The Story of the Vampire, L (Completed | Featured )

Part 6 - Young Vampires

But it was another delusion, to think that we had been happy, that I had been. I know that now. I have said as much.

The following day, I consulted his wardrobe book. He kept the details of his accounts well for me, purchases and deposits. In that year he had made purchases of several gifts for his paramours, amounting to the modern equivalent of some five thousand francs, and had received some fifty thousand in return. All these were leaked from the crown, coming through the fingers of the aristocracy and bourgeoisie. This was not enough to cover the household finances, and in those years we had large shortfalls. 

I had begun investing in the 1680s, mostly in real estate and in the still healthy wool trade, with the little money and jewels that L had at that time. By the waning years of Louis XIV's reign, those investments had begun to mature such that we came into quite a bit of money. This, on top of the small fortune coming in from Laurent's paramours of that era, had kept  us comfortable to the extent that we owned several properties in Paris and the surrounding duchy. This townhouse, however, high on our hill and near to Pigalle and Montmartre, had always been Laurent's favorite, and mine. Even with the money we'd had, far too much had been spent on appointing the house, such that it dipped into our investment capitol. It had been a disaster when Louis XIV died, with the coming of the Regency Council, and the sweeping up of court. We were left with unmatured investments and no income. By the 1740s, our lot had not improved by much. 

Even so, in the very back of the book, I went through his fabric swatches, noting the some two thousand francs he had expended at the tailor for his pet, and drew out the white brocade of his favorite robe. Brocade of course, for its exoticism, and not silk damask. I wrote out a bequest to his tailor, a bosom friend and growing old, to replace the robe I had ruined with my tears. L had been wearing it in any case, but it wounded him always to have a hair out of place, and I felt that he only continued to wear it for my sake. 

It irritated me to be treated by him as if I were made of glass. 

I felt a strange numbness in all of my limbs. When I looked in the mirror I did not recognize myself. In my closet were all of my familiar clothes, so I pulled on my silk stockings, and low heels,shades of gray in damask, black frock coat with enamel buttons. As a young man, I could choose to wear a wig or not, according to etiquette, and I chose not to, pulling my hair back with a black satin ribbon and rolling it neatly in a thick barrel curl. In those days, a little bit of powder for the face was appropriate, and I brushed this on with a thick brush of sable fur. A thin grease pencil, heated briefly over a flame did for shaping the brows into a neat line and applying a small spot high on the left cheek. In Laurent's vanity, there was a small pot of rouge for the lips and cheeks. Gazing upon myself in full costume, this seemed more like somebody I knew, with hold over himself.

We fought often, more regularly than we ever had. I was frustrated with his fear that I would leave him, and did not understand why he insisted that I wanted to. Yes, in the past, I had conspired with Nicky to do so, but I had never done it, and could he not see that? I found myself shouting at him, and depending upon his mood, he would shout back, sob, collapse. I slept in the yellow room,and if he came to me at night, as he always had, he slept with his arms around me, occasionally after having a little cry. He was in obvious distress, over far more than his anxiety over my state of mind, and afraid. I told him that I did not recognize myself, and he said, "You are my good, smart child, and a man now. You are beautiful and kind. My darling, you are too kind for your own good."

I stroked the soft skin of his back, rubbed his muscles, which ached from the physical strain of love. He still strove to meet his obligations, to make it to his daylight appointments with paramours, but after a month or so without blood, he seemed sick to me, and his body far too weak to be roughly handled. He pursued sex because it thrilled him, pleased him to be Venus. He was not a whore. One must be clear about that. He did not pursue sex for the financial reward. These men patronized him for his regard, to sustain him. To even speak about it otherwise is not to be suffered. His paramours knew about one other, and competed for his favor, wanted him in the best clothes and to see him at the grand fetes. He had been seeing some of them for decades. They were aware that he was a man of complex taste, and that he, like them, saw talk of money as distasteful, but they were also aware that for all of his mystique, he would not reject a gift.