Gloria in Excelsis Deo

“Gloria in Excelsis Deo” is the hymn through which Patsy’s final apparition takes shape and, later, the refrain by which her presence is recalled after Lestat has sent her spirit away. First heard in a vision of Patsy singing in pink cowboy clothes, it accompanies a struggle between terror and release; its later repetition by Grandma and Jasmine shows how the encounter continues to resonate beyond the moment of the haunting.

The Hymn in Patsy’s Apparition

During the apparition, Lestat sees a teenage cowgirl strumming a guitar and singing “Gloria!” as a crowd screams. The vision is crowded with flashes of angels and innumerable unseen monsters, so the hymn rises amid an experience that is at once musical, religious, and frightening. It is not a quiet devotional scene: Patsy stamps her foot and belts the refrain, while Lestat’s perception shifts between seeing and not seeing the supernatural figures around her.

The hymn returns as Lestat struggles against Oncle Julien, who beckons him. Julien warns that this is the most dangerous game and tells Lestat he is no Saint Juan Diego. Lestat claws at the grass, trying to get into the earth, and refuses to go with him. Against that threatened descent, Patsy appears in pink leather with her arms raised, singing “Gloria in Excelsis Deo!” The image makes the hymn part of the apparition’s decisive contest: Patsy’s song is joined to the blinding light that Lestat associates with her presence.

Release and Return to the Ordinary

After the vision, Lestat experiences blackness and a sense of separation. He finds himself on the grass, with Mona cradling his head and Quinn kneeling beside her; the night is otherwise quiet and empty. He whispers a Latin prayer, then tells Jasmine that Patsy’s spirit is definitely gone from the Earth and that he is spent. The hymn belongs, therefore, not just to the haunting but to its resolution: the apparition ends, and Lestat believes Patsy has passed on.

Yet the image does not remain confined to Lestat’s vision. Later, Jasmine sings the refrain while bringing coffee across the lawn to Stirling. When Lestat asks where she learned it, Jasmine explains that Grandma has been singing it in the kitchen all day. Grandma says it comes from the Latin Mass in the old days and reports seeing Patsy in a dream, dressed in pink cowboy clothes and carrying a guitar. Her account echoes the apparition’s distinctive details, carrying the hymn from Lestat’s supernatural encounter into the household’s daily conversation.

Meaning and Recurrence

The hymn binds together three forms of experience: Lestat’s terrifying vision, his act of spiritual release, and the household’s subsequent retelling of Patsy’s appearance. Its refrain accompanies both the pressure of the apparition and the image of Patsy moving toward light, while its later repetition suggests that the event has left a recognizable imprint on those around Lestat. The text does not present the later dream as proof that Patsy remains on Earth: Lestat has already declared her spirit gone, even as Grandma’s dream preserves her image.

The song’s contrast between the vision’s overwhelming supernatural spectacle and Jasmine’s ordinary singing gives its recurrence a particular force. What had sounded amid screaming, monsters, and a flash of angels is now sung over coffee on the lawn. The hymn thus serves as a bridge between the extraordinary and the domestic, preserving Patsy’s final image in a form that others can repeat after Lestat has returned from the encounter.