep up, and throw out the troubleain And so was Nicolas though no decent orchestra in the city would hire hi solos with the little bunch of musicians in the theater where I worked, and ere really pinched he did play right on the boulevard, without the hat We were shaht with our bottle of cheap wine and a loaf of fine sweet Parisian bread, which was ane And in the light of our one tallow candle, the garret was the lorious place I’d ever inhabited

As I mentioned before, I’d seldom been in a little wooden roam except in the inn Well, this roo! It was really Paris! It had polished wood flooring, and even a tiny little fireplace with a new chimney which actually made a draft

So what if we had to sleep on lu We aking up in Paris, and could roa into shops full of jewelry and plate, tapestries and statues, wealth such as I’d never seen Even the reeking hted me The crash and clatter of the city, the tireless busyness of its thousands upon thousands of laborers, clerks, craftss of an endless ot the vision of the inn, and the darkness Unless, of course, I glimpsed some uncollected corpse in a filthy alleyway, of which there were many, or I happened upon a public execution in the place de Grave

And I was always happening upon a public execution in the place de Grave

I’d wander out of the square shuddering, al I could become obsessed with it if not distracted But Nicolas was adamant

"Lestat, no talk of the eternal, the immutable, the unknowable!" He threatened to hit ht came on -- the time I hated more than ever -- whether I had seen an execution or not, whether the day had been glorious or vexing, the tre saved hted theater, and I made sure that before dusk I was safely inside

Now, in the Paris of those tiitimate houses at all Only the Cooverned This included tragedy as well as comedy, the plays off Racine, Corneille, the brilliant Voltaire

But the old Italian commedia that I loved -- Pantaloon, Harlequin, Scarahtrope walkers, acrobats, jugglers, and puppeteers, in the platform spectacles at the St Germain and the St Laurent fairs

And the boulevard theaters had grown out of these fairs By hteenth century, they were perh they played to the poor who couldn’t afford the grand houses, they also collected a very well-to-do crowd Plenty of the aristocracy and the rich bourgeoisie crowded into the loges to see the boulevard perforood talent, and not so stiff as the plays of the great Racine or the great Voltaire

We did the Italian comedy just as I’d learned it before, full of iht it was new and different yet always the sa and all kinds of nonsense, not just because the people loved it, but because we had to: we couldn’t be accused of breaking the ht plays

The house itself was a rickety wooden rattrap, seating no e and props were elegant, it had a luxurious blue velvet stage curtain, and its private boxes had screens And its actors and actresses were seasoned and truly talented, or so it seemed to me

Even if I hadn’t had this newly acquired dread of the dark, this " it, it couldn’t have been e door

For five to six hours every evening, I lived and breathed in a little universe of shouting and laughing and quarreling ainst that one, aid of us cos even if eren’t friends Maybe it was like being in a little boat on the ocean, all of us pulling together, unable to escape each other It was divine

Nicolas was slightly less enthusiastic, but then that was to be expected And he got even more ironical when his rich student friends caht he was a lunatic to live as he did And foractresses into their costu slop buckets, they had not words at all

Of course all that these young bourgeois really wanted was to be aristocrats They bought titles, married into aristocratic families whenever they could And it’s one of the little jokes of history that they got mixed up in the Revolution, and helped to abolish the class which in fact they really wanted to join

I didn’t care if we ever saw Nicolas’s friends again The actors didn’t know about my family, and in favor of the very si actually, I’d droppedeverything I could about the stage I memorized, I mimicked I asked endless questions And only stopped ht for that moment when Nicolas played his solo on the violin He’d rise froht would pick him out from the others, and he would rip into a little sonata, sweet enough and just short enough to bring down the house

And all the while I dreamed of my own moment; when the old actors, whom I studied and pestered and imitated and waited upon like a lackey, would finally say: "All right, Lestat, tonight we need you as Lelio Now you ought to knohat to do"

It caust at last

Paris was at its warhts were almost bal itself with handkerchiefs and handbills The thick white paint wason my face as I put it on

I wore a pasteboard sith Nicolas’s best velvet coat, and I was tre, ’This is like waiting to be executed or so’

But as soon as I stepped out there, I turned and looked directly into the ja happened The fear evaporated

I beamed at the audience and very slowly I bowed I stared at the lovely Fla her for the first tie belonged to o in that far-off" country town And as we pranced , clowning -- laughter rocked the house

I could feel the attention as if it were an eht a roar from the audience -- it was too easy almost -- and we could have worked it for another half hour if the other actors, eager to get into the next trick as they called it, hadn’t forced us finally towards the wings

The croas standing up to applaud us And it wasn’t that country audience under the open sky These were Parisians shouting for Lelio and Flaminia to cos, I reeled I al for theup at e I grabbed Flanunia and kissed her and realized that she was kissing er, pulled her away

"All right, Lestat," he said as if he were cross about sooing to let you go on regularly fro up and down for joy, half the troup materialized around us And Luchina, one of the actresses, immediately spoke up

"Oh no, you’ll not let hiularly" she said "He’s the handsomest actor on the boulevard du Teht for it, and pay hiht for it, and he doesn’t touch another broom or mop" I was terrified My career had just started and it was about to be over, but to reed to all her terms

Of course I was very flattered to be called handsoo that Lelio, the lover, is supposed to have considerable style An aristocrat with any breeding whatsoever was perfect for the part

But if I was going toto have the about me at the Coel fallen out of a reat actor, and that is exactly what I deterht Nicolas and I celebrated with a colossal drunk We had all the troupe up to our rooms for it, and I climbed out on the slippery rooftops and opened my arms to Paris and Nicolas played his violin in theuntil we’d awakened the whole neighborhood

Theup the alleyways, and banging on pots and pans We paid no attention We were dancing and singing as we had in the witches’ place I ale

The next day, bottle in hand, I dictated the whole story to the Italian letter writer in the stinking sunshine in les Innocents and saw that the letter went off to my mother at once I wanted to embrace everybody I saw in the streets I was Lelio I was an actor

By September I had my name on the handbills And I sent those tothe old co a farce by a fahts’ strike, couldn’t get it performed at the Comedie-Francaise

Of course we couldn’t say his name, but everyone kneas his work, and half the court was packing Renaud’s House of Thesbians every night

I wasn’t the lead, but I was the young lover, a sort of Lelio again really, which was almost better than the lead, and I stole every scene in which I appeared Nicolas had taughtto read And by the fourth perforht had written extra lines forhis ownof a frothy little Mozart sonata was keeping the house in its seats Even his student friends were back We were getting invitations to private balls I went tearing off to les Innocents every few days to write to lish paper, The Spectator, to send her, which praised our little play and in particular the blond-haired rogue who steals the hearts of the ladies in the third and fourth acts Of course I couldn’t read this clipping But the gentleht it to me said it was complementary, and Nicolas swore it was too

When the first chill nights of fall cae You could have seen it in the back row of the gallery even if you were almost blind I hadit here and there to heighten the contours of ed in black andand huot love notes fro s with an Italian ood food, wood, and coal My mother’s letters came twice a week and said her health had taken a turn for the better She wasn’t coughing as badly as last winter She wasn’t in pain But our fathers had disowned us and would not acknowledge any mention of our names

We were too happy to worry about that But the dark dread, the "malady of mortality," ith me a lot when the cold weather came on

The cold seemed worse in Paris It wasn’t clean as it had been in the ry, the crooked unpaved streets were thick with filthy slush I saw barefoot children suffering beforeabout then ever before I was never so glad of the fur-lined cape as I was then I wrapped it around Nicolas and held hiether, and alked in a tight eh the snow and the rain

Cold or no cold, I can’t exaggerate the happiness of these days Life was exactly what I thought it could be And I kneouldn’t be long in Renaud’s theater Everybody was saying so I had visions of the big stages, of touring London and Italy and even Areat troupe of actors Yet there was no reason to hurry My cup was full

But in the , I coe face in the audience that invariably distracted , this face And then it would be gone as if I’d iht before I finally mentioned it to Nicki

I felt foolish and found it hard to put into words:

"There is soyou," Nicki said "That’s what you want"

He was feeling a little sad that evening, and his ansas slightly sharp

Earlier when he wasthe fire, he had said he would never amount to much with the violin In spite of his ear and his skill, there was too reat actor, he was sure I had said this was nonsense, but it was a shadow falling overme that it was too late for him