VI. LE VIOLON ENCHANTÉ

VI

THE ENCHANTED VIOLIN

Christine Daaé, the victim of intrigues to which we shall return later, did not immediately regain at the Opera the triumph of that famous gala evening. Since then, however, she had had the opportunity to be heard in the city, at the home of the Duchess of Zurich, where she sang the most beautiful pieces from her repertoire; and here is what the great critic X. Y. Z., who was among the distinguished guests, wrote of her:

"When one hears her in *Hamlet*, one wonders if Shakespeare came from the Champs-Élysées to rehearse *Ophelia* with her... It is true that, when she dons the starry diadem of the Queen of the Night, Mozart, for his part, must leave his eternal dwelling to come and hear her. But no, he need not trouble himself, for the high, vibrant voice of the magical interpreter of his *Magic Flute* goes to find him in Heaven, which she climbs with ease, exactly as she has known how, without effort, to pass from her cottage in the village of Skotelof to the palace of gold and marble built by Mr. Garnier."

But after the Duchess of Zurich's evening, Christine no longer sings in society. The fact is that at this time, she refuses every invitation, every fee. Without offering a plausible excuse, she gives up appearing at a charity festival, for which she had previously promised her assistance. She acts as if she were no longer mistress of her destiny, as if she were afraid of a new triumph.

She learned that the Count de Chagny, to please his brother, had made very active overtures on her behalf with Mr. Richard; she wrote to thank him and also to beg him to speak of her no more to her directors. What could have been the reasons for so strange an attitude? Some have claimed it was an immeasurable pride, others have cried up a divine modesty. One is not so modest as that when one is in the theater; in truth, I do not know whether I should not simply write this word: dread. Yes, I believe Christine Daaé was then afraid of what had just happened to her and was as stupefied as all those around her. Stupefied? Come now! I have here a letter from Christine (the Persian's collection) relating to the events of that period. Well, after rereading it, I shall not write that Christine was stupefied or even frightened by her triumph, but rather *terrified*. Yes, yes... terrified! "I no longer recognize myself when I sing!" she says.

The poor, pure, sweet child!

She showed herself nowhere, and the Vicomte de Chagny tried in vain to cross her path. He wrote to her, asking permission to call upon her, and he was despairing of a reply, when one morning she sent him the following note:

"Monsieur, I have not forgotten the little child who went to fetch my scarf from the sea. I cannot help but write you this, today as I depart for Perros, led by a sacred duty. Tomorrow is the anniversary of my poor papa's death, whom you knew and who loved you well. He is buried there, with his violin, in the cemetery that surrounds the little church, at the foot of the hillside where, as very small children, we played so much; on the edge of that road where, a little older, we said farewell to each other for the last time."

When he received this note from Christine Daaé, the Vicomte de Chagny threw himself upon a railway timetable, dressed hastily, wrote a few lines that his valet was to deliver to his brother, and flung himself into a carriage, which moreover set him down too late on the platform of the Montparnasse station for him to catch the morning train on which he had counted.

Raoul spent a dismal day and regained a taste for life only toward evening when he was installed in his compartment. All along the journey, he reread Christine's note, he breathed in its perfume; he revived the sweet image of his youth. He passed that whole abominable railway night in a feverish dream that had Christine Daaé for beginning and end. Day was beginning to break when he disembarked at Lannion. He ran to the diligence for Perros-Guirec. He was the only traveler. He questioned the coachman. He learned that the previous evening a young woman who looked entirely like a Parisian had had herself driven to Perros and had gone down at the inn of the Setting Sun. It could only be Christine. She had come alone. Raoul let escape a deep sigh. He would be able, in full peace, to speak to Christine, in that solitude. He loved her to the point of suffocation. That big fellow, who had gone around the world, was pure as a virgin who had never left her mother's house.

As he drew nearer to her, he devoutly recalled the story of the little Swedish singer. Many details of it are still unknown to the crowd.

Once upon a time, in a small town near Upsal, there was a peasant who lived there with his family, tilling the soil during the week and singing at the lectern on Sunday. This peasant had a little girl to whom, long before she knew how to read, he taught to decipher the musical alphabet. Daaé's father was, perhaps without suspecting it, a great musician. He played the violin and was considered the best fiddler in all of Scandinavia. His reputation extended round about and one always turned to him to make the couples dance at weddings and feasts. Mother Daaé, invalid, died when Christine was entering her sixth year. At once the father, who loved only his daughter and his music, sold his plot of land and went off to seek glory at Upsal. He found there only misery.

Then he returned to the countryside, going from fair to fair, scraping out his Scandinavian melodies, while his child, who never left him, listened to him in ecstasy or accompanied him in song. One day, at the Limby fair, Professor Valérius heard them both and took them to Gothenburg. He claimed that the father was the first fiddler in the world and that his daughter had the stuff of a great artist. They provided for the education and instruction of the child. Everywhere she amazed everyone by her beauty, her grace, and her thirst to speak and do well. Her progress was rapid. Professor Valérius and his wife, on these occurrences, had to come and install themselves in France. They took Daaé and Christine with them. Mama Valérius treated Christine like her own daughter. As for the old man, he began to waste away, seized with homesickness. In Paris he never went out. He lived in a kind of dream that he sustained with his violin. For whole hours, he locked himself in his room with his daughter, and one could hear him violin and sing ever so softly, ever so softly. Sometimes Mama Valérius came to listen to them behind the door, gave a great sigh, wiped away a tear, and went back on tiptoe. She too was nostalgic for her Scandinavian sky.

Father Daaé seemed to regain his strength only in summer, when the whole family went to vacation at Perros-Guirec, in a corner of Brittany that was then almost unknown to Parisians. He loved the sea of that country very much, finding it, he said, the same color as back there, and often, on the beach, he played for it his most mournful airs, and claimed that the sea fell silent to listen to them. And then, he had so well entreated Mama Valérius, that she had consented to a new whim of the former fiddler.

At the time of the "pardons," the village festivals, the dances and the "dérobees," he set off as in former days, with his violin, and he had the right to take his daughter with him for eight days. One never tired of listening to them. They poured for the whole year a measure of harmony into the smallest hamlets, and slept at night in barns, refusing the inn bed, pressing close on the straw one against the other, as in the time when they were so poor in Sweden.

Now, they were dressed quite properly, refused the coins offered them, made no collection, and the people around them understood nothing of the conduct of this fiddler who ran the roads with that beautiful child who sang so well one thought one heard an angel from paradise. They followed them from village to village.

One day, a young boy from the city, who was with his governess, made her walk a long way, for he could not decide to leave the little girl whose voice so sweet and so pure seemed to have enchained him. Thus they arrived at the edge of a creek still called Trestraou. At that time, there was in that place only the sky and the sea and the golden shore. And, above all, there was a great wind that carried Christine's scarf into the sea. Christine gave a cry and stretched out her arms, but the veil was already far upon the waves. Christine heard a voice saying to her:

"Do not trouble yourself, mademoiselle, I shall fetch your scarf from the sea."

And she saw a little boy who ran, who ran, despite the cries and indignant protests of a worthy lady, all in black. The little boy went into the sea fully clothed and brought her back her scarf. The little boy and the scarf were in a fine state! The lady in black could not calm herself, but Christine laughed with all her heart, and she kissed the little boy. It was the Vicomte Raoul de Chagny. He was then living, with his aunt, at Lannion. During the season they saw each other almost every day and they played together. At the request of the aunt and through the good offices of Professor Valérius, old Daaé consented to give violin lessons to the young viscount. Thus Raoul learned to love the same airs as those which had enchanted Christine's childhood.

They had about the same little dreamy and calm soul. They took pleasure only in stories, in old Breton tales, and their principal game was to go seek them at the threshold of doors, like beggars. "Madame or my good sir, have you a little story to tell us, please?" It was rare that one did not "give" them one. What Breton grandmother has not at least once in her life seen the korrigans dance upon the heather, in the moonlight?

But their great feast was when, at dusk, in the great peace of the evening, after the sun had set into the sea, father Daaé came to sit beside them on the edge of the road, and told them in a low voice, as if afraid to frighten the ghosts he evoked, the beautiful, sweet or terrible legends of the land of the North. Sometimes, it was beautiful as the tales of Andersen, sometimes it was sad, as the songs of the great poet Runeberg. When he fell silent, the two children said: "Again!"

There was a story that began thus:

"A king had seated himself in a little skiff, upon one of those tranquil and deep waters that open like a brilliant eye amid the mountains of Norway..."

And another:

"Little Lotte thought of everything and thought of nothing. A summer bird, she soared in the golden rays of the sun, bearing upon her blond curls her springtime crown. Her soul was as clear, as blue as her gaze. She caressed her mother, she was faithful to her doll, took great care of her dress, her red shoes and her violin, but she loved, above all things, to hear, as she fell asleep, the Angel of Music."

While the old man said these things, Raoul looked at the blue eyes and golden hair of Christine. And Christine thought that little Lotte was happy to hear, as she fell asleep, the Angel of Music. There was scarce a story of father Daaé's in which the Angel of Music did not appear, and the children asked him for explanations of this Angel without end. Father Daaé claimed that all great musicians, all great artists receive at least once in their life the visit of the Angel of Music. This Angel has sometimes leaned over their cradle, as happened to little Lotte, and thus it is that there are little prodigies who play the violin at six better than men of fifty, which, you will admit, is quite extraordinary. Sometimes, the Angel comes much later, because the children are not good and will not learn their method and neglect their scales. Sometimes, the Angel never comes, because one does not have a pure heart nor a tranquil conscience. One never sees the Angel, but he makes himself heard to predestined souls. It is often at the moments they least expect it, when they are sad and discouraged. Then, the ear suddenly perceives celestial harmonies, a divine voice, and remembers it all its life. Persons visited by the Angel remain as if inflamed. They vibrate with a shudder known to no other mortals. And they have this privilege, of no longer being able to touch an instrument or open the mouth to sing, without making heard sounds that put to shame by their beauty all other human sounds. People who do not know that the Angel has visited these persons say they have genius.

Little Christine asked her papa if he had heard the Angel. But father Daaé shook his head sadly, then his gaze shone as he looked at his child and said to her:

"You, my child, shall hear him one day! When I am in Heaven, I shall send him to you, I promise you!"

Father Daaé began to cough at that time.

Autumn came, which separated Raoul and Christine.

They saw each other again three years later; they were young people. This took place at Perros again and Raoul retained such an impression of it that it pursued him all his life. Professor Valérius was dead, but Mama Valérius had remained in France, where her interests detained her with old Daaé and his daughter, these still singing and playing the violin, drawing into their harmonious dream their dear protectress, who seemed to live no longer but on music. The young man had come to Perros on chance and, likewise, he entered the house formerly inhabited by his little friend. He saw first old Daaé, who rose from his seat with tears in his eyes and who embraced him, telling him they had kept a faithful memory of him. In fact, scarce a day had passed without Christine speaking of Raoul. The old man was still speaking when the door opened and, charming, eager, the young girl entered, bearing on a tray the steaming tea. She recognized Raoul and set down her burden. A light flame spread over her charming face. She remained hesitant, silent. Papa looked at them both. Raoul approached the young girl and kissed her with a kiss she did not avoid. She put a few questions to him, acquitted herself prettily of her duty as hostess, took up the tray and left the room. Then she went to take refuge on a bench in the solitude of the garden. She experienced feelings that stirred in her adolescent heart for the first time. Raoul came to join her and they talked until evening, in great embarrassment. They were quite changed, did not recognize their former selves, who seemed to have acquired a considerable importance. They were prudent as diplomats and they told each other things that had no bearing on their nascent feelings. When they parted, at the edge of the road, Raoul said to Christine, placing a correct kiss upon her trembling hand: "Mademoiselle, I shall never forget you!" And he went off regretting those bold words, for he knew well that Christine Daaé could not be the wife of the Vicomte de Chagny.

As for Christine, she went to find her father and said to him: "Do you not find that Raoul is no longer as nice as before? I no longer love him!" And she tried not to think of him. She succeeded with some difficulty and threw herself back upon her art, which took all her moments. Her progress became marvelous. Those who listened to her predicted she would be the first artist in the world. But her father, on these occurrences, died, and, at once, she seemed to have lost with him her voice, her soul and her genius. She retained enough of all that to enter the Conservatoire, but barely. She distinguished herself in no way, followed the classes without enthusiasm and won a prize to please old Mama Valérius, with whom she continued to live. The first time Raoul had seen Christine again at the Opera, he had been charmed by the beauty of the young girl and by the revival of sweet images of former times, but he had been rather astonished by the negative side of her art. She seemed detached from everything. He came back to listen to her. He followed her in the wings. He waited for her behind a flat. He tried to attract her attention. More than once, he accompanied her as far as the threshold of her dressing room, but she did not see him. She seemed, moreover, to see no one. It was indifference passing by. Raoul suffered from it, for she was beautiful; he was timid and dared not admit to himself that he loved her. And then, there had been the thunderclap of the gala evening: the heavens rent, a voice of an angel making itself heard on earth for the ravishment of men and the consummation of his heart...

And then, and then, there had been that man's voice behind the door: "You must love me!" and no one in the dressing room...

Why had she laughed when he said to her, at the moment she reopened her eyes: "I am the little child who fetched your scarf from the sea"? Why had she not recognized him? And why had she written to him?

Oh! this coast is long... long... Here is the crucifix of the three roads... Here is the deserted moor, the frozen heather, the immobile landscape under the white sky. The windowpanes tinkle, break their squares in his ears... What a noise this diligence makes that advances so little! He recognizes the cottages... the enclosures, the banks, the trees of the road... Here is the last turn of the road, and then one will descend and it will be the sea... the great bay of Perros...

So, she went down at the inn of the Setting Sun. Well! There is no other. And then, one is very well there. He recalls that in the old days, they told fine stories there! How his heart beats! What will she say on seeing him?

The first person he perceives on entering the smoke-filled old room of the inn is Mama Tricard. She recognizes him. She pays him compliments. She asks what brings him. He blushes. He says that, come on business to Lannion, he had wanted to "push on as far as here to say good day to her." She wants to serve him lunch, but he says: "Later." He seems to be awaiting something or someone. The door opens. He stands. He is not mistaken: it is she! He wants to speak, he falls back. She remains before him smiling, in no way astonished. Her face is fresh and pink as a strawberry come in the shade. No doubt, the young girl is moved by a rapid walk. Her breast that encloses a sincere heart rises gently. Her eyes, clear mirrors of pale azure, of the color of lakes that dream, immobile, far up toward the north of the world, her eyes bring him tranquilly the reflection of her candid soul. The fur garment is half-open upon a supple waist, upon the harmonious line of her young body full of grace. Raoul and Christine look at each other long. Mama Tricard smiles and, discreet, slips away. At last Christine speaks:

"You have come and that does not astonish me. I had the presentiment that I should find you here, in this inn, on returning from mass. *Someone* told me so, there. Yes, I had been announced your arrival."

"Who then?" asks Raoul, taking in his hands the little hand of Christine, which she does not withdraw.

"Why, my poor papa who is dead."

There is a silence between the two young people.

Then Raoul resumes:

"Did your papa tell you that I love you, Christine, and that I cannot live without you?"

Christine blushes to her hair and turns her head. She says, her voice trembling:

"Me? You are mad, my friend."

And she bursts out laughing to give herself, as they say, a composed air.

"Do not laugh, Christine, it is very serious."

And she replies, grave:

"I did not bring you here for you to say such things to me."

"You 'brought me,' Christine; you guessed that your letter would not leave me indifferent and that I would hasten to Perros. How could you have thought that, if you had not thought that I loved you?"

"I thought that you would remember the games of our childhood in which my father so often joined. At bottom, I do not well know what I thought... I may have been wrong to write to you... Your sudden appearance the other evening in my dressing room had carried me far, far into the past, and I wrote to you like the little girl I then was, who would be happy to see, in a moment of sadness and solitude, her little comrade beside her..."

For an instant, they keep silent. There is in Christine's attitude something that Raoul does not find natural without his being able to define his thought. However, he does not feel her hostile; far from it... the despairing tenderness of her eyes informs him sufficiently. But why is this tenderness despairing?... That is perhaps what must be known and what already irritates the young man...

"When you saw me in your dressing room, was that the first time you perceived me, Christine?"

She does not know how to lie. She says:

"No! I had already caught sight of you several times in your brother's box. And also upon the stage."

"I suspected as much!" says Raoul, pinching his lips. "But why then, when you saw me in your dressing room, at your knees, and reminded you that I had fetched your scarf from the sea, why did you answer as if you did not know me and also why did you laugh?"

The tone of these questions is so harsh that Christine looks at Raoul, astonished, and does not answer him. The young man is himself stupefied at this sudden quarrel, which he dares at the very moment when he had promised himself to make Christine hear words of sweetness, of love and of submission. A husband, a lover who has every right, would not speak otherwise to his wife or his mistress who had offended him. But he irritates himself at his own wrongs, and judging himself stupid, he finds no other issue from this ridiculous situation than in the fierce decision he takes to show himself odious.

"You do not answer me!" he says, furious and unhappy. "Well, I shall answer for you, I! It is that there was someone in that dressing room who embarrassed you, Christine! someone to whom you did not wish to show that you could take an interest in a person other than him!..."

"If someone embarrassed me, my friend!" interrupted Christine in an icy tone... "if someone embarrassed me, that evening, it must have been you, since it is you that I threw out!..."

"Yes!... to remain with the other!..."

"What do you say, monsieur?" says the young woman, breathless... "and of what other is it a question here?"

"Of the one to whom you said: *I sing only for you! I gave you my soul this evening, and I am dead!*"

Christine has seized Raoul's arm: she grips it with a force one would not suspect in this fragile being.

"You were listening then behind the door?"

"Yes! because I love you... And I heard everything..."

"You heard what?" And the young girl, having become strangely calm again, releases Raoul's arm.

"He said to you: *You must love me!*"

At these words, a cadaverous pallor spreads over Christine's face, her eyes become ringed... She staggers, she is about to fall. Raoul rushes forward, stretches out his arms, but already Christine has overcome this passing faintness, and, in a low voice, almost expiring:

"Speak! speak again! say all that you heard!"

Raoul looks at her, hesitates, understands nothing of what is happening.

"But, do speak! You see well that you are killing me!..."

"I heard further that he answered you, when you had said to him that you had given him your soul: *Your soul is very beautiful, my child, and I thank you. There is no emperor who has received such a gift! The angels wept this evening!*"

Christine has placed her hand upon her heart. She fixes Raoul in an indescribable emotion. Her gaze is so acute, so fixed, that it seems that of a madwoman. Raoul is terrified. But see, Christine's eyes become moist and upon her ivory cheeks slide two pearls, two heavy tears...

"Christine!..."

"Raoul!..."

The young man wants to seize her, but she slips through his hands and flees in great disorder.

While Christine remained locked in her room, Raoul made himself a thousand reproaches for his brutality; but, on the other hand, jealousy took up its gallop in his fevered veins. For the young girl to have shown such emotion on learning that her secret had been surprised, that secret must be of importance! Certainly, Raoul, despite what he had heard, did not doubt the purity of Christine. He knew she had a great reputation for wisdom and he was not so naive as not to understand the necessity in which an artiste is sometimes cornered to hear words of love. She had indeed answered by affirming that she had given her soul, but it was evident that in all this it was only a question of song and of music. Evident? Then why this agitation just now? My God, how unhappy Raoul was! And, had he held the man, *the man's voice*, he would have demanded precise explanations.

Why has Christine fled? Why does she not come down?

He refused to lunch. He was quite downcast and his grief was great to see flow far from the young Swede those hours he had hoped so sweet. Why did she not come with him to roam the country where so many memories were common to them? And why, since she seemed to have nothing more to do at Perros and, in fact, did nothing there, did she not at once take the road back to Paris? He had learned that in the morning, she had had a mass said for the repose of father Daaé's soul and that she had passed long hours in prayer in the little church and upon the fiddler's tomb.

Sad, discouraged, Raoul went toward the cemetery that surrounded the church. He pushed open its door. He wandered solitary among the tombs, deciphering the inscriptions, but as he arrived behind the apse, he was at once informed by the startling note of the flowers that sighed upon the granite tomb and overflowed even onto the white earth. They perfumed all that frozen corner of the Breton winter. They were miraculous red roses that seemed to have bloomed that morning, in the snow. It was a little life among the dead, for death, there, was everywhere. It too overflowed from the earth that had rejected its too-full of corpses. Skeletons and skulls by the hundreds were piled against the church wall, retained simply by a light mesh of wire that left exposed all the macabre edifice. The death's heads, stacked, aligned like bricks, consolidated in the intervals by very neatly whitened bones, seemed to form the first course upon which one had masoned the walls of the sacristy. The door of this sacristy opened in the middle of this ossuary, such as one sees many along the old Breton churches.

Raoul prayed for Daaé, then, lamentably impressed by those eternal smiles that the mouths of death's heads have, he left the cemetery, climbed the hillside and sat at the edge of the moor that overlooks the sea. The wind ran maliciously upon the shores, barking after the poor and timid light of day. That light yielded, fled and was no more than a livid streak at the horizon. Then, the wind fell silent. It was evening. Raoul was wrapped in icy shadows, but he did not feel the cold. All his thought wandered upon the deserted and desolate moor, all his memory. It was there, in this place, that he had often come, at nightfall, with little Christine, to see the korrigans dance, just at the moment the moon rises. For his part, he had never glimpsed any, and yet he had good eyes. Christine, on the contrary, who was a little near-sighted, claimed to have seen many. He smiled at the idea, and then, suddenly, he started. A form, a precise form, but which had come there without his knowing how, without the least noise having warned him, a form standing at his side, said:

"Do you believe the korrigans will come this evening?"

It was Christine. He wanted to speak. She closed his mouth with her gloved hand.

"Listen to me, Raoul, I am resolved to tell you something grave, very grave!"

Her voice trembled. He waited.

She resumed, oppressed:

"Do you remember, Raoul, the legend of the Angel of Music?"

"If I remember it!" said he, "I believe it is here that your father told it to us for the first time."

"It is here also that he said to me: 'When I am in heaven, my child, I shall send him to you.' Well! Raoul, my father is in heaven and I have received the visit of the Angel of Music."

"I do not doubt it," replied the young man gravely, for he believed he understood that in a pious thought, his friend mingled the memory of her father with the brilliance of her last triumph.

Christine seemed slightly astonished at the composure with which the Vicomte de Chagny learned that she had received the visit of the Angel of Music.

"How do you understand it, Raoul?" said she, bending her pale face so near the young man's that he could believe Christine was about to give him a kiss, but she only wished to read, despite the darkness, in his eyes.

"I understand," he replied, "that a human creature does not sing as you sang the other evening, without some miracle intervening, without heaven having some part in it. There is no professor on earth who can teach you such accents. You have heard the Angel of Music, Christine."

"Yes," she said solemnly, *in my dressing room.* It is there that he comes to give me his daily lessons."

The tone in which she said that was so penetrating and so singular that Raoul looked at her uneasily, as one looks at a person who says an enormity or affirms some foolish vision to which she believes with all the forces of her poor sick brain. But she had drawn back and she was no more, immobile, than a little shadow in the night.

"In your dressing room?" he repeated like a stupid echo.

"Yes, it is there that I heard him and I was not alone in hearing him..."

"Who else heard him, Christine?"

"You, my friend."

"Me? I heard the Angel of Music?"

"Yes, the other evening, it was he who spoke when you were listening behind the door of my dressing room. It was he who said to me: 'You must love me.' But I believed myself to be the only one to perceive his voice. So, judge of my astonishment when I learned, this morning, that you could hear him, you too..."

Raoul burst out laughing. And at once, the night dissipated over the deserted moor and the first rays of the moon came to envelop the young people. Christine had turned, hostile, toward Raoul. Her eyes, ordinarily so sweet, shot lightning.

"Why do you laugh? You perhaps believe you heard a man's voice?"

"Well!" answered the young man, whose ideas began to muddle before Christine's battle attitude.

"It is you, Raoul! you who say that to me! a former little comrade of mine! a friend of my father! I no longer recognize you! But what do you believe then? I am an honest girl, I, Monsieur le Vicomte de Chagny, and I do not lock myself in with men's voices, in my dressing room. If you had opened the door, you would have seen there was no one!"

"It is true! When you had gone, I opened that door and I found no one in the dressing room..."

"You see well... then?"

The count called upon all his courage.

"Then, Christine, I think someone is making a fool of you!"

She gave a cry and fled. He ran behind her, but she threw at him, in a fierce irritation:

"Leave me! leave me!"

And she disappeared. Raoul returned to the inn very weary, very discouraged and very sad.

He learned that Christine had just gone up to her room and that she had announced she would not come down for dinner. The young man asked if she were not ill. The worthy innkeeper answered him in an ambiguous fashion that, if she were ailing, it must be from an ill that was not very grave, and, as she believed in the quarrel of two lovers, she moved away shrugging her shoulders and expressing surreptitiously the pity she had for young people who squandered in vain quarrels the hours that good God has permitted them to spend on earth. Raoul dined all alone, in the corner of the hearth and, as you well think, in a very glum fashion. Then, in his room, he tried to read, then, in his bed, he tried to sleep. No noise was to be heard in the adjoining apartment. What was Christine doing? Was she sleeping? And if she were not sleeping, what was she thinking? And he, what was he thinking? Would he even have been able to say? The strange conversation he had had with Christine had quite troubled him!... He thought less of Christine than *around* Christine, and this "around" was so diffuse, so nebulous, so ungraspable, that he felt from it a very curious and very anguishing unease.

Thus the hours passed very slowly; it might have been half past eleven at night when he distinctly heard walking in the room next to his. It was a light, furtive step. Christine had then not gone to bed? Without reasoning his gestures, the young man dressed hastily, taking care to make the least noise. And, ready for anything, he waited. Ready for what? Did he know? His heart leapt when he heard Christine's door turn slowly on its hinges. Where was she going at that hour when all rested in Perros? He opened his door very softly and could see, in a moonbeam, the white form of Christine who slipped cautiously in the corridor. She reached the staircase; she descended and, he, above her, leaned over the rail. Suddenly, he heard two voices conversing rapidly. A phrase reached him: "Do not lose the key." It was the hostess's voice. Below, the door giving onto the harbor was opened. It was closed again. And all returned to calm. Raoul at once went back into his room and ran to his window which he opened. The white form of Christine stood upon the deserted quay.

This first floor of the inn of the Setting Sun was not very high and an espaliered tree that stretched its branches to Raoul's impatient arms permitted him to be outside without the hostess suspecting his absence. So, what was the astonishment of the worthy lady, the next morning, when the young man was brought to her, almost frozen, more dead than alive, and she learned that he had been found stretched full length upon the steps of the high altar of the little church of Perros. She ran to tell the news presto to Christine, who came down in haste and, aided by the innkeeper, lavished her anxious cares upon the young man who soon opened his eyes and came quite back to life on perceiving above him the charming face of his friend.

What then had happened? M. le Commissaire Mifroid had the occasion, some weeks later, when the drama of the Opera brought on the action of the public prosecutor's office, to interrogate the Vicomte de Chagny upon the events of the Perros night, and here is how those were transcribed upon the sheets of the investigation file. (Ref. 150.)

*Q.*--Mlle Daaé had not seen you descend from your room by the singular path you had chosen?

*A.*--No, monsieur, no, no. However, I arrived behind her neglecting to stifle the noise of my steps. I then asked but one thing, that she turn around, that she see me and that she recognize me. I had just told myself, indeed, that my pursuit was quite incorrect and that the espionage to which I was lending myself was unworthy of me. But she seemed not to hear me and, in fact, she acted as if I had not been there. She left the quay tranquilly and then, suddenly, rapidly climbed the road. The church clock had just struck a quarter to midnight, and it seemed to me that the sound of the hour had determined the haste of her course, for she almost took to running. Thus she arrived at the cemetery gate.

*Q.* The cemetery gate was open?

*A.* Yes, monsieur, and that surprised me, but seemed in no way to astonish Mlle Daaé.

*Q.* There was no one in the cemetery?

*A.* I saw no one. If there had been someone, I would have seen him. The moonlight was dazzling and the snow that covered the earth, sending back its rays, made the night still clearer.

*Q.* One could not hide behind the tombs?

*A.* No, monsieur. They are poor tombstones that disappeared under the layer of snow and that aligned their crosses level with the ground. The only shadows were those of these crosses and ours. The church was all dazzling with light. I have never seen such a nocturnal light. It was very beautiful, very transparent and very cold. I had never gone at night into cemeteries, and I ignored that one could find there such a light, "a light that weighs nothing."

*Q.* Are you superstitious?

*A.* No, monsieur, I am a believer.

*Q.* In what state of mind were you?

*A.* Very sound and very tranquil, my faith. Certainly, the unusual outing of Mlle Daaé had at first profoundly troubled me; but as soon as I saw the young girl enter the cemetery, I told myself that she came there to accomplish some vow upon the paternal tomb, and I found the thing so natural that I regained all my calm. I was simply astonished that she had not yet heard me walking behind her, for the snow cracked under my steps. But no doubt she was wholly absorbed by her pious thought. I resolved besides not to trouble her and, when she had reached her father's tomb, I remained a few steps behind her. She knelt in the snow, made the sign of the cross and began to pray. At that moment, midnight struck. The twelfth stroke was still ringing in my ear when, suddenly, I saw the young girl raise her head; her gaze fixed the celestial vault, her arms stretched toward the night's star; she seemed to me in ecstasy and I was still asking myself what had been the sudden and determining reason for that ecstasy when I myself raised my head, cast around me a distraught look and all my being stretched toward the Invisible, *the invisible who played music for us.* And what music! We already knew it! Christine and I had heard it in our youth. But never upon father Daaé's violin had it expressed itself with so divine an art. I could do no better, in that instant, than to recall all that Christine had just told me of the Angel of Music, and I knew not too well what to think of those unforgettable sounds which, if they did not descend from heaven, left unknown their origin on earth. There was there no instrument nor hand to guide the bow. Oh! I recalled the admirable melody. It was the *Resurrection of Lazarus*, that father Daaé played us in his hours of sadness and of faith. Christine's angel might have existed that he would not have better played that night with the dead fiddler's violin. The invocation of Jesus ravished us from the earth, and, my faith, I almost expected to see the stone of Christine's father's tomb rise. The idea also came to me that Daaé had been buried with his violin and, in truth, I know not how far, in that funereal and radiant minute, at the bottom of that little hidden provincial cemetery, beside those death's heads that laughed at us with all their immobile jaws, no, I know not how far my imagination went, nor where it stopped.

But the music had fallen silent and I found my senses. It seemed to me I heard noise from the side of the death's heads of the ossuary.

*Q.*--Ah! ah! you heard noise from the side of the ossuary?

*A.*--Yes, it appeared to me that the death's heads were now snickering and I could not help but shiver.

*Q.*--You did not at once think that behind the ossuary could be hiding precisely the celestial musician who had just so charmed you?

*A.*--I so well thought that, that I thought of nothing else, Monsieur le Commissaire, and that I forgot to follow Mlle Daaé who had just risen and was tranquilly gaining the cemetery gate. As for her, she was so absorbed, that it is not astonishing she did not perceive me. I did not move, eyes fixed toward the ossuary, decided to go to the end of this incredible adventure and to know its last word.

*Q.*--And then, what happened that you were found in the morning, stretched half-dead, upon the steps of the high altar?

*A.*--Oh! it was rapid... A death's head rolled at my feet... then another... then another... One would have said I was the target of this funereal game of bowls. And I had this fancy that a false movement must have destroyed the harmony of the scaffolding behind which our musician was concealed. This hypothesis appeared to me all the more reasonable in that a shadow suddenly glided upon the dazzling wall of the sacristy.

I threw myself forward. The shadow had already, pushing the door, penetrated into the church. I had wings, the shadow had a mantle. I was quick enough to seize a corner of the shadow's mantle. At that moment, the shadow and I were, just before the high altar and the moon's rays, through the great window of the apse, fell straight before us. As I did not let go the mantle, the shadow turned around and, the mantle with which it was wrapped having opened, I saw, Monsieur le Juge, as I see you, a frightful death's head that darted upon me a gaze where burned the fires of hell. I believed I had to do with Satan himself and, before that apparition from beyond the tomb, my heart, despite all its courage, failed, and I have no further memory of anything until the moment I awoke in my little room at the inn of the Setting Sun.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”