On this way, they reached the roof. Christine tripped over it as
lightly as a swallow. Their eyes swept the empty space between the
three domes and the triangular pediment. She breathed freely over
Paris, the whole valley of which was seen at work below. She called
Raoul to come quite close to her and they walked side by side along the
zinc streets, in the leaden avenues; they looked at their twin shapes
in the huge tanks, full of stagnant water, where, in the hot weather,
the little boys of the ballet, a score or so, learn to swim and dive.
The shadow had followed behind them clinging to their steps; and the
two children little suspected its presence when they at last sat down,
trustingly, under the mighty protection of Apollo, who, with a great
bronze gesture, lifted his huge lyre to the heart of a crimson sky.
It was a gorgeous spring evening. Clouds, which had just received
their gossamer robe of gold and purple from the setting sun, drifted
slowly by; 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 leave me, Raoul. But, if, when the moment
comes for you to take me away, I refuse to go with you--well you must
carry me off by force!"
"Are you afraid that you will change your mind, Christine?"
"I don't know," she said, shaking her head in an odd fashion. "He is a
demon!" And she shivered and nestled in his arms with a moan. "I am
afraid now of going back to live with him ... in the ground!"
"What compels you to go back, Christine?"
"If I do not go back to him, terrible misfortunes may happen! ... But
I can't do it, I can't do it! ... I know one ought to be sorry for
people who live underground ... But he is too horrible! And yet the
time is at hand; I have only a day left; and, if I do not go, he will
come and fetch me with his voice. And he will drag me with him,
underground, and go on his knees before me, with his death's head. And
he will tell me that he loves me! And he will cry! Oh, those tears,
Raoul, those tears in the two black eye-sockets of the death's head! I
can not see those tears flow again!"
She wrung her hands in anguish, while Raoul pressed her to his heart.
"No, no, you shall never again hear him tell you that he loves you!
You shall not see his tears! Let us fly, Christine, let us fly at
once!"
And he tried to drag her away, then and there. But she stopped him.
"No, no," she said, shaking her head sadly. "Not now! ... It would be
too cruel ... let him hear me sing to-morrow evening ... and then we
will go away. You must come and fetch me in my dressing-room at
midnight exactly. He will then be waiting for me in the dining-room by
the lake ... we shall be free and you shall take me away ... You must
promise me that, Raoul, even if I refuse; for I feel that, if I go back
this time, I shall perhaps never return."
And she gave a sigh to which it seemed to her that another sigh, behind
her, replied.
"Didn't you hear?"
Her teeth chattered.
"No," said Raoul, "I heard nothing."
"It is too terrible," she confessed, "to be always trembling like this!
... And yet we run no danger here; we are at home, in the sky, in the
open air, in the light. The sun is flaming; and night-birds can not
bear to look at the sun. I have never seen him by daylight ... it must
be awful! ... Oh, the first time I saw him! ... I thought that he was
going to die."
"Why?" asked Raoul, really frightened at the aspect which this strange
confidence was taking.
"BECAUSE I HAD SEEN HIM!"
This time, Raoul and Christine turned round at the same time:
"There is some one in pain," said Raoul. "Perhaps some one has been
hurt. Did you hear?"
"I can't say," Christine confessed. "Even when he is not there, my
ears are full of his sighs. Still, if you heard ..."
They stood up and looked around them. They were quite alone on the
immense lead roof. They sat down again and Raoul said:
"Tell me how you saw him first."
"I had heard him for three months without seeing him. The first time I
heard it, I thought, as you did, that that adorable voice was singing
in another room. I went out and looked everywhere; but, as you know,
Raoul, my dressing-room is very much by itself; and I could not find
the voice outside my room, whereas it went on steadily inside. And it
not only sang, but it spoke to me and answered my questions, like a
real man's voice, with this difference, that it was as beautiful as the
voice of an angel. I had never got the Angel of Music whom my poor
father had promised to send me as soon as he was dead. I really think
that Mamma Valerius was a little bit to blame. I told her about it;
and she at once said, 'It must be the Angel; at any rate, you can do no
harm by asking him.' I did so; and the man's voice replied that, yes,
it was the Angel's voice, the voice which I was expecting and which my
father had promised me. From that time onward, the voice and I became
great friends. It asked leave to give me lessons every day. I agreed
and never failed to keep the appointment which it gave me in my
dressing-room. You have no idea, though you have heard the voice, of
what those lessons were like."
"No, I have no idea," said Raoul. "What was your accompaniment?"
"We were accompanied by a music which I do not know: it was behind the
wall and wonderfully accurate. The voice seemed to understand mine
exactly, to know precisely where my father had left off teaching me.
In a few weeks' time, I hardly knew myself when I sang. I was even
frightened. I seemed to dread a sort of witchcraft behind it; but
Mamma Valerius reassured me. She said that she knew I was much too
simple a girl to give the devil a hold on me ... My progress, by the
voice's own order, was kept a secret between the voice, Mamma Valerius
and myself. It was a curious thing, but, outside the dressing-room, I
sang with my ordinary, every-day voice and nobody noticed anything. I
did all that the voice asked. It said, 'Wait and see: we shall
astonish Paris!' And I waited and lived on in a sort of ecstatic dream.
It was then that I saw you for the first time one evening, in the
house. I was so glad that I never thought of concealing my delight
when I reached my dressing-room. Unfortunately, the voice was there
before me and soon noticed, by my air, that something had happened. It
asked what was the matter and I saw no reason for keeping our story
secret or concealing the place which you filled in my heart. Then the
voice was silent. I called to it, but it did not reply; I begged and
entreated, but in vain. I was terrified lest it had gone for good. I
wish to Heaven it had, dear! ... That night, I went home in a
desperate condition. I told Mamma Valerius, who said, 'Why, of course,
the voice is jealous!' And that, dear, first revealed to me that I
loved you."
Christine stopped and laid her head on Raoul's shoulder. They sat like
that for a moment, in silence, and they did not see, did not perceive
the movement, at a few steps from them, of the creeping shadow of two
great black wings, a shadow that came along the roof so near, so near
them that it could have stifled them by closing over them.
"The next day," Christine continued, with a sigh, "I went back to my
dressing-room in a very pensive frame of mind. The voice was there,
spoke to me with great sadness and told me plainly that, if I must
bestow my heart on earth, there was nothing for the voice to do but to
go back to Heaven. And it said this with such an accent of HUMAN
sorrow that I ought then and there to have suspected and begun to
believe that I was the victim of my deluded senses. But my faith in
the voice, with which the memory of my father was so closely
intermingled, remained undisturbed. I feared nothing so much as that I
might never hear it again; I had thought about my love for you and
realized all the useless danger of it; and I did not even know if you
remembered me. Whatever happened, your position in society forbade me
to contemplate the possibility of ever marrying you; and I swore to the
voice that you were no more than a brother to me nor ever would be and
that my heart was incapable of any earthly love. And that, dear, was
why I refused to recognize or see you when I met you on the stage or in
the passages. Meanwhile, the hours during which the voice taught me
were spent in a divine frenzy, until, at last, the voice said to me,
'You can now, Christine Daae, give to men a little of the music of
Heaven.' I don't know how it was that Carlotta did not come to the
theater that night nor why I was called upon to sing in her stead; but
I sang with a rapture I had never known before and I felt for a moment
as if my soul were leaving my body!"
"Oh, Christine," said Raoul, "my heart quivered that night at every
accent of your voice. I saw the tears stream down your cheeks and I
wept with you. How could you sing, sing like that while crying?"
"I felt myself fainting," said Christine, "I closed my eyes. When I
opened them, you were by my side. But the voice was there also, Raoul!
I was afraid for your sake and again I would not recognize you and
began to laugh when you reminded me that you had picked up my scarf in
the sea! ... Alas, there is no deceiving the voice! ... The voice
recognized you and the voice was jealous! ... It said that, if I did
not love you, I would not avoid you, but treat you like any other old
friend. It made me scene upon scene. At last, I said to the voice,
'That will do! I am going to Perros to-morrow, to pray on my father's
grave, and I shall ask M. Raoul de Chagny to go with me.' 'Do as you
please,' replied the voice, 'but I shall be at Perros too, for I am
wherever you are, Christine; and, if you are still worthy of me, if you
have not lied to me, I will play you The Resurrection of Lazarus, on
the stroke of midnight, on your father's tomb and on your father's
violin.' That, dear, was how I came to write you the letter that
brought you to Perros. How could I have been so beguiled? How was it,
when I saw the personal, the selfish point of view of the voice, that I
did not suspect some impostor? Alas, I was no longer mistress of
myself: I had become his thing!"
"But, after all," cried Raoul, "you soon came to know the truth! Why
did you not at once rid yourself of that abominable nightmare?"
"Know the truth, Raoul? Rid myself of that nightmare? But, my poor
boy, I was not caught in the nightmare until the day when I learned the
truth! ... Pity me, Raoul, pity me! ... You remember the terrible
evening when Carlotta thought that she had been turned into a toad on
the stage and when the house was suddenly plunged in darkness through
the chandelier crashing to the floor? There were killed and wounded
that night and the whole theater rang with terrified screams. My first
thought was for you and the voice. I was at once easy, where you were
concerned, for I had seen you in your brother's box and I knew that you
were not in danger. But the voice had told me that it would be at the
performance and I was really afraid for it, just as if it had been an
ordinary person who was capable of dying. I thought to myself, 'The
chandelier may have come down upon the voice.' I was then on the stage
and was nearly running into the house, to look for the voice among the
killed and wounded, when I thought that, if the voice was safe, it
would be sure to be in my dressing-room and I rushed to my room. The
voice was not there. I locked my door and, with tears in my eyes,
besought it, if it were still alive, to manifest itself to me. The
voice did not reply, but suddenly I heard a long, beautiful wail which
I knew well. It is the plaint of Lazarus when, at the sound of the
Redeemer's voice, he begins to open his eyes and see the light of day.
It was the music which you and I, Raoul, heard at Perros. And then the
voice began to sing the leading phrase, 'Come! And believe in me!
Whoso believes in me shall live! Walk! Whoso hath believed in me
shall never die! ...' I can not tell you the effect which that music
had upon me. It seemed to command me, personally, to come, to stand up
and come to it. It retreated and I followed. 'Come! And believe in
me!' I believed in it, I came ... I came and--this was the
extraordinary thing--my dressing-room, as I moved, seemed to lengthen
out ... to lengthen out ... Evidently, it must have been an effect of
mirrors ... for I had the mirror in front of me ... And, suddenly, I
was outside the room without knowing how!"
"What! Without knowing how? Christine, Christine, you must really
stop dreaming!"
"I was not dreaming, dear, I was outside my room without knowing how.
You, who saw me disappear from my room one evening, may be able to
explain it; but I can not. I can only tell you that, suddenly, there
was no mirror before me and no dressing-room. I was in a dark passage,
I was frightened and I cried out. It was quite dark, but for a faint
red glimmer at a distant corner of the wall. I tried out. My voice
was the only sound, for the singing and the violin had stopped. And,
suddenly, a hand was laid on mine ... or rather a stone-cold, bony
thing that seized my wrist and did not let go. I cried out again. An
arm took me round the waist and supported me. I struggled for a little
while and then gave up the attempt. I was dragged toward the little
red light and then I saw that I was in the hands of a man wrapped in a
large cloak and wearing a mask that hid his whole face. I made one
last effort; my limbs stiffened, my mouth opened to scream, but a hand
closed it, a hand which I felt on my lips, on my skin ... a hand that
smelt of death. Then I fainted away.
"When I opened my eyes, we were still surrounded by darkness. A
lantern, standing on the ground, showed a bubbling well. The water
splashing from the well disappeared, almost at once, under the floor on
which I was lying, with my head on the knee of the man in the black
cloak and the black mask. He was bathing my temples and his hands
smelt of death. I tried to push them away and asked, 'Who are you?
Where is the voice?' His only answer was a sigh. Suddenly, a hot
breath passed over my face and I perceived a white shape, beside the
man's black shape, in the darkness. The black shape lifted me on to
the white shape, a glad neighing greeted my astounded ears and I
murmured, 'Cesar!' The animal quivered. Raoul, I was lying half back
on a saddle and I had recognized the white horse out of the PROFETA,
which I had so often fed with sugar and sweets. I remembered that, one
evening, there was a rumor in the theater that the horse had
disappeared and that it had been stolen by the Opera ghost. I believed
in the voice, but had never believed in the ghost. Now, however, I
began to wonder, with a shiver, whether I was the ghost's prisoner. I
called upon the voice to help me, for I should never have imagined that
the voice and the ghost were one. You have heard about the Opera
ghost, have you not, Raoul?"
"Yes, but tell me what happened when you were on the white horse of the
Profeta?"
"I made no movement and let myself go. The black shape held me up, and
I made no effort to escape. A curious feeling of peacefulness came
over me and I thought that I must be under the influence of some
cordial. I had the full command of my senses; and my eyes became used
to the darkness, which was lit, here and there, by fitful gleams. I
calculated that we were in a narrow circular gallery, probably running
all round the Opera, which is immense, underground. I had once been
down into those cellars, but had stopped at the third floor, though
there were two lower still, large enough to hold a town. But the
figures of which I caught sight had made me run away. There are demons
down there, quite black, standing in front of boilers, and they wield
shovels and pitchforks and poke up fires and stir up flames and, if you
come too near them, they frighten you by suddenly opening the red
mouths of their furnaces ... Well, while Cesar was quietly carrying me
on his back, I saw those black demons in the distance, looking quite
small, in front of the red fires of their furnaces: they came into
sight, disappeared and came into sight again, as we went on our winding
way. At last, they disappeared altogether. The shape was still
holding me up and Cesar walked on, unled and sure-footed. I could not
tell you, even approximately, how long this ride lasted; I only know
that we seemed to turn and turn and often went down a spiral stair into
the very heart of the earth. Even then, it may be that my head was
turning, but I don't think so: no, my mind was quite clear. At last,
Cesar raised his nostrils, sniffed the air and quickened his pace a
little. I felt a moistness in the air and Cesar stopped. The darkness
had lifted. A sort of bluey light surrounded us. We were on the edge
of a lake, whose leaden waters stretched into the distance, into the
darkness; but the blue light lit up the bank and I saw a little boat
fastened to an iron ring on the wharf!"
"A boat!"
"Yes, but I knew that all that existed and that there was nothing
supernatural about that underground lake and boat. But think of the
exceptional conditions in which I arrived upon that shore! I don't
know whether the effects of the cordial had worn off when the man's
shape lifted me into the boat, but my terror began all over again. My
gruesome escort must have noticed it, for he sent Cesar back and I
heard his hoofs trampling up a staircase while the man jumped into the
boat, untied the rope that held it and seized the oars. He rowed with
a quick, powerful stroke; and his eyes, under the mask, never left me.
We slipped across the noiseless water in the bluey light which I told
you of; then we were in the dark again and we touched shore. And I was
once more taken up in the man's arms. I cried aloud. And then,
suddenly, I was silent, dazed by the light... Yes, a dazzling light in
the midst of which I had been put down. I sprang to my feet. I was in
the middle of a drawing-room that seemed to me to be decorated, adorned
and furnished with nothing but flowers, flowers both magnificent and
stupid, because of the silk ribbons that tied them to baskets, like
those which they sell in the shops on the boulevards. They were much
too civilized flowers, like those which I used to find in my
dressing-room after a first night. And, in the midst of all these
flowers, stood the black shape of the man in the mask, with arms
crossed, and he said, 'Don't be afraid, Christine; you are in no
danger.' IT WAS THE VOICE!
"My anger equaled my amazement. I rushed at the mask and tried to
snatch it away, so as to see the face of the voice. The man said, 'You
are in no danger, so long as you do not touch the mask.' And, taking me
gently by the wrists, he forced me into a chair and then went down on
his knees before me and said nothing more! His humility gave me back
some of my courage; and the light restored me to the realties of life.
However extraordinary the adventure might be, I was now surrounded by
mortal, visible, tangible things. The furniture, the hangings, the
candles, the vases and the very flowers in their baskets, of which I
could almost have told whence they came and what they cost, were bound
to confine my imagination to the limits of a drawing-room quite as
commonplace as any that, at least, had the excuse of not being in the
cellars of the Opera. I had, no doubt, to do with a terrible,
eccentric person, who, in some mysterious fashion, had succeeded in
taking up his abode there, under the Opera house, five stories below
the level of the ground. And the voice, the voice which I had
recognized under the mask, was on its knees before me, WAS A MAN! And
I began to cry... The man, still kneeling, must have understood the
cause of my tears, for he said, 'It is true, Christine! ... I am not an
Angel, nor a genius, nor a ghost ... I am Erik!'"
Christine's narrative was again interrupted. An echo behind them
seemed to repeat the word after her.
"Erik!"
What echo? ... They both turned round and saw that night had fallen.
Raoul made a movement as though to rise, but Christine kept him beside
her.
"Don't go," she said. "I want you to know everything HERE!"
"But why here, Christine? I am afraid of your catching cold."
"We have nothing to fear except the trap-doors, dear, and here we are
miles away from the trap-doors ... and I am not allowed to see you
outside the theater. This is not the time to annoy him. We must not
arouse his suspicion."
"Christine! Christine! Something tells me that we are wrong to wait
till to-morrow evening and that we ought to fly at once."
"I tell you that, if he does not hear me sing tomorrow, it will cause
him infinite pain."
"It is difficult not to cause him pain and yet to escape from him for
good."
"You are right in that, Raoul, for certainly he will die of my flight."
And she added in a dull voice, "But then it counts both ways ... for
we risk his killing us."
"Does he love you so much?"
"He would commit murder for me."
"But one can find out where he lives. One can go in search of him.
Now that we know that Erik is not a ghost, one can speak to him and
force him to answer!"
Christine shook her head.
"No, no! There is nothing to be done with Erik except to run away!"
"Then why, when you were able to run away, did you go back to him?"
"Because I had to. And you will understand that when I tell you how I
left him."
"Oh, I hate him!" cried Raoul. "And you, Christine, tell me, do you
hate him too?"
"No," said Christine simply.
"No, of course not ... Why, you love him! Your fear, your terror, all
of that is just love and love of the most exquisite kind, the kind
which people do not admit even to themselves," said Raoul bitterly.
"The kind that gives you a thrill, when you think of it... Picture it:
a man who lives in a palace underground!" And he gave a leer.
"Then you want me to go back there?" said the young girl cruelly.
"Take care, Raoul; I have told you: I should never return!"
There was an appalling silence between the three of them: the two who
spoke and the shadow that listened, behind them.
"Before answering that," said Raoul, at last, speaking very slowly, "I
should like to know with what feeling he inspires you, since you do not
hate him."
"With horror!" she said. "That is the terrible thing about it. He
fills me with horror and I do not hate him. How can I hate him, Raoul?
Think of Erik at my feet, in the house on the lake, underground. He
accuses himself, he curses himself, he implores my forgiveness! ... He
confesses his cheat. He loves me! He lays at my feet an immense and
tragic love... He has carried me off for love! ... He has imprisoned
me with him, underground, for love! ... But he respects me: he crawls,
he moans, he weeps! ... And, when I stood up, Raoul, and told him that
I could only despise him if he did not, then and there, give me my
liberty ... he offered it ... he offered to show me the mysterious road
... Only ... only he rose too ... and I was made to remember that,
though he was not an angel, nor a ghost, nor a genius, he remained the
voice ... for he sang. And I listened ... and stayed! ... That night,
we did not exchange another word. He sang me to sleep.
"When I woke up, I was alone, lying on a sofa in a simply furnished
little bedroom, with an ordinary mahogany bedstead, lit by a lamp
standing on the marble top of an old Louis-Philippe chest of drawers.
I soon discovered that I was a prisoner and that the only outlet from
my room led to a very comfortable bath-room. On returning to the
bedroom, I saw on the chest of drawers a note, in red ink, which said,
'My dear Christine, you need have no concern as to your fate. You have
no better nor more respectful friend in the world than myself. You are
alone, at present, in this home which is yours. I am going out
shopping to fetch you all the things that you can need.' I felt sure
that I had fallen into the hands of a madman. I ran round my little
apartment, looking for a way of escape which I could not find. I
upbraided myself for my absurd superstition, which had caused me to
fall into the trap. I felt inclined to laugh and to cry at the same
time.
"This was the state of mind in which Erik found me. After giving three
taps on the wall, he walked in quietly through a door which I had not
noticed and which he left open. He had his arms full of boxes and
parcels and arranged them on the bed, in a leisurely fashion, while I
overwhelmed him with abuse and called upon him to take off his mask, if
it covered the face of an honest man. He replied serenely, 'You shall
never see Erik's face.' And he reproached me with not having finished
dressing at that time of day: he was good enough to tell me that it was
two o'clock in the afternoon. He said he would give me half an hour
and, while he spoke, wound up my watch and set it for me. After which,
he asked me to come to the dining-room, where a nice lunch was waiting
for us.
"I was very angry, slammed the door in his face and went to the
bath-room ... When I came out again, feeling greatly refreshed, Erik
said that he loved me, but that he would never tell me so except when I
allowed him and that the rest of the time would be devoted to music.
'What do you mean by the rest of the time?' I asked. 'Five days,' he
said, with decision. I asked him if I should then be free and he said,
'You will be free, Christine, for, when those five days are past, you
will have learned not to see me; and then, from time to time, you will
come to see your poor Erik!' He pointed to a chair opposite him, at a
small table, and I sat down, feeling greatly perturbed. However, I ate
a few prawns and the wing of a chicken and drank half a glass of tokay,
which he had himself, he told me, brought from the Konigsberg cellars.
Erik did not eat or drink. I asked him what his nationality was and if
that name of Erik did not point to his Scandinavian origin. He said
that he had no name and no country and that he had taken the name of
Erik by accident.
"After lunch, he rose and gave me the tips of his fingers, saying he
would like to show me over his flat; but I snatched away my hand and
gave a cry. What I had touched was cold and, at the same time, bony;
and I remembered that his hands smelt of death. 'Oh, forgive me!' he
moaned. And he opened a door before me. 'This is my bedroom, if you
care to see it. It is rather curious.' His manners, his words, his
attitude gave me confidence and I went in without hesitation. I felt
as if I were entering the room of a dead person. The walls were all
hung with black, but, instead of the white trimmings that usually set
off that funereal upholstery, there was an enormous stave of music with
the notes of the DIES IRAE, many times repeated. In the middle of the
room was a canopy, from which hung curtains of red brocaded stuff, and,
under the canopy, an open coffin. 'That is where I sleep,' said Erik.
'One has to get used to everything in life, even to eternity.' The
sight upset me so much that I turned away my head.
"Then I saw the keyboard of an organ which filled one whole side of the
walls. On the desk was a music-book covered with red notes. I asked
leave to look at it and read, 'Don Juan Triumphant.' 'Yes,' he said, 'I
compose sometimes.' I began that work twenty years ago. When I have
finished, I shall take it away with me in that coffin and never wake up
again.' 'You must work at it as seldom as you can,' I said. He
replied, 'I sometimes work at it for fourteen days and nights together,
during which I live on music only, and then I rest for years at a
time.' 'Will you play me something out of your Don Juan Triumphant?' I
asked, thinking to please him. 'You must never ask me that,' he said,
in a gloomy voice. 'I will play you Mozart, if you like, which will
only make you weep; but my Don Juan, Christine, burns; and yet he is
not struck by fire from Heaven.' Thereupon we returned to the
drawing-room. I noticed that there was no mirror in the whole
apartment. I was going to remark upon this, but Erik had already sat
down to the piano. He said, 'You see, Christine, there is some music
that is so terrible that it consumes all those who approach it.
Fortunately, you have not come to that music yet, for you would lose
all your pretty coloring and nobody would know you when you returned to
Paris. Let us sing something from the Opera, Christine Daae.' He spoke
these last words as though he were flinging an insult at me."
"What did you do?"
"I had no time to think about the meaning he put into his words. We at
once began the duet in Othello and already the catastrophe was upon us.
I sang Desdemona with a despair, a terror which I had never displayed
before. As for him, his voice thundered forth his revengeful soul at
every note. Love, jealousy, hatred, burst out around us in harrowing
cries. Erik's black mask made me think of the natural mask of the Moor
of Venice. He was Othello himself. Suddenly, I felt a need to see
beneath the mask. I wanted to know the FACE of the voice, and, with a
movement which I was utterly unable to control, swiftly my fingers tore
away the mask. Oh, horror, horror, horror!"
Christine stopped, at the thought of the vision that had scared her,
while the echoes of the night, which had repeated the name of Erik, now
thrice moaned the cry:
"Horror! ... Horror! ... Horror!"
Raoul and Christine, clasping each other closely, raised their eyes to
the stars that shone in a clear and peaceful sky. Raoul said:
"Strange, Christine, that this calm, soft night should be so full of
plaintive sounds. One would think that it was sorrowing with us."
"When you know the secret, Raoul, your ears, like mine, will be full of
lamentations."
She took Raoul's protecting hands in hers and, with a long shiver,
continued:
"Yes, if I lived to be a hundred, I should always hear the superhuman
cry of grief and rage which he uttered when the terrible sight appeared
before my eyes ... Raoul, you have seen death's heads, when they have
been dried and withered by the centuries, and, perhaps, if you were not
the victim of a nightmare, you saw HIS death's head at Perros. And
then you saw Red Death stalking about at the last masked ball. But all
those death's heads were motionless and their dumb horror was not
alive. But imagine, if you can, Red Death's mask suddenly coming to
life in order to express, with the four black holes of its eyes, its
nose, and its mouth, the extreme anger, the mighty fury of a demon; AND
NOT A RAY OF LIGHT FROM THE SOCKETS, for, as I learned later, you can
not see his blazing eyes except in the dark.
"I fell back against the wall and he came up to me, grinding his teeth,
and, as I fell upon my knees, he hissed mad, incoherent words and
curses at me. Leaning over me, he cried, 'Look! You want to see! See!
Feast your eyes, glut your soul on my cursed ugliness! Look at Erik's
face! Now you know the face of the voice! You were not content to
hear me, eh? You wanted to know what I looked like! Oh, you women are
so inquisitive! Well, are you satisfied? I'm a very good-looking
fellow, eh? ... When a woman has seen me, as you have, she belongs to
me. She loves me for ever. I am a kind of Don Juan, you know!' And,
drawing himself up to his full height, with his hand on his hip,
wagging the hideous thing that was his head on his shoulders, he
roared, 'Look at me! I AM DON JUAN TRIUMPHANT!' And, when I turned
away my head and begged for mercy, he drew it to him, brutally,
twisting his dead fingers into my hair."
"Enough! Enough!" cried Raoul. "I will kill him. In Heaven's name,
Christine, tell me where the dining-room on the lake is! I must kill
him!"
"Oh, be quiet, Raoul, if you want to know!"
"Yes, I want to know how and why you went back; I must know! ... But,
in any case, I will kill him!"
"Oh, Raoul, listen, listen! ... He dragged me by my hair and then ...
and then ... Oh, it is too horrible!"
"Well, what? Out with it!" exclaimed Raoul fiercely. "Out with it,
quick!"
"Then he hissed at me. 'Ah, I frighten you, do I? ... I dare say! ...
Perhaps you think that I have another mask, eh, and that this ... this
... my head is a mask? Well,' he roared, 'tear it off as you did the
other! Come! Come along! I insist! Your hands! Your hands! Give
me your hands!' And he seized my hands and dug them into his awful
face. He tore his flesh with my nails, tore his terrible dead flesh
with my nails! ... 'Know,' he shouted, while his throat throbbed and
panted like a furnace, 'know that I am built up of death from head to
foot and that it is a corpse that loves you and adores you and will
never, never leave you! ... Look, I am not laughing now, I am crying,
crying for you, Christine, who have torn off my mask and who therefore
can never leave me again! ... As long as you thought me handsome, you
could have come back, I know you would have come back ... but, now that
you know my hideousness, you would run away for good... So I shall keep
you here! ... Why did you want to see me? Oh, mad Christine, who
wanted to see me! ... When my own father never saw me and when my
mother, so as not to see me, made me a present of my first mask!'
"He had let go of me at last and was dragging himself about on the
floor, uttering terrible sobs. And then he crawled away like a snake,
went into his room, closed the door and left me alone to my
reflections. Presently I heard the sound of the organ; and then I
began to understand Erik's contemptuous phrase when he spoke about
Opera music. What I now heard was utterly different from what I had
heard up to then. His Don Juan Triumphant (for I had not a doubt but
that he had rushed to his masterpiece to forget the horror of the
moment) seemed to me at first one long, awful, magnificent sob. But,
little by little, it expressed every emotion, every suffering of which
mankind is capable. It intoxicated me; and I opened the door that
separated us. Erik rose, as I entered, BUT DARED NOT TURN IN MY
DIRECTION. 'Erik,' I cried, 'show me your face without fear! I swear
that you are the most unhappy and sublime of men; and, if ever again I
shiver when I look at you, it will be because I am thinking of the
splendor of your genius!' Then Erik turned round, for he believed me,
and I also had faith in myself. He fell at my feet, with words of love
... with words of love in his dead mouth ... and the music had ceased
... He kissed the hem of my dress and did not see that I closed my
eyes.
"What more can I tell you, dear? You now know the tragedy. It went on
for a fortnight--a fortnight during which I lied to him. My lies were
as hideous as the monster who inspired them; but they were the price of
my liberty. I burned his mask; and I managed so well that, even when
he was not singing, he tried to catch my eye, like a dog sitting by its
master. He was my faithful slave and paid me endless little
attentions. Gradually, I gave him such confidence that he ventured to
take me walking on the banks of the lake and to row me in the boat on
its leaden waters; toward the end of my captivity he let me out through
the gates that closed the underground passages in the Rue Scribe. Here
a carriage awaited us and took us to the Bois. The night when we met
you was nearly fatal to me, for he is terribly jealous of you and I had
to tell him that you were soon going away ... Then, at last, after a
fortnight of that horrible captivity, during which I was filled with
pity, enthusiasm, despair and horror by turns, he believed me when I
said, 'I WILL COME BACK!'"
"And you went back, Christine," groaned Raoul.
"Yes, dear, and I must tell you that it was not his frightful threats
when setting me free that helped me to keep my word, but the harrowing
sob which he gave on the threshold of the tomb. ... That sob attached
me to the unfortunate man more than I myself suspected when saying
good-by to him. Poor Erik! Poor Erik!"
"Christine," said Raoul, rising, "you tell me that you love me; but you
had recovered your liberty hardly a few hours before you returned to
Erik! Remember the masked ball!"
"Yes; and do you remember those hours which I passed with you, Raoul
... to the great danger of both of us?"
"I doubted your love for me, during those hours."
"Do you doubt it still, Raoul? ... Then know that each of my visits to
Erik increased my horror of him; for each of those visits, instead of
calming him, as I hoped, made him mad with love! And I am so
frightened, so frightened! ..."
"You are frightened ... but do you love me? If Erik were good-looking,
would you love me, Christine?"
She rose in her turn, put her two trembling arms round the young man's
neck and said:
"Oh, my betrothed of a day, if I did not love you, I would not give you
my lips! Take them, for the first time and the last."
He kissed her lips; but the night that surrounded them was rent
asunder, they fled as at the approach of a storm and their eyes, filled
with dread of Erik, showed them, before they disappeared, high up above
them, an immense night-bird that stared at them with its blazing eyes
and seemed to cling to the string of Apollo's lyre.