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I was stunned.

"Stirling!" I whispered. "For the love of Christ, don't argue. "

Again Lestat looked at me, but not with anger. He returned to Stirling.

Stirling hadn't finished. He went on firmly: "You still feed off the riffraff," he said. "The authorities don't care, but we recognize the patterns. We know it's you. "

I was mortified. How could Stirling talk like this?

Lestat broke into an irrepressible laugh.

"And even so, you came by night?" he demanded. "You dared to come, knowing I might find you here?"

"I think. . . " Stirling hesitated, then went on. "I think I wanted to challenge you. I think, as I said, that I committed a sin of pride. "

Thank God for this confession, I thought. "Committed a sin" -- really good words. I was quaking, watching the two of them, appalled by Stirling's fearless tone.

"We respect you," said Stirling, "more than you deserve. "

I gasped.

"Oh, do explain that to me!" said Lestat, smiling. "In what form comes this respect, I should like to know. If I'm truly in your debt, I should like to say thanks. "

"St. Elizabeth's," said Stirling, his voice rolling gracefully now, "the building where you lay for so many years, sleeping on the chapel floor. We've never sought to enter it or discover what goes on there. And as you said we're very good at bribing guards. Your Chronicles made your sleep famous. And we knew that we could penetrate the building. We could glimpse you in the daylight hours, unprotected, lying on the marble. What a lure that was -- the sleeping vampire who no longer bothered with the trappings of a coffin. A dark deadly inverse of the sleeping King Arthur, waiting for England to need him again. But we never crept into your enormous lodgings. As I said, I think we respected you more than you deserve. "

I shut my eyes for an instant, certain of disaster.

But Lestat only broke into another fit of chuckling and laughing.

"Sheer nonsense," he said. "You and your members were afraid. You never came near St. Elizabeth's night or day because you were plainly afraid of the ancient ones among us who could have put out your light like a match. You were afraid too of the rogue vampires who came prowling, the ones who wouldn't respect the name Talamasca enough to give you a wide berth. As for the daylight hours, you had no clue what you'd find -- what high-paid thugs might have terminated you and buried you under the concrete basement floor. It was a purely practical matter. "

Stirling narrowed his eyes. "Yes, we did have to be careful," he conceded. "Nevertheless, there were times --. "

"Foolishness," said Lestat. "In point of pure fact, my infamous sleep ended before your declaration of war on us was made. And what if I did show myself sitting 'very boldly' in the Caf¨¦ du Monde! How dare you use the word 'boldly'? You imply I don't have the right!"

"You feed on your fellow human beings," said Stirling calmly. "Have you seriously forgotten that?"

I was frantic. Only the smile on Lestat's face reassured me that Stirling wasn't headed for certain death.

"No, I never forget what I do," said Lestat equably. "But surely you don't mean to take on the whole question of what I do now for my own survival! And you must remember, I'm not a human being -- far from it, and farther from it with every passing adventure and every passing year. I've been to Heaven and to Hell; let me ask you to remember that. "

Lestat paused as though he himself were remembering this, and Stirling tried to answer but plainly could not. Lestat pressed on in a measured voice:

"I've been in a human body and recovered this body you see before you. I've been the consort of a creature whom others called a goddess. And yes, I feed off my fellow human beings because it's my nature, and you know it, and you know what care I take with every mortal morsel, that it be tainted and vicious and unfit for human life. The point I was trying to make is that your declaration against us was ill conceived. "

"I agree with you; it was a foolish Declaration of Enmity. It should never have been put forth. "

"Declaration of Enmity, is that what you called it?" Lestat asked.

"I think those are the official words," said Stirling. "We've always been an authoritarian order. In fact, we don't know much about democracy at all. When I spoke of my vote, I was speaking of a symbolic voice rather than a literal one. Declaration of Enmity, yes, those were the words. It was a rather misguided and naive thing. "

"Ah, misguided and naive," Lestat repeated. "I like that. And it might do you good, all of you in the Talamasca, to remember that you're a pretentious bunch of meddlers, and your Elders are no better than the rest of you. "

Stirling seemed to be relaxing, mildly fascinated, but I couldn't relax. I was too afraid of what might happen at any moment.

"I have a theory about the Declaration of Enmity," Stirling said.

"Which is?" asked Lestat.