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"Virginia Lee was undeniably pretty, as you saw froirlish woman with pale blond hair and intense blue eyes She was said to have had a quick sense of huentle sense of irony, and to be utterly loving to Willia children she bore before she died As to those which she lost to lockjaw and influenza, Isabel and Philip, nothing could ever take her mind off them

"Galloping consuinia Lee, who had also becole during which she dressed herself co the Saturday on which she died, at which tiood cheer and self-deprecating hu on the sofa, until she took her last breath around noon

"She was buried in the sky blue dress that she wears in her portrait And if our house has a fainia Lee

"It was said that Manfred went out of his head when Virginia Lee died He roared and rave for Virginia Lee in the little ceal to bury her there in his own backyard anyway -- he bought a huge crypt for the entire family in the new Metairie Cemetery in New Orleans, which is where our family are buried to this day

"I've seen the mausoleum twice -- when Sweetheart died and when Pops died I presume little Isabel and Philip were uprooted to the crypt from wherever they'd been buried, but frankly I never asked

"It's a sranite, this Metairie Ceuardian angels beside its bronze gates, and a stained-glassin back Three coffin slots lie on either side of the little aisle

"You kno those tombs work, I'm sure Coffins are placed in the slots until all the slots are full, and then when someone new dies, the oldest coffin is opened up, bones duround, and the coffin siven the place of honor above ground

"It's where I always thought I'd be buried when I died, but now it doesn't see adventure I once contemplated to take me to that end But who knows? Maybe my mortal remains could somehow be secreted into that crypt on soe to put an end to my own life

"But let's return to Mad Manfred, as those around the parish began to call ar Devil Swa, and so for days at a time

"There was a general coar Devil Swaed and was daends already existed as to bears that habitually hunted there, and cougars and bobcats, and even worse creatures which howled in the night

"That Manfred was snake-bitreputation, and it was said he fired on a stranger he'd seen out there soht back the wounded poacher and heaved his body on the bank with oaths and vicious warnings to his workht to be a lesson to anyone who dared to come into his swamp or onto his land

"Soon it became known that there was an island out there, and it was to this island that Manfred went, pitching a tent for hi what he needed for food

"You can just picture this guy tearing birds apart with his teeth

"He ain that no one must ever atte open season on trespassers and boasting that he had shot and killed several bears

"Rumor had it that the island was cursed and Manfred was cursed, and that his gold was ill-gotten fro, if not worse vices, and that his name, Manfred, he had taken fronal other Demon Worshipers of his own ilk, and that he had sold his soul to the Devil long before he had ever laid eyes on the huinia Lee, and that she had been his very last chance at salvation