XIII. LA LYRE D'APOLLON

XIII

APOLLON'S LYRE

Thus they reached the rooftops. She glided over them, light and familiar, like a swallow. Their gaze, between the three domes and the triangular pediment, swept across the deserted space. She breathed deeply, above Paris whose entire working valley lay spread out before them. She looked at Raoul with trust. She called him close to her, and side by side they walked, up there so high, on the zinc streets, in the cast-iron avenues; they mirrored their twin shape in the vast reservoirs full of still water where, in the good season, the dance urchins, some twenty little boys, dive in and learn to swim. The shadow behind them, ever faithful to their steps, had risen, flattening itself upon the roofs, lengthening with movements of black wings, at the crossings of the iron alleys, circling around the basins, silently rounding the domes; and the unhappy children suspected nothing of its presence, when at last they sat down, trusting, under the high protection of Apollon, who with his gesture of bronze raised his prodigious lyre, in the heart of a sky on fire.

A flaming spring evening closed around them. Clouds, which had just received from the sunset their light robe of gold and purple, passed slowly, trailing it above the young people; and Christine said to Raoul: "Soon, we shall go farther and faster than the clouds, to the end of the world, and then you will abandon me, Raoul. But if, at the moment for you to carry me off, I should no longer consent to follow you, well then, Raoul, you would carry me away!"

With what force, seeming directed against herself, she said this, while she pressed nervously against him. The young man was struck by it.

--Do you fear then to change your mind, Christine?

--I do not know, she said, shaking her head strangely. It is a demon!

And she shuddered. She nestled into his arms with a moan.

--Now, I am afraid to go back to living with him: in the earth!

--What forces you to return there, Christine?

--If I do not return to him, great misfortunes may come to pass!... But I can no more!... I can no more!... I know well that one must pity those who live "beneath the earth..." But that one is too horrible! And yet, the moment approaches; I have but one day left? and if I do not come, it is he who will come seek me with his voice. He will drag me with him, to his place, beneath the earth, and he will fall to his knees before me, with his death's head! And he will tell me he loves me! And he will weep! Ah! those tears! Raoul! those tears in the two black holes of the death's head! I can no longer bear to see those tears flow!

She wrung her hands frightfully, while Raoul, himself seized by this contagious despair, pressed her to his heart: "No! no! You shall hear him say he loves you no more! You shall see his tears no more! Let us flee!... At once, Christine, let us flee!" And already he would have drawn her away.

But she stopped him.

--No, no, she said, shaking her head painfully, not now!... That would be too cruel... Let him hear me sing once more tomorrow evening, a last time... and then, we shall go. At midnight, you will come fetch me in my dressing room; at midnight exactly. At that moment, he will be waiting for me in the dining room of the lake... we shall be free and you will carry me off!... Even if I refuse, you must swear me this, Raoul... for I feel well that, this time, if I return there, I may never come back...

She added:

--You cannot understand!...

And she gave a sigh to which it seemed to her that, behind her, another sigh had answered.

--Did you not hear?

Her teeth chattered.

--No, Raoul assured her, I heard nothing...

--It is too awful, she confessed, to tremble all the time like this!... And yet, here we run no danger; we are at home, at mine, in the sky, in the open air, in broad daylight. The sun is in flames, and the night birds do not like to look upon the sun! I have never seen _him_ in the light of day... It must be horrible!... she stammered, turning toward Raoul eyes gone wild. Ah! the first time I _saw_ him!... I thought _he_ was going to die!

--Why? asked Raoul, truly frightened by the tone this strange and formidable confidence was taking... why did you think he was going to die?

--BECAUSE I HAD SEEN HIM!!!

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

This time Raoul and Christine turned around at the same moment.

--There is someone here who suffers! said Raoul... perhaps a wounded man... Did you hear?

--As for me, I could not tell you, Christine confessed, _even when he is not there, my ears are full of his sighs_... However, if you heard...

They stood up, looked around them... They were quite alone on the immense leaden roof. They sat down again. Raoul asked:

--How did you see him for the first time?

--I had been hearing him for three months without seeing him. The first time I "heard" him, I thought, like you, that this adorable voice, which had suddenly begun to sing _at my side_, was singing in a neighboring dressing room. I went out, and searched for it everywhere; but my room is very isolated, Raoul, as you know, and it was impossible for me to find the voice outside my room, while it remained faithfully in my room. And not only did it sing, but it spoke to me, it answered my questions like a true man's voice, with this difference, that it was beautiful like the voice of an angel. How to explain so incredible a phenomenon? I had never ceased to think of the "angel of music" that my poor papa had promised to send me as soon as he should be dead. I dare speak to you of such childishness, Raoul, because you knew my father, and that he loved you and that you believed, at the same time as I, when you were very small, in the "angel of music," and that I am quite sure you will neither smile nor mock. I had kept, my friend, the tender and credulous soul of little Lotte, and it was certainly not the company of Mamma Valérius that would have taken it from me. I carried that little all-white soul in my naive hands, and naively I stretched it out, I offered it to the man's voice, believing I offered it to the angel. The fault was certainly, a little, my adoptive mother's, to whom I hid nothing of the inexplicable phenomenon. She was the first to say to me: "It must be the angel; in any case, you can always ask him." That is what I did, and the man's voice answered me that indeed it was the angel voice I awaited and that my father had promised me on dying. From that moment, a great intimacy was established between the voice and me, and I had in it an absolute confidence. It told me it had descended to earth to make me taste the supreme joys of eternal art, and it asked permission to give me music lessons, every day. I consented with fervent ardor and missed none of the appointments it gave me, from the first hour, in my room, when that corner of the Opera was quite deserted. To tell you what those lessons were! You yourself, who have heard the voice, cannot form an idea of it.

--Evidently not! I cannot form an idea of it, affirmed the young man. With what did you accompany yourself?

--With a music I know not, which was behind the wall and which was of incomparable exactness. And then it would seem, my friend, that the Voice knew exactly to what point my father, on dying, had left me in my studies and with what simple method also he had worked; and thus, recalling or, rather, my organ recalling all past lessons and benefiting at once, with the present ones, from them, I made prodigious progress such that, under other conditions, they would have required years! Think that I am rather delicate, my friend, and that my voice was at first poorly defined; the low strings were naturally little developed; the high tones were rather harsh and the middle veiled. It was against all these faults that my father had fought and triumphed for a moment; it is these faults that the Voice definitively vanquished. Little by little, I increased the volume of sounds in proportions that my past weakness did not permit me to hope for: I learned to give my breath the widest range. But above all the Voice confided to me the secret of developing the chest sounds in a soprano voice. Finally it enveloped all that with the sacred fire of inspiration, it awoke in me an ardent, devouring, sublime life. The Voice had the virtue, in making itself heard, of raising me to it. It put me in unison with its superb flight. The soul of the Voice dwelt in my mouth and breathed harmony there!

After some weeks, I no longer recognized myself when I sang!... I was even terrified by it... I feared, for an instant, that there was some sorcery beneath; but Mamma Valérius reassured me. She said she knew me too simple a girl to give hold to the demon.

My progress had remained secret, between the Voice, Mamma Valérius and me, by the Voice's own order. Strange thing, outside the room, I sang with my everyday voice, and no one noticed anything. I did all the Voice wished. It said to me: "We must wait... you shall see! we shall astonish Paris!" And I waited. I lived in a kind of ecstatic dream where the Voice commanded. Meanwhile, Raoul, I caught sight of you, one evening, in the hall. My joy was such that I did not even think to hide it on returning to my room. To our misfortune, the Voice was already there and it saw well, by my air, that there was something new. It asked me "what was the matter" and I saw no inconvenience in telling it our sweet story, nor in hiding the place you held in my heart. Then the Voice fell silent: I called it, it did not answer; I beseeched it, in vain. I had a mad terror that it had gone forever! Would to God, my friend!... I returned home that evening in a desperate state. I threw myself on Mamma Valérius's neck saying to her: "You know, the Voice is gone! It may never return!" And she was as frightened as I and asked me for explanations. I told her all. She said to me: "Of course! the Voice is jealous!" This, my friend, made me reflect that I loved you...

Here Christine stopped a moment. She bent her head upon Raoul's breast and they remained silent a while, in each other's arms. The emotion that gripped them was such that they did not see, or rather did not feel shift, a few steps from them, the creeping shadow of two great black wings which drew near, along the roofs, so close, so close to them, that it could, in closing upon them, have smothered them...

--The next day, Christine resumed with a deep sigh, I returned to my room all pensive. The Voice was there. O my friend! It spoke to me with great sadness. It declared to me plainly that, if I must give my heart on earth, it, the Voice, had but to return to heaven. And it said this with such an accent of _human_ grief that I should have, from that day, been wary and begun to understand that I had been strangely victim of my abused senses. But my faith in this apparition of Voice, to which was so intimately joined the thought of my father, was still entire. I feared nothing so much as to hear it no more; on the other hand, I had reflected on the feeling that bore me toward you; I had measured all its useless danger; I did not even know if you remembered me. Whatever happened, your position in the world forbade me forever the thought of an honest union; I swore to the Voice that you were nothing to me but a brother and that you would never be anything else and that my heart was empty of all earthly love... And here is the reason, my friend, why I turned away my eyes when, on the stage or in the corridors, you sought to attract my attention, the reason why I did not recognize you... why I did not see you!... During this time, the lesson hours, between the Voice and me, passed in a divine delirium. Never had the beauty of sounds possessed me to this point and one day the Voice said to me: "Go now, Christine Daaé, you can bring to men a little of the music of heaven!"

How, that evening, which was gala night, did Carlotta not come to the theater? How was I called to replace her? I know not; but I sang... I sang with an unknown transport; I was light as if one had given me wings; I thought for an instant that my flaming soul had left its body!

--O Christine! said Raoul, whose eyes were moist at this memory, that evening, my heart vibrated at each accent of your voice. I saw your tears flow on your pale cheeks, and I wept with you. How could you sing, sing while weeping?

--My strength abandoned me, said Christine, I closed my eyes... When I opened them again, you were at my side! But the Voice was there too, Raoul!... I feared for you and again, this time, I would not recognize you and I began to laugh when you reminded me that you had picked up my scarf in the sea!...

Alas! one does not deceive the Voice!... It had well recognized you, it!... And the Voice was jealous!... The two following days, it made atrocious scenes for me... It said to me: "You love him! if you did not love him, you would not flee him! You would shake an old friend's hand, as with all the others... If you did not love him, you would not fear to find yourself, in your room, alone with him and with me!... If you did not love him, you would not chase him away!...

--Enough! I said to the irritated Voice; tomorrow, I must go to Perros, on my father's tomb; I shall ask M. Raoul de Chagny to accompany me there.

--As you wish, it answered, but know that I too shall be at Perros, for I am everywhere you are, Christine, and if you are still worthy of me, if you have not lied to me, I shall play for you, at midnight striking, on your father's tomb, the _Resurrection of Lazarus_, with the dead man's violin.

Thus, my friend, I was led to write you the letter that brought you to Perros. How could I have been deceived to this point? How, before the Voice's so personal preoccupations, did I not suspect some imposture? Alas! I no longer possessed myself: I was its thing!... And the means the Voice disposed of should easily abuse a child such as I!"

--But finally, cried Raoul, at this point of Christine's tale where she seemed to deplore with tears the too-perfect innocence of a mind little "forewarned"... but finally you soon knew the truth!... How did you not at once leave that abominable nightmare?

--Learn the truth!... Raoul!... Leave that nightmare!... But I entered, unhappy one, into that nightmare only from the day I knew that truth!... Be silent! Be silent! I have told you nothing... and now that we are about to descend from the sky to the earth, pity me, Raoul!... pity me!... One evening, fatal evening... see... it was the evening when so many misfortunes were to happen... the evening when Carlotta could believe herself transformed on stage into a hideous toad and began to utter cries as if she had lived all her life at the edge of marshes... the evening when the hall was suddenly plunged into darkness, under the thunderclap of the chandelier crashing on the parquet... There were dead and wounded that evening, and the whole theater rang with the saddest clamors.

My first thought, Raoul, in the burst of the catastrophe, was at once for you and for the Voice, for you were, at that time, the two equal halves of my heart. I was at once reassured as concerned you, for I had seen you in your brother's box and I knew you ran no danger. As for the Voice, it had announced it would attend the performance, and I feared for it; yes, really feared, as if it had been "an ordinary living person capable of dying." I said to myself: "My God! the chandelier may have crushed the Voice." I found myself then on the stage, and so distraught that I was about to run into the hall to seek the Voice among the dead and wounded, when the idea came to me that, if nothing unfortunate had befallen it, it must already be in my room, where it would hasten to reassure me. I bounded to my room. The Voice was not there. I locked myself in my room, and tears in my eyes, I besought it, if it still lived, to manifest itself to me. The Voice did not answer, but suddenly I heard a long, an admirable moan that I knew well. It was the plaint of Lazarus, when, at Jesus's voice, he begins to lift his eyelids and see the daylight again. They were the weeping of my father's violin. I recognized Daaé's bow stroke, the same, Raoul, that once held us motionless on the roads of Perros, the same that had "enchanted" the night of the cemetery. And then, it was again, on the invisible and triumphant instrument, the cry of joy of Life, and the Voice, making itself heard at last, began to sing the dominating and sovereign phrase: "Come! and believe in me! Those who believe in me shall live again! Walk! Those who have believed in me cannot die!" I could not tell you the impression I received from that music, which sang eternal life at the moment when, near us, poor unhappy ones, crushed by that fatal chandelier, souls were departing... It seemed to me it commanded me too to come, to rise, to walk toward it. It drew away, I followed. "Come! and believe in me!" I believed in it, I came... I came, and, extraordinary thing, my room, before my steps, seemed to lengthen... lengthen... Evidently, there must have been, there, an effect of mirrors... for I had the mirror before me... And suddenly, I found myself outside my room, without knowing how.

Raoul here abruptly interrupted the young girl:

--What! Without knowing how? Christine Christine! One should try to dream no more!

--Eh! poor friend, I was not dreaming! I found myself outside my room without knowing how! You who saw me disappear from my room, one evening, my friend, you might perhaps explain that to me, but I cannot!... I can tell you but one thing, which is that, finding myself before my mirror, I no longer saw it suddenly before me and I sought it behind... but there was no more mirror, no more room... I was in a dark corridor... I was afraid and I cried out!...

All was black around me; far off, a faint red glow lit a corner of wall, a bit of crossing. I cried. My voice alone filled the walls, for the singing and violins had fallen silent. And then suddenly, in the dark, a hand laid upon mine... or rather, something bony and icy that imprisoned my wrist and let go no more. I cried. An arm imprisoned my waist and I was lifted... I struggled an instant in horror; my fingers slid along the damp stones, where they caught on nothing. And then, I moved no more, I thought I was going to die of fright. I was carried toward the little red glow; we entered that glow and then I saw that I was in the hands of a man wrapped in a great black cloak and who had a mask that hid all his face... I made a supreme effort: my limbs stiffened, my mouth opened again to howl my terror, but a hand closed it, a hand that I felt on my lips, on my flesh... and that smelled of death! I fainted.

How long did I remain unconscious? I could not say. When I reopened my eyes, we were still, the black man and I, in the midst of darkness. A dark lantern, set on the ground, lit the spurting of a fountain. The water, lapping, come from the wall, disappeared almost at once under the floor on which I lay; my head rested on the knee of the man in the cloak and black mask and my silent companion refreshed my temples with a care, an attention, a delicacy that seemed to me more horrible to bear than the brutality of his abduction just now. His hands, light though they were, nonetheless smelled of death. I pushed them away, but without strength. I asked in a breath: "Who are you? where is the Voice?" Only a sigh answered me. Suddenly, a warm breath passed over my face and vaguely, in the darkness, beside the black shape of the man, I distinguished a white shape. The black shape lifted me and deposited me on the white shape. And at once, a joyful neigh struck my stupefied ears and I murmured: "César!" The beast trembled. My friend, I was half-lying on a saddle and I had recognized the white horse of _The Prophet_, which I had so often spoiled with sweets. Now, one evening, the rumor had spread in the theater that this beast had disappeared and that it had been stolen by the Phantom of the Opera. I, I believed in the Voice; I had never believed in the Phantom, and yet here I was asking myself, shivering, if I were not the prisoner of the Phantom! I called, from the bottom of my heart, for the Voice to come to my aid, for never would I have imagined that the Voice and the Phantom were one! Have you heard speak of the Phantom of the Opera, Raoul?

--Yes, answered the young man... But tell me, Christine, what happened to you when you were on the white horse of _The Prophet_?

--I made no movement and let myself be led... Little by little a strange torpor succeeded the state of anguish and terror into which this infernal adventure had thrown me. The black shape supported me and I no longer did anything to escape it. A singular peace spread in me and I thought I was under the beneficent influence of some elixir. I had full use of my senses. My eyes grew accustomed to the darkness which, besides, lit up here and there with brief glows... I judged we were in a narrow circular gallery and I imagined this gallery went around the Opera, which, underground, is immense. Once, my friend, only once, I had descended into those lower depths which are prodigious, but I had stopped at the third level, not daring to go further into the earth. And yet, two more levels, where a town might be housed, opened beneath my feet. But the figures that had appeared to me had made me flee. There are demons there, all black before furnaces, and they stir shovels, forks, excite braziers, light flames, threaten you, if you approach, suddenly opening on you the red mouth of the ovens!... Now, while César, tranquilly, in this nightmare night, carried me on his back, I suddenly glimpsed, far, very far, and very small, very small, like at the end of a reversed spyglass, the black demons before the red braziers of their heaters... They appeared... They disappeared... They reappeared at the bizarre whim of our march... Finally, they disappeared altogether. The man shape still supported me, and César walked without guide and with sure foot... I could not tell you, even approximately, how long this journey, in the night, lasted; I had only the idea that we were turning! that we were turning! that we were descending following an inflexible spiral to the very heart of the abysses of the earth; and yet, was it not my head that turned?... However, I do not think so. No! I was incredibly lucid. César, for an instant, raised his nostrils, sniffed the atmosphere and quickened his pace a little. I felt the damp air and then César stopped. The night had lightened. A bluish glow surrounded us. I looked where we were. We were at the edge of a lake whose leaden waters lost themselves far off, in the black... but the blue light lit this shore and there I saw a little boat, tied to an iron ring, on the quay!

Certainly, I knew all that existed, and the vision of this lake and this boat underground had nothing supernatural. But think of the exceptional conditions in which I landed on that shore. The souls of the dead could not have felt more unease in landing on the Styx. Charon was surely no more lugubrious nor more mute than the man shape that transported me into the boat. Had the elixir exhausted its effect? did the coolness of these places suffice to bring me wholly back to myself? But my torpor was vanishing, and I made some movements that denoted the recommencement of my terror. My sinister companion must have noticed it, for, with a rapid gesture, he dismissed César who fled into the darkness of the gallery and whose four hoofs I heard beat the sonorous steps of a staircase, then the man threw himself into the boat which he freed from its iron tie; he seized the oars and rowed with force and speed. His eyes, under the mask, did not leave me; I felt upon me the weight of their motionless pupils. The water around us made no sound. We glided in that bluish glow I told you of and then we were again wholly in the night, and we landed. The boat struck a hard body. And I was again carried in arms. I had recovered the strength to cry. I howled. And then, suddenly, I fell silent, stunned by the light. Yes, a dazzling light, in the midst of which I had been deposited. I rose with a bound. I had all my strength. At the center of a salon which seemed to me adorned, furnished, only with flowers, magnificent flowers and stupid because of silk ribbons tying them to baskets, as one sells in the shops of the boulevards, flowers too civilized like those I was accustomed to find in my room after each "premiere"; at the center of this very Parisian perfuming, the black man shape with the mask stood, arms crossed... and it spoke:

--Be reassured, Christine, it said; you run no danger.

_IT WAS THE VOICE!_

My fury equaled my stupefaction. I sprang at that mask and would have torn it off, to know the face of the Voice. The man shape said to me:

--You run no danger, if you do not touch the mask!

And gently imprisoning my wrists, it made me sit down.

And then, it fell to its knees before me, and said no more!

The humility of that gesture gave me back some courage; the light, by making all things precise around me, returned me to the reality of life. However extraordinary it appeared, the adventure now surrounded itself with mortal things that I could see and touch. The tapestries of those walls, those furnishings, those torches, those vases and even those flowers of which I could almost have said whence they came, in their gilded baskets, and how much they had cost, fatally enclosed my imagination within the limits of a salon as banal as many others which had at least the excuse of not being situated in the lower depths of the Opera. I had doubtless to do with some frightful eccentric who, mysteriously, had lodged himself in the cellars, as others, by need, and with the mute complicity of the administration, had found a definitive shelter in the attics of that modern Tower of Babel, where one intrigued, where one sang in all languages, where one loved in all patois.

And then the _Voice_, the _Voice_ that I had recognized under the mask, which had not been able to hide it from me, _it was that which was on its knees before me: a man!_

I no longer even thought of the horrible situation in which I found myself, I did not even ask what was to become of me and what was the obscure and coldly tyrannical design that had led me into this salon like one shuts a prisoner in a jail, a slave in a harem. No! no! no! I said to myself: The Voice, it is that: a man! and I began to weep.

The man, still on his knees, understood no doubt the sense of my tears, for he said:

--"It is true, Christine!... I am neither angel, nor genius, nor phantom... I am Erik!"

Here again, Christine's tale was interrupted. It seemed to the young people that the echo had repeated, behind them: Erik!... What echo?... They turned, and they perceived that night had come. Raoul made a movement as if to rise, but Christine held him near her: "Stay! You must know all _here!_

--Why here, Christine? I fear for you the coolness of the night.

--We must fear only the traps, my friend, and here, we are at the end of the world of traps... and I have no right to see you outside the theater... It is not the moment to cross him... Let us not awaken his suspicions...

--Christine! Christine! something tells me we are wrong to wait until tomorrow evening and that we should flee at once!

--I tell you that, if he does not hear me sing tomorrow evening, he will have an infinite sorrow.

--It is difficult not to cause Erik pain and to flee him forever...

--You are right, Raoul, in that... for, certainly, of my flight he will die...

The young girl added in a hollow voice;

--But also the part is equal... for we risk that he kill us.

--Does he then love you so?

--To the point of crime!

--But his dwelling is not unfindable... One can go seek him there. Since Erik is not a phantom, one can speak to him and even force him to answer!

Christine shook her head:

--No! no! One can do nothing against Erik!... One can only flee!

--And how, being able to flee, did you return near him?

--Because it was necessary... And you will understand that when you know how I came out of his place?...

--Ah! I hate him well!... cried Raoul... and you, Christine, tell me... I need you to tell me that to listen with more calm to the rest of this extraordinary love story... and you, do you hate him?

--No! said Christine, simply.

--Eh! why so many words!... You certainly love him! Your fear, your terrors, all that is still love and of the most delicious! The one one does not avow to oneself, explained Raoul with bitterness. The one who gives you, when one thinks of it, the shiver... Think, a man who lives in a palace under the earth!

And he sneered...

--You want me then to return there! interrupted brutally the young girl... Take care, Raoul, I told you: I would not come back!

There was a frightful silence among the three of them... the two who spoke and the shadow that listened, behind...

--Before answering you, Raoul finally said in a slow voice, I would like to know what sentiment _he_ inspires in you, since you do not hate him...

--Horror! she said... And she threw these words with such force that they covered the sighs of the night.

--That is what is terrible, she resumed, in a growing fever... I have him in horror and I do not detest him. How to hate him, Raoul? See Erik at my feet, in the dwelling of the lake, beneath the earth. He accuses himself, he curses himself, he implores my pardon!...

He confesses his imposture. He loves me! He lays at my feet an immense and tragic love!... He stole me through love!... He shut me up with him, in the earth, through love... but he respects me, but he crawls, but he moans, but he weeps!... And when I rise, Raoul, when I tell him that I can but despise him if he does not at once restore to me that liberty, which he took from me, incredible thing... he offers it to me... I have only to leave... He is ready to show me the mysterious way;... only... only he rose too, and I am quite obliged to remember that, if he is neither phantom, nor angel, nor genius, he is still the Voice, for he sings!...

And I listen... and I stay!...

That evening, we exchanged not another word... He had seized a harp and he began to sing to me, he, man's voice, angel's voice, the romance of Desdemona. The memory I had of having sung it myself made me ashamed. My friend, there is a virtue in music which makes that nothing more exists of the outer world outside those sounds that come strike your heart. My extravagant adventure was forgotten. Only the voice lived again and I followed it intoxicated in its harmonious voyage; I was part of Orpheus's flock! It led me through sorrow, and through joy, through martyrdom, through despair, through gladness, through death and through triumphant nuptials... I listened... It sang... It sang me unknown pieces... and made me hear a new music which caused me a strange impression of sweetness, of languor, of rest... a music which, after having lifted my soul, gradually calmed it, and led it to the threshold of dream. I fell asleep.

When I awoke, I was alone, on a chaise-longue, in a very simple little chamber, furnished with a banal mahogany bed, walls hung with toile de Jouy, and lit by a lamp set on the marble of an old "Louis-Philippe" commode. What was this new decor?... I passed my hand over my brow, as to chase a bad dream... Alas! I was not long in perceiving that I had not dreamed! I was a prisoner and I could not leave my chamber but to enter a most comfortable bathroom; hot and cold water at will. On returning to my chamber, I noticed on my commode a note in red ink which quite informed me of my sad situation and which, if it had still been necessary, would have removed all my doubts on the reality of events: "My dear Christine," said the paper, "be quite reassured as to your fate. You have in the world no better, nor more respectful friend than I. You are alone, at this moment, in this dwelling which belongs to you. I am going out to run the shops and bring you back all the linen you may need."

--Decidedly! I cried, I have fallen into the hands of a madman! What am I to become? And how long does this wretch think to keep me shut in his underground prison?

I ran in my little apartment like a madwoman, always seeking an exit that I did not find. I bitterly accused myself of my stupid superstition and I took a horrible pleasure in railing at the perfect innocence with which I had welcomed, through the walls, the Voice of the genius of music... When one was so silly, one must expect the most unheard-of catastrophes and one had deserved them all! I felt like striking myself and I began to laugh at myself and weep over myself, at the same time. It was in this state that Erik found me.

After knocking three little sharp knocks in the wall, he entered tranquilly by a door I had not known how to discover and which he left open. He was loaded with boxes and packages and he deposited them without haste on my bed, while I drenched him with insults and summoned him to remove that mask, if he pretended to hide behind it the face of an honest man.

He answered me with great serenity:

--You will never see Erik's face.

And he reproached me that I had not yet made my toilet at that hour of the day;--he deigned instruct me that it was two in the afternoon. He left me half an hour to do so,--saying that, he took care to wind my watch and set it to the hour.--After which, he invited me to pass into the dining room, where an excellent luncheon, he announced me, awaited us. I was very hungry, I slammed the door in his face and entered the toilet cabinet. I took a bath after placing near me a magnificent pair of scissors with which I was quite decided to give myself death, if Erik, after behaving like a madman, ceased to behave like an honest man. The coolness of the water did me the greatest good and, when I reappeared before Erik, I had taken the wise resolution to not strike nor wound him in anything, to flatter him as needed to obtain a prompt liberty. It was he, first, who spoke to me of his designs upon me, and made them precise, to reassure me, he said. He pleased himself too much in my company to deprive himself of it at once as he had a moment consented the evening before, before the indignant expression of my fright. I must understand now, that I had no cause to be terrified at seeing him, at my side. He loved me, but he would tell me so only as much as I permitted him and the rest of the time would pass in music.

--What do you mean by the rest of the time? I asked him.

He answered me firmly:

--Five days.

--And after, I shall be free?

--You shall be free, Christine, for, those five days elapsed, you will have learned to no longer fear me, and then you will come see, from time to time, poor Erik!...

The tone in which he pronounced these last words moved me profoundly. It seemed to me to discover there so real, so pitiable a despair that I lifted toward the mask a softened face. I could not see the eyes behind the mask and this was not to diminish the strange feeling of unease one had in questioning that mysterious square of black silk; but under the cloth, at the end of the mask's beard, appeared one, two, three, four tears.

Silently, he designated a place facing him, at a little guéridon which occupied the center of the room where, the evening before, he had played me the harp, and I sat down, very troubled. I ate however with good appetite some crayfish, a wing of chicken washed down with a little Tokay wine that he had brought himself, he told me, from the cellars of Kœnisgberg, once frequented by Falstaff. As for him, he ate not, he drank not. I asked him what was his nationality, and if that name of Erik did not reveal a Scandinavian origin. He answered me he had neither name nor country, and had taken the name of Erik by chance. I asked him why, since he loved me, he had found no other means to make it known than to drag me with him and shut me in the earth!

--It is quite difficult, I said, to make oneself loved in a tomb.

--One has, he answered, in a singular tone, the "rendezvous" one can.

Then he rose and held out his fingers, for he wished, he said, to do me the honors of his apartment, but I quickly withdrew my hand from his, crying out. What I had touched there was at once moist and bony, and I remembered that his hands smelled of death.

--Oh! pardon, he groaned.

And he opened before me a door.

--Here is my chamber, he said. It is rather curious to visit... if you wish to see it?

I did not hesitate. His manners, his words, his whole air told me to have confidence... and then, I felt one must not be afraid.

I entered. It seemed to me I penetrated a mortuary chamber. The walls were all hung with black, but in place of the white tears that ordinarily complete this funereal ornament, one saw on an enormous staff of music, the repeated notes of the _Dies iræ._ In the middle of this chamber, there was a canopy where hung red brocatelle curtains and, under this canopy, an open coffin.

At this sight, I recoiled.

--It is in there that I sleep, said Erik. One must grow accustomed to all in life, even to eternity.

I turned my head away, so sinister an impression had I received from this spectacle. My eyes met the keyboard of an organ that held a whole panel of the wall. On the stand was a notebook, all scrawled with red notes. I asked permission to look at it and I read on the first page: _Don Juan Triumphant._

--Yes, he told me, I sometimes compose. It is twenty years since I began this work. When it is finished, I shall carry it with me into that coffin and shall wake no more.

--One must work at it as little as possible, I said.

--I work at it sometimes fifteen days and fifteen nights in a row, during which I live only on music, and then I rest for years.

--Will you play me something of your _Don Juan Triumphant?_ I asked, thinking to please him and overcoming the repugnance I had to remain in that chamber of death.

--Never ask me that, he answered in a dark voice. That _Don Juan_ was not written on the words of a Lorenzo da Ponte, inspired by wine, little loves and vice, finally chastised by God. I shall play you Mozart if you wish, which will make your beautiful tears flow and inspire you with honest reflections. But my _Don Juan_, mine, burns, Christine, and yet, it is not struck by the fire of heaven!...

Thereupon, we re-entered the salon we had just left. I noticed that nowhere, in this apartment, was there a mirror. I was about to remark it, but Erik had just seated himself at the piano. He said to me:

--You see, Christine, there is a music so terrible that it consumes all who approach it. You are not yet at that music, happily, for you would lose your fresh colors and one would not recognize you on your return to Paris. Let us sing the Opera, Christine Daaé.

He said to me:

--Let us sing the Opera, Christine Daaé, as if he threw me an insult.

But I had not time to dwell on the air he had given his words. We at once began the duet from _Othello_, and already the catastrophe was upon our heads. This time, he had left me the role of Desdemona, which I sang with a real despair, a real fright such as I had never attained until that day. The neighborhood of such a partner, instead of annihilating me, inspired me a magnificent terror. The events of which I was the victim singularly brought me close to the poet's thought and I found accents of which the musician would have been dazzled. As for him, his voice was thundering, his vindictive soul bore upon each sound, and terribly increased its power. Love, jealousy, hatred, burst around us in tearing cries. Erik's black mask made me think of the natural mask of the Moor of Venice. He was Othello himself. I thought he was going to strike me, that I was going to fall under his blows and yet, I made no movement to flee him, to avoid his fury like timid Desdemona. On the contrary, I drew near him, attracted, fascinated, finding charms in death at the center of such a passion; but, before dying, I wished to know, to carry its sublime image in my last glance, those unknown features that eternal art must transfigure. I wished to see the _face_ of the _Voice_ and, instinctively, by a gesture of which I was not mistress, for I no longer possessed myself, my swift fingers tore off the mask...

Oh! horror!... horror!... horror!...

Christine stopped, at this vision which she seemed still to push away with her two trembling hands, while the echoes of the night, as they had repeated the name of Erik, repeated three times the clamor: "Horror! horror! horror!" Raoul and Christine, more closely united still by the terror of the tale, raised their eyes toward the stars that shone in a peaceful and pure sky.

Raoul said:

--It is strange, Christine, how this so sweet and calm night is full of moanings. One would say it laments with us!

She answers him:

--Now that you are about to know the secret, your ears, like mine, will be full of lamentations.

She imprisons Raoul's protective hands in hers and, shaken by a long quiver, she continues:

--Oh! yes, were I to live a hundred years, I should always hear the superhuman clamor he uttered, the cry of his infernal grief and rage, while the thing appeared to my eyes immense with horror, as my mouth that did not close and yet cried no more.

Oh! Raoul, the thing! how to no longer see the thing! if my ears are forever full of its cries, my eyes are forever haunted by its face! What an image! How to no longer see it and how to make you see it?... Raoul, you have seen death's heads when they have been dried by the centuries and perhaps, if you were not victim of a frightful nightmare, you saw his death's head, at the night of Perros. Still you saw walk, at the last masked ball, "the Red Death"! But all those death's heads were motionless, and their mute horror did not live! But imagine, if you can, the mask of Death suddenly coming to life to express with the four black holes of its eyes, its nose and its mouth the anger at its last degree, the sovereign fury of a demon, _and no gaze in the holes of the eyes_, for, as I learned later, one never perceives its ember eyes but in the deep night... I must have been, glued to the wall, the very image of Dread as he was that of Hideousness.

Then he brought near me the frightful grating of his lip-less teeth and, while I fell to my knees, he hissed at me hatefully senseless things, disconnected words, curses, delirium... How should I know!... How should I know?...

Leaning over me: "--Look," he cried, "you wanted to see! See! Feast your eyes, drunk your soul on my accursed ugliness! Look on the face of Erik! Now, you know the face of the Voice! Was that not enough for you, tell me, to hear me? You wanted to know how I was made. You women are so curious, you others!"

And he fell to laughing in repeating: "You are so curious, you women!..." with a growling, raucous, foaming, formidable laugh... He said still things like these:

--Are you satisfied? I am handsome, eh?... When a woman has seen me, like you, she is mine. She loves me forever! I, I am a type in the manner of Don Juan.

And, rising to his full height, fist on hip, swaying on his shoulders the hideous thing that was his head, he thundered:

--Look at me! _I am Don Juan Triumphant!_

And as I turned my head away begging mercy, he brought it back to him, my head, brutally, by my hair, into which his death fingers had entered.

--Enough! Enough! interrupted Raoul! I shall kill him! I shall kill him! In heaven's name, Christine, tell me where is the _dining room of the lake!_ I must kill him!

--Eh! be quiet then, Raoul, if you wish to know!

--Ah! yes, I wish to know how and why you returned there! That is the secret, Christine, take care! there is no other! But, in any case, I shall kill him!

--Oh! my Raoul! listen then! since you wish to know, listen! He dragged me by the hair, and then... and then... Oh! that is yet more horrible!

--Well, speak, now!... exclaimed Raoul, fierce! Speak quickly!

--Then, he hissed at me: "What? I frighten you? It is possible!... You perhaps think I still have a mask, eh? and that that... that! my head, is a mask? Well but! he fell to howling. Tear it off like the other! Come! come! again! again! I want it! Your hands! Your hands!... Give your hands!... if they suffice you not, I shall lend you mine... and we shall set to it two to tear off the mask." I rolled at his feet, but he seized my hands, Raoul... and he drove them into the horror of his face... With my nails, he plowed his flesh, his horrible dead flesh!

--Learn! learn! he clamored from the depth of his throat that breathed like a forge... learn that I am made entirely of death!... from head to foot!... and that it is a corpse that loves you, that adores you and that will never leave you again! never!... I shall have the coffin enlarged, Christine, for later, when we are at the end of our loves!... See! I laugh no more, you see, I weep... I weep for you, Christine, who tore off my mask, and who, because of that, can never leave me again!... While you could believe me beautiful, Christine, you could return!... I know you would have returned... but now that you know my hideousness, you would flee forever... I keep you!!! Also, why did you wish to see me? Senseless woman! mad Christine, who wished to see me!... when my father, he, never saw me, and when my mother, to see me no more, gave me weeping my first mask!

He had finally let me go and he now dragged himself on the parquet with frightful hiccups. And then, like a reptile, he crawled, dragged himself out of the room, penetrated into his chamber, whose door closed, and I remained alone, given over to my horror and my reflections, but rid of the vision of the thing. A prodigious silence, the silence of the tomb, had succeeded that storm and I could reflect on the terrible consequences of the gesture that had torn off the mask. The Monster's last words had sufficiently informed me. I had myself imprisoned forever and my curiosity was to be the cause of all my misfortunes. He had sufficiently warned me... He had repeated that I ran no danger so long as I did not touch the mask, and I had touched it. I cursed my imprudence, but I noted shivering that the monster's reasoning was logical. Yes, I would have returned if I had not seen his face... Already he had sufficiently touched me, interested me, even moved me by his masked tears, that I should not remain insensible to his prayer. Finally I was no ingrate, and his impossibility could not make me forget that he was the voice and that he had warmed me with his genius. I would have returned! And now, out of these catacombs, I certainly would not return! One does not return to shut oneself in a tomb with a corpse that loves you!

By certain frenzied ways he had, during the scene, of looking at me or rather of bringing near me the two black holes of his invisible gaze, I had been able to measure the savagery of his passion. That he had not taken me in his arms, then when I could offer no resistance, there must have been that this monster was doubled with an angel and perhaps, after all, he was a little, the Angel of Music, and perhaps he would have been quite so if God had clothed him in beauty instead of dressing him in rot!

Already, lost at the thought of the fate reserved for me, prey to the terror of seeing reopen the door of the chamber of the coffin, and of seeing again the monster's face without mask, I had slipped into my own apartment and seized the scissors, which could put an end to my frightful destiny... when the sounds of the organ made themselves heard...

It is then, my friend, that I began to understand Erik's words on what he called, with a contempt that had stupefied me: opera music. What I heard had no more to do with what had charmed me until that day. His _Don Juan Triumphant_, (for I had no doubt that he had rushed to his masterpiece to forget the horror of the present minute), his _Don Juan Triumphant_ at first seemed to me but a long, frightful and magnificent sob where poor Erik had put all his accursed misery.

I saw again the notebook with red notes and easily imagined that this music had been written with blood. It led me through all the detail of martyrdom; it made me enter all the corners of the abyss, the abyss inhabited by _the ugly man_; it showed me Erik atrociously knocking his poor hideous head against the funereal walls of that hell, and there fleeing, to not frighten them, the gazes of men. I assisted, annihilated, panting, pitiable and vanquished, at the bursting forth of those gigantic chords where _Suffering_ was divinized and then the sounds that rose from the abyss suddenly grouped in a prodigious and threatening flight, their whirling troop seemed to scale the sky as the eagle rises to the sun, and such a triumphal symphony seemed to set the world aflame that I understood the work was at last accomplished and that Ugliness, lifted on the wings of Love, had dared look Beauty in the face! I was as if drunk; the door that separated me from Erik gave under my efforts. He had risen on hearing me, _but he dared not turn around._

"Erik," I cried, "show me your face, without terror. I swear to you that you are the most sorrowful and the most sublime of men, and if Christine Daaé henceforth shivers in looking at you, it is that she will think of the splendor of your genius!"

Then Erik turned, for he believed me, and I too, alas!... I had faith in myself... He raised toward Destiny his unchained hands, and fell to his knees before me with words of love...

... With words of love in his death's mouth... and the music had fallen silent...

He kissed the hem of my gown; he did not see that I closed my eyes.

What more shall I tell you, my friend? You now know the drama... For fifteen days, it renewed itself... fifteen days during which I lied to him. My lie was as frightful as the monster that inspired it in me, and at that price I could acquire my liberty. I burned his mask. And I did so well that, even when he no longer sang, he dared beg one of my glances, like a timid dog that prowls around its master. He was thus, around me, like a faithful slave, and surrounded me with a thousand cares. Little by little, I inspired him such confidence that he dared show me the shores of _Lake Avernus_ and lead me by boat on its leaden waters; in the last days of my captivity, he made me, by night, cross the grilles that close the underground passages of the rue Scribe. There, a carriage awaited us, and bore us toward the solitudes of the Bois.

The night we met you nearly proved tragic for me, for he has a terrible jealousy of you, which I combatted only by affirming your imminent departure... Finally, after fifteen days of that abominable captivity where I was in turn burned by pity, by enthusiasm, by despair and by horror, he believed me when I said to him: _I shall return!_

--And you returned, Christine, groaned Raoul.

--It is true, friend, and I must say that it was not the frightful threats with which he accompanied my liberation that helped me keep my word; but the tearing sob he uttered on the threshold of his tomb!

Yes, that sob, repeated Christine, shaking her head painfully, bound me to the unhappy one more than I supposed myself in the moment of farewells. Poor Erik! Poor Erik!

--Christine, said Raoul rising, you say you love me, but scarcely a few hours had elapsed, since you had recovered your liberty, when already you returned to Erik!... Recall the masked ball!

--Things were understood thus... recall also that those few hours I passed with you, Raoul... to our great peril, both of us...

--During those few hours, I doubted you loved me.

--Do you still doubt it, Raoul?... Learn then that each of my journeys to Erik increased my horror for him, for each of those journeys, instead of calming him as I hoped, made him mad with love!... and I am afraid! and I am afraid!... I am afraid!...

--You are afraid... but do you love me?... If Erik were handsome, would you love me, Christine?

--Unhappy one! why tempt fate?... Why ask me things that I hide in the depth of my conscience as one hides sin?

She rose in her turn, encircled the young man's head with her beautiful trembling arms and said to him:

--O my betrothed of a day, if I did not love you, I would not give you my lips. For the first and last time, here they are.

He took them, but the night that surrounded them had such a rending that they fled as at the approach of a tempest, and their eyes, where dwelt the dread of Erik, showed them, before they disappeared into the forest of the attics, far above them, an immense night bird that looked at them with its ember eyes, and that seemed hung to the strings of Apollon's lyre!

“Stories of the world, in your language.”