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“And Lestat sat there with his eyes closed, his face transfigured with his pain It see creature I’d never known ‘Please,’ he said, the voice eloquent and gentle as he implored me

“ ‘I can’t talk to you here! I can’t make you understand You’ll coain?’

“ ‘This issuddenly to my temples ‘Where is she! Where is she!’ I looked about me, at their still, passive faces, those inscrutable s at the black wool of his lapels

“And then I saw the think in his hands I knehat it was And in an instant I’d ripped it fro that it was — Claudia’s yellow dress His hand rose to his lips, his face turned away And the soft, subdued sobs broke from him as he sat back while I stared at hiers moved slowly over the tears in it, the stains of blood; ainst my chest

“For a longupon ht, ethereal laughter fillingthat I wanted to put o of the dress, couldn’t stop trying to make it so small that it was hidden within , an uneven row coainst the painted walls A door stood open to the rain, and all the candies spluttered and blew on the wind as if the fla to the wicks and were all right I knew that Claudia was through the doorway The candles o had a candle and was bowing to h the door I was barely aware of hi in o mad And they don’t matter, really She hter was remote, and it see

“Then I saw so I’d seen before, a long, long ti I’d seen years before except myself No Lestat knew But it didn’t matter He wouldn’t kno or understand That he and I had seen this thing, standing at the door of that brick kitchen in the Rue Royale, tet shriveled things that had been alive, hter in one another’s arms, theunder the gentle rain were Madeleine and Claudia, and Madeleine’s lovely red hair listened in the wind that sucked through the open doorway Only that which was living had been burnt away — not the hair, not the long, empty velvet dress, not the small bloodstained chemise with its eyelets of white lace And the blackened, burnt, and drawn thing that was Madeleine — still bore the sta face, and the hand that clutched at the child hole like a mummy’s hand But the child, the ancient one, my Claudia, was ashes

“A cry rose incry that ca up like the wind in that narrow place, the wind that swirled the rains teeainst the bricks, that golden hair lifting, those loose strands rising, flying upwards And a blow struckthat I believed to be Santiago, and I was pounding, against hi white face around with hands froainst which he railed, crying out, his criesdown into those ashes, as I threw him backwards away from them, my own eyes blinded with the rain, without for hi against was Arraveyard into the whirling colors of the bal

lroohter

“And Lestat was calling out, ‘Louis, wait for me; Louis, I must talk to you!’

“I could see Armand’s rich, brown eye close to uely aware that Madeleine and Claudia were dead, his voice saying softly, perhaps soundlessly, ‘I could not prevent it, I could not prevent it…’ And they were dead, sio was near them somewhere there where they were still, that hair lifted on the wind, swept across those bricks, unraveling locks But I was losing consciousness

“I could not gather their bodies up with me, could not take them out Armand had his arm aroundplace, and the s, the fresh sleaes stopped there And I could seedown the Boulevard des Capucines with a s way foraround the crowded tables of the open cafe and ahis arm It seemed I stuain I saw his brown eyes looking atAnd yet I walked, I leam of my own boots on the paves to ry, even the sound of it givingloudly ‘He’s stark-raving mad to speak to me in this manned Did you hear him?’ I demanded And Ar about Madeleine and Claudia, that we could not leave the inside ofelse out of its way, my teeth clenched to keep it in, because it was so loud and so full it would destroy o

“And then I conceived of everything too clearly We alking now, a belligerent, blind sort of walking that men do when they are wildly drunk and filled with hatred for others, while at the sa in such a ht I’d first encountered Lestat, that drunken walking which is a battering against things, which is miraculously sure-footed and finds its path I saw a drunkenmiraculously with a match Fla at a cafeTheon his pipe He was not at all drunk Ar, and ere in the crowded Boulevard des Capucines Or was it the Boulevard do Teed that their bodies reo’s foot touching the blackened burned thing that had been h clenched teeth, and the lass in front of his face ‘Get away fro to Armand ‘Damn you into hell, don’t co away from hi aside for me, the man with his arm out to protect the woman

“Then I was running People sawI wondered how it appeared to the they saw that moved too fast for their eyes I remember that by the ti as if I were starved I thought of killing, and the thought filledon the stone steps beside a church, at one of those small side doors, carved into the stone, which was bolted and locked for the night The rain had abated Or so it seeh a ht, black umbrella Armand stood at a distance under the trees Behind hirasses and round arm

“By thinking of only one thing, the sickness inin my throat, was I able to return to a state of cal clear again, I are of all that had happened, the great distance we’d come from the theater, and that the remains of Madeleine and Claudia were still there Victims of a holocaust in each other’s arms And I felt resolute and very near to my own destruction

“ ‘I could not prevent it,’ Armand said softly to me And I looked up to see his face unutterably sad He looked away from me as if he felt it was futile to try to convincesadness, his near defeat I had the feeling that if I were to vent all er on him he would do little to resist me And I could feel that detach pervasive which was at the root of what he insisted to ain, ‘I could not have prevented it’