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
etter 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.'