prompt:
Chapter: Chapter X  Forget the Name of the Man's Voice

The day after Christine had vanished before his eyes in a sort of
dazzlement that still made him doubt the evidence of his senses, M. le
Vicomte de Chagny called to inquire at Mamma Valerius'.  He came upon a
charming picture.  Christine herself was seated by the bedside of the
old lady, who was sitting up against the pillows, knitting.  The pink
and white had returned to the young girl's cheeks.  The dark rings
round her eyes had disappeared.  Raoul no longer recognized the tragic
face of the day before.  If the veil of melancholy over those adorable
features had not still appeared to the young man as the last trace of
the weird drama in whose toils that mysterious child was struggling, he
could have believed that Christine was not its heroine at all.

She rose, without showing any emotion, and offered him her hand.  But
Raoul's stupefaction was so great that he stood there dumfounded,
without a gesture, without a word.

"Well, M. de Chagny," exclaimed Mamma Valerius, "don't you know our
Christine?  Her good genius has sent her back to us!"

"Mamma!" the girl broke in promptly, while a deep blush mantled to her
eyes.  "I thought, mamma, that there was to be no more question of
that! ... You know there is no such thing as the Angel of Music!"

"But, child, he gave you lessons for three months!"

"Mamma, I have promised to explain everything to you one of these days;
and I hope to do so but you have promised me, until that day, to be
silent and to ask me no more questions whatever!"

"Provided that you promised never to leave me again!  But have you
promised that, Christine?"

"Mamma, all this can not interest M. de Chagny."

"On the contrary, mademoiselle," said the young man, in a voice which
he tried to make firm and brave, but which still trembled, "anything
that concerns you interests me to an extent which perhaps you will one
day understand.  I do not deny that my surprise equals my pleasure at
finding you with your adopted mother and that, after what happened
between us yesterday, after what you said and what I was able to guess,
I hardly expected to see you here so soon.  I should be the first to
delight at your return, if you were not so bent on preserving a secrecy
that may be fatal to you ... and I have been your friend too long not
to be alarmed, with Mme. Valerius, at a disastrous adventure which will
remain dangerous so long as we have not unraveled its threads and of
which you will certainly end by being the victim, Christine."

At these words, Mamma Valerius tossed about in her bed.

"What does this mean?" she cried.  "Is Christine in danger?"

"Yes, madame," said Raoul courageously, notwithstanding the signs which
Christine made to him.

"My God!" exclaimed the good, simple old woman, gasping for breath.
"You must tell me everything, Christine!  Why did you try to reassure
me?  And what danger is it, M. de Chagny?"

"An impostor is abusing her good faith."

"Is the Angel of Music an impostor?"

"She told you herself that there is no Angel of Music."

"But then what is it, in Heaven's name?  You will be the death of me!"

"There is a terrible mystery around us, madame, around you, around
Christine, a mystery much more to be feared than any number of ghosts
or genii!"

Mamma Valerius turned a terrified face to Christine, who had already
run to her adopted mother and was holding her in her arms.

"Don't believe him, mummy, don't believe him," she repeated.

"Then tell me that you will never leave me again," implored the widow.

Christine was silent and Raoul resumed.

"That is what you must promise, Christine.  It is the only thing that
can reassure your mother and me.  We will undertake not to ask you a
single question about the past, if you promise us to remain under our
protection in future."

"That is an undertaking which I have not asked of you and a promise
which I refuse to make you!" said the young girl haughtily.  "I am
mistress of my own actions, M. de Chagny: you have no right to control
them, and I will beg you to desist henceforth.  As to what I have done
during the last fortnight, there is only one man in the world who has
the right to demand an account of me: my husband!  Well, I have no
husband and I never mean to marry!"

She threw out her hands to emphasize her words and Raoul turned pale,
not only because of the words which he had heard, but because he had
caught sight of a plain gold ring on Christine's finger.

"You have no husband and yet you wear a wedding-ring."

He tried to seize her hand, but she swiftly drew it back.

"That's a present!" she said, blushing once more and vainly striving to
hide her embarrassment.

"Christine!  As you have no husband, that ring can only have been given
by one who hopes to make you his wife!  Why deceive us further?  Why
torture me still more?  That ring is a promise; and that promise has
been accepted!"

"That's what I said!" exclaimed the old lady.

"And what did she answer, madame?"

"What I chose," said Christine, driven to exasperation.  "Don't you
think, monsieur, that this cross-examination has lasted long enough?
As far as I am concerned ..."

Raoul was afraid to let her finish her speech.  He interrupted her:

"I beg your pardon for speaking as I did, mademoiselle.  You know the
good intentions that make me meddle, just now, in matters which, you no
doubt think, have nothing to do with me.  But allow me to tell you what
I have seen--and I have seen more than you suspect, Christine--or what
I thought I saw, for, to tell you the truth, I have sometimes been
inclined to doubt the evidence of my eyes."

"Well, what did you see, sir, or think you saw?"

"I saw your ecstasy AT THE SOUND OF THE VOICE, Christine:  the voice
that came from the wall or the next room to yours ... yes, YOUR
ECSTASY!  And that is what makes me alarmed on your behalf.  You are
under a very dangerous spell.  And yet it seems that you are aware of
the imposture, because you say to-day THAT THERE IS NO ANGEL OF MUSIC!
In that case, Christine, why did you follow him that time?  Why did you
stand up, with radiant features, as though you were really hearing
angels? ... Ah, it is a very dangerous voice, Christine, for I myself,
when I heard it, was so much fascinated by it that you vanished before
my eyes without my seeing which way you passed!  Christine, Christine,
in the name of Heaven, in the name of your father who is in Heaven now
and who loved you so dearly and who loved me too, Christine, tell us,
tell your benefactress and me, to whom does that voice belong?  If you
do, we will save you in spite of yourself.  Come, Christine, the name
of the man!  The name of the man who had the audacity to put a ring on
your finger!"

"M. de Chagny," the girl declared coldly, "you shall never know!"

Thereupon, seeing the hostility with which her ward had addressed the
viscount, Mamma Valerius suddenly took Christine's part.

"And, if she does love that man, Monsieur le Vicomte, even then it is
no business of yours!"

"Alas, madame," Raoul humbly replied, unable to restrain his tears,
"alas, I believe that Christine really does love him! ... But it is not
only that which drives me to despair; for what I am not certain of,
madame, is that the man whom Christine loves is worthy of her love!"

"It is for me to be the judge of that, monsieur!" said Christine,
looking Raoul angrily in the face.

"When a man," continued Raoul, "adopts such romantic methods to entice
a young girl's affections. .."

"The man must be either a villain, or the girl a fool:  is that it?"

"Christine!"

"Raoul, why do you condemn a man whom you have never seen, whom no one
knows and about whom you yourself know nothing?"

"Yes, Christine ...  Yes ...  I at least know the name that you thought
to keep from me for ever ...  The name of your Angel of Music,
mademoiselle, is Erik!"

Christine at once betrayed herself.  She turned as white as a sheet and
stammered:  "Who told you?"

"You yourself!"

"How do you mean?"

"By pitying him the other night, the night of the masked ball.  When
you went to your dressing-room, did you not say, 'Poor Erik?' Well,
Christine, there was a poor Raoul who overheard you."

"This is the second time that you have listened behind the door, M. de
Chagny!"

"I was not behind the door ... I was in the dressing-room, in the inner
room, mademoiselle."

"Oh, unhappy man!" moaned the girl, showing every sign of unspeakable
terror.  "Unhappy man!  Do you want to be killed?"

"Perhaps."

Raoul uttered this "perhaps" with so much love and despair in his voice
that Christine could not keep back a sob.  She took his hands and
looked at him with all the pure affection of which she was capable:

"Raoul," she said, "forget THE MAN'S VOICE and do not even remember its
name... You must never try to fathom the mystery of THE MAN'S VOICE."

"Is the mystery so very terrible?"

"There is no more awful mystery on this earth.  Swear to me that you
will make no attempt to find out," she insisted.  "Swear to me that you
will never come to my dressing-room, unless I send for you."

"Then you promise to send for me sometimes, Christine?"

"I promise."

"When?"

"To-morrow."

"Then I swear to do as you ask."

He kissed her hands and went away, cursing Erik and resolving to be
patient.

Chapter XI  Above the Trap-Doors

The next day, he saw her at the Opera.  She was still wearing the plain
gold ring.  She was gentle and kind to him.  She talked to him of the
plans which he was forming, of his future, of his career.

He told her that the date of the Polar expedition had been put forward
and that he would leave France in three weeks, or a month at latest.
She suggested, almost gaily, that he must look upon the voyage with
delight, as a stage toward his coming fame.  And when he replied that
fame without love was no attraction in his eyes, she treated him as a
child whose sorrows were only short-lived.

"How can you speak so lightly of such serious things?" he asked.
"Perhaps we shall never see each other again!  I may die during that
expedition."

"Or I," she said simply.

She no longer smiled or jested.  She seemed to be thinking of some new
thing that had entered her mind for the first time.  Her eyes were all
aglow with it.

"What are you thinking of, Christine?"

"I am thinking that we shall not see each other again ..."

"And does that make you so radiant?"

"And that, in a month, we shall have to say good-by for ever!"

"Unless, Christine, we pledge our faith and wait for each other for
ever."

She put her hand on his mouth.

"Hush, Raoul! ... You know there is no question of that ...  And we
shall never be married:  that is understood!"

She seemed suddenly almost unable to contain an overpowering gaiety.
She clapped her hands with childish glee.  Raoul stared at her in
amazement.

"But ... but," she continued, holding out her two hands to Raoul, or
rather giving them to him, as though she had suddenly resolved to make
him a present of them, "but if we can not be married, we can ... we can
be engaged!  Nobody will know but ourselves, Raoul.  There have been
plenty of secret marriages:  why not a secret engagement? ... We are
engaged, dear, for a month!  In a month, you will go away, and I can be
happy at the thought of that month all my life long!"

She was enchanted with her inspiration.  Then she became serious again.

"This," she said, "IS A HAPPINESS THAT WILL HARM NO ONE."

Raoul jumped at the idea.  He bowed to Christine and said:

"Mademoiselle, I have the honor to ask for your hand."

"Why, you have both of them already, my dear betrothed! ...  Oh, Raoul,
how happy we shall be! ... We must play at being engaged all day long."

It was the prettiest game in the world and they enjoyed it like the
children that they were.  Oh, the wonderful speeches they made to each
other and the eternal vows they exchanged!  They played at hearts as
other children might play at ball; only, as it was really their two
hearts that they flung to and fro, they had to be very, very handy to
catch them, each time, without hurting them.

One day, about a week after the game began, Raoul's heart was badly
hurt and he stopped playing and uttered these wild words:

"I shan't go to the North Pole!"

Christine, who, in her innocence, had not dreamed of such a
possibility, suddenly discovered the danger of the game and reproached
herself bitterly.  She did not say a word in reply to Raoul's remark
and went straight home.

This happened in the afternoon, in the singer's dressing-room, where
they met every day and where they amused themselves by dining on three
biscuits, two glasses of port and a bunch of violets.  In the evening,
she did not sing; and he did not receive his usual letter, though they
had arranged to write to each other daily during that month.  The next
morning, he ran off to Mamma Valerius, who told him that Christine had
gone away for two days.  She had left at five o'clock the day before.

Raoul was distracted.  He hated Mamma Valerius for giving him such news
as that with such stupefying calmness.  He tried to sound her, but the
old lady obviously knew nothing.

Christine returned on the following day.  She returned in triumph.  She
renewed her extraordinary success of the gala performance.  Since the
adventure of the "toad," Carlotta had not been able to appear on the
stage.  The terror of a fresh "co-ack" filled her heart and deprived
her of all her power of singing; and the theater that had witnessed her
incomprehensible disgrace had become odious to her.  She contrived to
cancel her contract.  Daae was offered the vacant place for the time.
She received thunders of applause in the Juive.

The viscount, who, of course, was present, was the only one to suffer
on hearing the thousand echoes of this fresh triumph; for Christine
still wore her plain gold ring.  A distant voice whispered in the young
man's ear:

"She is wearing the ring again to-night; and you did not give it to
her.  She gave her soul again tonight and did not give it to you...  If
she will not tell you what she has been doing the past two days ... you
must go and ask Erik!"

He ran behind the scenes and placed himself in her way.  She saw him
for her eyes were looking for him.  She said:

"Quick!  Quick! ... Come!"

And she dragged him to her dressing-room.

Raoul at once threw himself on his knees before her.  He swore to her
that he would go and he entreated her never again to withhold a single
hour of the ideal happiness which she had promised him.  She let her
tears flow.  They kissed like a despairing brother and sister who have
been smitten with a common loss and who meet to mourn a dead parent.

Suddenly, she snatched herself from the young man's soft and timid
embrace, seemed to listen to something, and, with a quick gesture,
pointed to the door.  When he was on the threshold, she said, in so low
a voice that the viscount guessed rather than heard her words:

"To-morrow, my dear betrothed!  And be happy, Raoul:  I sang for you
to-night!"

He returned the next day.  But those two days of absence had broken the
charm of their delightful make-believe. They looked at each other, in
the dressing-room, with their sad eyes, without exchanging a word.
Raoul had to restrain himself not to cry out:

"I am jealous!  I am jealous!  I am jealous!"

But she heard him all the same.  Then she said:

"Come for a walk, dear.  The air will do you good."

Raoul thought that she would propose a stroll in the country, far from
that building which he detested as a prison whose jailer he could feel
walking within the walls ... the jailer Erik ...  But she took him to
the stage and made him sit on the wooden curb of a well, in the
doubtful peace and coolness of a first scene set for the evening's
performance.

On another day, she wandered with him, hand in, hand, along the
deserted paths of a garden whose creepers had been cut out by a
decorator's skilful hands.  It was as though the real sky, the real
flowers, the real earth were forbidden her for all time and she
condemned to breathe no other air than that of the theater.  An
occasional fireman passed, watching over their melancholy idyll from
afar.  And she would drag him up above the clouds, in the magnificent
disorder of the grid, where she loved to make him giddy by running in
front of him along the frail bridges, among the thousands of ropes
fastened to the pulleys, the windlasses, the rollers, in the midst of a
regular forest of yards and masts.  If he hesitated, she said, with an
adorable pout of her lips:

"You, a sailor!"

And then they returned to terra firma, that is to say, to some passage
that led them to the little girls' dancing-school, where brats between
six and ten were practising their steps, in the hope of becoming great
dancers one day, "covered with diamonds ..." Meanwhile, Christine gave
them sweets instead.

She took him to the wardrobe and property-rooms, took him all over her
empire, which was artificial, but immense, covering seventeen stories
from the ground-floor to the roof and inhabited by an army of subjects.
She moved among them like a popular queen, encouraging them in their
labors, sitting down in the workshops, giving words of advice to the
workmen whose hands hesitated to cut into the rich stuffs that were to
clothe heroes.  There were inhabitants of that country who practised
every trade.  There were cobblers, there were goldsmiths.  All had
learned to know her and to love her, for she always interested herself
in all their troubles and all their little hobbies.

She knew unsuspected corners that were secretly occupied by little old
couples.  She knocked at their door and introduced Raoul to them as a
Prince Charming who had asked for her hand; and the two of them,
sitting on some worm-eaten "property," would listen to the legends of
the Opera, even as, in their childhood, they had listened to the old
Breton tales.  Those old people remembered nothing outside the Opera.
They had lived there for years without number.  Past managements had
forgotten them; palace revolutions had taken no notice of them; the
history of France had run its course unknown to them; and nobody
recollected their existence.

The precious days sped in this way; and Raoul and Christine, by
affecting excessive interest in outside matters, strove awkwardly to
hide from each other the one thought of their hearts.  One fact was
certain, that Christine, who until then had shown herself the stronger
of the two, became suddenly inexpressibly nervous.  When on their
expeditions, she would start running without reason or else suddenly
stop; and her hand, turning ice-cold in a moment, would hold the young
man back.  Sometimes her eyes seemed to pursue imaginary shadows.  She
cried, "This way," and "This way," and "This way," laughing a
breathless laugh that often ended in tears.  Then Raoul tried to speak,
to question her, in spite of his promises.  But, even before he had
worded his question, she answered feverishly:

"Nothing ... I swear it is nothing."

Once, when they were passing before an open trapdoor on the stage,
Raoul stopped over the dark cavity.

"You have shown me over the upper part of your empire, Christine, but
there are strange stories told of the lower part.  Shall we go down?"

She caught him in her arms, as though she feared to see him disappear
down the black hole, and, in a trembling voice, whispered:

"Never! ... I will not have you go there! ... Besides, it's not mine
... EVERYTHING THAT IS UNDERGROUND BELONGS TO HIM!"

Raoul looked her in the eyes and said roughly:

"So he lives down there, does he?"

"I never said so ...  Who told you a thing like that?  Come away!  I
sometimes wonder if you are quite sane, Raoul ...  You always take
things in such an impossible way ...  Come along!  Come!"

And she literally dragged him away, for he was obstinate and wanted to
remain by the trap-door; that hole attracted him.

Suddenly, the trap-door was closed and so quickly that they did not
even see the hand that worked it; and they remained quite dazed.

"Perhaps HE was there," Raoul said, at last.

She shrugged her shoulders, but did not seem easy.

"No, no, it was the 'trap-door-shutters.' They must do something, you
know ...  They open and shut the trap-doors without any particular
reason ...  It's like the 'door-shutters:' they must spend their time
somehow."

"But suppose it were HE, Christine?"

"No, no!  He has shut himself up, he is working."

"Oh, really!  He's working, is he?"

"Yes, he can't open and shut the trap-doors and work at the same time."
She shivered.

"What is he working at?"

"Oh, something terrible! ... But it's all the better for us... When
he's working at that, he sees nothing; he does not eat, drink, or
breathe for days and nights at a time ... he becomes a living dead man
and has no time to amuse himself with the trap-doors." She shivered
again.  She was still holding him in her arms.  Then she sighed and
said, in her turn:

"Suppose it were HE!"

"Are you afraid of him?"

"No, no, of course not," she said.

For all that, on the next day and the following days, Christine was
careful to avoid the trap-doors. Her agitation only increased as the
hours passed.  At last, one afternoon, she arrived very late, with her
face so desperately pale and her eyes so desperately red, that Raoul
resolved to go to all lengths, including that which he foreshadowed
when he blurted out that he would not go on the North Pole expedition
unless she first told him the secret of the man's voice.

"Hush!  Hush, in Heaven's name! Suppose HE heard you, you unfortunate
Raoul!"

And Christine's eyes stared wildly at everything around her.

"I will remove you from his power, Christine, I swear it.  And you
shall not think of him any more."

"Is it possible?"

She allowed herself this doubt, which was an encouragernent, while
dragging the young man up to the topmost floor of the theater, far,
very far from the trap-doors.

"I shall hide you in some unknown corner of the world, where HE can not
come to look for you.  You will be safe; and then I shall go away ...
as you have sworn never to marry."

Christine seized Raoul's hands and squeezed them with incredible
rapture.  But, suddenly becoming alarmed again, she turned away her
head.

"Higher!" was all she said.  "Higher still!"

And she dragged him up toward the summit.

He had a difficulty in following her.  They were soon under the very
roof, in the maze of timber-work. They slipped through the buttresses,
the rafters, the joists; they ran from beam to beam as they might have
run from tree to tree in a forest.

And, despite the care which she took to look behind her at every
moment, she failed to see a shadow which followed her like her own
shadow, which stopped when she stopped, which started again when she
did and which made no more noise than a well-conducted shadow should.
As for Raoul, he saw nothing either; for, when he had Christine in
front of him, nothing interested him that happened behind.

Chapter XII  Apollo's Lyre

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.

Chapter XIII  A Master-Stroke of the Trap-Door Lover

Raoul and Christine ran, eager to escape from the roof and the blazing
eyes that showed only in the dark; and they did not stop before they
came to the eighth floor on the way down.

There was no performance at the Opera that night and the passages were
empty.  Suddenly, a queer-looking form stood before them and blocked
the road:

"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.

[Illustration: They Sat Like that for a Moment in Silence]

"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
promise.  But, as love is all-powerful, at the Opera as--and even more
than--elsewhere, we wonder how Count Philippe intends to prevent the
viscount, his brother, from leading the new Margarita to the altar.
The two brothers are said to adore each other; but the count is
curiously mistaken if he imagines that brotherly love will triumph over
love pure and simple."

"You see, Raoul," said the count, "you are making us ridiculous!  That
little girl has turned your head with her ghost-stories."

The viscount had evidently repeated Christine's narrative to his
brother, during the night.  All that he now said was:

"Good-by, Philippe."

"Have you quite made up your mind?  You are going to-night? With her?"

No reply.

"Surely you will not do anything so foolish?  I SHALL know how to
prevent you!"

"Good-by, Philippe," said the viscount again and left the room.

This scene was described to the examining-magistrate by the count
himself, who did not see Raoul again until that evening, at the Opera,
a few minutes before Christine's disappearance.

Raoul, in fact, devoted the whole day to his preparations for the
flight.  The horses, the carriage, the coachman, the provisions, the
luggage, the money required for the journey, the road to be taken (he
had resolved not to go by train, so as to throw the ghost off the
scent): all this had to be settled and provided for; and it occupied
him until nine o'clock at night.

At nine o'clock, a sort of traveling-barouche with the curtains of its
windows close-down, took its place in the rank on the Rotunda side.  It
was drawn by two powerful horses driven by a coachman whose face was
almost concealed in the long folds of a muffler.  In front of this
traveling-carriage were three broughams, belonging respectively to
Carlotta, who had suddenly returned to Paris, to Sorelli and, at the
head of the rank, to Comte Philippe de Chagny.  No one left the
barouche.  The coachman remained on his box, and the three other
coachmen remained on theirs.

A shadow in a long black cloak and a soft black felt hat passed along
the pavement between the Rotunda and the carriages, examined the
barouche carefully, went up to the horses and the coachman and then
moved away without saying a word, The magistrate afterward believed
that this shadow was that of the Vicomte Raoul de Chagny; but I do not
agree, seeing that that evening, as every evening, the Vicomte de
Chagny was wearing a tall hat, which hat, besides, was subsequently
found.  I am more inclined to think that the shadow was that of the
ghost, who knew all about the whole affair, as the reader will soon
perceive.

They were giving FAUST, as it happened, before a splendid house.  The
Faubourg was magnificently represented; and the paragraph in that
morning's EPOQUE had already produced its effect, for all eyes were
turned to the box in which Count Philippe sat alone, apparently in a
very indifferent and careless frame of mind.  The feminine element in
the brilliant audience seemed curiously puzzled; and the viscount's
absence gave rise to any amount of whispering behind the fans.
Christine Daae met with a rather cold reception.  That special audience
could not forgive her for aiming so high.

The singer noticed this unfavorable attitude of a portion of the house
and was confused by it.

The regular frequenters of the Opera, who pretended to know the truth
about the viscount's love-story, exchanged significant smiles at
certain passages in Margarita's part; and they made a show of turning
and looking at Philippe de Chagny's box when Christine sang:

        "I wish I could but know who was he
        That addressed me,
        If he was noble, or, at least, what his name is."

The count sat with his chin on his hand and seemed to pay no attention
to these manifestations.  He kept his eyes fixed on the stage; but his
thoughts appeared to be far away.

Christine lost her self-assurance more and more.  She trembled.  She
felt on the verge of a breakdown ...  Carolus Fonta wondered if she was
ill, if she could keep the stage until the end of the Garden Act.  In
the front of the house, people remembered the catastrophe that had
befallen Carlotta at the end of that act and the historic "co-ack"
which had momentarily interrupted her career in Paris.

Just then, Carlotta made her entrance in a box facing the stage, a
sensational entrance.  Poor Christine raised her eyes upon this fresh
subject of excitement.  She recognized her rival.  She thought she saw
a sneer on her lips.  That saved her.  She forgot everything, in order
to triumph once more.

From that moment the prima donna sang with all her heart and soul.  She
tried to surpass all that she had done till then; and she succeeded.
In the last act when she began the invocation to the angels, she made
all the members of the audience feel as though they too had wings.

In the center of the amphitheater a man stood up and remained standing,
facing the singer.  It was Raoul.

"Holy angel, in Heaven blessed ..."

And Christine, her arms outstretched, her throat filled with music, the
glory of her hair falling over her bare shoulders, uttered the divine
cry:

"My spirit longs with thee to rest!"

It was at that moment that the stage was suddenly plunged in darkness.
It happened so quickly that the spectators hardly had time to utter a
sound of stupefaction, for the gas at once lit up the stage again.  But
Christine Daae was no longer there!

What had become of her?  What was that miracle?  All exchanged glances
without understanding, and the excitement at once reached its height.
Nor was the tension any less great on the stage itself.  Men rushed
from the wings to the spot where Christine had been singing that very
instant.  The performance was interrupted amid the greatest disorder.

Where had Christine gone?  What witchcraft had snatched her, away
before the eyes of thousands of enthusiastic onlookers and from the
arms of Carolus Fonta himself?  It was as though the angels had really
carried her up "to rest."

Raoul, still standing up in the amphitheater, had uttered a cry.  Count
Philippe had sprung to his feet in his box.  People looked at the
stage, at the count, at Raoul, and wondered if this curious event was
connected in any way with the paragraph in that morning's paper.  But
Raoul hurriedly left his seat, the count disappeared from his box and,
while the curtain was lowered, the subscribers rushed to the door that
led behind the scenes.  The rest of the audience waited amid an
indescribable hubbub.  Every one spoke at once.  Every one tried to
suggest an explanation of the extraordinary incident.

At last, the curtain rose slowly and Carolus Fonta stepped to the
conductor's desk and, in a sad and serious voice, said:

"Ladies and gentlemen, an unprecedented event has taken place and
thrown us into a state of the greatest alarm.  Our sister-artist,
Christine Daae, has disappeared before our eyes and nobody can tell us
how!"

Chapter XIV  The Singular Attitude of a Safety-Pin

Behind the curtain, there was an indescribable crowd.  Artists,
scene-shifters, dancers, supers, choristers, subscribers were all
asking questions, shouting and hustling one another.

"What became of her?"

"She's run away."

"With the Vicomte de Chagny, of course!"

"No, with the count!"

"Ah, here's Carlotta!  Carlotta did the trick!"

"No, it was the ghost!"  And a few laughed, especially as a careful
examination of the trap-doors and boards had put the idea of an
accident out of the question.

Amid this noisy throng, three men stood talking in a low voice and with
despairing gestures.  They were Gabriel, the chorus-master; Mercier,
the acting-manager; and Remy, the secretary.  They retired to a corner
of the lobby by which the stage communicates with the wide passage
leading to the foyer of the ballet.  Here they stood and argued behind
some enormous "properties."

"I knocked at the door," said Remy.  "They did not answer.  Perhaps
they are not in the office.  In any case, it's impossible to find out,
for they took the keys with them."

"They" were obviously the managers, who had given orders, during the
last entr'acte, that they were not to be disturbed on any pretext
whatever.  They were not in to anybody.

"All the same," exclaimed Gabriel, "a singer isn't run away with, from
the middle of the stage, every day!"

"Did you shout that to them?" asked Mercier, impatiently.

"I'll go back again," said Remy, and disappeared at a run.

Thereupon the stage-manager arrived.

"Well, M. Mercier, are you coming?  What are you two doing here?
You're wanted, Mr. Acting-Manager."

"I refuse to know or to do anything before the commissary arrives,"
declared Mercier.  "I have sent for Mifroid.  We shall see when he
comes!"

"And I tell you that you ought to go down to the organ at once."

"Not before the commissary comes."

"I've been down to the organ myself already."

"Ah!  And what did you see?"

"Well, I saw nobody!  Do you hear--nobody!"

"What do you want me to do down there for{sic}?"

"You're right!" said the stage-manager, frantically pushing his hands
through his rebellious hair.  "You're right!  But there might be some
one at the organ who could tell us how the stage came to be suddenly
darkened.  Now Mauclair is nowhere to be found.  Do you understand
that?"

Mauclair was the gas-man, who dispensed day and night at will on the
stage of the Opera.

"Mauclair is not to be found!" repeated Mercier, taken aback.  "Well,
what about his assistants?"

"There's no Mauclair and no assistants!  No one at the lights, I tell
you!  You can imagine," roared the stage-manager, "that that little
girl must have been carried off by somebody else:  she didn't run away
by herself!  It was a calculated stroke and we have to find out about
it ...  And what are the managers doing all this time?  ...  I gave
orders that no one was to go down to the lights and I posted a fireman
in front of the gas-man's box beside the organ.  Wasn't that right?"

"Yes, yes, quite right, quite right.  And now let's wait for the
commissary."

The stage-manager walked away, shrugging his shoulders, fuming,
muttering insults at those milksops who remained quietly squatting in a
corner while the whole theater was topsyturvy{sic}.

Gabriel and Mercier were not so quiet as all that.  Only they had
received an order that paralyzed them.  The managers were not to be
disturbed on any account.  Remy had violated that order and met with no
success.

At that moment he returned from his new expedition, wearing a curiously
startled air.

"Well, have you seen them?" asked Mercier.

"Moncharmin opened the door at last.  His eyes were starting out of his
head.  I thought he meant to strike me.  I could not get a word in; and
what do you think he shouted at me?  'Have you a safety-pin?' 'No!'
'Well, then, clear out!'  I tried to tell him that an unheard-of thing
had happened on the stage, but he roared, 'A safety-pin! Give me a
safety-pin at once!'  A boy heard him--he was bellowing like a
bull--ran up with a safety-pin and gave it to him; whereupon Moncharmin
slammed the door in my face, and there you are!"

"And couldn't you have said, 'Christine Daae.'"

"I should like to have seen you in my place.  He was foaming at the
mouth.  He thought of nothing but his safety-pin. I believe, if they
hadn't brought him one on the spot, he would have fallen down in a fit!
... Oh, all this isn't natural; and our managers are going mad! ...
Besides, it can't go on like this!  I'm not used to being treated in
that fashion!"

Suddenly Gabriel whispered:

"It's another trick of O. G.'s."

Rimy gave a grin, Mercier a sigh and seemed about to speak ... but,
meeting Gabriel's eye, said nothing.

However, Mercier felt his responsibility increased as the minutes
passed without the managers' appearing; and, at last, he could stand it
no longer.

"Look here, I'll go and hunt them out myself!"

Gabriel, turning very gloomy and serious, stopped him.

"Be careful what you're doing, Mercier!  If they're staying in their
office, it's probably because they have to!  O. G. has more than one
trick in his bag!"

But Mercier shook his head.

"That's their lookout!  I'm going!  If people had listened to me, the
police would have known everything long ago!"

And he went.

"What's everything?" asked Remy.  "What was there to tell the police?
Why don't you answer, Gabriel? ... Ah, so you know something!  Well,
you would do better to tell me, too, if you don't want me to shout out
that you are all going mad! ... Yes, that's what you are:  mad!"

Gabriel put on a stupid look and pretended not to understand the
private secretary's unseemly outburst.

"What 'something' am I supposed to know?" he said.  "I don't know what
you mean."

Remy began to lose his temper.

"This evening, Richard and Moncharmin were behaving like lunatics,
here, between the acts."

"I never noticed it," growled Gabriel, very much annoyed.

"Then you're the only one! ... Do you think that I didn't see them? ...
And that M. Parabise, the manager of the Credit Central, noticed
nothing? ... And that M. de La Borderie, the ambassador, has no eyes to
see with? ... Why, all the subscribers were pointing at our managers!"

"But what were our managers doing?" asked Gabriel, putting on his most
innocent air.

"What were they doing?  You know better than any one what they were
doing! ... You were there! ... And you were watching them, you and
Mercier! ... And you were the only two who didn't laugh."

"I don't understand!"

Gabriel raised his arms and dropped them to his sides again, which
gesture was meant to convey that the question did not interest him in
the least.  Remy continued:

"What is the sense of this new mania of theirs?  WHY WON'T THEY HAVE
ANY ONE COME NEAR THEM NOW?"

"What?  WON'T THEY HAVE ANY ONE COME NEAR THEM?"

"AND THEY WON'T LET ANY ONE TOUCH THEM!"

"Really?  Have you noticed THAT THEY WON'T LET ANY ONE TOUCH THEM?
That is certainly odd!"

"Oh, so you admit it!  And high time, too!  And THEN, THEY WALK
BACKWARD!"

"BACKWARD!  You have seen our managers WALK BACKWARD?  Why, I thought
that only crabs walked backward!"

"Don't laugh, Gabriel; don't laugh!"

"I'm not laughing," protested Gabriel, looking as solemn as a judge.

"Perhaps you can tell me this, Gabriel, as you're an intimate friend of
the management:  When I went up to M. Richard, outside the foyer,
during the Garden interval, with my hand out before me, why did M.
Moncharmin hurriedly whisper to me, 'Go away!  Go away!  Whatever you
do, don't touch M. le Directeur!'  Am I supposed to have an infectious
disease?"

"It's incredible!"

"And, a little later, when M. de La Borderie went up to M. Richard,
didn't you see M. Moncharmin fling himself between them and hear him
exclaim, 'M. l'Ambassadeur I entreat you not to touch M. le Directeur'?"

"It's terrible! ... And what was Richard doing meanwhile?"

"What was he doing?  Why, you saw him!  He turned about, BOWED IN FRONT
OF HIM, THOUGH THERE WAS NOBODY IN FRONT OF HIM, AND WITHDREW BACKWARD."

"BACKWARD?"

"And Moncharmin, behind Richard, also turned about; that is, he
described a semicircle behind Richard and also WALKED BACKWARD! ... And
they went LIKE THAT to the staircase leading to the managers' office:
BACKWARD, BACKWARD, BACKWARD!  ...  Well, if they are not mad, will you
explain what it means?"

"Perhaps they were practising a figure in the ballet," suggested
Gabriel, without much conviction in his voice.

The secretary was furious at this wretched joke, made at so dramatic a
moment.  He knit his brows and contracted his lips.  Then he put his
mouth to Gabriel's ear:

"Don't be so sly, Gabriel.  There are things going on for which you and
Mercier are partly responsible."

"What do you mean?" asked Gabriel.

"Christine Daae is not the only one who suddenly disappeared to-night."

"Oh, nonsense!"

"There's no nonsense about it.  Perhaps you can tell me why, when
Mother Giry came down to the foyer just now, Mercier took her by the
hand and hurried her away with him?"

"Really?" said Gabriel, "I never saw it."

"You did see it, Gabriel, for you went with Mercier and Mother Giry to
Mercier's office.  Since then, you and Mercier have been seen, but no
one has seen Mother Giry."

"Do you think we've eaten her?"

"No, but you've locked her up in the office; and any one passing the
office can hear her yelling, 'Oh, the scoundrels!  Oh, the scoundrels!'"

At this point of this singular conversation, Mercier arrived, all out
of breath.

"There!" he said, in a gloomy voice.  "It's worse than ever! ...  I
shouted, 'It's a serious matter!  Open the door!  It's I, Mercier.' I
heard footsteps.  The door opened and Moncharmin appeared.  He was very
pale.  He said, 'What do you want?'  I answered, 'Some one has run away
with Christine Daae.'  What do you think he said?  'And a good job,
too!'  And he shut the door, after putting this in my hand."

Mercier opened his hand; Remy and Gabriel looked.

"The safety-pin!" cried Remy.

"Strange!  Strange!" muttered Gabriel, who could not help shivering.

Suddenly a voice made them all three turn round.

"I beg your pardon, gentlemen.  Could you tell me where Christine Daae
is?"

In spite of the seriousness of the circumstances, the absurdity of the
question would have made them roar with laughter, if they had not
caught sight of a face so sorrow-stricken that they were at once seized
with pity.  It was the Vicomte Raoul de Chagny.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: The next day, Raoul sees Christine at the Opera. She is gentle and kind to him. Raoul is going to leave for a polar expedition soon. As for Christine, she tells him that in a month they shall have to say goodbye forever. Even though they cannot be married, they can certainly be engaged for a month. They play at being engaged and enjoy it as if they were children. They make speeches to each other and exchange eternal vows as well. One day, about a week after the game began, Raoul stops playing and says that he will not go to the North Pole. Christine suddenly discovers the danger of the game and does not say a word in reply, going straight home instead. The next morning, Raoul goes to Mamma Valerius, who tells him that Christine had gone away for two days. Christine returns on the following day and renews her extraordinary success of the gala performance. He runs behind the scenes and places himself in her way. She drags him to her dressing room, and they embrace. Raoul swears that he would go, and entreats her to never again withhold an hour of happiness that she had promised him. Christine asks him to leave and come back the next day. The next day, they go for a walk; throughout the following days, Christine shows him a different part of her empire in the Opera House, which covers 17 stories from the ground floor to the roof. She moves among her subjects and workers like a queen, She knows of unsuspected corners, and the days go by in this way. Raoul and Christine by showing excessive interest in other things, trying awkwardly to hide their affection from one another. Christine becomes more nervous, and on their expeditions often she often starts to run without reason or else suddenly stop. Having seen the upper part of Christine's empire, Raoul asks her if she could show him the lower part. Christine whispers to him that she will not take him there, because everything that is underground belongs to the Ghost. On the next day and the following days, Christine is careful to avoid trap doors. One afternoon they find themselves under the very roof, in the maze of timberwork. They slip through the buttresses, the rafters, and the joists. They run from beam to beam, and despite the care Christine takes to look behind her at every moment, she fails to see a shadow that follows her like her own shadow. Christine and Raoul sit on the roof, and Christine tells Raoul that she cannot leave Erik because terrible misfortunes will happen if she does. She has only a day left before he comes to fetch her with his voice. Christine and Raoul resolve to run away after her performance tomorrow evening. Christine tells Raoul about how she met Erik. For the first three months, she heard him without seeing him. The voice answered her questions, and from that time onward - after Mamma Valerius was convinced that it was the Angel of Music that Christine's father spoke of - the voice and Christine became great friends. It asked permission to give her lessons every day. Christine agreed and never failed to keep the appointments. Christine says that the voice seemed to understand hers exactly. In a a few weeks' time, Christine saw the quality of her singing improve tremendously. But as per the voice's request, she kept the secret between the voice, herself, and Mamma Valerius. The voice said that they would astonish Paris, and Christine waited and lived on in a sort of ecstatic dream. Then one night, for the first time, she saw Raoul in the Opera House. She was so glad to see him that when she reached her dressing room - and the voice saw that something was different about her - he asked what had happened. She told him of her and Raoul's love story, after which the voice went silent and disappeared. That night she went home in a desperate condition, and she told Mamma Valerius, who said that the voice was jealous. The next day, she went back to her dressing room in a pensive mood. The voice was there and very sadly that, if she had to bestow her heard on earth, there was nothing for the voice to do but go back to heaven. Christine feared nothing so much as that she might never hear the voice again, and she swore that Raoul was no more than a brother to her. That night she fainted and woke up to Raoul in her dressing room; she pretended not to recognize him for his sake, and began to laugh when Raoul reminded her of the scarf in the sea. The voice recognized Raoul and became jealous. The voice said that he would continue to follow her wherever she went. Raoul asks Christine why he did not rid herself of the voice. Christine replies that on the night the chandelier fell, she was worried that the voice might have been hurt. She went to her dressing room, called for the voice, and then, as a result of a mirror trick, she suddenly was outside the room. She was in a dark passage, was frightened, and cried out. An arm of a man wrapped in a large cloak and wearing a mask that hid his face took her round the waist and supported her. Soon she fainted. When she opened her eyes, she was still surrounded by darkness. She saw Cesar, the missing horse. She called upon the voice to help her, because she never thought the ghost and voice were one. The black shape held her up and put her on Cesar, who quietly carried her through the tunnels of the Opera House. At last the darkness lifted. They found themselves on the edge of a lake, where Christine saw a little boat fastened to an iron ring on the wharf. They floated across the water, and suddenly she found herself in a drawing room that was decorated with flowers. The man in the mask told her not to be afraid - it was the voice! He told her that she was no danger, so as long as she did not touch the mask. This man had succeeded in taking up his residence five stories under the Opera House. The voice was a man, and then Christine began to cry. The man said that he was not an Angel, a genius, or a ghost. He introduces himself as Erik. That night he sung her to sleep, and the next morning he prepared a meal for her. She was angry with him, and after she had freshened up, Erik told her that he loved her. Erik said he had no name, no country, and that he had taken the name Erik by accident. They began singing a piece from Othello, and Christine found an urge to see what was underneath the mask. Her fingers swiftly tore away the mask, and the face she saw horrified her. Christine fell back against the wall. Erik came up to her and began cursing. He then hissed at her and asked why she wanted to see him. He dragged himself into his room and closed the door. After telling him the whole story, Christine and Raoul kiss. Raoul and Christine run off the roof. There is no performance at the Opera that night, and the passages are empty. They go to Christine's dressing room, where Erik gave his word he would not go. Christine notices that she has lost the ring that Erik gave her - which she vowed to keep on her finger if Erik was ever to let her go about and do what she wishes, the price of her liberty. She and Raoul look for it, and when they cannot find it, she disappears. Raoul goes home, and finds that Erik is in his room. He uses his revolver and shoots at Erik, who is apparently on the balcony. It turns out that Raoul has only shot at a cat, and as a result of the gunshot he was awoken the servants and his brother. Raoul attempts to tell his brother about Erik, but his brother thinks Raoul has gone mad. They argue, and the next day the paper publishes a news about their quarrel: Raoul has committed to marrying Christine Daee, but his older brother, Count Philippe, objects. Philippe says that he will not allow the marriage to happen. Raoul prepares for his flight with Christine: the horses, the carriage, the coachman, the luggage, and the money required for the trip. In the evening he parks his traveling-barouche on the Rotunda side of the Opera House. Alongside it were three broughams, belonging to Carlotta, Sorelli, and Comte Philippe de Chagny. At the performance gala, Christine is met with a surprisingly cold reception. During the performance, the stage is suddenly plunged in darkness. When the gas lit up the stage again, Christine is nowhere to be found. Raoul and Philippe are both stupefied, and some people wonder if this has anything to do with what they read about in the paper that morning. Behind the curtain is an indescribable crowd. Everyone is asking questions, shouting, and hustling one another. Mercier, the acting-manager, calls for Mifroid, the commissary. Mauclair, the gasman , and his assistants are not to be found. Mercier, Remy , and Gabriel begin arguing about what just happened, and approach the managers' office. Suddenly a voice makes all three of them turn around: it is Raoul, and he asks where Christine is. Raoul's first thought after Christine's disappearance is to accuse Erik. He unsuccessfully goes around the Opera House asking about the entrance to the Rue Scribe. Mercier tells Raoul that he should direct his questions to Mifroid, the commissary of the police. They all soon go to the managers' office, and despite Mercier's attempts to storm the door, it remains closed. Raoul is the last to enter, and as he enters, someone puts his hands on Raoul's shoulders and he hears someone say in his ear that Erik's secret concerns none but Erik. The hand and voice belong to the Persian. At the moment when Raoul is about to inquire about his mysterious intervention, the Persian bows and disappears.