For three hundred years, I was faithful to the Old Ways of Santino, even after Santino himself had disappeared. Understand, this vampire was by no means dead. He turned up in the modern era, quite healthy, strong, silent and without apology for the credos he had stuffed down my throat in the year 1500 before I was sent north to Paris.
三百年來，我始終忠於桑蒂諾的古老教誨，即便桑蒂諾本人早已消失。須知，這吸血鬼絕非死去。他於近代重現，身強體壯，沉默寡言，絲毫不為1500年我被送往巴黎之前，他強加給我的那些信條道歉。
I was mad during those times. Lead the Coven I did, and of its ceremonies, his fanciful dark litanies and bloody baptisms, I became the architect and the master. My physical strength increased with each year, as is the case with all vampires, and drinking greedily from my victims, for it was the only pleasure of which I could dream, I fed my vampiric powers.
那時我已瘋癲。我帶領著女巫團，並成為了其儀式──那些奇幻黑暗的禱文和血腥洗禮──的創造者和主宰。如同所有吸血鬼一樣，我的力量逐年增強，貪婪地吸食受害者的鮮血，因為那是我唯一能奢望的快樂，我以此來滋養我的吸血鬼之力。
Spells I could make around those I killed, and choosing the beautiful, the promising, the most audacious and splendid for my feast, I nevertheless conveyed upon them fantastical visions to blunt their fear or suffering.
我可以對我殺死的人施展魔法，並選擇最美麗、最有前途、最大膽、最輝煌的人作為我的盛宴，但我還是會給他們帶來奇幻的幻象，以減輕他們的恐懼或痛苦。
I was mad. Denied the places of light, the comfort of entering the smallest church, bent on perfection in the Dark Ways, I wandered as a dusty wraith through the blackest alleyways of Paris, turning her noblest poetry and music into a din by the wax of piety and bigotry by which I stopped my ears, blind to the soaring majesty of her cathedrals or palaces.
我瘋了。被剝奪了光明之地，被剝奪了進入最小教堂的慰藉，一心追求黑暗道路上的完美，我像一個塵土飛揚的幽靈般遊蕩在巴黎最黑暗的小巷裡，用虔誠和偏執的蠟封住了耳朵，將她最高貴的詩歌和音樂變成了喧囂，對她大教堂或宮殿的雄偉壯麗視而不見。
The Coven took all my love, with chatter in the dark of how we might best be Satan’s saints, or whether a beautiful and bold poisoner should be offered our demonic pact and made one of us.
女巫團奪走了我所有的愛，她們在黑暗中竊竊私語，討論著我們如何才能最好地成為撒旦的聖徒，或者是否應該向一位美麗而大膽的毒婦提供我們與惡魔的契約，讓她成為我們中的一員。
But sometimes I went from an acceptable madness to a state of which I alone knew the dangers. In my earthen cell in the secret catacombs beneath the great Paris Cemetery of Les Innocents where we made our lair, I dreamt night after night of one strange and meaningless thing: What had become of that fine little treasure my mortal Mother had given me? What had become of that strange artifact of Podil which she’d taken from the Ikon corner and put in my hands, that painted egg, that crimson painted egg with the star so beautifully painted on it? Now, where could it be? What had become of it? Had I not left it, wrapped thickly in fur in a golden coffin in which I’d once lodged, ah, had all that really ever taken place, that life I thought I recalled from a city of brilliant white-tiled palaces and glittering canals and a great sweet gray sea full of swift and graceful ships, plying their long oars in perfect unison as if they were living things, those ships, those beautifully painted ships, so often decked with flowers, and with the whitest sails, oh, that could not have been real, and to think, a golden chamber with a golden coffin in it, and this special treasure, this fragile and lovely thing, this painted egg, this brittle and perfect egg, whose painted covering locked inside to utter perfection a moist, mysterious concoction of living fluids—oh, what strange imaginings. But what had happened to it! Who had found it!
但有時，我會從一種尚可接受的瘋狂狀態，墮入一種只有我才知道其中危險的境地。在我們位於巴黎聖嬰公墓地下秘密墓穴的土室裡——那是我們的巢穴——我夜復一夜地夢見一件奇怪而毫無意義的事：我凡人母親送給我的那件精美的小玩意兒，究竟去了哪裡？她從聖像角取下，放在我手中的那件波迪爾的奇特器物，那枚彩繪的蛋，那枚繪著美麗星辰的深紅色彩蛋，究竟去了哪裡？現在它究竟在哪裡？它究竟去了哪裡？如果我沒有把它留下，沒有把它厚厚地裹在皮毛里，放在我曾經棲身的那口金棺裡，啊，這一切真的發生過嗎？我記憶中的生活，來自一座擁有潔白瓷磚宮殿、波光粼粼的運河和一片廣闊的灰色大海的城市，大海上滿是輕快優雅的船隻，它們長長的槳劃得整齊劃一，彷彿是有生命的個體。那些船，那些彩繪精美的船，常常裝飾著鮮花，揚著潔白的船帆，哦，那不可能是真的。想想看，一個金碧輝煌的房間，裡面放著一口金棺，還有這件特別的珍寶，這件脆弱而美麗的東西，這枚彩繪的蛋，這枚易碎而完美的蛋，它彩繪的外殼完美地封存著裡面濕潤而神秘的生命體液——哦，多麼奇特的想像啊！可是它後來怎麼樣了呢？是誰發現了它！
Somebody had.
有人有。
出版日期：1998年（原版）
See the difference, read #1 bestselling author Anne Rice in Large Print
看看差異，請閱讀#1 暢銷作家安·萊絲的大字版
About Large Print
關於大字版
All Random House Large Print editions are published in a 16-point typeface
所有蘭登書屋大字版皆採用 16 號字體印刷
In the latest installment of The Vampire Chronicles, Anne Rice summons up dazzling worlds to bring us the story of Armand - eternally young, with the face of a Botticelli angel. Armand, who first appeared in all his dark glory more than twenty years ago in the now-classic Interview with the Vampire, the first of The Vampire Chronicles, the novel that established its author worldwide as a magnificent storyteller and creator of magical realms.
在最新一集的《吸血鬼編年史》中，安·萊絲召喚出令人眼花繚亂的世界，帶給我們阿曼德的故事——永遠年輕，擁有波提切利天使般的面孔。阿曼德，二十多年前首次以黑暗的光輝現身，出現在經典的《與吸血鬼訪談》中，這是《吸血鬼編年史》的第一部，該小說奠定了作者全球作為偉大說書人與魔法領域的創造者的地位。
Now, we go with Armand across the centuries to the Kiev Rus of his boyhood - a ruined city under Mongol dominion - and to ancient Constantinople, where Tartar raiders sell him into slavery. And in a magnificent palazzo in the Venice of the Renaissance we see him emotionally and intellectually in thrall to the great vampire Marius, who...
現在，我們跟隨阿曼德穿越數世紀，來到他童年時期的基輔羅斯——一座被蒙古統治的廢墟城市——以及古代君士坦丁堡，那裡韃靼掠奪者將他賣為奴隸。在文藝復興時期威尼斯一座宏偉的宮殿中，我們看到他在情感與智慧上都被偉大的吸血鬼馬瑞斯所吸引，而馬瑞斯......
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