by Anne Rice
No one knows. What survives of it are the letters that Cassiodorus sent to others.
Soon the classics were declared profane. Pope Gregory wrote tales of magic and miracles, because it was the only way to convert thousands of superstitious uncatechized Northern tribes to Christianity in great en masse baptisms.
He conquered the warriors Rome could never conquer.
The history of Italy for one hundred years falls into absolute darkness after Cassiodorus. How do the books put it? For a century, nothing is heard from Italy.
Ah, what a silence!
Now David, as you come to these final pages, I must confess, I have left you. The smiles with which I gave you these notebooks were deceptive. Feminine wiles, Marius would call them. My promise to meet with you tomorrow night here in Paris was a lie. I will have left Paris by the time you come to these lines. I go to New Orleans.
It's your doing, David. You have transformed me. You have given me a desperate faith that in narrative there is a shadow of meaning. I now know a new strident energy. You have trained me through your demand upon my language and my memory to live again, to believe again that some good exists in this world.
I want to find Marius. Thoughts of other immortals fill the air. Cries, pleas, strange messages...
One who was believed gone from us is now apparently known to have survived.
I have strong reason to believe that Marius has gone to New Orleans, and I must be reunited with him. I must seek out Lestat, to see this fallen brat Prince lying on the chapel floor unable to speak or move.
Come join me, David. Don't fear Marius! I know he will come to help Lestat. I do the same.
Come back to New Orleans.
Even if Marius is not there, I want to see Lestat. I want to see the others again. What have you done, David? I now contain - with this new curiosity, with this flaming capacity to care once more, with reborn capacity to sing - I now contain the awful capacity to want and to love.
For that, if for nothing else, and there is indeed much more, I shall always thank you. No matter what suffering is to come, you have quickened me. And nothing you do or say will ever cause the death of my love for you.
THE END
Final: July 5, 1997
