The Phantom of the Opera
HE will hear us, too! ... And, as you know him, we shall talk to him!"
"Baby!" said the Persian. "We shall never enter the house on the lake
by the lake! ... I myself have never landed on the other bank ... the
bank on which the house stands. ... You have to cross the lake first
... and it is well guarded! ... I fear that more than one of those
men--old scene-shifters, old door-shutters--who have never been seen
again were simply tempted to cross the lake ... It is terrible ... I
myself would have been nearly killed there ... if the monster had not
recognized me in time! ... One piece of advice, sir; never go near the
lake... And, above all, shut your ears if you hear the voice singing
under the water, the siren's voice!"
"But then, what are we here for?" asked Raoul, in a transport of fever,
impatience and rage. "If you can do nothing for Christine, at least
let me die for her!" The Persian tried to calm the young man.
"We have only one means of saving Christine Daae, believe me, which is
to enter the house unperceived by the monster."
"And is there any hope of that, sir?"
"Ah, if I had not that hope, I would not have come to fetch you!"
"And how can one enter the house on the lake without crossing the lake?"
"From the third cellar, from which we were so unluckily driven away.
We will go back there now ... I will tell you," said the Persian, with
a sudden change in his voice, "I will tell you the exact place, sir: it
is between a set piece and a discarded scene from ROI DE LAHORE,
exactly at the spot where Joseph Buquet died... Come, sir, take
courage and follow me! And hold your hand at the level of your eyes!
... But where are we?"
The Persian lit his lamp again and flung its rays down two enormous
corridors that crossed each other at right angles.
"We must be," he said, "in the part used more particularly for the
waterworks. I see no fire coming from the furnaces."
He went in front of Raoul, seeking his road, stopping abruptly when he
was afraid of meeting some waterman. Then they had to protect
themselves against the glow of a sort of underground forge, which the
men were extinguishing, and at which Raoul recognized the demons whom
Christine had seen at the time of her first captivity.
In this way, they gradually arrived beneath the huge cellars below the
stage. They must at this time have been at the very bottom of the
"tub" and at an extremely great depth, when we remember that the earth
was dug out at fifty feet below the water that lay under the whole of
that part of Paris.[4]
The Persian touched a partition-wall and said:
"If I am not mistaken, this is a wall that might easily belong to the
house on the lake."
He was striking a partition-wall of the "tub," and perhaps it would be
as well for the reader to know how the bottom and the partition-walls
of the tub were built. In order to prevent the water surrounding the
building-operations from remaining in immediate contact with the walls
supporting the whole of the theatrical machinery, the architect was
obliged to build a double case in every direction. The work of
constructing this double case took a whole year. It was the wall of
the first inner case that the Persian struck when speaking to Raoul of
the house on the lake. To any one understanding the architecture of
the edifice, the Persian's action would seem to indicate that Erik's
mysterious house had been built in the double case, formed of a thick
wall constructed as an embankment or dam, then of a brick wall, a
tremendous layer of cement and another wall several yards in thickness.
At the Persian's words, Raoul flung himself against the wall and
listened eagerly. But he heard nothing ... nothing ... except distant
steps sounding on the floor of the upper portions of the theater.
The Persian darkened his lantern again.
"Look out!" he said. "Keep your hand up! And silence! For we shall
try another way of getting in."
And he led him to the little staircase by which they had come down
lately.
They went up, stopping at each step, peering into the darkness and the
silence, till they came to the third cellar. Here the Persian motioned
to Raoul to go on his knees; and, in this way, crawling on both knees
and one hand--for the other hand was held in the position
indicated--they reached the end wall.
Against this wall stood a large discarded scene from the ROI DE LAHORE.
Close to this scene was a set piece. Between the scene and the set
piece there was just room for a body ... for a body which one day was
found hanging there. The body of Joseph Buquet.
The Persian, still kneeling, stopped and listened. For a moment, he
seemed to hesitate and looked at Raoul; then he turned his eyes upward,
toward the second cellar, which sent down the faint glimmer of a
lantern, through a cranny between two boards. This glimmer seemed to
trouble the Persian.
At last, he tossed his head and made up his mind to act. He slipped
between the set piece and the scene from the ROI DE LAHORE, with Raoul
close upon his heels. With his free hand, the Persian felt the wall.
Raoul saw him bear heavily upon the wall, just as he had pressed
against the wall in Christine's dressing-room. Then a stone gave way,
leaving a hole in the wall.
This time, the Persian took his pistol from his pocket and made a sign
to Raoul to do as he did. He cocked the pistol.
And, resolutely, still on his knees, he wiggled through the hole in the
wall. Raoul, who had wished to pass first, had to be content to follow
him.
The hole was very narrow. The Persian stopped almost at once. Raoul
heard him feeling the stones around him. Then the Persian took out his
dark lantern again, stooped forward, examined something beneath him and
immediately extinguished his lantern. Raoul heard him say, in a
whisper:
"We shall have to drop a few yards, without making a noise; take off
your boots."
The Persian handed his own shoes to Raoul.
"Put them outside the wall," he said. "We shall find them there when
we leave."[5]
He crawled a little farther on his knees, then turned right round and
said:
"I am going to hang by my hands from the edge of the stone and let
myself drop INTO HIS HOUSE. You must do exactly the same. Do not be
afraid. I will catch you in my arms."
Raoul soon heard a dull sound, evidently produced by the fall of the
Persian, and then dropped down.
He felt himself clasped in the Persian's arms.
"Hush!" said the Persian.
And they stood motionless, listening.
The darkness was thick around them, the silence heavy and terrible.
Then the Persian began to make play with the dark lantern again,
turning the rays over their heads, looking for the hole through which
they had come, and failing to find it:
"Oh!" he said. "The stone has closed of itself!"
And the light of the lantern swept down the wall and over the floor.
The Persian stooped and picked up something, a sort of cord, which he
examined for a second and flung away with horror.
"The Punjab lasso!" he muttered.
"What is it?" asked Raoul.
The Persian shivered. "It might very well be the rope by which the man
was hanged, and which was looked for so long."
And, suddenly seized with fresh anxiety, he moved the little red disk
of his lantern over the walls. In this way, he lit up a curious thing:
the trunk of a tree, which seemed still quite alive, with its leaves;
and the branches of that tree ran right up the walls and disappeared in
the ceiling.
Because of the smallness of the luminous disk, it was difficult at
first to make out the appearance of things: they saw a corner of a
branch ... and a leaf ... and another leaf ... and, next to it, nothing
at all, nothing but the ray of light that seemed to reflect itself ...
Raoul passed his hand over that nothing, over that reflection.
"Hullo!" he said. "The wall is a looking-glass!"
"Yes, a looking-glass!" said the Persian, in a tone of deep emotion.
And, passing the hand that held the pistol over his moist forehead, he
added, "We have dropped into the torture-chamber!"
What the Persian knew of this torture-chamber and what there befell him
and his companion shall be told in his own words, as set down in a
manuscript which he left behind him, and which I copy VERBATIM.
[1] M. Pedro Gailhard has himself told me that he created a few
additional posts as door-shutters for old stage-carpenters whom he was
unwilling to dismiss from the service of the Opera.
[2] In those days, it was still part of the firemen's duty to watch
over the safety of the Opera house outside the performances; but this
service has since been suppressed. I asked M. Pedro Gailhard the
reason, and he replied:
"It was because the management was afraid that, in their utter
inexperience of the cellars of the Opera, the firemen might set fire to
the building!"
[3] Like the Persian, I can give no further explanation touching the
apparition of this shade. Whereas, in this historic narrative,
everything else will be normally explained, however abnormal the course
of events may seem, I can not give the reader expressly to understand
what the Persian meant by the words, "It is some one much worse than
that!" The reader must try to guess for himself, for I promised M.
Pedro Gailhard, the former manager of the Opera, to keep his secret
regarding the extremely interesting and useful personality of the
wandering, cloaked shade which, while condemning itself to live in the
cellars of the Opera, rendered such immense services to those who, on
gala evenings, for instance, venture to stray away from the stage. I
am speaking of state services; and, upon my word of honor, I can say no
more.
[4] All the water had to be exhausted, in the building of the Opera.
To give an idea of the amount of water that was pumped up, I can tell
the reader that it represented the area of the courtyard of the Louvre
and a height half as deep again as the towers of Notre Dame. And
nevertheless the engineers had to leave a lake.
[5] These two pairs of boots, which were placed, according to the
Persian's papers, just between the set piece and the scene from the ROI
DE LAHORE, on the spot where Joseph Buquet was found hanging, were
never discovered. They must have been taken by some stage-carpenter or
"door-shutter."
Chapter XXI Interesting and Instructive Vicissitudes of a Persian in
the Cellars of the Opera
THE PERSIAN'S NARRATIVE
It was the first time that I entered the house on the lake. I had
often begged the "trap-door lover," as we used to call Erik in my
country, to open its mysterious doors to me. He always refused. I
made very many attempts, but in vain, to obtain admittance. Watch him
as I might, after I first learned that he had taken up his permanent
abode at the Opera, the darkness was always too thick to enable me to
see how he worked the door in the wall on the lake. One day, when I
thought myself alone, I stepped into the boat and rowed toward that
part of the wall through which I had seen Erik disappear. It was then
that I came into contact with the siren who guarded the approach and
whose charm was very nearly fatal to me.
I had no sooner put off from the bank than the silence amid which I
floated on the water was disturbed by a sort of whispered singing that
hovered all around me. It was half breath, half music; it rose softly
from the waters of the lake; and I was surrounded by it through I knew
not what artifice. It followed me, moved with me and was so soft that
it did not alarm me. On the contrary, in my longing to approach the
source of that sweet and enticing harmony, I leaned out of my little
boat over the water, for there was no doubt in my mind that the singing