The Phantom of the Opera
"No, not this way!"
And the form pointed to another passage by which they were to reach the
wings. Raoul wanted to stop and ask for an explanation. But the form,
which wore a sort of long frock-coat and a pointed cap, said:
"Quick! Go away quickly!"
Christine was already dragging Raoul, compelling him to start running
again.
"But who is he? Who is that man?" he asked.
Christine replied: "It's the Persian."
"What's he doing here?"
"Nobody knows. He is always in the Opera."
"You are making me run away, for the first time in my life. If we
really saw Erik, what I ought to have done was to nail him to Apollo's
lyre, just as we nail the owls to the walls of our Breton farms; and
there would have been no more question of him."
"My dear Raoul, you would first have had to climb up to Apollo's lyre:
that is no easy matter."
"The blazing eyes were there!"
"Oh, you are getting like me now, seeing him everywhere! What I took
for blazing eyes was probably a couple of stars shining through the
strings of the lyre."
And Christine went down another floor, with Raoul following her.
"As you have quite made up your mind to go, Christine, I assure you it
would be better to go at once. Why wait for to-morrow? He may have
heard us to-night."
"No, no, he is working, I tell you, at his Don Juan Triumphant and not
thinking of us."
"You're so sure of that you keep on looking behind you!"
"Come to my dressing-room."
"Hadn't we better meet outside the Opera?"
"Never, till we go away for good! It would bring us bad luck, if I did
not keep my word. I promised him to see you only here."
"It's a good thing for me that he allowed you even that. Do you know,"
said Raoul bitterly, "that it was very plucky of you to let us play at
being engaged?"
"Why, my dear, he knows all about it! He said, 'I trust you,
Christine. M. de Chagny is in love with you and is going abroad.
Before he goes, I want him to be as happy as I am.' Are people so
unhappy when they love?"
"Yes, Christine, when they love and are not sure of being loved."
They came to Christine's dressing-room.
"Why do you think that you are safer in this room than on the stage?"
asked Raoul. "You heard him through the walls here, therefore he can
certainly hear us."
"No. He gave me his word not to be behind the walls of my dressing-room
again and I believe Erik's word. This room and my bedroom on the lake
are for me, exclusively, and not to be approached by him."
"How can you have gone from this room into that dark passage,
Christine? Suppose we try to repeat your movements; shall we?"
"It is dangerous, dear, for the glass might carry me off again; and,
instead of running away, I should be obliged to go to the end of the
secret passage to the lake and there call Erik."
"Would he hear you?"
"Erik will hear me wherever I call him. He told me so. He is a very
curious genius. You must not think, Raoul, that he is simply a man who
amuses himself by living underground. He does things that no other man
could do; he knows things which nobody in the world knows."
"Take care, Christine, you are making a ghost of him again!"
"No, he is not a ghost; he is a man of Heaven and earth, that is all."
"A man of Heaven and earth ... that is all! ... A nice way to speak of
him! ... And are you still resolved to run away from him?"
"Yes, to-morrow."
"To-morrow, you will have no resolve left!"
"Then, Raoul, you must run away with me in spite of myself; is that
understood?"
"I shall be here at twelve to-morrow night; I shall keep my promise,
whatever happens. You say that, after listening to the performance, he
is to wait for you in the dining-room on the lake?"
"Yes."
"And how are you to reach him, if you don't know how to go out by the
glass?"
"Why, by going straight to the edge of the lake."
Christine opened a box, took out an enormous key and showed it to Raoul.
"What's that?" he asked.
"The key of the gate to the underground passage in the Rue Scribe."
"I understand, Christine. It leads straight to the lake. Give it to
me, Christine, will you?"
"Never!" she said. "That would be treacherous!"
Suddenly Christine changed color. A mortal pallor overspread her
features.
"Oh heavens!" she cried. "Erik! Erik! Have pity on me!"
"Hold your tongue!" said Raoul. "You told me he could hear you!"
But the singer's attitude became more and more inexplicable. She wrung
her fingers, repeating, with a distraught air:
"Oh, Heaven! Oh, Heaven!"
"But what is it? What is it?" Raoul implored.
"The ring ... the gold ring he gave me."
"Oh, so Erik gave you that ring!"
"You know he did, Raoul! But what you don't know is that, when he gave
it to me, he said, 'I give you back your liberty, Christine, on
condition that this ring is always on your finger. As long as you keep
it, you will be protected against all danger and Erik will remain your
friend. But woe to you if you ever part with it, for Erik will have
his revenge!' ... My dear, my dear, the ring is gone! ... Woe to us
both!"
They both looked for the ring, but could not find it. Christine
refused to be pacified.
"It was while I gave you that kiss, up above, under Apollo's lyre," she
said. "The ring must have slipped from my finger and dropped into the
street! We can never find it. And what misfortunes are in store for
us now! Oh, to run away!"
"Let us run away at once," Raoul insisted, once more.
She hesitated. He thought that she was going to say yes... Then her
bright pupils became dimmed and she said:
"No! To-morrow!"
And she left him hurriedly, still wringing and rubbing her fingers, as
though she hoped to bring the ring back like that.
Raoul went home, greatly perturbed at all that he had heard.
"If I don't save her from the hands of that humbug," he said, aloud, as
he went to bed, "she is lost. But I shall save her."
He put out his lamp and felt a need to insult Erik in the dark. Thrice
over, he shouted:
"Humbug! ... Humbug! ... Humbug!"
But, suddenly, he raised himself on his elbow. A cold sweat poured
from his temples. Two eyes, like blazing coals, had appeared at the
foot of his bed. They stared at him fixedly, terribly, in the darkness
of the night.
Raoul was no coward; and yet he trembled. He put out a groping,
hesitating hand toward the table by his bedside. He found the matches
and lit his candle. The eyes disappeared.
Still uneasy in his mind, he thought to himself:
"She told me that HIS eyes only showed in the dark. His eyes have
disappeared in the light, but HE may be there still."
And he rose, hunted about, went round the room. He looked under his
bed, like a child. Then he thought himself absurd, got into bed again
and blew out the candle. The eyes reappeared.
He sat up and stared back at them with all the courage he possessed.
Then he cried:
"Is that you, Erik? Man, genius, or ghost, is it you?"
He reflected: "If it's he, he's on the balcony!"
Then he ran to the chest of drawers and groped for his revolver. He
opened the balcony window, looked out, saw nothing and closed the
window again. He went back to bed, shivering, for the night was cold,
and put the revolver on the table within his reach.
The eyes were still there, at the foot of the bed. Were they between
the bed and the window-pane or behind the pane, that is to say, on the
balcony? That was what Raoul wanted to know. He also wanted to know
if those eyes belonged to a human being... He wanted to know
everything. Then, patiently, calmly, he seized his revolver and took
aim. He aimed a little above the two eyes. Surely, if they were eyes
and if above those two eyes there was a forehead and if Raoul was not
too clumsy ...
The shot made a terrible din amid the silence of the slumbering house.
And, while footsteps came hurrying along the passages, Raoul sat up
with outstretched arm, ready to fire again, if need be.
This time, the two eyes had disappeared.
Servants appeared, carrying lights; Count Philippe, terribly anxious:
"What is it?"
"I think I have been dreaming," replied the young man. "I fired at two
stars that kept me from sleeping."
"You're raving! Are you ill? For God's sake, tell me, Raoul: what
happened?"
And the count seized hold of the revolver.
"No, no, I'm not raving... Besides, we shall soon see ..."
He got out of bed, put on a dressing-gown and slippers, took a light
from the hands of a servant and, opening the window, stepped out on the
balcony.
The count saw that the window had been pierced by a bullet at a man's
height. Raoul was leaning over the balcony with his candle: "Aha!" he
said. "Blood! ... Blood! ... Here, there, more blood! ... That's a
good thing! A ghost who bleeds is less dangerous!" he grinned.
"Raoul! Raoul! Raoul!"
The count was shaking him as though he were trying to waken a
sleep-walker.
"But, my dear brother, I'm not asleep!" Raoul protested impatiently.
"You can see the blood for yourself. I thought I had been dreaming and
firing at two stars. It was Erik's eyes ... and here is his blood! ...
After all, perhaps I was wrong to shoot; and Christine is quite capable
of never forgiving me ... All this would not have happened if I had
drawn the curtains before going to bed."
"Raoul, have you suddenly gone mad? Wake up!"
"What, still? You would do better to help me find Erik ... for, after
all, a ghost who bleeds can always be found."
The count's valet said:
"That is so, sir; there is blood on the balcony."
The other man-servant brought a lamp, by the light of which they
examined the balcony carefully. The marks of blood followed the rail
till they reached a gutter-spout; then they went up the gutter-spout.
"My dear fellow," said Count Philippe, "you have fired at a cat."
"The misfortune is," said Raoul, with a grin, "that it's quite
possible. With Erik, you never know. Is it Erik? Is it the cat? Is
it the ghost? No, with Erik, you can't tell!"
Raoul went on making this strange sort of remarks which corresponded so
intimately and logically with the preoccupation of his brain and which,
at the same time, tended to persuade many people that his mind was
unhinged. The count himself was seized with this idea; and, later, the
examining magistrate, on receiving the report of the commissary of
police, came to the same conclusion.
"Who is Erik?" asked the count, pressing his brother's hand.
"He is my rival. And, if he's not dead, it's a pity."
He dismissed the servants with a wave of the hand and the two Chagnys
were left alone. But the men were not out of earshot before the
count's valet heard Raoul say, distinctly and emphatically:
"I shall carry off Christine Daae to-night."
This phrase was afterward repeated to M. Faure, the
examining-magistrate. But no one ever knew exactly what passed between
the two brothers at this interview. The servants declared that this
was not their first quarrel. Their voices penetrated the wall; and it
was always an actress called Christine Daae that was in question.
At breakfast--the early morning breakfast, which the count took in his
study--Philippe sent for his brother. Raoul arrived silent and gloomy.
The scene was a very short one. Philippe handed his brother a copy of
the Epoque and said:
"Read that!"
The viscount read:
"The latest news in the Faubourg is that there is a promise of marriage
between Mlle. Christine Daae, the opera-singer, and M. le Vicomte Raoul
de Chagny. If the gossips are to be credited, Count Philippe has sworn
that, for the first time on record, the Chagnys shall not keep their