XXII. INTÉRESSANTES ET INSTRUCTIVES TRIBULATIONS D'UN PERSAN DANS LES DESSOUS

XXII

INTERESTING AND INSTRUCTIVE TRIBULATIONS OF A PERSIAN IN THE LOWER DEPTHS OF THE OPERA

*Account of the Persian.*

The Persian himself related how, up to that night, he had vainly attempted to penetrate into the dwelling of the Lake by way of the lake; how he had discovered the entrance to the third cellar, and how, finally, the Vicomte de Chagny and he found themselves at grips with the infernal imagination of the phantom in the *torture chamber*. Here is the written account he left us (under circumstances that will be specified later) and to which I have not altered a single word. I give it as it is, because I did not think fit to pass over in silence the personal adventures of the daroga around the house of the Lake, before he happened to fall into it in company with Raoul. If, for a few moments, this highly interesting beginning seems to lead us somewhat away from the torture chamber, it is only to bring us back to it all the better immediately, after explaining to you certain very important things and certain attitudes and ways of the Persian which may have appeared quite extraordinary.

"It was the first time I set foot in the house of the Lake," writes the Persian. "In vain had I begged *the trap-fancier*—for that is what, in our country, in Persia, we called Erik—to open to me its mysterious doors. He had always refused. I, who was paid to know many of his secrets and his tricks, had in vain tried, by cunning, to force the watch. Since I had found Erik again at the Opera, where he seemed to have taken up residence, I had often spied on him, now in the corridors of the upper floors, now in those of the cellars, now on the very shore of the Lake, when he thought himself alone, stepping into the little boat and landing directly against the wall opposite. But the shadow that surrounded him was always too opaque to allow me to see at exactly what point he made his door in the wall play. Curiosity, and also a dreadful idea that had come to me on reflecting upon certain remarks the monster had made to me, prompted me, one day when I thought myself alone in turn, to throw myself into the little boat and steer it toward that part of the wall where I had seen Erik disappear. It was then that I had to deal with the Siren who guarded the approaches of those places, and whose charm had nearly been fatal to me, in the precise circumstances that follow. No sooner had I left the shore than the silence amid which I was sailing was gradually troubled by a kind of singing breath that enveloped me. It was at once a respiration and a music; it rose softly from the waters of the Lake and I was wrapped in it without being able to discover by what artifice. It followed me, moved with me, and it was so sweet that it did not frighten me. On the contrary, in the desire to draw nearer to the source of that gentle and captivating harmony, I leaned over my little boat toward the waters, for I had no doubt that this song came from the waters themselves. I was already in the middle of the Lake and there was no one else in the boat but me; the voice—for it was now distinctly a voice—was beside me, upon the waters. I leaned over... I leaned further... The Lake was perfectly calm and the moonbeam which, after passing through the vent in the Rue Scribe, came to light it, showed me absolutely nothing upon its surface, smooth and black as ink. I shook my ears a little with the intention of ridding myself of a possible buzzing, but I had to yield to the evidence that there is no ear-buzzing as harmonious as the singing breath that followed me and that now drew me on.

"Had I been a superstitious spirit or easily accessible to the weak, I should not have failed to think that I had to do with some siren charged with troubling the traveler bold enough to voyage upon the waters of the house of the Lake; but, thank God! I am from a country where one loves the fantastic too well not to know it thoroughly, and I myself had studied it too deeply in former days, with the simplest tricks, for someone who knows his trade to be able to set poor human imagination to work.

"I therefore did not doubt that I found myself confronted with a new invention of Erik's, but again this invention was so perfect that, leaning over the little boat, I was less impelled by the desire to discover the deception than to enjoy its charm.

"And I leaned, I leaned... to capsizing.

"Suddenly, two monstrous arms came out of the bosom of the waters and gripped my neck, dragging me into the gulf with an irresistible force. I was certainly lost had I not had time to utter a cry by which Erik recognized me.

"For it was he, and instead of drowning me, as he had certainly intended, he swam and gently deposited me upon the shore.

"'See how imprudent you are,' he said, rising before me, all dripping with that water of hell. 'Why try to enter my dwelling! I have not invited you. I want neither you nor anyone in the world! Did you save my life only to make it insupportable to me? Great as the service rendered is, Erik may perhaps end by forgetting it, and you know that nothing can hold Erik, not even Erik himself.'

"He spoke, but now I had no other desire than to know what I already called *the siren trick*. He was willing to satisfy my curiosity, for Erik, who is a true monster—to me, that is how I judge him, having had, alas! in Persia, occasion to see him at work—is yet in certain respects a veritable presumptuous and vain child, and he loves nothing so much, after having astonished his world, as to prove the truly miraculous ingenuity of his mind.

"He began to laugh and showed me a long stalk of reed.

"'It is silly as a cabbage!' he said to me, 'but it is very handy for breathing and singing in the water! It is a trick I taught the pirates of Tonkin, who can thus remain hidden for whole hours at the bottom of rivers[8].'

"I spoke to him severely.

"'That is a trick that nearly killed me!' I said... 'and it may have been fatal to others!'

"He did not answer me, but he rose before me with that childishly threatening air I know well in him.

"I was not 'taken in'. I said to him very plainly:

"'You know what you promised me, Erik! no more crimes!'

"'Have I really,' he asked, assuming a friendly air, 'committed crimes?'

"'Unhappy man!...' I cried... 'Have you then forgotten *the rose hours of Mazenderan?*'

"'Yes,' he answered, suddenly sad, 'I prefer to have forgotten them, but I made the little sultana laugh well.'

"'All that,' I declared, 'is past... but there is the present... and you owe me an account of the present, since, had I wished it, it would not exist for you!... Remember this, Erik: I saved your life!'

"And I profited by the turn the conversation had taken to speak to him of a thing that had of late often come back to my mind.

"'Erik,' I asked... 'Erik, swear to me...'

"'What?' said he. 'You know well I do not keep my oaths. Oaths are made to catch fools.'

"'Tell me... You can well tell me that, to me?'

"'Well?'

"'Well!... The chandelier... the chandelier? Erik...'

"'What, the chandelier?'

"'You know well what I may say?'

"'Ah!' he sneered, 'that, the chandelier... I am willing to tell you!... *The chandelier, it was not me!*... It was very worn, the chandelier...'

"When he laughed, Erik was yet more frightful. He jumped into the boat with a sneer so sinister that I could not help trembling.

"'Very worn, dear *Daroga!*[9] Very worn, the chandelier!... It fell all by itself... It went boom! And now, a piece of advice, Daroga, go and dry yourself, if you do not want to catch a brain cold!... and never get back into my boat... and above all do not try to enter my house... I am not always there... Daroga! And I should be grieved to dedicate *my mass of the dead* to you!'

"Saying this and sneering, he stood at the stern of his boat and sculled with a monkey's swaying. He looked then truly like the fatal rock, with his golden eyes in addition. And then, I soon saw nothing more but his eyes and at last he disappeared into the night of the lake.

"It was from that day that I renounced penetrating into his dwelling by the lake! Evidently, that entrance was too well guarded, especially since he knew that I knew it. But I thought there must be another, for more than once I had seen Erik disappear into the third cellar, when I was watching him and without my being able to imagine how. I cannot repeat it too often: since I had found Erik again, installed at the Opera, I lived in a perpetual terror of his horrible fancies, not at all as concerned myself, certainly, but I dreaded everything from him for others[10]. And when some accident occurred, some fatal event, I never failed to say to myself: 'It is perhaps Erik!...' as others around me said: 'It is the Phantom!...' How many times have I not heard that phrase pronounced by people who smiled! Poor wretches! had they known that this phantom existed in flesh and blood and was otherwise terrible than the vain shadow they evoked, I swear they would have ceased to mock!... Had they but known what Erik was capable of, especially in a field of maneuver like the Opera!... And had they known the very bottom of my dreadful thought!...

"For myself, I no longer lived!... Although Erik had announced to me most solemnly that he had greatly changed and had become the most virtuous of men, *since he was loved for himself*, a phrase which left me at the moment in fearful perplexity, I could not help shuddering at the thought of the monster. His horrible, unique and repulsive ugliness put him outside humanity, and it had often appeared to me that he no longer believed himself, by that very fact, bound by any duty toward the human race. The way in which he had spoken to me of his love affairs had only increased my tremors, for I foresaw in that event to which he had alluded in a tone of bravado that I knew in him, the cause of new dramas more frightful than all the rest. I knew to what degree of sublime and disastrous despair Erik's sorrow could go, and the remarks he had made to me—vaguely announcing the most horrible catastrophe—never ceased to inhabit my dreadful thought.

"On the other hand, I had discovered the bizarre moral commerce that had established itself between the monster and Christine Daaé. Hidden in the storeroom that adjoins the dressing-room of the young diva, I had witnessed admirable music sessions, which evidently plunged Christine into a marvelous ecstasy, but still I had not thought that Erik's voice—which was as resounding as thunder or as sweet as that of angels, at will—could make one forget his ugliness. I understood all when I discovered that Christine had not yet seen him! I had occasion to enter the dressing-room and, remembering the lessons he had formerly given me, I had no difficulty in finding the trick that made the wall supporting the mirror pivot, and I observed by what contrivance of hollow bricks, of speaking-bricks, he made himself heard by Christine as if he had been at her side. By that too I discovered the path that leads to the fountain and the dungeon—the dungeon of the communards—and also the trap that was to allow Erik to introduce himself directly into the cellars beneath the stage.

"A few days later, what was my stupor to learn, with my own eyes and ears, that Erik and Christine Daaé saw each other, and to surprise the monster, bent over the little weeping fountain, in the communards' path (right at the end, under the earth) and busy refreshing the brow of the fainting Christine Daaé. A white horse, the horse of *The Prophet*, which had disappeared from the stables of the Opera cellars, stood quietly near them. I showed myself. It was terrible. I saw sparks fly from two golden eyes and I was, before I could say a word, struck full on the forehead by a blow that stunned me. When I came to, Erik, Christine and the white horse had disappeared. I did not doubt that the unhappy girl was prisoner in the house of the Lake. Without hesitation, I resolved to return to the shore, despite the certain danger of such an enterprise. For four-and-twenty hours I watched, hidden near the black bank, for the monster's appearance, for I thought he must come out, forced as he was to go and fetch his provisions. And on this subject, I must say that, when he went out in Paris or dared show himself in public, he put in place of his horrible nose-hole a nose of papier-mâché furnished with a mustache, which did not wholly remove his macabre air, since, when he passed, people said behind him: 'Look, there goes Father Cheat-Death,' but which made him about—I say about—supportable to look at.

"I was therefore watching for him on the shore of the Lake—of the Avernus Lake, as he had called, several times, before me, sneering, his lake—and, tired of my long patience, I was saying to myself yet again: He has gone by another door, that of the 'third cellar', when I heard a little splashing in the dark, I saw the two golden eyes shine like beacons, and soon the boat landed. Erik jumped onto the bank and came to me.

"'You have been there for four-and-twenty hours,' he said; 'you are in my way! I warn you that all this will end very badly! And it is you who will have wished it! for my patience with you is prodigious!... You think you are following me, immense ninny,—(verbatim)—and it is I who am following you, and I know all that you know of me, here. I spared you yesterday, in *my communards' path*; but I tell you, in truth, that I wish never to see you there again! All this is very imprudent, upon my word! and I wonder if you still know what talking means!'

"He was so angry that I took care, at that moment, not to interrupt him. After blowing like a seal, he made precise his horrible thought—which corresponded to my dreadful thought.

"'Yes, one must know once and for all—once and for all, that is said—what talking means! I tell you that with your imprudences—for you have already been arrested twice by the shadow with the felt hat, who did not know what you were doing in the cellars and who led you to the managers, who took you for a whimsical Persian amateur of fairy tricks and theater stagecraft (I was there... yes, I was there in the office; you know well I am everywhere)—I tell you then that with your imprudences, people will end by asking what you are seeking here... and they will end by knowing that you are seeking Erik... and they will wish, like you, to seek Erik... and they will discover the house of the Lake... Then, so much the worse, old fellow! so much the worse!... I answer for nothing more!'

"He blew again like a seal.

"'For nothing!... If Erik's secrets do not remain Erik's secrets, so much the worse for *many of the human race!* That is all I had to tell you and, unless you are an immense ninny—(verbatim)—that should suffice you; unless you know what talking means!...'

"He had sat down on the after-part of his boat and was tapping the wood of the little craft with his heels, awaiting what I had to answer him; I said to him simply:

"'It is not Erik I come seeking here!...'

"'And who then?'

"'You know well: it is Christine Daaé!'

"He replied:

"'I have surely the right to give her a rendezvous at my home. I am loved for myself.'

"'That is not true,' I said; 'you carried her off and hold her prisoner!'

"'Listen,' he said, 'do you promise me to meddle no more in my affairs if I prove to you that I am loved for myself?'

"'Yes, I promise you,' I answered without hesitation, for I thought that for such a monster such proof was impossible to give.

"'Well, there! it is quite simple!... Christine Daaé will leave here as it pleases her and will return!... Yes, will return! because it will please her... will return of her own accord, because she loves me for myself!...'

"'Oh! I doubt she will return!... But it is your duty to let her go.'

"'My duty, immense ninny! (verbatim)—It is my will... my will to let her go, and she will return... for she loves me!... All this, I tell you, will end in a marriage... a marriage at the Madeleine, immense ninny! (verbatim). Do you believe me, at last? When I tell you my marriage mass is already written... you shall see that *Kyrie*...'

"He tapped his heels again on the boat's wood, in a kind of rhythm which he accompanied half-voice, singing: *Kyrie!... Kyrie!... Kyrie Eleison!*... You shall see, you shall see that mass!

"'Listen,' I concluded, 'I shall believe you if I see Christine Daaé leave the house of the Lake and return there freely!'

"'And you will meddle no more in my affairs?'

"'Well! you shall see that this evening... Come to the masked ball. Christine and I will go there for a little turn... You will then hide in the storeroom and you will see that Christine, who will have regained her dressing-room, will ask nothing better than to take again the communards' path.'

"'Agreed!'

"If I saw that, indeed, I should but have to bow, for a very beautiful person always has the right to love the most horrible monster, especially when, like this one, he has the seduction of music and when that person is precisely a very distinguished singer.

"'And now, be off! for I must go to do my marketing!...'

"I therefore went away, still uneasy on Christine Daaé's account, but having above all, at the bottom of myself, a dreadful thought, since he had so formidably awakened it concerning my imprudences.

"I said to myself: 'How will all this end?' And, although I was rather fatalistic by temperament, I could not rid myself of an indefinable anguish because of the incredible responsibility I had taken one day, in letting live the monster who today threatened *many of the human race*.

"To my prodigious astonishment, things passed as he had announced to me. Christine Daaé left the house of the Lake and returned there several times without apparently being forced. My mind then wished to detach itself from that loving mystery, but it was very difficult, especially for me—because of the dreadful thought—not to think of Erik. However, resigned to extreme prudence, I did not commit the fault of returning to the banks of the Lake nor of taking again the communards' path. But the haunting of the secret door of the third cellar pursuing me, I went more than once directly to that place which I knew was most often deserted in the daytime. I made there interminable stays, twiddling my thumbs and hidden by a set of *The King of Lahore*, which had been left there, I know not why, for *The King of Lahore* was not often played. So much patience was to be rewarded. One day, I saw the monster come toward me, on his knees. I was certain he did not see me. He passed between the set that was there and a stage-flat, went as far as the wall and acted, at a point I noted from afar, upon a spring that made a stone tilt, opening him a passage. He disappeared by that passage and the stone closed behind him. I had the monster's secret, a secret which could, in my hour, deliver to me the house of the Lake.

"To assure myself of it, I waited at least half an hour and, in my turn, made the spring play. All passed as for Erik. But I took care not to penetrate myself into the hole, knowing Erik at home. On the other hand, the idea that I might be surprised here by Erik suddenly recalled to me the death of Joseph Buquet and, not wishing to compromise so great a discovery, which could be useful to many, *to many of the human race*, I left the cellars of the theater, after carefully replacing the stone, following a system which had not varied since Persia.

"You may well think that I was always very interested in the intrigue of Erik and Christine Daaé, not that I obeyed in the circumstance a morbid curiosity, but precisely because, as I have already said, of that dreadful thought which never left me: 'If,' I thought, 'Erik discovers that he is not loved for himself, we may expect anything.' And, ceasing not to wander—prudently—in the Opera, I soon learned the truth about the sad loves of the monster. He occupied Christine's mind by terror, but the heart of the sweet child belonged wholly to the Vicomte Raoul de Chagny. While those two played, like two innocent betrothed, in the upper floors of the Opera—fleeing the monster—they little suspected that someone watched over them. I was decided on all: to kill the monster if need be and to give explanations afterward to justice. But Erik did not show himself—and I was none the more reassured for that.

"I must tell all my calculation. I believed that the monster, driven from his dwelling by jealousy, would thus permit me to penetrate without peril into the house of the Lake, by the passage of the third cellar. I had every interest, for everyone's sake, in knowing exactly what there could well be inside! One day, tired of waiting for an occasion, I made the stone play and immediately heard a formidable music; the monster was working, all doors open in his home, at his *Don Juan Triumphant*. I knew that was the work of his life. I took care not to move and remained prudently in my dark hole. He stopped playing a moment and fell to walking through his dwelling like a madman. And he said aloud, in a resounding voice: 'All this must be finished *before!* Quite finished!' That word was not yet to reassure me and, as the music resumed, I closed the stone very softly. Now, despite that closed stone, I still heard a vague distant chant, distant, distant, which rose from the depth of the earth, as I had heard the siren's chant rise from the depth of the waters. And I recalled the words of some stagehands who had been smiled at at the moment of Joseph Buquet's death: 'There was around the hanged man's body a noise that resembled the song of the dead.'

"The day of Christine Daaé's abduction, I arrived at the theater only rather late in the evening and trembling to learn bad news. I had passed an atrocious day, for I had not ceased, since reading a morning paper announcing the marriage of Christine and the Vicomte de Chagny, to ask myself if, after all, *I was not better advised to denounce the monster*. But reason returned to me and I remained persuaded that such an attitude could only precipitate the possible catastrophe.

"When my carriage set me down before the Opera, I looked at that monument as if I were astonished, in truth, *to see it still standing!*

"But I am, like every good oriental, a bit fatalistic and I entered, *expecting anything!*

"The abduction of Christine Daaé at the prison act, which naturally surprised everyone, found me prepared. It was certain that Erik had made her vanish, like the king of prestidigitators that he is, in truth. And I thought well that this time it was the end for Christine *and perhaps for everyone*.

"So much so that for a moment I asked myself if I should not advise all those people, who lingered at the theater, to flee. But again I was stopped in that thought of denunciation, by the certainty I had that I should be taken for a madman. Finally, I was not unaware that if, for example, I cried to make all those people come out: 'Fire!' I could be the cause of a catastrophe, suffocations in the flight, tramplings, savage struggles—worse than the catastrophe itself.

"However, I resolved to act without further delay, personally. The moment seemed to me, moreover, favorable. I had much chance that Erik, at that hour, thought only of his captive. It was necessary to profit by it to penetrate into his dwelling by the third cellar and I thought, for that enterprise, to join to myself that poor little despairing vicomte, who, at the first word, accepted with a confidence in me that touched me deeply; I had sent my servant to fetch my pistols. Darius rejoined us with the box in Christine's dressing-room. I gave a pistol to the vicomte and advised him to be ready to fire as myself, for, after all, Erik could be waiting for us behind the wall. We were to pass by the communards' path and by the trap.

"The little vicomte had asked me, on seeing my pistols, if we were going to fight a duel? Surely! and I said: What a duel! But I had no time, of course, to explain anything to him. The little vicomte is brave, but still he was almost wholly ignorant of his adversary! And so much the better!

"What is a duel with the most terrible of swordsmen beside a combat with the most ingenious of prestidigitators? I myself could hardly accustom myself to the thought that I was going to enter into strife with a man who is visible at bottom only when he wishes and who, in return, sees all around him, when all remains dark for you!... With a man whose bizarre science, subtlety, imagination and dexterity allow him to dispose of all natural forces, combined to create before your eyes or ears the illusion that ruins you!... And that, in the cellars of the Opera, that is to say in the very land of phantasmagoria! Can one imagine that without shuddering? Can one even have an idea of what could happen to the eyes or ears of an inhabitant of the Opera, if one had locked in the Opera—in its five cellars and its twenty-five upper floors—a ferocious and 'funny' Robert-Houdin, now mocking and now hating! now emptying pockets and now killing!... Do you think of this: 'Fight the trap-fancier?'—Good Lord! has he not fabricated, in our country, in all our palaces, those astonishing pivoting traps which are the best of traps!—Fight the trap-fancier in the land of traps!...

"If my hope was that he had not left Christine Daaé in that house of the Lake where he must have transported her, once again, fainting, my terror was that he was already somewhere around us, preparing *the Punjab lasso*.

"None better than he knows how to fling the Punjab lasso and he is the prince of stranglers as he is the king of prestidigitators. When he had finished making the little sultana laugh, in the time *of the rose hours of Mazenderan*, she herself asked that he amuse himself making her shiver. And he found nothing better than the game of the Punjab lasso. Erik, who had sojourned in India, had returned from it with an incredible skill at strangling. He had himself locked in a courtyard where they led a warrior—most often a condemned man—armed with a long pike and a broad sword. Erik, he, had only his lasso, and it was always at the moment the warrior thought to fell Erik with a tremendous blow that one heard the lasso whistle. With a flick of the wrist, Erik had tightened the slender noose at his enemy's neck, and he dragged him at once before the little sultana and her women who looked from a window and applauded. The little sultana learned herself to fling the Punjab lasso and thus killed several of her women and even friends on a visit. But I prefer to leave that terrible subject *of the Rose Hours of Mazenderan*. If I have spoken of it, it is that I had, having arrived with the Vicomte de Chagny in the cellars of the Opera, to warn my companion against a possibility always threatening around us, of strangling. Certainly! once in the cellars, my pistols could serve us no longer, for I was quite sure that from the moment he had not opposed our entry into the communards' path at the first blow, Erik would let himself be seen no more. But he could always strangle us. I had no time to explain all that to the vicomte and even I know not if, had I disposed of that time, I should have used it to tell him there was somewhere, in the shadow, a Punjab lasso ready to whistle. It was quite useless to complicate the situation and I confined myself to advising M. de Chagny to keep always his hand at the height of the eye, the arm bent in the position of the pistol-shooter who awaits the command to fire. In that position, it is impossible, even for the most adroit strangler, to fling the Punjab lasso usefully. At the same time as the neck, it takes your arm or hand and thus that lasso, which one can easily untie, becomes harmless.

"After avoiding the police commissioner and some door-lockers, then the firemen, and meeting for the first time the rat-killer and passing unnoticed before the man with the felt hat, the vicomte and I reached without hindrance the third cellar, between the stage-flat and the set of *The King of Lahore*. I made the stone play and we jumped into the dwelling Erik had built himself in the double envelope of the foundation walls of the Opera (*and that, the most calmly in the world, since Erik was one of the first masonry contractors of Charles Garnier, the architect of the Opera, and had continued to work, mysteriously, all alone, when the works were officially suspended, during the war, the siege of Paris and the Commune*).

"I knew my Erik well enough to cherish the presumption of arriving at discovering all the tricks he could have fabricated during all that time: also was I in no way reassured on jumping into his house. I knew what he had done with a certain palace of Mazenderan. From the most honest construction in the world, he had soon made the devil's house, where one could no longer utter a word without its being spied upon or reported by the echo. What family dramas! what bloody tragedies the monster dragged behind him with his traps! Not to count that one could never, in the palaces he had 'tricked', know exactly where one was. He had astonishing inventions. Certainly, the most curious, the most horrible and the most dangerous of all was *the torture chamber*. Except in exceptional cases where the little sultana amused herself making the bourgeois suffer, one hardly let enter there but condemned men. It was, in my opinion, the most atrocious imagination of *the rose hours of Mazenderan*. Also, when the visitor who had entered the torture chamber had 'enough of it', he was always permitted to finish with a Punjab lasso that was left at his disposal at the foot of the iron tree!

"Now, what was my dismay, immediately after penetrating into the monster's dwelling, on perceiving that the room into which we had just jumped, M. le Vicomte de Chagny and I, was exactly the exact reconstruction of the torture chamber of *the rose hours of Mazenderan*.

"At our feet, I found the Punjab lasso that I had so dreaded all the evening. I was convinced that that cord had already served for Joseph Buquet. The chief stagehand must have, like me, surprised Erik one evening at the moment he made the stone of the third cellar play. Curious, he had in his turn attempted the passage before the stone closed and had fallen into the torture chamber, and had come out of it only hanged. I very well imagined Erik dragging the body he wished to be rid of as far as the set of *The King of Lahore* and hanging it there, to make an example or to swell *the superstitious terror which was to help him guard the approaches of the cavern!*

"But, on reflection, Erik came back to seek the Punjab lasso, which is very singularly made of cat-guts and which could have excited the curiosity of an examining magistrate. Thus was explained the disappearance of the hanged man's rope.

"And behold that I discovered it at our feet, the lasso, in the torture chamber!... I am not faint-hearted, but a cold sweat flooded my face.

"The lantern whose little red disc I moved over the walls of the too famous chamber, trembled in my hand.

"M. de Chagny noticed it and said to me:

"'What is happening, sir?'

"I violently signaled him to be silent, for I could still have that supreme hope that we were in the torture chamber, without the monster knowing of it!

"And even, that hope was not salvation, for I could still very well imagine that, on the side of the third cellar, the torture chamber was charged with guarding the *house of the Lake*, and, that perhaps, automatically.

"Yes, the tortures were perhaps going to begin *automatically*.

"Who could have said what gestures of ours they awaited for that?

"I recommended the most absolute immobility to my companion.

"An crushing silence weighed upon us.

"And my red lantern continued to go round the torture chamber... I recognized it... I recognized it...

[Note 8: An administrative report, come from Tonkin and arrived in Paris at the end of July 1900, relates how the celebrated bandit chief De Tham, tracked with his pirates by our soldiers, was able to escape them, as well as all his men, thanks to the play of the reeds.]

[Note 9: Daroga, in Persia, commander-general of the police of the government.]

[Note 10: Here the Persian might have confessed that Erik's fate interested him equally for himself, for he was not unaware that if the government of Teheran had learned that Erik was still, living, it would have been all over with the modest pension of the former *Daroga*. It is just, moreover, to add that the Persian had a noble and generous heart and we do not doubt that the catastrophes he dreaded for others did not occupy his mind strongly. His conduct, moreover, throughout this affair, sufficiently proves it and is above all praise.]

“Stories of the world, in your language.”