________________________________________________
_ 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. _
Read next: CHAPTER XIII - A MASTER-STROKE OF THE TRAP-DOOR LOVER
Read previous: CHAPTER XI - ABOVE THE TRAP-DOORS
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