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“But even in these moments, when the ship slept and all the world slept, neither heaven nor hell see fancy To know, to believe, in one or the other… that was perhaps the only salvation for which I could dream

“Claudia, with Lestat’s liking for light, lit the la cards, acquired from a lady on board; the picture cards were in the fashion of Marie Antoinette, and the backs of the cards bore gold fleurs-de-lis on gleaame of solitaire in which the cards made the nuan to answer her, how Lestat had accoer shaken If she remembered her screams in the fire she did not care to dwell on them If she remembered that, before the fire, she had wept real tears in e in her; she was, as always in the past, a person of little indecision, a person for whoret

“ ‘We should have burned him,’ she said ‘We were fools to think from his appearance that he was dead’

“ ‘But how could he have survived?’ I asked her ‘You saw him, you knohat becaladly pushed it to the back of my ave ue was really with herself ‘Suppose, though, he had ceased to fight us,’ she explained, ‘that he was still living, locked in that helpless dried corpse, conscious and calculating…’

“ ‘Conscious in that state!’ I whispered

“ ‘And suppose, when he reached the saters and heard the sounds of our carriage going away, that he had strength enough to propel those limbs to move There were creatures all around hiarden lizard and watch the blood run down into a glass Can you iroping in that water for anything that moved?’

“ ‘The will to live? Tenacity?’ Ielse…’

“ ‘And then, when he’d felt the resuscitation of his strength, just enough perhaps to have sustained hi that road he found soe; perhaps he crept, gathering still what blood he could until he carants or those scattered country houses And what a spectacle helamp, her eyes narrow, her voice muted, without emotion ‘And then what did he do? It’s clear to otten back to New Orleans in time, he could most definitely have reached the Old Bayou cemetery The charity hospital feeds it fresh coffins every day And I can see hih thethe fresh contents out in the swahtfall in that shallow grave where no manner of man would be wont to disturb him Yes… that is what he did, I’m certain’

“I thought of this for a long ti that it htfully, as she laid down her card and looked at the oval face of a white-coiffed king, ‘I could have done it

“ ‘And why do you look that way at ers struggling to make a neat pack of them and then to shuffle them

“ ‘But you do believe… that had we burned his remains he would have died?’ I asked

“ ‘Of course I believe it If there is nothing to rise, there is nothing to rise What are you driving at?’ She was dealing out the cards now, dealing a hand for me on the small oak table I looked at the cards, but I did not touch them

“ ‘I don’t know…’ I whispered to her ‘Only that perhaps there was no will to live, no tenacity… because very simply there was no need of either’

“Her eyes gazed at hts or that she understood mine

“ ‘Because perhaps he was incapable of dying… perhaps he is, and we are… truly immortal?’