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"Give h time and they'll turn on anyone He claimed to have been a prophet, divinely inspired by God, and that these were the Last Days, and this is the oldest most tiresome Christian complaint in the world, believe you ion based on the notion that we are living in the Last Days! It's a religion fueled by the ability of et dressed once more for the Last Days "

I s presentiment, that ere always in the Last Days, and it was inscribed in our hearts, because ere mortals, when quite suddenly and totally I realized that I was no longer mortal, except insofar as the world itself was mortal

And it seemed I understood looain the muddy catacombs, and the half-buried monks who

had cheered me on to become one of them

I shook it off, and no bright Florence seehted Piazza del Duoreat Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore

"Ah,to lad that Savonarola is nois not to approve the endless parade of cruelty that is human history I wish it were otherwise Public sacrifice becorotesque in every respect It dulls the senses of the populace In this city, above all others, it's a spectacle The Florentines enjoy it, as we do our Regattas and Processions So Savonarola is dead Well, if anyas he did the end of the world, dareat painters to immolate their works The hell with him "

"Master, look, the Baptistery, let's go, let's look at the doors The piazza's almost eged on his sleeve

He followed , but he was not himself

What I wanted so to see is work that you can see in Florence now, and in fact, almost every treasure of this city and of Venice which I've described here you can see now You have only to go there The panels in the door which were done by Lorenzo Ghiberti were ht, but there was also older work done by Andrea Pisano, portraying the life of St John the Baptist, and this, I didn't intend to overlook

So keen was the vampiric vision that as I studied these various detailed bronze pictures, I could hardly keep fro with pleasure

This mo ever could hurt ain, that I had discovered the bal is, that as I dictate this story now, I think the sa once more

Though unhappy now, and possibly forever, I believe again in the paramount importance of the flesh My mind wanders to the words of D H Lawrence, the twentieth-century writer, who in his writings on Italy, recalled Blake's iht / In the forests of the night " Lawrence's words are:

This is the supreured into abush indeed

This is one way of transfiguration into the eternal flah ecstasy in the flesh

But I have done a risky thing here for a storyteller I have left my plot, as I'm sure The Vampire Lestat (who is e of Williaht, and who has, whether he cares to ader in his work in the very same ould point out to me, and I must speedily return to this o standing, side by side with Marius, looking at the burnished genius of Ghiberti, as he sings in bronze of Sybils and saints