And we will sing, all by ourselves, till we swoon away with delight. You are crying! You are afraid of me! And yet I am not really wicked. Love me and you shall see! All I wanted was to be loved for myself. If you loved me I should be as gentle as a lamb; and you could do anything with me that you pleased. Soon the moans that accompanied this sort of loves litany increased and increased. I have never heard anything more despairing; and M. de Chagny and I recognized that this terrible lamentation came from Erik himself. Christine seemed to be standing dumb with horror, without the strength to cry out, while the monster was on his knees before her. Three times over, Erik fiercely bewailed his fate You dont love me! You dont love me! You dont love me! And then, more gently Why do you cry? You know it gives me pain to see you cry! A silence. Each silence gave us fresh hope. We said to ourselves Perhaps he has left Christine behind the wall. And we thought only of the possibility of warning Christine Daa of our presence, unknown to the monster. We were unable to leave the torturechamber now, unless Christine opened the door to us; and it was only on this condition that we could hope to help her, for we did not even know where the door might be. Suddenly, the silence in the next room was disturbed by the ringing of an electric bell. There was a bound on the other side of the wall and Eriks voice of thunder Somebody ringing! Walk in, please! A sinister chuckle. Who has come bothering now? Wait for me here.  I am going to tell the siren to open the door. Steps moved away, a door closed. I had no time to think of the fresh horror that was preparing; I forgot that the monster was only going out perhaps to perpetrate a fresh crime; I understood but one thing Christine was alone behind the wall! The Vicomte de Chagny was already calling to her Christine! Christine! As we could hear what was said in the next room, there was no reason why my companion should not be heard in his turn. Nevertheless, the viscount had to repeat his cry time after time. At last, a faint voice reached us. I am dreaming! it said. Christine, Christine, it is I, Raoul! A silence. But answer me, Christine!  In Heavens name, if you are alone, answer me! Then Christines voice whispered Raouls name. Yes! Yes! It is I! It is not a dream!  Christine, trust me!  We are here to save you  but be prudent! When you hear the monster, warn us! Then Christine gave way to fear. She trembled lest Erik should discover where Raoul was hidden; she told us in a few hurried words that Erik had gone quite mad with love and that he had decided to kill everybody and himself with everybody if she did not consent to become his wife. He had given her till eleven oclock the next evening for reflection. It was the last respite. She must choose, as he said, between the wedding mass and the requiem. And Erik had then uttered a phrase which Christine did not quite understand Yes or no! If your answer is no, everybody will be dead and buried! But I understood the sentence perfectly, for it corresponded in a terrible manner with my own dreadful thought. Can you tell us where Erik is? I asked. She replied that he must have left the house. Could you make sure? No. I am fastened. I can not stir a limb. When we heard this, M. de Chagny and I gave a yell of fury. Our safety, the safety of all three of us, depended on the girls liberty of movement. But where are you? asked Christine. There are only two doors in my room, the LouisPhilippe room of which I told you, Raoul; a door through which Erik comes and goes, and another which he has never opened before me and which he has forbidden me ever to go through, because he says it is the most dangerous of the doors, the door of the torturechamber! Christine, that is where we are! You are in the torturechamber? Yes, but we can not see the door. Oh, if I could only drag myself so far! I would knock at the door and that would tell you where it is. Is it a door with a lock to it? I asked. Yes, with a lock. Mademoiselle, I said, it is absolutely necessary that you should open that door to us! But how? asked the poor girl tearfully. We heard her straining, trying to free herself from the bonds that held her. I know where the key is, she said, in a voice that seemed exhausted by the effort she had made. But I am fastened so tight.  Oh, the wretch! And she gave a sob. Where is the key? I asked, signing to M. de Chagny not to speak and to leave the business to me, for we had not a moment to lose. In the next room, near the organ, with another little bronze key, which he also forbade me to touch. They are both in a little leather bag which he calls the bag of life and death.  Raoul! Raoul! Fly! Everything is mysterious and terrible here, and Erik will soon have gone quite mad, and you are in the torturechamber!  Go back by the way you came. There must be a reason why the room is called by that name! Christine, said the young man, we will go from here together or die together! We must keep cool, I whispered. Why has he fastened you, mademoiselle? You cant escape from his house; and he knows it! I tried to commit suicide! The monster went out last night, after carrying me here fainting and half chloroformed. He was going to his banker, so he said!  When he returned he found me with my face covered with blood.  I had tried to kill myself by striking my forehead against the walls. Christine! groaned Raoul; and he began to sob. Then he bound me.  I am not allowed to die until eleven oclock tomorrow evening. Mademoiselle, I declared, the monster bound you  and he shall unbind you. You have only to play the necessary part! Remember that he loves you! Alas! we heard. Am I likely to forget it! Remember it and smile to him  entreat him  tell him that your bonds hurt you. But Christine Daa said Hush!  I hear something in the wall on the lake!  It is he!  Go away! Go away! Go away! We could not go away, even if we wanted to, I said, as impressively as I could. We can not leave this! And we are in the torturechamber! Hush! whispered Christine again. Heavy steps sounded slowly behind the wall, then stopped and made the floor creak once more. Next came a tremendous sigh, followed by a cry of horror from Christine, and we heard Eriks voice I beg your pardon for letting you see a face like this! What a state I am in, am I not? Its the other ones fault! Why did he ring? Do I ask people who pass to tell me the time? He will never ask anybody the time again! It is the sirens fault. Another sigh, deeper, more tremendous still, came from the abysmal depths of a soul. Why did you cry out, Christine? Because I am in pain, Erik. I thought I had frightened you. Erik, unloose my bonds.  Am I not your prisoner? You will try to kill yourself again. You have given me till eleven oclock tomorrow evening, Erik. The footsteps dragged along the floor again. After all, as we are to die together  and I am just as eager as you  yes, I have had enough of this life, you know.  Wait, dont move, I will release you.  You have only one word to say No! And it will at once be over with everybody!  You are right, you are right; why wait till eleven oclock tomorrow evening? True, it would have been grander, finer.  But that is childish nonsense.  We should only think of ourselves in this life, of our own death  the rest doesnt matter.  Youre looking at me because I am all wet?  Oh, my dear, its raining cats and dogs outside!  Apart from that, Christine, I think I am subject to hallucinations.  You know, the man who rang at the sirens door just nowgo and look if hes ringing at the bottom of the lakewell, he was rather like.  There, turn round  are you glad? Youre free now.  Oh, my poor Christine, look at your wrists tell me, have I hurt them?  That alone deserves death.  Talking of death, I must sing his requiem! Hearing these terrible remarks, I received an awful presentiment  I too had once rung at the monsters door  and, without knowing it, must have set some warning current in motion.  And I remembered the two arms that had emerged from the inky waters.  What poor wretch had strayed to that shore this time? Who was the other one, the one whose requiem we now heard sung? Erik sang like the god of thunder, sang a Dies Irae that enveloped us as in a storm. The elements seemed to rage around us. Suddenly, the organ and the voice ceased so suddenly that M. de Chagny sprang back, on the other side of the wall, with emotion. And the voice, changed and transformed, distinctly grated out these metallic syllables What have you done with my bag? XXIII The Tortures Begin The Persians Narrative Continued The voice repeated angrily What have you done with my bag? So it was to take my bag that you asked me to release you! We heard hurried steps, Christine running back to the LouisPhilippe room, as though to seek shelter on the other side of our wall. What are you running away for? asked the furious voice, which had followed her. Give me back my bag, will you? Dont you know that it is the bag of life and death? Listen to me, Erik, sighed the girl. As it is settled that we are to live together  what difference can it make to you? You know there are only two keys in it, said the monster. What do you want to do? I want to look at this room which I have never seen and which you have always kept from me.  Its womans curiosity! she said, in a tone which she tried to render playful. But the trick was too childish for Erik to be taken in by it. I dont like curious women, he retorted, and you had better remember the story of Bluebeard and be careful.  Come, give me back my bag!  Give me back my bag!  Leave the key alone, will you, you inquisitive little thing? And he chuckled, while Christine gave a cry of pain. Erik had evidently recovered the bag from her. At that moment, the viscount could not help uttering an exclamation of impotent rage. Why, whats that? said the monster. Did you hear, Christine? No, no, replied the poor girl. I heard nothing. I thought I heard a cry. A cry! Are you going mad, Erik? Whom do you expect to give a cry, in this house?  I cried out, because you hurt me! I heard nothing. I dont like the way you said that!  Youre trembling.  Youre quite excited.  Youre lying!  That was a cry, there was a cry!  There is someone in the torturechamber!  Ah, I understand now! There is no one there, Erik! I understand! No one! The man you want to marry, perhaps! I dont want to marry anybody, you know I dont. Another nasty chuckle. Well, it wont take long to find out. Christine, my love, we need not open the door to see what is happening in the torturechamber. Would you like to see? Would you like to see? Look here! If there is someone, if there is really someone there, you will see the invisible window light up at the top, near the ceiling. We need only draw the black curtain and put out the light in here. There, thats it.  Lets put out the light! Youre not afraid of the dark, when youre with your little husband! Then we heard Christines voice of anguish No!  Im frightened!  I tell you, Im afraid of the dark!  I dont care about that room now.  Youre always frightening me, like a child, with your torturechamber!  And so I became inquisitive.  But I dont care about it now  not a bit  not a bit! And that which I feared above all things began, automatically. We were suddenly flooded with light! Yes, on our side of the wall, everything seemed aglow. The Vicomte de Chagny was so much taken aback that he staggered. And the angry voice roared I told you there was someone! Do you see the window now? The lighted window, right up there? The man behind the wall cant see it! But you shall go up the folding steps that is what they are there for!  You have often asked me to tell you; and now you know!  They are there to give a peep into the torturechamber  you inquisitive little thing! What tortures?  Who is being tortured?  Erik, Erik, say you are only trying to frighten me!  Say it, if you love me, Erik!  There are no tortures, are there? Go and look at the little window, dear! I do not know if the viscount heard the girls swooning voice, for he was too much occupied by the astounding spectacle that now appeared before his distracted gaze. As for me, I had seen that sight too often, through the little window, at the time of the rosy hours of Mazenderan; and I cared only for what was being said next door, seeking for a hint how to act, what resolution to take. Go and peep through the little window! Tell me what he looks like! We heard the steps being dragged against the wall. Up with you!  No!  No, I will go up myself, dear! Oh, very well, I will go up. Let me go! Oh, my darling, my darling!  How sweet of you!  How nice of you to save me the exertion at my age!  Tell me what he looks like! At that moment, we distinctly heard these words above our heads There is no one there, dear! No one?  Are you sure there is no one? Why, of course not  no one! Well, thats all right!  Whats the matter, Christine? Youre not going to faint, are you  as there is no one there?  Here  come down  there!  Pull yourself together  as there is no one there!  But how do you like the landscape? Oh, very much! There, thats better!  Youre better now, are you not?  Thats all right, youre better!  No excitement!  And what a funny house, isnt it, with landscapes like that in it? Yes, its like the Muse Grvin.  But, I say, Erik  there are no tortures in there!  What a fright you gave me! Why  as there is no one there? Did you design that room? Its very handsome. Youre a great artist, Erik. Yes, a great artist, in my own line. But tell me, Erik, why did you call that room the torturechamber? Oh, its very simple. First of all, what did you see? I saw a forest. And what is in a forest? Trees. And what is in a tree? Birds. Did you see any birds? No, I did not see any birds. Well, what did you see? Think! You saw branches! And what are the branches? asked the terrible voice. Theres a gibbet! That is why I call my wood the torturechamber!  You see, its all a joke. I never express myself like other people. But I am very tired of it!  Im sick and tired of having a forest and a torturechamber in my house and of living like a mountebank, in a house with a false bottom!  Im tired of it! I want to have a nice, quiet flat, with ordinary doors and windows and a wife inside it, like anybody else! A wife whom I could love and take out on Sundays and keep amused on weekdays.  Here, shall I show you some cardtricks? That will help us to pass a few minutes, while waiting for eleven oclock tomorrow evening.  My dear little Christine!  Are you listening to me?  Tell me you love me!  No, you dont love me  but no matter, you will!  Once, you could not look at my mask because you knew what was behind.  And now you dont mind looking at it and you forget what is behind!  One can get used to everything  if one wishes.  Plenty of young people who did not care for each other before marriage have adored each other since! Oh, I dont know what I am talking about! But you would have lots of fun with me. For instance, I am the greatest ventriloquist that ever lived, I am the first ventriloquist in the world!  Youre laughing.  Perhaps you dont believe me? Listen. The wretch, who really was the first ventriloquist in the world, was only trying to divert the childs attention from the torturechamber; but it was a stupid scheme, for Christine thought of nothing but us! She repeatedly besought him, in the gentlest tones which she could assume Put out the light in the little window!  Erik, do put out the light in the little window! For she saw that this light, which appeared so suddenly and of which the monster had spoken in so threatening a voice, must mean something terrible. One thing must have pacified her for a moment; and that was seeing the two of us, behind the wall, in the midst of that resplendent light, alive and well. But she would certainly have felt much easier if the light had been put out. Meantime, the other had already begun to play the ventriloquist. He said Here, I raise my mask a little.  Oh, only a little!  You see my lips, such lips as I have? Theyre not moving!  My mouth is closedsuch mouth as I haveand yet you hear my voice.  Where will you have it? In your left ear? In your right ear? In the table? In those little ebony boxes on the mantelpiece?  Listen, dear, its in the little box on the right of the mantelpiece what does it say? Shall I turn the scorpion?  And now, crack! What does it say in the little box on the left? Shall I turn the grasshopper?  And now, crack! Here it is in the little leather bag.  What does it say? I am the little bag of life and death!  And now, crack! It is in Carlottas throat, in Carlottas golden throat, in Carlottas crystal throat, as I live! What does it say? It says, Its I, Mr. Toad, its I singing! I feel without alarmcoackwith its melody enwind mecoack!  And now, crack! It is on a chair in the ghosts box and it says, Madame Carlotta is singing tonight to bring the chandelier down!  And now, crack! Aha! Where is Eriks voice now? Listen, Christine, darling! Listen! It is behind the door of the torturechamber! Listen! Its myself in the torturechamber! And what do I say? I say, Woe to them that have a nose, a real nose, and come to look round the torturechamber! Aha, aha, aha!  Oh, the ventriloquists terrible voice! It was everywhere, everywhere. It passed through the little invisible window, through the walls. It ran around us, between us. Erik was there, speaking to us! We made a movement as though to fling ourselves upon him. But, already, swifter, more fleeting than the voice of the echo, Eriks voice had leaped back behind the wall! Soon we heard nothing more at all, for this is what happened Erik! Erik! said Christines voice. You tire me with your voice. Dont go on, Erik! Isnt it very hot here? Oh, yes, replied Eriks voice, the heat is unendurable! But what does this mean?  The wall is really getting quite hot!  The wall is burning!  Ill tell you, Christine, dear it is because of the forest next door. Well, what has that to do with it? The forest? Why, didnt you see that it was an African forest? And the monster laughed so loudly and hideously that we could no longer distinguish Christines supplicating cries! The Vicomte de Chagny shouted and banged against the walls like a madman. I could not restrain him. But we heard nothing except the monsters laughter, and the monster himself can have heard nothing else. And then there was the sound of a body falling on the floor and being dragged along and a door slammed and then nothing, nothing more around us save the scorching silence of the south in the heart of a tropical forest! XXIV Barrels!  Barrels!  Any Barrels to Sell? The Persians Narrative Continued I have said that the room in which M. le Vicomte de Chagny and I were imprisoned was a regular hexagon, lined entirely with mirrors. Plenty of these rooms have been seen since, mainly at exhibitions they are called palaces of illusion, or some such name. But the invention belongs entirely to Erik, who built the first room of this kind under my eyes, at the time of the rosy hours of Mazenderan. A decorative object, such as a column, for instance, was placed in one of the corners and immediately produced a hall of a thousand columns; for, thanks to the mirrors, the real room was multiplied by six hexagonal rooms, each of which, in its turn, was multiplied indefinitely. But the little sultana soon tired of this infantile illusion, whereupon Erik altered his invention into a torturechamber. For the architectural motive placed in one corner, he substituted an iron tree. This tree, with its painted leaves, was absolutely true to life and was made of iron so as to resist all the attacks of the patient who was locked into the torturechamber. We shall see how the scene thus obtained was twice altered instantaneously into two successive other scenes, by means of the automatic rotation of the drums or rollers in the corners. These were divided into three sections, fitting into the angles of the mirrors and each supporting a decorative scheme that came into sight as the roller revolved upon its axis. The walls of this strange room gave the patient nothing to lay hold of, because, apart from the solid decorative object, they were simply furnished with mirrors, thick enough to withstand any onslaught of the victim, who was flung into the chamber emptyhanded and barefoot. There was no furniture. The ceiling was capable of being lit up. An ingenious system of electric heating, which has since been imitated, allowed the temperature of the walls and room to be increased at will. I am giving all these details of a perfectly natural invention, producing, with a few painted branches, the supernatural illusion of an equatorial forest blazing under the tropical sun, so that no one may doubt the present balance of my brain or feel entitled to say that I am mad or lying or that I take him for a fool.11 I now return to the facts where I left them. When the ceiling lit up and the forest became visible around us, the viscounts stupefaction was immense. That impenetrable forest, with its innumerable trunks and branches, threw him into a terrible state of consternation. He passed his hands over his forehead, as though to drive away a dream; his eyes blinked; and, for a moment, he forgot to listen. I have already said that the sight of the forest did not surprise me at all; and therefore I listened for the two of us to what was happening next door. Lastly, my attention was especially attracted, not so much to the scene, as to the mirrors that produced it. These mirrors were broken in parts. Yes, they were marked and scratched; they had been starred, in spite of their solidity; and this proved to me that the torturechamber in which we now were had already served a purpose. Yes, some wretch, whose feet were not bare like those of the victims of the rosy hours of Mazenderan, had certainly fallen into this mortal illusion and, mad with rage, had kicked against those mirrors which, nevertheless, continued to reflect his agony. And the branch of the tree on which he had put an end to his own sufferings was arranged in such a way that, before dying, he had seen, for his last consolation, a thousand men writhing in his company. Yes, Joseph Buquet had undoubtedly been through all this! Were we to die as he had done? I did not think so, for I knew that we had a few hours before us and that I could employ them to better purpose than Joseph Buquet was able to do. After all, I was thoroughly acquainted with most of Eriks tricks; and now or never was the time to turn my knowledge to account. To begin with, I gave up every idea of returning to the passage that had brought us to that accursed chamber. I did not trouble about the possibility of working the inside stone that closed the passage; and this for the simple reason that to do so was out of the question. We had dropped from too great a height into the torturechamber; there was no furniture to help us reach that passage; not even the branch of the iron tree, not even each others shoulders were of any avail. There was only one possible outlet, that opening into the LouisPhilippe room in which Erik and Christine Daa were. But, though this outlet looked like an ordinary door on Christines side, it was absolutely invisible to us. We must therefore try to open it without even knowing where it was. When I was quite sure that there was no hope for us from Christine Daas side, when I had heard the monster dragging the poor girl from the LouisPhilippe room lest she should interfere with our tortures, I resolved to set to work without delay. But I had first to calm M. de Chagny, who was already walking about like a madman, uttering incoherent cries. The snatches of conversation which he had caught between Christine and the monster had contributed not a little to drive him beside himself add to that the shock of the magic forest and the scorching heat which was beginning to make the perspiration stream down his temples and you will have no difficulty in understanding his state of mind. He shouted Christines name, brandished his pistol, knocked his forehead against the glass in his endeavors to run down the glades of the illusive forest. In short, the torture was beginning to work its spell upon a brain unprepared for it. I did my best to induce the poor viscount to listen to reason. I made him touch the mirrors and the iron tree and the branches and explained to him, by optical laws, all the luminous imagery by which we were surrounded and of which we need not allow ourselves to be the victims, like ordinary, ignorant people. We are in a room, a little room; that is what you must keep saying to yourself. And we shall leave the room as soon as we have found the door. And I promised him that, if he let me act, without disturbing me by shouting and walking up and down, I would discover the trick of the door in less than an hours time. Then he lay flat on the floor, as one does in a wood, and declared that he would wait until I found the door of the forest, as there was nothing better to do! And he added that, from where he was, the view was splendid! The torture was working, in spite of all that I had said. Myself, forgetting the forest, I tackled a glass panel and began to finger it in every direction, hunting for the weak point on which to press in order to turn the door in accordance with Eriks system of pivots. This weak point might be a mere speck on the glass, no larger than a pea, under which the spring lay hidden. I hunted and hunted. I felt as high as my hands could reach. Erik was about the same height as myself and I thought that he would not have placed the spring higher than suited his stature. While groping over the successive panels with the greatest care, I endeavored not to lose a minute, for I was feeling more and more overcome with the heat and we were literally roasting in that blazing forest. I had been working like this for half an hour and had finished three panels, when, as illluck would have it, I turned round on hearing a muttered exclamation from the viscount. I am stifling, he said. All those mirrors are sending out an infernal heat! Do you think you will find that spring soon? If you are much longer about it, we shall be roasted alive! I was not sorry to hear him talk like this. He had not said a word of the forest and I hoped that my companions reason would hold out some time longer against the torture. But he added What consoles me is that the monster has given Christine until eleven tomorrow evening. If we cant get out of here and go to her assistance, at least we shall be dead before her! Then Eriks mass can serve for all of us! And he gulped down a breath of hot air that nearly made him faint. As I had not the same desperate reasons as M. le Vicomte for accepting death, I returned, after giving him a word of encouragement, to my panel, but I had made the mistake of taking a few steps while speaking and, in the tangle of the illusive forest, I was no longer able to find my panel for certain! I had to begin all over again, at random, feeling, fumbling, groping. Now the fever laid hold of me in my turn  for I found nothing, absolutely nothing. In the next room, all was silence. We were quite lost in the forest, without an outlet, a compass, a guide or anything. Oh, I knew what awaited us if nobody came to our aid  or if I did not find the spring! But, look as I might, I found nothing but branches, beautiful branches that stood straight up before me, or spread gracefully over my head. But they gave no shade. And this was natural enough, as we were in an equatorial forest, with the sun right above our heads, an African forest. M. de Chagny and I had repeatedly taken off our coats and put them on again, finding at one time that they made us feel still hotter and at another that they protected us against the heat. I was still making a moral resistance, but M. de Chagny seemed to me quite gone. He pretended that he had been walking in that forest for three days and nights, without stopping, looking for Christine Daa! From time to time, he thought he saw her behind the trunk of a tree, or gliding between the branches; and he called to her with words of supplication that brought the tears to my eyes. And then, at last Oh, how thirsty I am! he cried, in delirious accents. I too was thirsty. My throat was on fire. And, yet, squatting on the floor, I went on hunting, hunting, hunting for the spring of the invisible door  especially as it was dangerous to remain in the forest as evening drew nigh. Already the shades of night were beginning to surround us. It had happened very quickly night falls quickly in tropical countries  suddenly, with hardly any twilight. Now night, in the forests of the equator, is always dangerous, particularly when, like ourselves, one has not the materials for a fire to keep off the beasts of prey. I did indeed try for a moment to break off the branches, which I would have lit with my dark lantern, but I knocked myself also against the mirrors and remembered, in time, that we had only images of branches to do with. The heat did not go with the daylight; on the contrary, it was now still hotter under the blue rays of the moon. I urged the viscount to hold our weapons ready to fire and not to stray from camp, while I went on looking for my spring. Suddenly, we heard a lion roaring a few yards away. Oh, whispered the viscount, he is quite close!  Dont you see him?  There  through the trees  in that thicket!  If he roars again, I will fire!  And the roaring began again, louder than before. And the viscount fired, but I do not think that he hit the lion; only, he smashed a mirror, as I perceived the next morning, at daybreak. We must have covered a good distance during the night, for we suddenly found ourselves on the edge of the desert, an immense desert of sand, stones and rocks. It was really not worth while leaving the forest to come upon the desert. Tired out, I flung myself down beside the viscount, for I had had enough of looking for springs which I could not find. I was quite surprisedand I said so to the viscountthat we had encountered no other dangerous animals during the night. Usually, after the lion came the leopard and sometimes the buzz of the tsetse fly. These were easily obtained effects; and I explained to M. de Chagny that Erik imitated the roar of a lion on a long tabour or timbrel, with an asss skin at one end. Over this skin he tied a string of catgut, which was fastened at the middle to another similar string passing through the whole length of the tabour. Erik had only to rub this string with a glove smeared with resin and, according to the manner in which he rubbed it, he imitated to perfection the voice of the lion or the leopard, or even the buzzing of the tsetse fly. The idea that Erik was probably in the room beside us, working his trick, made me suddenly resolve to enter into a parley with him, for we must obviously give up all thought of taking him by surprise. And by this time he must be quite aware who were the occupants of his torturechamber. I called him Erik! Erik! I shouted as loudly as I could across the desert, but there was no answer to my voice. All around us lay the silence and the bare immensity of that stony desert. What was to become of us in the midst of that awful solitude? We were beginning literally to die of heat, hunger and thirst  of thirst especially. At last, I saw M. de Chagny raise himself on his elbow and point to a spot on the horizon. He had discovered an oasis! Yes, far in the distance was an oasis  an oasis with limpid water, which reflected the iron trees!  Tush, it was the scene of the mirage.  I recognized it at once  the worst of the three!  No one had been able to fight against it  no one.


I did my utmost to keep my head and not to hope for water, because I knew that, if a man hoped for water, the water that reflected the iron tree, and if, after hoping for water, he struck against the mirror, then there was only one thing for him to do to hang himself on the iron tree! So I cried to M. de Chagny Its the mirage!  Its the mirage!  Dont believe in the water!  Its another trick of the mirrors!  Then he flatly told me to shut up, with my tricks of the mirrors, my springs, my revolving doors and my palaces of illusions! He angrily declared that I must be either blind or mad to imagine that all that water flowing over there, among those splendid, numberless trees, was not real water!  And the desert was real!  And so was the forest!  And it was no use trying to take him in  he was an old, experienced traveler  he had been all over the place! And he dragged himself along, saying Water! Water! And his mouth was open, as though he were drinking. And my mouth was open too, as though I were drinking. For we not only saw the water, but we heard it!  We heard it flow, we heard it ripple!  Do you understand that word ripple?  It is a sound which you hear with your tongue!  You put your tongue out of your mouth to listen to it better! Lastlyand this was the most pitiless torture of allwe heard the rain and it was not raining! This was an infernal invention.  Oh, I knew well enough how Erik obtained it! He filled with little stones a very long and narrow box, broken up inside with wooden and metal projections. The stones, in falling, struck against these projections and rebounded from one to another; and the result was a series of pattering sounds that exactly imitated a rainstorm. Ah, you should have seen us putting out our tongues and dragging ourselves toward the rippling riverbank! Our eyes and ears were full of water, but our tongues were hard and dry as horn! When we reached the mirror, M. de Chagny licked it  and I also licked the glass. It was burning hot! Then we rolled on the floor with a hoarse cry of despair. M. de Chagny put the one pistol that was still loaded to his temple; and I stared at the Punjab lasso at the foot of the iron tree. I knew why the iron tree had returned, in this third change of scene!  The iron tree was waiting for me!  But, as I stared at the Punjab lasso, I saw a thing that made me start so violently that M. de Chagny delayed his attempt at suicide. I took his arm. And then I caught the pistol from him  and then I dragged myself on my knees toward what I had seen. I had discovered, near the Punjab lasso, in a groove in the floor, a blackheaded nail of which I knew the use. At last I had discovered the spring! I felt the nail.  I lifted a radiant face to M. de Chagny.  The blackheaded nail yielded to my pressure.  And then.  And then we saw not a door opened in the wall, but a cellarflap released in the floor. Cool air came up to us from the black hole below. We stooped over that square of darkness as though over a limpid well. With our chins in the cool shade, we drank it in. And we bent lower and lower over the trapdoor. What could there be in that cellar which opened before us? Water? Water to drink? I thrust my arm into the darkness and came upon a stone and another stone  a staircase  a dark staircase leading into the cellar. The viscount wanted to fling himself down the hole; but I, fearing a new trick of the monsters, stopped him, turned on my dark lantern and went down first. The staircase was a winding one and led down into pitchy darkness. But oh, how deliciously cool were the darkness and the stairs? The lake could not be far away. We soon reached the bottom. Our eyes were beginning to accustom themselves to the dark, to distinguish shapes around us  circular shapes  on which I turned the light of my lantern. Barrels! We were in Eriks cellar it was here that he must keep his wine and perhaps his drinkingwater. I knew that Erik was a great lover of good wine. Ah, there was plenty to drink here! M. de Chagny patted the round shapes and kept on saying Barrels! Barrels!  What a lot of barrels!  Indeed, there was quite a number of them, symmetrically arranged in two rows, one on either side of us. They were small barrels and I thought that Erik must have selected them of that size to facilitate their carriage to the house on the lake. We examined them successively, to see if one of them had not a funnel, showing that it had been tapped at some time or another. But all the barrels were hermetically closed. Then, after half lifting one to make sure it was full, we went on our knees and, with the blade of a small knife which I carried, I prepared to stave in the bunghole. At that moment, I seemed to hear, coming from very far, a sort of monotonous chant which I knew well, from often hearing it in the streets of Paris Barrels!  Barrels!  Any barrels to sell?  My hand desisted from its work. M. de Chagny had also heard. He said Thats funny! It sounds as if the barrel were singing! The song was renewed, farther away Barrels!  Barrels!  Any barrels to sell?  Oh, I swear, said the viscount, that the tune dies away in the barrel!  We stood up and went to look behind the barrel. Its inside, said M. de Chagny, its inside! But we heard nothing there and were driven to accuse the bad condition of our senses. And we returned to the bunghole. M. de Chagny put his two hands together underneath it and, with a last effort, I burst the bung. Whats this? cried the viscount. This isnt water! The viscount put his two full hands close to my lantern.  I stooped to look  and at once threw away the lantern with such violence that it broke and went out, leaving us in utter darkness. What I had seen in M. de Chagnys hands  was gunpowder! XXV The Scorpion or the Grasshopper Which? The Persians Narrative Concluded The discovery flung us into a state of alarm that made us forget all our past and present sufferings. We now knew all that the monster meant to convey when he said to Christine Daa Yes or no! If your answer is no, everybody will be dead and buried! Yes, buried under the ruins of the Paris Grand Opera! The monster had given her until eleven oclock in the evening. He had chosen his time well. There would be many people, many members of the human race, up there, in the resplendent theater. What finer retinue could be expected for his funeral? He would go down to the tomb escorted by the whitest shoulders in the world, decked with the richest jewels. Eleven oclock tomorrow evening! We were all to be blown up in the middle of the performance  if Christine Daa said no! Eleven oclock tomorrow evening!  And what else could Christine say but no? Would she not prefer to espouse death itself rather than that living corpse? She did not know that on her acceptance or refusal depended the awful fate of many members of the human race! Eleven oclock tomorrow evening! And we dragged ourselves through the darkness, feeling our way to the stone steps, for the light in the trapdoor overhead that led to the room of mirrors was now extinguished; and we repeated to ourselves Eleven oclock tomorrow evening! At last, I found the staircase. But, suddenly I drew myself up on the first step, for a terrible thought had come to my mind What is the time? Ah, what was the time?  For, after all, eleven oclock tomorrow evening might be now, might be this very moment! Who could tell us the time? We seemed to have been imprisoned in that hell for days and days  for years  since the beginning of the world. Perhaps we should be blown up then and there! Ah, a sound! A crack! Did you hear that?  There, in the corner  good heavens!  Like a sound of machinery!  Again!  Oh, for a light!  Perhaps its the machinery that is to blow everything up!  I tell you, a cracking sound are you deaf? M. de Chagny and I began to yell like madmen. Fear spurred us on. We rushed up the treads of the staircase, stumbling as we went, anything to escape the dark, to return to the mortal light of the room of mirrors! We found the trapdoor still open, but it was now as dark in the room of mirrors as in the cellar which we had left. We dragged ourselves along the floor of the torturechamber, the floor that separated us from the powdermagazine. What was the time? We shouted, we called M. de Chagny to Christine, I to Erik. I reminded him that I had saved his life. But no answer, save that of our despair, of our madness what was the time? We argued, we tried to calculate the time which we had spent there, but we were incapable of reasoning. If only we could see the face of a watch!  Mine had stopped, but M. de Chagnys was still going.  He told me that he had wound it up before dressing for the Opera.  We had not a match upon us.  And yet we must know.  M. de Chagny broke the glass of his watch and felt the two hands.  He questioned the hands of the watch with his fingertips, going by the position of the ring of the watch.  Judging by the space between the hands, he thought it might be just eleven oclock! But perhaps it was not the eleven oclock of which we stood in dread. Perhaps we had still twelve hours before us! Suddenly, I exclaimed Hush! I seemed to hear footsteps in the next room. Someone tapped against the wall. Christine Daas voice said Raoul! Raoul! We were now all talking at once, on either side of the wall. Christine sobbed; she was not sure that she would find M. de Chagny alive. The monster had been terrible, it seemed, had done nothing but rave, waiting for her to give him the yes which she refused. And yet she had promised him that yes, if he would take her to the torturechamber. But he had obstinately declined, and had uttered hideous threats against all the members of the human race! At last, after hours and hours of that hell, he had that moment gone out, leaving her alone to reflect for the last time. Hours and hours? What is the time now? What is the time, Christine? It is eleven oclock! Eleven oclock, all but five minutes! But which eleven oclock? The eleven oclock that is to decide life or death!  He told me so just before he went.  He is terrible.  He is quite mad he tore off his mask and his yellow eyes shot flames!  He did nothing but laugh!  He said, I give you five minutes to spare your blushes! Here, he said, taking a key from the little bag of life and death, here is the little bronze key that opens the two ebony caskets on the mantelpiece in the LouisPhilippe room.  In one of the caskets, you will find a scorpion, in the other, a grasshopper, both very cleverly imitated in Japanese bronze they will say yes or no for you. If you turn the scorpion round, that will mean to me, when I return, that you have said yes. The grasshopper will mean no. And he laughed like a drunken demon. I did nothing but beg and entreat him to give me the key of the torturechamber, promising to be his wife if he granted me that request.  But he told me that there was no future need for that key and that he was going to throw it into the lake!  And he again laughed like a drunken demon and left me. Oh, his last words were, The grasshopper! Be careful of the grasshopper! A grasshopper does not only turn it hops! It hops! And it hops jolly high!  The five minutes had nearly elapsed and the scorpion and the grasshopper were scratching at my brain. Nevertheless, I had sufficient lucidity left to understand that, if the grasshopper were turned, it would hop  and with it many members of the human race! There was no doubt but that the grasshopper controlled an electric current intended to blow up the powdermagazine! M. de Chagny, who seemed to have recovered all his moral force from hearing Christines voice, explained to her, in a few hurried words, the situation in which we and all the Opera were. He told her to turn the scorpion at once. There was a pause. Christine, I cried, where are you? By the scorpion. Dont touch it! The idea had come to mefor I knew my Erikthat the monster had perhaps deceived the girl once more. Perhaps it was the scorpion that would blow everything up. After all, why wasnt he there? The five minutes were long past  and he was not back.  Perhaps he had taken shelter and was waiting for the explosion!  Why had he not returned?  He could not really expect Christine ever to consent to become his voluntary prey!  Why had he not returned? Dont touch the scorpion! I said. Here he comes! cried Christine. I hear him! Here he is! We heard his steps approaching the LouisPhilippe room. He came up to Christine, but did not speak. Then I raised my voice Erik! It is I! Do you know me? With extraordinary calmness, he at once replied So you are not dead in there? Well, then, see that you keep quiet. I tried to speak, but he said coldly Not a word, daroga, or I shall blow everything up. And he added, The honor rests with mademoiselle.  Mademoiselle has not touched the scorpionhow deliberately he spoke!mademoiselle has not touched the grasshopperwith that composure!but it is not too late to do the right thing. There, I open the caskets without a key, for I am a trapdoor lover and I open and shut what I please and as I please. I open the little ebony caskets mademoiselle, look at the little dears inside. Arent they pretty? If you turn the grasshopper, mademoiselle, we shall all be blown up. There is enough gunpowder under our feet to blow up a whole quarter of Paris. If you turn the scorpion, mademoiselle, all that powder will be soaked and drowned. Mademoiselle, to celebrate our wedding, you shall make a very handsome present to a few hundred Parisians who are at this moment applauding a poor masterpiece of Meyerbeers  you shall make them a present of their lives.  For, with your own fair hands, you shall turn the scorpion.  And merrily, merrily, we will be married! A pause; and then If, in two minutes, mademoiselle, you have not turned the scorpion, I shall turn the grasshopper  and the grasshopper, I tell you, hops jolly high! The terrible silence began anew. The Vicomte de Chagny, realizing that there was nothing left to do but pray, went down on his knees and prayed. As for me, my blood beat so fiercely that I had to take my heart in both hands, lest it should burst. At last, we heard Eriks voice The two minutes are past.  Goodbye, mademoiselle.  Hop, grasshopper!  Erik, cried Christine, do you swear to me, monster, do you swear to me that the scorpion is the one to turn?  Yes, to hop at our wedding. Ah, you see! You said, to hop! At our wedding, ingenuous child!  The scorpion opens the ball.  But that will do!  You wont have the scorpion? Then I turn the grasshopper! Erik! Enough! I was crying out in concert with Christine. M. de Chagny was still on his knees, praying. Erik! I have turned the scorpion! Oh, the second through which we passed! Waiting! Waiting to find ourselves in fragments, amid the roar and the ruins! Feeling something crack beneath our feet, hearing an appalling hiss through the open trapdoor, a hiss like the first sound of a rocket! It came softly, at first, then louder, then very loud. But it was not the hiss of fire. It was more like the hiss of water. And now it became a gurgling sound Guggle! Guggle! We rushed to the trapdoor. All our thirst, which vanished when the terror came, now returned with the lapping of the water. The water rose in the cellar, above the barrels, the powderbarrelsBarrels!  Barrels!  Any barrels to sell?and we went down to it with parched throats. It rose to our chins, to our mouths. And we drank. We stood on the floor of the cellar and drank. And we went up the stairs again in the dark, step by step, went up with the water. The water came out of the cellar with us and spread over the floor of the room. If this went on, the whole house on the lake would be swamped. The floor of the torturechamber had itself become a regular little lake, in which our feet splashed. Surely there was water enough now! Erik must turn off the tap! Erik! Erik! That is water enough for the gunpowder! Turn off the tap! Turn off the scorpion! But Erik did not reply. We heard nothing but the water rising it was halfway to our waists! Christine! cried M. de Chagny. Christine! The water is up to our knees! But Christine did not reply.  We heard nothing but the water rising. No one, no one in the next room, no one to turn the tap, no one to turn the scorpion! We were all alone, in the dark, with the dark water that seized us and clasped us and froze us! Erik! Erik! Christine! Christine! By this time, we had lost our foothold and were spinning round in the water, carried away by an irresistible whirl, for the water turned with us and dashed us against the dark mirror, which thrust us back again; and our throats, raised above the whirlpool, roared aloud. Were we to die here, drowned in the torturechamber? I had never seen that. Erik, at the time of the rosy hours of Mazenderan, had never shown me that, through the little invisible window. Erik! Erik! I cried. I saved your life! Remember!  You were sentenced to death! But for me, you would be dead now!  Erik! We whirled around in the water like so much wreckage. But, suddenly, my straying hands seized the trunk of the iron tree! I called M. de Chagny, and we both hung to the branch of the iron tree. And the water rose still higher. Oh! Oh! Can you remember? How much space is there between the branch of the tree and the domeshaped ceiling? Do try to remember!  After all, the water may stop, it must find its level!  There, I think it is stopping!  No, no, oh, horrible!  Swim! Swim for your life! Our arms became entangled in the effort of swimming; we choked; we fought in the dark water; already we could hardly breathe the dark air above the dark water, the air which escaped, which we could hear escaping through some venthole or other. Oh, let us turn and turn and turn until we find the air hole and then glue our mouths to it! But I lost my strength; I tried to lay hold of the walls! Oh, how those glass walls slipped from under my groping fingers!  We whirled round again!  We began to sink!  One last effort!  A last cry Erik!  Christine!  Guggle, guggle, guggle! in our ears. Guggle! Guggle! At the bottom of the dark water, our ears went, Guggle! Guggle! And, before losing consciousness entirely, I seemed to hear, between two guggles Barrels! Barrels! Any barrels to sell? XXVI The End of the Ghosts Love Story The previous chapter marks the conclusion of the written narrative which the Persian left behind him. Notwithstanding the horrors of a situation which seemed definitely to abandon them to their deaths, M. de Chagny and his companion were saved by the sublime devotion of Christine Daa. And I had the rest of the story from the lips of the daroga himself. When I went to see him, he was still living in his little flat in the Rue de Rivoli, opposite the Tuileries. He was very ill, and it required all my ardor as an historian pledged to the truth to persuade him to live the incredible tragedy over again for my benefit. His faithful old servant Darius showed me in to him. The daroga received me at a window overlooking the garden of the Tuileries. He still had his magnificent eyes, but his poor face looked very worn. He had shaved the whole of his head, which was usually covered with an astrakhan cap; he was dressed in a long, plain coat and amused himself by unconsciously twisting his thumbs inside the sleeves; but his mind was quite clear, and he told me his story with perfect lucidity. It seems that, when he opened his eyes, the daroga found himself lying on a bed. M. de Chagny was on a sofa, beside the wardrobe. An angel and a devil were watching over them. After the deceptions and illusions of the torturechamber, the precision of the details of that quiet little middleclass room seemed to have been invented for the express purpose of puzzling the mind of the mortal rash enough to stray into that abode of living nightmare. The wooden bedstead, the waxed mahogany chairs, the chest of drawers, those brasses, the little square antimacassars carefully placed on the backs of the chairs, the clock on the mantelpiece and the harmlesslooking ebony caskets at either end, lastly, the whatnot filled with shells, with red pincushions, with motherofpearl boats and an enormous ostrichegg, the whole discreetly lighted by a shaded lamp standing on a small round table this collection of ugly, peaceable, reasonable furniture, at the bottom of the Opera cellars, bewildered the imagination more than all the late fantastic happenings. And the figure of the masked man seemed all the more formidable in this oldfashioned, neat and trim little frame. It bent down over the Persian and said, in his ear Are you better, daroga?  You are looking at my furniture?  It is all that I have left of my poor unhappy mother. Christine Daa did not say a word she moved about noiselessly, like a sister of charity, who had taken a vow of silence. She brought a cup of cordial, or of hot tea, he did not remember which. The man in the mask took it from her hands and gave it to the Persian. M. de Chagny was still sleeping. Erik poured a drop of rum into the darogas cup and, pointing to the viscount, said He came to himself long before we knew if you were still alive, daroga. He is quite well. He is asleep. We must not wake him. Erik left the room for a moment, and the Persian raised himself on his elbow, looked around him and saw Christine Daa sitting by the fireside. He spoke to her, called her, but he was still very weak and fell back on his pillow. Christine came to him, laid her hand on his forehead and went away again. And the Persian remembered that, as she went, she did not give a glance at M. de Chagny, who, it is true, was sleeping peacefully; and she sat down again in her chair by the chimneycorner, silent as a sister of charity who had taken a vow of silence. Erik returned with some little bottles which he placed on the mantelpiece. And, again in a whisper, so as not to wake M. de Chagny, he said to the Persian, after sitting down and feeling his pulse You are now saved, both of you. And soon I shall take you up to the surface of the earth, to please my wife. Thereupon he rose, without any further explanation, and disappeared once more. The Persian now looked at Christines quiet profile under the lamp. She was reading a tiny book, with gilt edges, like a religious book. There are editions of The Imitation that look like that. The Persian still had in his ears the natural tone in which the other had said, to please my wife. Very gently, he called her again; but Christine was wrapped up in her book and did not hear him. Erik returned, mixed the daroga a draft and advised him not to speak to his wife again nor to anyone, because it might be very dangerous to everybodys health. Eventually, the Persian fell asleep, like M. de Chagny, and did not wake until he was in his own room, nursed by his faithful Darius, who told him that, on the night before, he was found propped against the door of his flat, where he had been brought by a stranger, who rang the bell before going away. As soon as the daroga recovered his strength and his wits, he sent to Count Philippes house to inquire after the viscounts health. The answer was that the young man had not been seen and that Count Philippe was dead. His body was found on the bank of the Opera lake, on the RueScribe side. The Persian remembered the requiem mass which he had heard from behind the wall of the torturechamber, and had no doubt concerning the crime and the criminal. Knowing Erik as he did, he easily reconstructed the tragedy. Thinking that his brother had run away with Christine Daa, Philippe had dashed in pursuit of him along the Brussels Road, where he knew that everything was prepared for the elopement. Failing to find the pair, he hurried back to the Opera, remembered Raouls strange confidence about his fantastic rival and learned that the viscount had made every effort to enter the cellars of the theater and that he had disappeared, leaving his hat in the prima donnas dressingroom beside an empty pistolcase. And the count, who no longer entertained any doubt of his brothers madness, in his turn darted into that infernal underground maze. This was enough, in the Persians eyes, to explain the discovery of the Comte de Chagnys corpse on the shore of the lake, where the siren, Eriks siren, kept watch. The Persian did not hesitate. He determined to inform the police. Now the case was in the hands of an examiningmagistrate called Faure, an incredulous, commonplace, superficial sort of person, (I write as I think), with a mind utterly unprepared to receive a confidence of this kind. M. Faure took down the darogas depositions and proceeded to treat him as a madman. Despairing of ever obtaining a hearing, the Persian sat down to write. As the police did not want his evidence, perhaps the press would be glad of it; and he had just written the last line of the narrative I have quoted in the preceding chapters, when Darius announced the visit of a stranger who refused his name, who would not show his face and declared simply that he did not intend to leave the place until he had spoken to the daroga. The Persian at once felt who his singular visitor was and ordered him to be shown in. The daroga was right. It was the ghost, it was Erik! He looked extremely weak and leaned against the wall, as though he were afraid of falling. Taking off his hat, he revealed a forehead white as wax. The rest of the horrible face was hidden by the mask. The Persian rose to his feet as Erik entered. Murderer of Count Philippe, what have you done with his brother and Christine Daa? Erik staggered under this direct attack, kept silent for a moment, dragged himself to a chair and heaved a deep sigh. Then, speaking in short phrases and gasping for breath between the words Daroga, dont talk to me  about Count Philippe.  He was dead  by the time  I left my house  he was dead  when  the siren sang.  It was an  accident  a sad  a very sad  accident. He fell very awkwardly  but simply and naturally  into the lake!  You lie! shouted the Persian. Erik bowed his head and said I have not come here  to talk about Count Philippe  but to tell you that  I am going  to die.  Where are Raoul de Chagny and Christine Daa? I am going to die.  Raoul de Chagny and Christine Daa? Of love  daroga  I am dying  of love.  That is how it is.  I loved her so!  And I love her still  daroga  and I am dying of love for her, I  I tell you!  If you knew how beautiful she was  when she let me kiss her  alive.  It was the first  time, daroga, the first  time I ever kissed a woman.  Yes, alive.  I kissed her alive  and she looked as beautiful as if she had been dead!  The Persian shook Erik by the arm Will you tell me if she is alive or dead. Why do you shake me like that? asked Erik, making an effort to speak more connectedly. I tell you that I am going to die.  Yes, I kissed her alive.  And now she is dead? I tell you I kissed her just like that, on her forehead  and she did not draw back her forehead from my lips!  Oh, she is a good girl!  As to her being dead, I dont think so; but it has nothing to do with me.  No, no, she is not dead! And no one shall touch a hair of her head! She is a good, honest girl, and she saved your life, daroga, at a moment when I would not have given twopence for your Persian skin. As a matter of fact, nobody bothered about you. Why were you there with that little chap? You would have died as well as he! My word, how she entreated me for her little chap! But I told her that, as she had turned the scorpion, she had, through that very fact, and of her own free will, become engaged to me and that she did not need to have two men engaged to her, which was true enough. As for you, you did not exist, you had ceased to exist, I tell you, and you were going to die with the other!  Only, mark me, daroga, when you were yelling like the devil, because of the water, Christine came to me with her beautiful blue eyes wide open, and swore to me, as she hoped to be saved, that she consented to be my living wife!  Until then, in the depths of her eyes, daroga, I had always seen my dead wife; it was the first time I saw my living wife there. She was sincere, as she hoped to be saved. She would not kill herself. It was a bargain.  Half a minute later, all the water was back in the lake; and I had a hard job with you, daroga, for, upon my honor, I thought you were done for!  However!  There you were!  It was understood that I was to take you both up to the surface of the earth. When, at last, I cleared the LouisPhilippe room of you, I came back alone.  What have you done with the Vicomte de Chagny? asked the Persian, interrupting him. Ah, you see, daroga, I couldnt carry him up like that, at once.  He was a hostage.  But I could not keep him in the house on the lake either, because of Christine; so I locked him up comfortably, I chained him up nicelya whiff of the Mazenderan scent had left him as limp as a ragin the Communists dungeon, which is in the most deserted and remote part of the Opera, below the fifth cellar, where no one ever comes, and where no one ever hears you. Then I came back to Christine. She was waiting for me.  Erik here rose solemnly. Then he continued, but, as he spoke, he was overcome by all his former emotion and began to tremble like a leaf Yes, she was waiting for me  waiting for me erect and alive, a real, living bride  as she hoped to be saved.  And, when I  came forward, more timid than  a little child, she did not run away  no, no  she stayed  she waited for me.  I even believe  daroga  that she put out her forehead  a little  oh, not much  just a little  like a living bride.  And  and  I  kissed her!  I!  I!  I!  And she did not die!  Oh, how good it is, daroga, to kiss somebody on the forehead!  You cant tell!  But I! I!  My mother, daroga, my poor, unhappy mother would never  let me kiss her.  She used to run away  and throw me my mask!  Nor any other woman  ever, ever!  Ah, you can understand, my happiness was so great, I cried. And I fell at her feet, crying  and I kissed her feet  her little feet  crying. Youre crying, too, daroga  and she cried also  the angel cried!  Erik sobbed aloud and the Persian himself could not retain his tears in the presence of that masked man, who, with his shoulders shaking and his hands clutched at his chest, was moaning with pain and love by turns. Yes, daroga  I felt her tears flow on my forehead  on mine, mine!  They were soft  they were sweet!  They trickled under my mask  they mingled with my tears in my eyes  they flowed between my lips.  Listen, daroga, listen to what I did.  I tore off my mask so as not to lose one of her tears  and she did not run away!  And she did not die!  She remained alive, weeping over me, with me. We cried together! I have tasted all the happiness the world can offer! And Erik fell into a chair, choking for breath Ah, I am not going to die yet  presently I shall  but let me cry!  Listen, daroga  listen to this.  While I was at her feet  I heard her say, Poor, unhappy Erik!  And she took my hand!  I had become no more, you know, than a poor dog ready to die for her.  I mean it, daroga!  I held in my hand a ring, a plain gold ring which I had given her  which she had lost  and which I had found again  a weddingring, you know.  I slipped it into her little hand and said, There!  Take it!  Take it for you  and him!  It shall be my weddingpresent  a present from your poor, unhappy Erik.  I know you love the boy  dont cry any more!  She asked me, in a very soft voice, what I meant.


Then I made her understand that, where she was concerned, I was only a poor dog, ready to die for her  but that she could marry the young man when she pleased, because she had cried with me and mingled her tears with mine!  Eriks emotion was so great that he had to tell the Persian not to look at him, for he was choking and must take off his mask. The daroga went to the window and opened it. His heart was full of pity, but he took care to keep his eyes fixed on the trees in the Tuileries gardens, lest he should see the monsters face. I went and released the young man, Erik continued, and told him to come with me to Christine.  They kissed before me in the LouisPhilippe room.  Christine had my ring.  I made Christine swear to come back, one night, when I was dead, crossing the lake from the RueScribe side, and bury me in the greatest secrecy with the gold ring, which she was to wear until that moment.  I told her where she would find my body and what to do with it.  Then Christine kissed me, for the first time, herself, here, on the foreheaddont look, daroga!here, on the forehead  on my forehead, minedont look, daroga!and they went off together.  Christine had stopped crying.  I alone cried.  Daroga, daroga, if Christine keeps her promise, she will come back soon!  The Persian asked him no questions. He was quite reassured as to the fate of Raoul Chagny and Christine Daa; no one could have doubted the word of the weeping Erik that night. The monster resumed his mask and collected his strength to leave the daroga. He told him that, when he felt his end to be very near at hand, he would send him, in gratitude for the kindness which the Persian had once shown him, that which he held dearest in the world all Christine Daas papers, which she had written for Raouls benefit and left with Erik, together with a few objects belonging to her, such as a pair of gloves, a shoebuckle and two pockethandkerchiefs. In reply to the Persians questions, Erik told him that the two young people, as soon as they found themselves free, had resolved to go and look for a priest in some lonely spot where they could hide their happiness and that, with this object in view, they had started from the northern railway station of the world. Lastly, Erik relied on the Persian, as soon as he received the promised relics and papers, to inform the young couple of his death and to advertise it in the Epoque. That was all. The Persian saw Erik to the door of his flat, and Darius helped him down to the street. A cab was waiting for him. Erik stepped in; and the Persian, who had gone back to the window, heard him say to the driver Go to the Opera. And the cab drove off into the night. The Persian had seen the poor, unfortunate Erik for the last time. Three weeks later, the Epoque published this advertisement Erik is dead. Colophon The Phantom of the Opera was published in 1910 by Gaston Leroux. It was translated from French in 1911 by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos. This ebook was produced for Standard Ebooks by Jason Bell, and is based on a transcription produced in 2008 for Project Gutenberg and on digital scans from the Internet Archive. The cover page is adapted from Siskuva Suomalaisesta Oopperasta, a painting completed in 1919 by Magnus Enckell. The cover and title pages feature the League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by The League of Moveable Type. This edition was released on November 7, 2024, 856 p.m. and is based on revision 82b3af6. The first edition of this ebook was released on January 29, 2020, 459 a.m. You can check for updates to this ebook, view its revision history, or download it for different ereading systems at standardebooks.orgebooksgastonlerouxthephantomoftheoperaalexanderteixeirademattos. The volunteerdriven Standard Ebooks project relies on readers like you to submit typos, corrections, and other improvements. Anyone can contribute at standardebooks.org. Endnotes I have the anecdote, which is quite authentic, from M. Pedro Gailhard himself, the late manager of the Opera.  Flash notes drawn on the Bank of St. Farce in France correspond with those drawn on the Bank of Engraving in England. Translators note  M. Pedro Gailhard has himself told me that he created a few additional posts as doorshutters for old stagecarpenters whom he was unwilling to dismiss from the service of the Opera.  In those days, it was still part of the firemens duty to watch over the safety of the Opera house outside the performances; but this service has since been suppressed. I asked M. Pedro Gailhard the reason, and he replied It was because the management was afraid that, in their utter inexperience of the cellars of the Opera, the firemen might set fire to the building!  Like the Persian, I can give no further explanation touching the apparition of this shade. Whereas, in this historic narrative, everything else will be normally explained, however abnormal the course of events may seem, I can not give the reader expressly to understand what the Persian meant by the words, It is someone much worse than that! The reader must try to guess for himself, for I promised M. Pedro Gailhard, the former manager of the Opera, to keep his secret regarding the extremely interesting and useful personality of the wandering, cloaked shade which, while condemning itself to live in the cellars of the Opera, rendered such immense services to those who, on gala evenings, for instance, venture to stray away from the stage. I am speaking of state services; and, upon my word of honor, I can say no more.  All the water had to be exhausted, in the building of the Opera. To give an idea of the amount of water that was pumped up, I can tell the reader that it represented the area of the courtyard of the Louvre and a height half as deep again as the towers of Notre Dame. And nevertheless the engineers had to leave a lake.  These two pairs of boots, which were placed, according to the Persians papers, just between the set piece and the scene from the Roi de Lahore, on the spot where Joseph Buquet was found hanging, were never discovered. They must have been taken by some stagecarpenter or doorshutter.  An official report from Tonkin, received in Paris at the end of July, 1909, relates how the famous pirate chief De Tham was tracked, together with his men, by our soldiers; and how all of them succeeded in escaping, thanks to this trick of the reeds.  Daroga is Persian for chief of police.  The Persian might easily have admitted that Eriks fate also interested himself, for he was well aware that, if the government of Teheran had learned that Erik was still alive, it would have been all up with the modest pension of the erstwhile daroga. It is only fair, however, to add that the Persian had a noble and generous heart; and I do not doubt for a moment that the catastrophes which he feared for others greatly occupied his mind. His conduct, throughout this business, proves it and is above all praise.  It is very natural that, at the time when the Persian was writing, he should take so many precautions against any spirit of incredulity on the part of those who were likely to read his narrative. Nowadays, when we have all seen this sort of room, his precautions would be superfluous.  Even so, I am convinced that it would be easy to reach it by draining the lake, as I have repeatedly requested the Ministry of Fine Arts to do. I was speaking about it to M. DujardinBeaumetz, the undersecretary for fine arts, only fortyeight hours before the publication of this book. Who knows but that the score of Don Juan Triumphant might yet be discovered in the house on the lake?  See the interview of the special correspondent of the Matin, with MohammedAli Bey, on the day after the entry of the Salonika troops into Constantinople.  Epilogue I have now told the singular, but veracious story of the Opera ghost. As I declared on the first page of this work, it is no longer possible to deny that Erik really lived. There are today so many proofs of his existence within the reach of everybody that we can follow Eriks actions logically through the whole tragedy of the Chagnys. There is no need to repeat here how greatly the case excited the capital. The kidnapping of the artist, the death of the Comte de Chagny under such exceptional conditions, the disappearance of his brother, the drugging of the gasman at the Opera and of his two assistants what tragedies, what passions, what crimes had surrounded the idyll of Raoul and the sweet and charming Christine!  What had become of that wonderful, mysterious artist of whom the world was never, never to hear again?  She was represented as the victim of a rivalry between the two brothers; and nobody suspected what had really happened, nobody understood that, as Raoul and Christine had both disappeared, both had withdrawn far from the world to enjoy a happiness which they would not have cared to make public after the inexplicable death of Count Philippe.  They took the train one day from the northern railway station of the world.  Possibly, I too shall take the train at that station, one day, and go and seek around thy lakes, O Norway, O silent Scandinavia, for the perhaps still living traces of Raoul and Christine and also of Mamma Valrius, who disappeared at the same time!  Possibly, some day, I shall hear the lonely echoes of the North repeat the singing of her who knew the Angel of Music!  Long after the case was pigeonholed by the unintelligent care of M. le Juge dInstruction Faure, the newspapers made efforts, at intervals, to fathom the mystery. One evening paper alone, which knew all the gossip of the theaters, said We recognize the touch of the Opera ghost. And even that was written by way of irony. The Persian alone knew the whole truth and held the main proofs, which came to him with the pious relics promised by the ghost. It fell to my lot to complete those proofs with the aid of the daroga himself. Day by day, I kept him informed of the progress of my inquiries; and he directed them. He had not been to the Opera for years and years, but he had preserved the most accurate recollection of the building, and there was no better guide than he possible to help me discover its most secret recesses. He also told me where to gather further information, whom to ask; and he sent me to call on M. Poligny, at a moment when the poor man was nearly drawing his last breath. I had no idea that he was so very ill, and I shall never forget the effect which my questions about the ghost produced upon him. He looked at me as if I were the devil and answered only in a few incoherent sentences, which showed, howeverand that was the main thingthe extent of the perturbation which O. G., in his time, had brought into that already very restless life (for M. Poligny was what people call a man of pleasure). When I came and told the Persian of the poor result of my visit to M. Poligny, the daroga gave a faint smile and said Poligny never knew how far that extraordinary blackguard of an Erik humbugged him.The Persian, by the way, spoke of Erik sometimes as a demigod and sometimes as the lowest of the lowPoligny was superstitious and Erik knew it. Erik knew most things about the public and private affairs of the Opera. When M. Poligny heard a mysterious voice tell him, in Box Five, of the manner in which he used to spend his time and abuse his partners confidence, he did not wait to hear any more. Thinking at first that it was a voice from Heaven, he believed himself damned; and then, when the voice began to ask for money, he saw that he was being victimized by a shrewd blackmailer to whom Debienne himself had fallen a prey. Both of them, already tired of management for various reasons, went away without trying to investigate further into the personality of that curious O. G., who had forced such a singular memorandumbook upon them. They bequeathed the whole mystery to their successors and heaved a sigh of relief when they were rid of a business that had puzzled them without amusing them in the least. I then spoke of the two successors and expressed my surprise that, in his Memoirs of a Manager, M. Moncharmin should describe the Opera ghosts behavior at such length in the first part of the book and hardly mention it at all in the second. In reply to this, the Persian, who knew the Memoirs as thoroughly as if he had written them himself, observed that I should find the explanation of the whole business if I would just recollect the few lines which Moncharmin devotes to the ghost in the second part aforesaid. I quote these lines, which are particularly interesting because they describe the very simple manner in which the famous incident of the twentythousand francs was closed As for O. G., some of whose curious tricks I have related in the first part of my Memoirs, I will only say that he redeemed by one spontaneous fine action all the worry which he had caused my dear friend and partner and, I am bound to say, myself. He felt, no doubt, that there are limits to a joke, especially when it is so expensive and when the commissary of police has been informed, for, at the moment when we had made an appointment in our office with M. Mifroid to tell him the whole story, a few days after the disappearance of Christine Daa, we found, on Richards table, a large envelope, inscribed, in red ink, With O. G.s compliments. It contained the large sum of money which he had succeeded in playfully extracting, for the time being, from the treasury. Richard was at once of the opinion that we must be content with that and drop the business. I agreed with Richard. Alls well that ends well. What do you say, O. G.? Of course, Moncharmin, especially after the money had been restored, continued to believe that he had, for a short while, been the butt of Richards sense of humor, whereas Richard, on his side, was convinced that Moncharmin had amused himself by inventing the whole of the affair of the Opera ghost, in order to revenge himself for a few jokes. I asked the Persian to tell me by what trick the ghost had taken twentythousand francs from Richards pocket in spite of the safetypin. He replied that he had not gone into this little detail, but that, if I myself cared to make an investigation on the spot, I should certainly find the solution to the riddle in the managers office by remembering that Erik had not been nicknamed the trapdoor lover for nothing. I promised the Persian to do so as soon as I had time, and I may as well tell the reader at once that the results of my investigation were perfectly satisfactory; and I hardly believed that I should ever discover so many undeniable proofs of the authenticity of the feats ascribed to the ghost. The Persians manuscript, Christine Daas papers, the statements made to me by the people who used to work under MM. Richard and Moncharmin, by little Meg herself (the worthy Madame Giry, I am sorry to say, is no more) and by Sorelli, who is now living in retirement at Louveciennes all the documents relating to the existence of the ghost, which I propose to deposit in the archives of the Opera, have been checked and confirmed by a number of important discoveries of which I am justly proud. I have not been able to find the house on the lake, Erik having blocked up all the secret entrances.12 On the other hand, I have discovered the secret passage of the Communists, the planking of which is falling to pieces in parts, and also the trapdoor through which Raoul and the Persian penetrated into the cellars of the operahouse. In the Communists dungeon, I noticed numbers of initials traced on the walls by the unfortunate people confined in it; and among these were an R and a C. R. C. Raoul de Chagny. The letters are there to this day. If the reader will visit the Opera one morning and ask leave to stroll where he pleases, without being accompanied by a stupid guide, let him go to Box Five and knock with his fist or stick on the enormous column that separates this from the stagebox. He will find that the column sounds hollow. After that, do not be astonished by the suggestion that it was occupied by the voice of the ghost there is room inside the column for two men. If you are surprised that, when the various incidents occurred, no one turned round to look at the column, you must remember that it presented the appearance of solid marble, and that the voice contained in it seemed rather to come from the opposite side, for, as we have seen, the ghost was an expert ventriloquist. The column was elaborately carved and decorated with the sculptors chisel; and I do not despair of one day discovering the ornament that could be raised or lowered at will, so as to admit of the ghosts mysterious correspondence with Mame Giry and of his generosity. However, all these discoveries are nothing, to my mind, compared with that which I was able to make, in the presence of the actingmanager, in the managers office, within a couple of inches from the deskchair, and which consisted of a trapdoor, the width of a board in the flooring and the length of a mans forearm and no longer; a trapdoor that falls back like the lid of a box; a trapdoor through which I can see a hand come and dexterously fumble at the pocket of a swallowtail coat. That is the way the fortythousand francs went!  And that also is the way by which, through some trick or other, they were returned. Speaking about this to the Persian, I said So we may take it, as the fortythousand francs were returned, that Erik was simply amusing himself with that memorandumbook of his? Dont you believe it! he replied. Erik wanted money. Thinking himself without the pale of humanity, he was restrained by no scruples and he employed his extraordinary gifts of dexterity and imagination, which he had received by way of compensation for his extraordinary ugliness, to prey upon his fellowmen. His reason for restoring the fortythousand francs, of his own accord, was that he no longer wanted it. He had relinquished his marriage with Christine Daa. He had relinquished everything above the surface of the earth. According to the Persians account, Erik was born in a small town not far from Rouen. He was the son of a mastermason. He ran away at an early age from his fathers house, where his ugliness was a subject of horror and terror to his parents. For a time, he frequented the fairs, where a showman exhibited him as the living corpse. He seems to have crossed the whole of Europe, from fair to fair, and to have completed his strange education as an artist and magician at the very fountainhead of art and magic, among the Gipsies. A period of Eriks life remained quite obscure. He was seen at the fair of NijniNovgorod, where he displayed himself in all his hideous glory. He already sang as nobody on this earth had ever sung before; he practised ventriloquism and gave displays of legerdemain so extraordinary that the caravans returning to Asia talked about it during the whole length of their journey. In this way, his reputation penetrated the walls of the palace at Mazenderan, where the little sultana, the favorite of the ShahinShah, was boring herself to death. A dealer in furs, returning to Samarkand from NijniNovgorod, told of the marvels which he had seen performed in Eriks tent. The trader was summoned to the palace and the daroga of Mazenderan was told to question him. Next the daroga was instructed to go and find Erik. He brought him to Persia, where for some months Eriks will was law. He was guilty of not a few horrors, for he seemed not to know the difference between good and evil. He took part calmly in a number of political assassinations; and he turned his diabolical inventive powers against the Emir of Afghanistan, who was at war with the Persian empire. The Shah took a liking to him. This was the time of the rosy hours of Mazenderan, of which the darogas narrative has given us a glimpse. Erik had very original ideas on the subject of architecture and thought out a palace much as a conjuror contrives a trickcasket. The Shah ordered him to construct an edifice of this kind. Erik did so; and the building appears to have been so ingenious that His Majesty was able to move about in it unseen and to disappear without a possibility of the tricks being discovered. When the ShahinShah found himself the possessor of this gem, he ordered Eriks yellow eyes to be put out. But he reflected that, even when blind, Erik would still be able to build so remarkable a house for another sovereign; and also that, as long as Erik was alive, someone would know the secret of the wonderful palace. Eriks death was decided upon, together with that of all the laborers who had worked under his orders. The execution of this abominable decree devolved upon the daroga of Mazenderan. Erik had shown him some slight services and procured him many a hearty laugh. He saved Erik by providing him with the means of escape, but nearly paid with his head for his generous indulgence. Fortunately for the daroga, a corpse, halfeaten by the birds of prey, was found on the shore of the Caspian Sea, and was taken for Eriks body, because the darogas friends had dressed the remains in clothing that belonged to Erik. The daroga was let off with the loss of the imperial favor, the confiscation of his property and an order of perpetual banishment. As a member of the Royal House, however, he continued to receive a monthly pension of a few hundred francs from the Persian treasury; and on this he came to live in Paris. As for Erik, he went to Asia Minor and thence to Constantinople, where he entered the Sultans employment. In explanation of the services which he was able to render a monarch haunted by perpetual terrors, I need only say that it was Erik who constructed all the famous trapdoors and secret chambers and mysterious strongboxes which were found at YildizKiosk after the last Turkish revolution. He also invented those automata, dressed like the Sultan and resembling the Sultan in all respects,13 which made people believe that the Commander of the Faithful was awake at one place, when, in reality, he was asleep elsewhere. Of course, he had to leave the Sultans service for the same reasons that made him fly from Persia he knew too much. Then, tired of his adventurous, formidable and monstrous life, he longed to be someone like everybody else. And he became a contractor, like any ordinary contractor, building ordinary houses with ordinary bricks. He tendered for part of the foundations in the Opera. His estimate was accepted. When he found himself in the cellars of the enormous playhouse, his artistic, fantastic, wizard nature resumed the upper hand. Besides, was he not as ugly as ever? He dreamed of creating for his own use a dwelling unknown to the rest of the earth, where he could hide from mens eyes for all time. The reader knows and guesses the rest. It is all in keeping with this incredible and yet veracious story. Poor, unhappy Erik! Shall we pity him? Shall we curse him? He asked only to be someone, like everybody else. But he was too ugly! And he had to hide his genius or use it to play tricks with, when, with an ordinary face, he would have been one of the most distinguished of mankind! He had a heart that could have held the empire of the world; and, in the end, he had to content himself with a cellar. Ah, yes, we must needs pity the Opera ghost. I have prayed over his mortal remains, that God might show him mercy notwithstanding his crimes. Yes, I am sure, quite sure that I prayed beside his body, the other day, when they took it from the spot where they were burying the phonographic records. It was his skeleton. I did not recognize it by the ugliness of the head, for all men are ugly when they have been dead as long as that, but by the plain gold ring which he wore and which Christine Daa had certainly slipped on his finger, when she came to bury him in accordance with her promise. The skeleton was lying near the little well, in the place where the Angel of Music first held Christine Daa fainting in his trembling arms, on the night when he carried her down to the cellars of the operahouse. And, now, what do they mean to do with that skeleton? Surely they will not bury it in the common grave!  I say that the place of the skeleton of the Opera ghost is in the archives of the National Academy of Music. It is no ordinary skeleton. Imprint This ebook is the product of many hours of hard work by volunteers for Standard Ebooks, and builds on the hard work of other literature lovers made possible by the public domain. This particular ebook is based on a transcription from Project Gutenberg and on digital scans from the Internet Archive. The source text and artwork in this ebook are believed to be in the United States public domain; that is, they are believed to be free of copyright restrictions in the United States. They may still be copyrighted in other countries, so users located outside of the United States must check their local laws before using this ebook. The creators of, and contributors to, this ebook dedicate their contributions to the worldwide public domain via the terms in the CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. For full license information, see the Uncopyright at the end of this ebook. Standard Ebooks is a volunteerdriven project that produces ebook editions of public domain literature using modern typography, technology, and editorial standards, and distributes them free of cost. You can download this and other ebooks carefully produced for true book lovers at standardebooks.org. Prologue In which the author of this singular work informs the reader how he acquired the certainty that the Opera Ghost really existed. The Opera ghost really existed. He was not, as was long believed, a creature of the imagination of the artists, the superstition of the managers, or a product of the absurd and impressionable brains of the young ladies of the ballet, their mothers, the boxkeepers, the cloakroom attendants or the concierge. Yes, he existed in flesh and blood, although he assumed the complete appearance of a real phantom; that is to say, of a spectral shade. When I began to ransack the archives of the National Academy of Music I was at once struck by the surprising coincidences between the phenomena ascribed to the ghost and the most extraordinary and fantastic tragedy that ever excited the Paris upper classes; and I soon conceived the idea that this tragedy might reasonably be explained by the phenomena in question. The events do not date more than thirty years back; and it would not be difficult to find at the present day, in the foyer of the ballet, old men of the highest respectability, men upon whose word one could absolutely rely, who would remember as though they happened yesterday the mysterious and dramatic conditions that attended the kidnapping of Christine Daa, the disappearance of the Vicomte de Chagny and the death of his elder brother, Count Philippe, whose body was found on the bank of the lake that exists in the lower cellars of the Opera on the RueScribe side. But none of those witnesses had until that day thought that there was any reason for connecting the more or less legendary figure of the Opera ghost with that terrible story. The truth was slow to enter my mind, puzzled by an inquiry that at every moment was complicated by events which, at first sight, might be looked upon as superhuman; and more than once I was within an ace of abandoning a task in which I was exhausting myself in the hopeless pursuit of a vain image. At last, I received the proof that my presentiments had not deceived me, and I was rewarded for all my efforts on the day when I acquired the certainty that the Opera ghost was more than a mere shade. On that day, I had spent long hours over The Memoirs of a Manager, the light and frivolous work of the tooskeptical Moncharmin, who, during his term at the Opera, understood nothing of the mysterious behavior of the ghost and who was making all the fun of it that he could at the very moment when he became the first victim of the curious financial operation that went on inside the magic envelope. I had just left the library in despair, when I met the delightful actingmanager of our National Academy, who stood chatting on a landing with a lively and wellgroomed little old man, to whom he introduced me gaily. The actingmanager knew all about my investigations and how eagerly and unsuccessfully I had been trying to discover the whereabouts of the examining magistrate in the famous Chagny case, M. Faure. Nobody knew what had become of him, alive or dead; and here he was back from Canada, where he had spent fifteen years, and the first thing he had done, on his return to Paris, was to come to the secretarial offices at the Opera and ask for a free seat. The little old man was M. Faure himself. We spent a good part of the evening together and he told me the whole Chagny case as he had understood it at the time. He was bound to conclude in favor of the madness of the viscount and the accidental death of the elder brother, for lack of evidence to the contrary; but he was nevertheless persuaded that a terrible tragedy had taken place between the two brothers in connection with Christine Daa. He could not tell me what became of Christine or the viscount. When I mentioned the ghost, he only laughed. He, too, had been told of the curious manifestations that seemed to point to the existence of an abnormal being, residing in one of the most mysterious corners of the Opera, and he knew the story of the envelope; but he had never seen anything in it worthy of his attention as magistrate in charge of the Chagny case, and it was as much as he had done to listen to the evidence of a witness who appeared of his own accord and declared that he had often met the ghost. This witness was none other than the man whom all Paris called the Persian and who was wellknown to every subscriber to the Opera. The magistrate took him for a visionary. I was immensely interested by this story of the Persian. I wanted, if there were still time, to find this valuable and eccentric witness. My luck began to improve and I discovered him in his little flat in the Rue de Rivoli, where he had lived ever since and where he died five months after my visit. I was at first inclined to be suspicious; but when the Persian had told me, with childlike candor, all that he knew about the ghost and had handed me the proofs of the ghosts existenceincluding the strange correspondence of Christine Daato do as I pleased with, I was no longer able to doubt. No, the ghost was not a myth! I have, I know, been told that this correspondence may have been forged from first to last by a man whose imagination had certainly been fed on the most seductive tales; but fortunately I discovered some of Christines writing outside the famous bundle of letters and, on a comparison between the two, all my doubts were removed. I also went into the past history of the Persian and found that he was an upright man, incapable of inventing a story that might have defeated the ends of justice. This, moreover, was the opinion of the more serious people who, at one time or other, were mixed up in the Chagny case, who were friends of the Chagny family, to whom I showed all my documents and set forth all my inferences. In this connection, I should like to print a few lines which I received from General D Sir I can not urge you too strongly to publish the results of your inquiry. I remember perfectly that, a few weeks before the disappearance of that great singer, Christine Daa, and the tragedy which threw the whole of the Faubourg SaintGermain into mourning, there was a great deal of talk, in the foyer of the ballet, on the subject of the ghost; and I believe that it only ceased to be discussed in consequence of the later affair that excited us all so greatly.