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beautiful street even for New Orleans; it has an extraordinarily wide
median where once streetcars used to run. Now there are generous
shade trees planted on it, just as there were all around the convent
that faced it.
It was the leafy depth of Victorian uptown.
I drew close to the building slowly, eager to imprint its details on
my mind. How I'd changed since last I'd spied on Dora.
Second Empire was the style of the convent, due to a mansard
roof which covered the central portion of the building and its long
wings. Old sjates had, here and there, fallen away from the sloping
mansard, which was concave on the central part and quite unusual on
account of that fact. The brickwork itself, die rounded arched
windows, the four corner towers of the building, the two-storey
plantation-house porch on the front of the central building with its white
columns and black iron railings all of this was vaguely New Orleans
Italianate, and gracefully proportioned. Old copper gutters clung to
the base of the roofs. There were no shutters, but surely there had
once been.
The windows were numerous, high, rounded at the tops on the
second and third stories, trimmed in faded white.
A great sparse garden covered the front of the building as it
looked out over the avenue, and of course I knew of the immense
courtyard inside. The entire city block was dominated by this little
universe in which nuns and orphans, young girls of all ages, had once
dwelt. Great oaks sprawled over the sidewalks. A row of truly ancient
crape myrtles lined the side street to the south.
Walking round the building, I surveyed the high stained-glass
windows of the two-storey chapel, noted the flickering of a light
inside, as though the Blessed Sacrament were present a fact that I
doubted and then coming to the rear I went over the wall.
The building did have some locked doors, but not very many. It
was wrapped in silence, and in the mild but nevertheless real winter
of New Orleans, it was chillier within than without.
I entered the lower corridor cautiously, and at once found myself
loving the proportions of the place, the loftiness and the breadth of
the corridors, the intense smell of the recently bared brick walls, and
the good wood scent of the bare yellow pine floors. It was rough, all
this, the kind of rough which is fashionable among artists in big cities
who live in old warehouses, or call their immense apartments lofts.
But this was no warehouse. This had been a habitation and
something of a hallowed one. I could feel it at once. I walked slowly down
the long corridor towards the northeast stairs. Above to my right
lived Dora in the northeast tower, so to speak, of the building, and
her living quarters did not begin until the third floor.
I sensed no one in the building. No scent nor sound of Dora. I
heard the rats, the insects, something a little larger than a rat,
possibly a raccoon feeding away somewhere up in an attic, and then I felt
for die elementals, as David called them those things which I prefer
to call spirits, or poltergeists.
I stood still, eyes closed. I listened. It seemed the silence gave back
dim emanations of personalities, but they were far too weak and too
mingled to touch my heart or spark a thought in me. Yes, ghosts
here, and here ... but I sensed no spiritual turbulence, no unresolved
tragedy or hanging injustice. On the contrary, there seemed a spiritual
stillness and firmness.
The building was whole and itself.
I think the building liked having been stripped to its nineteenth-
century essentials; even the naked beamed ceilings, though never
built for exposure, were nevertheless beautiful without plaster, their
wood dark and heavy and level because all the carpentry of those
years had been done with such care.
The stairway was original. I had walked up a thousand such built
in New Orleans. This building had at least five. I knew the gentle
curve to each tread, worn down by the feet of children, the silky feel
of the banister which had been waxed countless times for a century. I
knew die landing which cut directly against an exterior window,
ignoring the shape or existence of the window, and simply bisecting the
light which came from the street outside.
When I reached the second floor, I realized I was at the doorway
of the chapel. It had not seemed such a large space from outside.
It was in fact as large as many a church I'd seen in my years. Some
twenty or so pews were in neat rows on either side of its main aisle.
The plastered ceiling was coved and crowned with fancy molding.
Old medallions still held firmly in the plaster from which, no doubt,
gasoliers had once hung. The stained-glass windows, thoiigh without
human figures, were nevertheless very well executed, as the
streetlamp showed to good advantage. And the names of the patrons were
beautifully lettered on the lower panes of each window. There was no
sanctuary light, only a bank of candles before a plaster Regina Maria,
that is, a Virgin wearing an ornate crown.
The place must have been much as the Sisters had left it when the
building was sold. Even the holy water fount was there, though it had
no giant angel to hold it. It was only a simple marble basin on a stand.
I passed beneath a choir loft as I entered, somewhat amazed at the
purity and symmetry of the entire design. What was it like, living in a
building with your own chapel? Two hundred years ago I had knelt
more than once in my father's chapel. But that had been no more
than a tiny stone room in our castle, and this vast place, with its old
oscillating electric fans for breeze in summer, seemed no less
authentic than my father's little chapel had been.
This was more the chapel of royalty, and the entire convent
seemed suddenly a palazzo rather than an institutional building. I
imagined myself living here, not as Dora would have approved, but in
splendour, with miles of polished floors before me as I made my way
each night into this great sanctuary to say my prayers.
I liked this place. It flamed into my mind. Buy a convent, make it
your palace, live within its safety and grandeur in some forgotten
spot of a modern city! I felt covetous, or rather, my respect for Dora
deepened.
Countless Europeans still lived in such buildings, multi-storeyed,
wings facing each other over expensive private courts. Paris had its
share of such mansions, surely. But in America, it presented a lovely
picture, the idea of living here in such luxury.
But that had not been Dora's dream. Dora wanted to train her
women here, her female preachers who would declare the Word of
God with the fire of St. Francis or Bonaventure.
Well, if her faith were suddenly swept away by Roger's death, she
could live here in splendour.
And what power had I to affect Dora's dream? Whose wishes
would be fulfilled if I somehow positioned her so that she accepted
her enormous wealth and made herself a princess in this palace? One
happy human being saved from the misery which religion can so
effortlessly generate?
It wasn't an altogether worthless idea. Just typical of me. To think
in terms of Heaven on Earth, freshly painted in pastel hues, floored
in fine stone, and centrally heated.
Awful, Lestat.
Who was I to think such things? Why, we could live here like
Beauty and the Beast, Dora and I. I laughed out loud. A shiver ran
down my back, but I didn't hear the footsteps.
I was suddenly quite alone. I listened. I bristled.
"Don't you dare come near me now," I whispered to the Stalker
who was not there, for all I knew. "I'm in a chapel. I am safe! Safe as
if I were in the cathedral."
I wondered if the Stalker was laughing at me. Lestat, you imagined
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