XXIII. DANS LA CHAMBRE DES SUPPLICES

XXIII

IN THE TORTURE CHAMBER

*Continuation of the Persian's account.*

We were in the center of a small room of perfectly hexagonal shape... whose six wall faces were lined on the inside with mirrors... from top to bottom... In the corners, one could clearly distinguish the mirror "additions"... the little sectors meant to turn upon their drums... yes, yes, I recognize them... and I recognize the iron tree in a corner, at the back of one of those little sectors... the iron tree, with its iron branch... for the hanged.

I had seized my companion's arm. The Viscount de Chagny was all a-tremble, all ready to cry out to his fiancée the help he was bringing her... I feared he might not be able to contain himself.

Suddenly, we heard a noise to our left.

It was at first like a door opening and closing, in the adjoining room; then there was a muffled moan. I held M. de Chagny's arm more tightly, and then we distinctly heard these words:

"Take it or leave it! *The marriage mass* or *the mass of the dead.*"

I recognized the monster's voice.

There was another moan.

After which, a long silence.

I was now persuaded that the monster was unaware of our presence in his dwelling, for had it been otherwise, he would have contrived that we should hear nothing. It would have sufficed him to hermetically close the little invisible window through which lovers of torture look into the torture chamber.

And then, I was certain that had *he* known of our presence, the tortures would have begun at once.

We therefore had, from that moment, a great advantage over Erik: we were at his side and he knew nothing of it.

The important thing was not to let him know, and nothing frightened me so much as the impulse of the Viscount de Chagny, who wanted to rush through the walls to rejoin Christine Daaé, whose moaning we believed we heard at intervals.

"The mass of the dead, that's no laughing matter!" resumed Erik's voice, "whereas the marriage mass, talk to me of that! it is magnificent! One must make up one's mind and know what one wants! As for me, it is impossible for me to go on living like this, at the bottom of the earth, in a hole, like a mole! *Don Juan Triumphant is finished*, now I want to live like everyone else. I want to have a wife like everyone else and we will go for walks on Sundays. I have invented a mask that gives me the face of anybody at all. No one will even turn around. You will be the happiest of women. And we will sing for ourselves alone, to die of it. You weep! You are afraid of me! Yet I am not wicked at heart! Love me and you will see! *I lacked only being loved to be good!* If you loved me, I would be gentle as a lamb and you could do with me whatever you wished."

Soon the moaning that accompanied this sort of litany of love grew, grew. I have never heard anything more despairing, and M. de Chagny and I recognized that this frightful lamentation belonged to Erik himself. As for Christine, she must have been somewhere, perhaps on the other side of the wall we had before us, standing, mute with horror, no longer having the strength to cry out, with the monster at her knees.

This lamentation was sonorous and rumbling and rattling like the plaint of an ocean. Three times Erik drew this plaint from the rock of his throat.

"You do not love me! You do not love me! You do not love me!"

And then he softened:

"Why do you weep? You know well you hurt me."

A silence.

Each silence was a hope for us. We said to ourselves: "He has perhaps left Christine behind the wall."

And we thought only of the possibility of warning Christine Daaé of our presence without the monster suspecting anything.

We could not now leave the torture chamber unless Christine opened its door for us; and it was on this first condition that we could bring her aid, for we did not even know where the door might be around us.

Suddenly, the silence next door was disturbed by the sound of an electric bell.

There was a bound on the other side of the wall and Erik's thunderous voice:

"Someone rings! Pray, do come in!"

A lugubrious snicker.

"Who is it coming to disturb us again? Wait for me here a moment... *I am going to tell the siren to open.*"

And footsteps moved away, a door closed. I had no time to ponder the new horror that was preparing; I forgot that the monster was leaving perhaps only for a fresh crime; I understood but one thing: Christine alone was behind the wall!

The Viscount de Chagny was already calling her.

"Christine! Christine!"

Since we heard what was said in the next room, there was no reason my companion should not be heard in his turn. And yet the viscount had to repeat his call several times.

At last a faint voice reached us.

"I am dreaming," she said.

"Christine! Christine! It is I, Raoul."

Silence.

"But answer me, Christine!... if you are alone, for heaven's sake, answer me."

Then Christine's voice murmured Raoul's name.

"Yes! Yes! It is I! It is not a dream!... Christine, have confidence!... We are here to save you... but not a rash move!... When you hear the monster, warn us."

"Raoul!... Raoul!"

She had herself repeat several times that she was not dreaming and that Raoul de Chagny had been able to come to her, led by a devoted companion who knew the secret of Erik's dwelling.

But immediately upon the too-swift joy we brought her succeeded a greater terror. She wanted Raoul to withdraw at once. She trembled lest Erik discover his hiding place, for in that case he would not have hesitated to kill the young man. She told us in a few hurried words that Erik had become quite mad with love and was resolved *to kill everyone and himself with everyone*, if she did not consent to become his wife before the mayor and the priest, the priest of the Madeleine. He had given her until the next evening at eleven o'clock to reflect. It was the final deadline. She would then have to choose, as he put it, between the marriage mass and the mass of the dead!

And Erik had pronounced this phrase that Christine had not wholly understood: "Yes or no; if it is no, everyone is dead and *buried!*"

But I understood that phrase perfectly, for it answered in a terrible way to my dreadful thought.

"Could you tell us where Erik is?" I asked.

She answered that he must have left the dwelling.

"Could you make sure of it?"

"No!... I am tied up... I cannot move."

On learning this, M. de Chagny and I could not restrain a cry of rage. Our deliverance, all three of us, depended on the young girl's freedom of movement.

"Oh! to free her! To reach her!"

"But where are you then?" Christine was still asking... "There are but two doors in my room: the Louis-Philippe room, of which I spoke to you, Raoul!... one door by which Erik enters and leaves, and another that he has never opened before me and has forbidden me ever to cross, because it is, he says, the most dangerous of doors... the door of tortures!..."

"Christine, we are behind that door!..."

"You are in the torture chamber?"

"Yes, but we do not see the door."

"Ah! if I could only drag myself over there!... I would knock against the door and you would see well enough where the door is."

"Is it a door with a lock?" I asked.

"Yes, with a lock."

I thought: It opens from the other side with a key, like all doors, but on our side it opens with the spring and the counterweight, and that is not going to be easy to discover.

"Mademoiselle!" said I, "it is absolutely necessary that you open this door for us."

"But how?" answered the tearful voice of the unhappy girl... We heard a body writhing, which was evidently trying to free itself from the bonds that imprisoned it...

"We shall get out of this only by cunning," said I. "We must have the key to this door..."

"I know where it is," answered Christine, who seemed exhausted by the effort she had just made... "But I am tightly bound!... The wretch!..."

And there was a sob.

"Where is the key?" I asked, ordering M. de Chagny to be silent and let me conduct the affair, for we had not a moment to lose.

"In the room, next to the organ, with another little bronze key which he has also forbidden me to touch. They are both in a little leather bag which he calls: *The little bag of life and death*... Raoul! Raoul!... flee!... all here is mysterious and terrible... and Erik is going to become quite mad... And you are in the torture chamber!... Go away by the way you came! That room must have reasons for bearing such a name!"

"Christine!" said the young man, "we shall leave here together or die together!"

"It rests with us to leave here all safe and sound," I whispered, "but we must keep our cool. Why did he tie you up, mademoiselle? You surely cannot escape from his place! He knows that well!"

"I tried to kill myself! The monster, this evening, after bringing me here unconscious, half chloroformed, had gone out. He was, it seems,—he told me so himself—*gone to his banker!*... When he returned, he found my face bloody... I had tried to kill myself! I had beaten my forehead against the walls."

"Christine!" groaned Raoul, and he began to sob.

"So he tied me up... I have the right to die only tomorrow evening at eleven!..."

All this conversation through the wall was much more "broken" and much more cautious than I could give the impression of by transcribing it here. Often we stopped in the middle of a sentence, because we had thought we heard a creak, a step, an unusual stirring... She would say to us: No! No! it is not him!... He has gone out! He has indeed gone out! I recognized the noise made, as it closes, by the wall of the Lake.

"Mademoiselle!" I declared, "it is the monster himself who tied you up... it is he who will untie you... It is only a matter of playing the comedy that is needed for that!... Do not forget that he loves you!"

"Unhappy woman!" we heard, "how should I ever forget it!"

"Remember it so as to smile at him... beg him... tell him those bonds hurt you."

But Christine Daaé made:

"Hush!... I hear something in the wall of the Lake!... It is him!... Go away!... Go away!... Go away!..."

"We would not go even if we wished!" I affirmed, so as to impress the young girl. "We can no longer leave! And we are in the torture chamber!"

Silence! Christine breathed again.

We all three fell silent.

Heavy steps dragged slowly behind the wall, then stopped and made the parquet moan anew.

Then there was a tremendous sigh followed by a cry of horror from Christine, and we heard Erik's voice.

"I beg your pardon for showing you such a face! I am in a fine state, am I not? It is the fault of the *other?* Why did he ring? Do I ask those who pass by what time it is? He will ask no one the time again. It is the siren's fault..."

Another sigh, deeper, more tremendous, coming from the very depths of the abyss of a soul.

"Why did you cry out, Christine?"

"Because I suffer, Erik."

"I thought I had frightened you..."

"Erik, loosen my bonds... am I not your prisoner?"

"You will want to die again..."

"You gave me until tomorrow evening, eleven o'clock, Erik..."

The steps drag again upon the floor.

"After all, since we are to die together... and I am as eager as you... yes, I too have had enough of that life, you understand!... Wait, do not move, I am going to free you... You have but one word to say: *no!* and it will be over at once, *for everyone*... You are right... you are right! Why wait until tomorrow evening at eleven? Ah! yes, because it would have been finer!... I have always had the disease of decorum... of the grandiose... it is childish!... One must think only of oneself in life!... of one's own death... the rest is superfluous... *Do you see how wet I am?*... Ah! my dear, it is that I was wrong to go out... The weather is fit for neither man nor beast!... Apart from that, Christine, I believe I am having hallucinations... You know, the one who rang just now at the siren's,—go see at the bottom of the lake if he is ringing—well, he resembled... There, turn around... are you satisfied? There you are freed... My God! your wrists, Christine! I hurt them, didn't I?... That alone deserves death... Speaking of death, *I must sing his mass for him!*"

On hearing these terrible words, I could not help but have a dreadful presentiment... I too had once rung at the monster's door... and without knowing it, certainly!... I must have set some warning current in motion... And I remembered the two arms emerging from waters black as ink... Who was yet the unhappy one strayed on those shores?

The thought of that unhappy one almost kept me from rejoicing at Christine's stratagem, and yet the Viscount de Chagny was murmuring in my ear this magic word: freed!... Who then? Who was *the other?* He for whom we were at that moment hearing the mass of the dead?

Ah! the sublime and furious chant! The whole house of the Lake rumbled with it... all the bowels of the earth trembled with it... We had put our ears against the mirror wall to better hear Christine Daaé's playing, the playing she played for our deliverance; but we heard nothing more than the playing of the mass of the dead. It was rather a mass of the damned... It made, at the bottom of the earth, a round of demons.

I recall that the *Dies iræ* that *he* sang enveloped us like a storm. Yes, we had thunder around us and lightning... Surely! I had heard *him* sing formerly... He even went so far as to make the stone mouths of my androcephalous bulls sing, on the walls of the palace of Mazenderan... But to sing like that, never! never! He sang like the god of thunder...

Suddenly, the organ and the voice stopped so abruptly that M. de Chagny and I recoiled behind the wall, so seized were we... And the voice, suddenly changed, transformed, grated out distinctly all these metallic syllables.

"*What have you done with my bag?*"

“Stories of the world, in your language.”