Page 80 (1/2)

I sat down at the desk I was going to write so really churlish such as "I've learned that I'm the slave of a tyrant " But when I looked up and saw hied my mind

He kneas the perfect moment to come to me and kiss me And he did this, and I realized I had lifted my face for his kiss before he bent his head This didn't stop him

I felt the overwhel in to him I put my arm up and around his shoulders

He letsweet moment, and then I did write outwhat I've explained above I wrote about the battle in me between the fleshly and the ascetic; I wrote of hest level of exaltation In the painting of the ikon I had found it, but the ikon had satisfied the need for the sensual because the ikon was beautiful And as I wrote, I realized for the first time that the old Russian style, the antique Byzantine style, ele in itself between the sensual and the ascetic, the figures suppressed, flattened, disciplined, in the very ht to the eyes while representing denial

While I wrote, my Master went away I are of it, but it didn't radually I slipped

out of an to tell an old tale

In the old days, when the Russians didn't know Jesus Christ, the great Prince Vladinificent city-sent his eions of the Lord: the Mosleion, which these ion of Papal Rolory; and finally the Christianity of Byzantium In the city of Constantinople, the Russians were led to see the nificent churches in which the Greek Catholics worshiped their God, and they found these buildings so beautiful that they didn't knohether they were in Heaven or still on Earth Never had the Russians seen anything so splendid; they were certain then that God dwelt aion of Constantinople, and so it was this Christianity which Russia eave birth to our Russian Church

In Kiev once ht to recreate, but now that Kiev is a ruin and the Turks have taken Santa Sofia of Constantinople, one in who is the God-Bearer, and her Son when He becomes the Pantokrator, the Divine Creator of All In Venice, I have found in sparkling gold e the very ht of Christ Our Lord to the land where I was born, the Light of Christ Our Lord which burns still in the lamps of the Monastery of the Caves

I put down the pen I pushed the page aside, and I laid my head down on my arms and cried softly to myself in the quiet of the shadowy bedroonored

Finally, Marius came for me to take me to our crypt, and I realize now, centuries later, as I look back, that his forcing ht caused me to remember always the lessons of those times

The next night, after he'd read what I had written, he was contrite about having hit me, and he said that it was difficult for hi but a child, but that I was not a child Rather I was some spirit like unto a child-naive and maniacal in my pursuit of certain themes He had never expected to love me so much

I wanted to be aloof and distant, on account of the whipping, but I couldn't be I marveled that his touch, his kisses, his embraces meant more to me than they had when I was human

Chapter 12

12

I WISH I could slip away now from the happy picture of Marius and me in Venice and take up this tale in New York City, in o to the moment in the room in New York City when Dora held up Veronica's Veil, the relic brought back by Lestat from his journey into the Inferno, for then I would have a tale told in two perfect halves-of the child I had been and of the worshiper I became, and of the creature I am now