Seeing myself [from the words of Marius]

I was pitifully ignorant as to my own nature, and perpetually brooding on my eternal fate.

It seemed sometimes that self-destruction was preferable to the existence I endured.

It was time for me of breaking all ties.

—it was on account of my grief [for Pandora], and it was because I was alone. Who was there to restrain me? Who was there to outdo me? No one at all.

It was a great crisis of the soul.

I was able to sink my enmity down into myself with that little resolve, You can always kill [him] later, and so I went on.

Meantime, my heart was fast catching up with my mind.

...we cannot solace one another; we cannot have friendship. We can only part after bitter words. And then I'll be alone again.

[He] was in pain. [He] tried to hide it. Or perhaps [He] tried to make the pain go away.

What more is there for me to say?

I thought of my own existence, my life crowded with so much reading and wandering and with so many questions, and I felt utter pity [for him] along with my contempt.

But what was the use?

I sat there, feeling a crushing loneliness.

I lived the lie. I lived out of anger. This is what I'm trying to tell you. I have lived lies. I have done it again and again. I live lies because I cannot endure the weakness of anger, and I cannot admit the irrationality of love.

Oh, the lies that I have told myself and the others. I knew it yet I didn't know.

I also suffered considerable preoccupation with [Avicus], whose face I could not forget. What was the disposition of this strange being, I thought. What would it mean for him to be my companion? I feared I would never know.

I could never have [Avicus] for a companion. I could never have anyone.

I was doomed to be alone.

This is unendurable, this loneliness. I need to hear the sound of [her] voice. I need to see [him].

I closed my eyes. I longed for [her]. I prayed that [she] would come to me. I tried to remember with exactitude the shape and the fine color of [her] dark eyes.

Imagine it, if you can.

It was unthinkable to me.

I brooded in hatred. I knew despair.

I could not dare weep as I wanted to for my tears would have been full of blood.

In truth, as the years passed, my soul was crushed.

My need of [Pandora] became so terrible that I could not envision her or think of her anymore.

Never mind that I want to go on existing. We are unnatural. We are witnesses with both too much and too little feeling.

What did it matter to them what I did?

Never mind that. [Pandora] had little or nothing to do with those feelings. [Pandora] was inescapable and came from some different fount of sensation. [Pandora] would never leave me. That was the curse.

I had before me several hours before dawn in which to suffer, in which to think of [Pandora] as never before.

It seemed I lacked the courage to go in the existence which I made for myself, And then I turned and decided—simply out of desperation—

...and I felt that if I can cling to that, if I can do that, then I can go on.

My misery deepened.

I tried to cloak my pure loneliness, my pure need to touch his hand.

Oh, how cold was my heart.

I began to laugh at the absurdity of it.

For I imagined that I could escape into it with my mind.

But for a long self-indulgent moment I looked at what I had [painted]—

You understood my soul, I thought, and now others are coming only to sack my heart of all its riches... I cannot endure without you. Please come to me, from wherever you are.

But there was no time for my solitude. It suddenly seemed rather precious, no matter how much of it I had had in the past year.

In that fatal instant my mind was decided. Anger did move me and perhaps in the wrong way.

Oh, it's so simple. I should have remembered. But memory is desperate to leave us. Memory knows that we cannot endure its company.

But melancholy was also coming down upon me, harder than ever in the past.

...I often sat dejected in the corner... My mind was empty. Consolation was unimaginable.

How many years passed in this way, I can't calculate.

Was I comforted by this? I don't know. I can't allow myself to wake. I could not open my eyes. I wanted only to lie where I was and be alone.

My agony of mind grew too great.

I wanted to ask him, What had I done? I suppose I realized in that moment that I loved him. I would do anything if he would only change his mind.

There was truly no other path for me.

My heart will stand for nothing less.

What more was there to say.

It seemed the moment for me to turn and go, but I could not... feeling perhaps the worst pain I had ever known.

I was playing the mortal game of conversation and laughter, when my heart was broken, and I played it for many nights to come.

And when it was finished, who else would have lain down in the coldness to weep again out of some habitual loneliness? Who else could have lain for some two weeks in quietude and exhaustion, refusing to move?

I couldn't guard my heart very well.

I was a drifter through eternity, a spy among hearts.

Sometimes on the winds I drifter. Always through the lives of others I drifted.

I saw it all happening, and yet I saw nothing.

Why had I remained alive, I wondered? Why must I endure as the witness to all these tragic and wonderful things? What was I to make of what I beheld?

What I found there was to sting my heart, but also to astonish me.

What a fateful night this was for me.

My loneliness seemed as great as my age and it frightened me.

...they haunted me, I knew that my torment, my obsession, my complete abandonment to the love of [Boticelli] had only just begun.

...it was more than I could endure.

How long would I let this torture me? How long must I go through this wanton enthusiasm, this mad celebration before I retreated to my loneliness and coldness [in the vault]?I knew how to punish myself, didn't I?

There were reasons to be gone.

But these things didn't really matter.

How exquisite here to die of happiness after being so long miserable and alone.

There is no despair in me anymore. There is only joy. Continuous restless joy.

Is that possible?

I would have... But this was wrong, all of it.

This was not something that would be done. No, this must never be done. I could not do it. I would not do it.

I would hear it inside me. And my mind seemed curiously empty, and my body light and predatory and full of evil, an evil which I freely admitted and totally understood.

No, this is something you will never do, I thought.

I had to go now. I had to leave him now forever.

...I would be driven to the extremes of pain. I was in love with the man. I could not deny it.

Yet all the while I was longing to do it.

For a moment, I thought my powerful self-control would be lost. I would embrace [her], whether or not she would have it, and take [her] rapidly by force from the very middle of [her] warm safe rooms to the cold and fatal domain of my soul.

What was I to do with this pain? How should I be rid of it? How long would it torment me?

It was agony and also an immeasurable consolation to be near [her].

I want [her]. I want [her]. I want [her]. But I could not bring myself to do it.

... Nothing of his old memory could move from the recesses of his mind into the sanctum of reason.

I went to my grave.

I lay down in darkness dreaming of him.

I was weak from the heat of my own miserable thoughts. The fact was, my conviction had left me.

It was for me a great and terrible contradiction.

The memories inside him torment him like cancer, yet he could not see them and know them for what they were.

Beset by memories, yet not understanding them, he was moving slowly towards death.

What was this madness? Was he for the world or for me?

I confided again that I wanted him, I wanted to share my loneliness .

Oh, the pain of it!

If I did ask, there came no answer.

It was enough. It was more than enough.

Had I ever loved anyone more than I loved him? Had I ever revealed more of my soul than I had revealed to him? If my tears spilled now, he would see them. If I trembled now, he could know.

There is a bitter cold in me, a cold which comes from a distant land, And nothing really makes it warm.

I must see it to forget it. I must know for certain that it was... what it was.

No matter how long we exist, we have out memories—points in time which time itself cannot erase. Suffering may distort my backward glances, but even to suffering, some memories will yield nothing of their beauty ot their splendor. Rather they remain as hard as gems.

But my thoughts were my own in the darkness.

...So great had been my loneliness, so great had been my longing to be understood.

It was too painful for me to be here any longer.

I thought upon it in so far one can think when one is feeling such pain. My mind was not my mind. Of that, I was certain.

I thought for a moment I cannot go on.

Again, it did not seem possible that this had happened to me. My soul was burnt. My spirit was burnt. My will was scarred and my happiness ruined.

This night will carry me through centuries.

It will carry you away from me.

And once again, I knew it to be finished.

But I was most plainly alone now, alone as I had ever been before...

But what did it matter?

The aweful damage was done.

What more can I say to reveal the anguish of these [two] losses—?

With these [two] losses my story comes to a close.

Or rather should I say we have come full circle.

For I think I see more clearly what it is that would heal my miserable soul than anything.

I saw nothing in him but the same heartbreaking sadness that I had known [in Venice]. I preferred loneliness to courting him.

Blood and Gold: The Vampire Chronicles
 The Vampire Marius
Anne Rice