"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 game 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 cars, 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.