Nicolas “Nicki” de Lenfent is Lestat’s greatest mortal friend and greatest immortal tragedy. Lestat and Nicolas become beloved friends as mortals, but Lestat’s turning Nicolas into a vampire drives his beloved friend towards suicidal insanity. Nicolas appears in The Vampire Lestat (1985).
Nicolas de Lenfent is the eldest son of a draper in the Auvergne, France. When he comes of age, his father sends him to Paris to study law at the University of Paris in the Sorbonne. During that time, Nicolas encounters a genius violin virtuoso from Padua, Italy, who is so good that rumors spread that he sold his soul to the Devil. Upon hearing his playing, Nicolas forsakes his civil education and begins studying the violin under the tutelage of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Nicolas spends so much time practicing his new instrument that he eventually fails his scholastic examinations and must return to his father’s house. His father, who wants his son to become an imitation aristocrat, is furious with him and breaks his violin to pieces. Nicolas immediately goes to Clermont, which is about an eight-day walk to the north, sells his expensive watch, and buys a new violin. He brings it home and continues to practice, even when his father threatens to break his hands. Nicolas is in disgrace, as is his family. His magnificent playing can be heard from his upstairs bedroom over his father’s draper’s shop, across from the inn, near the village church.
The attention upon Nicolas’s disgrace is diverted to a problem with a pack of vicious wolves besieging the city. When the youngest son of the Marquis de Lioncourt, Lestat, goes into the mountains and slays the entire pack of wolves, the Auvergne villagers are so glad and grateful that they go into the mountains, retrieve the dead wolves, skin them, and from their pelts make a beautiful red velvet cloak and boots lined in wolf fur. Nicolas is elected to present the gifts to Lestat. From the instant these two encounter each other, they feel an immediate attraction. They spend increasing time in one another’s company, their intimacy growing deeper, so much so that Lestat nicknames him Nicki. Nicolas tells Lestat all about Paris, and soon they form a secret plan to run away to Paris and start a new life there. Lestat’s mother, Gabrielle, becomes aware of their plan. Desiring to live vicariously through her youngest son, she gives Lestat an expensive heirloom from her Italian family that he can sell to pay for his and Nicolas’s passage to Paris.
Once there, Nicolas and Lestat find employment in a small theater on the Boulevard du Temple, called Renaud’s House of Thesbians. At first they are given menial jobs, such as tearing tickets and cleaning floors, but in time their talent is revealed to Renaud. Nicolas begins performing music for the theater’s productions, and Lestat begins acting. Lestat’s popularity grows and draws much attention to the theater.
Lestat and Nicolas share an apartment, where they drink wine and enjoy deep philosophical conversations. While Lestat’s point of view always expresses a joie de vivre, Nicolas’s perspective is always formed by his Christian belief system, which, when compared with existential truths, occasionally drives him to depression. One night, Lestat is kidnapped from their apartment. Nicolas searches but cannot find him. The first word Nicolas hears of Lestat’s safety comes from Lestat’s mortal lawyer, Pierre Roget, who tells Nicolas vague tales of Lestat’s new good fortune, then Roget gives Nicolas gifts and money from Lestat so that he can study violin with a brilliant Italian maestro and have everything he can possibly desire. To Lestat’s surprise, Nicolas continues to perform at Renaud’s House of Thesbians, even though Renaud is deep in debt and the theater is in jeopardy of closing. With his newfound fortune, Lestat purchases the theater house, keeps it running, and showers all its thespians with many gifts. Nicolas moves out of his and Lestat’s former apartment and into a new flat.
One night, Nicolas is kidnapped from his flat by the Children of Darkness, a Parisian coven of vampires, led by the vampire Armand, who live by the Great Laws, which demand that vampires live in squalor and degradation, causing enmity between them and the well-heeled Lestat, whom Nicolas is surprised to discover is also a vampire. The Children of Darkness drink Nicolas’s blood but do not kill him or turn him into a vampire. The experience drives Nicolas’s occasional bouts with depression into utter nihilism. When Lestat comes to the Children of Darkness’s lair in the catacombs beneath Cemetery of les Innocents, Nicolas is equally surprised to discover that Lestat has turned his own mother, Gabrielle, into his first fledgling. In the privacy of their own home, Nicolas begs Lestat to turn him into a vampire also. Initially reluctant to do this to his dearest mortal friend, Lestat acquiesces. Unlike Gabrielle, who takes to being a vampire almost more naturally than she takes to being mortal, Nicolas finds his transformation into immortality exacerbates his nihilism into insanity. Nicolas grows to hate Lestat with a burning passion. But he accompanies Lestat and Gabrielle to Cemetery of les Innocents, where they confront Armand once more and convince him that his coven’s system of belief is outmoded in France’s Age of Enlightenment. In response, Armand burns the Children of Darkness alive. Only four vampires are spared—Felix, Eleni, Laurent, and Eugénie.
They beg Lestat to make a new coven with them and to lead them into the new age, but he refuses. Nicolas takes up his violin and plays such beautiful music that the four vampires begin dancing in a way that was totally forbidden in their former life under the stringent Great Laws of the Children of Darkness. Moved by their performance, Nicolas demands that Lestat give them Renaud’s House of Thesbians. For love of Nicki, Lestat obeys, the four vampires move in, and Nicolas joins them. He begins writing plays and composing music. The new coven performs his plays as mortals pretending to be vampires.
Lestat and Gabrielle leave Paris in search of Marius. One of the vampires who survived Armand’s burning, Eleni, writes letters to Lestat informing him of the success of the theater and of their care for Nicolas, whose insanity is increasing. In time, Nicolas begins accosting strangers in the street and revealing his vampire nature. Armand must restrain him by putting him in a cell. When his insanity does not cease, Armand cuts off Nicolas’s hands, but the coven ultimately restores them. In the end, when Nicolas can no longer bear the crushing weight of his existence, he writes numerous new plays and then commits suicide by leaping into a fire. Lestat laments the loss not simply of his second fledgling, but also of his only mortal friend, who became his greatest failure.
For more perspectives on Nicolas in the Vampire Chronicles, read the Alphabettery entries Armand, Children of Darkness, Eleni, Eugénie, Felix, Gabrielle, Laurent, Lestat de Lioncourt, Renaud, Renaud’s House of Thesbians, and Pierre Roget.