Books: The Phantom of the Opera
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Gaston Leroux >> The Phantom of the Opera
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"I am stifling," he said. "All those mirrors are sending out
an infernal heat! Do you think you will find that spring soon?
If you are much longer about it, we shall be roasted alive!"
I was not sorry to hear him talk like this. He had not said a word
of the forest and I hoped that my companion's reason would hold
out some time longer against the torture. But he added:
"What consoles me is that the monster has given Christine until
eleven to-morrow evening. If we can't get out of here and go
to her assistance, at least we shall be dead before her!
Then Erik's mass can serve for all of us!"
And he gulped down a breath of hot air that nearly made him faint.
As I had not the same desperate reasons as M. le Vicomte for
accepting death, I returned, after giving him a word of encouragement,
to my panel, but I had made the mistake of taking a few steps while
speaking and, in the tangle of the illusive forest, I was no longer
able to find my panel for certain! I had to begin all over again,
at random, feeling, fumbling, groping.
Now the fever laid hold of me in my turn...for I found nothing,
absolutely nothing. In the next room, all was silence. We were
quite lost in the forest, without an outlet, a compass, a guide
or anything. Oh, I knew what awaited us if nobody came to our aid...
or if I did not find the spring! But, look as I might, I found
nothing but branches, beautiful branches that stood straight up
before me, or spread gracefully over my head. But they gave no shade.
And this was natural enough, as we were in an equatorial forest,
with the sun right above our heads, an African forest.
M. de Chagny and I had repeatedly taken off our coats and put them
on again, finding at one time that they made us feel still hotter
and at another that they protected us against the heat. I was still
making a moral resistance, but M. de Chagny seemed to me quite "gone."
He pretended that he had been walking in that forest for three
days and nights, without stopping, looking for Christine Daae!
From time to time, he thought he saw her behind the trunk of a tree,
or gliding between the branches; and he called to her with words
of supplication that brought the tears to my eyes. And then,
at last:
"Oh, how thirsty I am!" he cried, in delirious accents.
I too was thirsty. My throat was on fire. And, yet, squatting on
the floor, I went on hunting, hunting, hunting for the spring of
the invisible door...especially as it was dangerous to remain
in the forest as evening drew nigh. Already the shades of night
were beginning to surround us. It had happened very quickly:
night falls quickly in tropical countries...suddenly, with hardly
any twilight.
Now night, in the forests of the equator, is always dangerous,
particularly when, like ourselves, one has not the materials for a
fire to keep off the beasts of prey. I did indeed try for a moment
to break off the branches, which I would have lit with my dark lantern,
but I knocked myself also against the mirrors and remembered,
in time, that we had only images of branches to do with.
The heat did not go with the daylight; on the contrary, it was now
still hotter under the blue rays of the moon. I urged the viscount
to hold our weapons ready to fire and not to stray from camp,
while I went on looking for my spring.
Suddenly, we heard a lion roaring a few yards away.
"Oh," whispered the viscount, "he is quite close!...Don't you
see him?...There...through the trees...in that thicket!
If he roars again, I will fire!..."
And the roaring began again, louder than before. And the viscount fired,
but I do not think that he hit the lion; only, he smashed a mirror,
as I perceived the next morning, at daybreak. We must have covered
a good distance during the night, for we suddenly found ourselves on
the edge of the desert, an immense desert of sand, stones and rocks.
It was really not worth while leaving the forest to come upon
the desert. Tired out, I flung myself down beside the viscount,
for I had had enough of looking for springs which I could not find.
I was quite surprised--and I said so to the viscount--that we
had encountered no other dangerous animals during the night.
Usually, after the lion came the leopard and sometimes the buzz
of the tsetse fly. These were easily obtained effects; and I
explained to M. de Chagny that Erik imitated the roar of a lion
on a long tabour or timbrel, with an ass's skin at one end.
Over this skin he tied a string of catgut, which was fastened
at the middle to another similar string passing through the whole
length of the tabour. Erik had only to rub this string with a glove
smeared with resin and, according to the manner in which he rubbed it,
he imitated to perfection the voice of the lion or the leopard,
or even the buzzing of the tsetse fly.
The idea that Erik was probably in the room beside us, working his trick,
made me suddenly resolve to enter into a parley with him, for we
must obviously give up all thought of taking him by surprise.
And by this time he must be quite aware who were the occupants
of his torture-chamber. I called him: "Erik! Erik!"
I shouted as loudly as I could across the desert, but there was no answer
to my voice. All around us lay the silence and the bare immensity of that
stony desert. What was to become of us in the midst of that awful solitude?
We were beginning literally to die of heat, hunger and thirst...
of thirst especially. At last, I saw M. de Chagny raise himself
on his elbow and point to a spot on the horizon. He had discovered
an oasis!
Yes, far in the distance was an oasis...an oasis with limpid water,
which reflected the iron trees!...Tush, it was the scene of
the mirage....I recognized it at once...the worst of the
three!...No one had been able to fight against it...no one.
...I did my utmost to keep my head AND NOT TO HOPE FOR WATER,
because I knew that, if a man hoped for water, the water that
reflected the iron tree, and if, after hoping for water, he struck
against the mirror, then there was only one thing for him to do:
to hang himself on the iron tree!
So I cried to M. de Chagny:
"It's the mirage!...It's the mirage!...Don't believe
in the water!...It's another trick of the mirrors!..."
Then he flatly told me to shut up, with my tricks of the mirrors,
my springs, my revolving doors and my palaces of illusions!
He angrily declared that I must be either blind or mad to imagine
that all that water flowing over there, among those splendid,
numberless trees, was not real water!...And the desert was real!
...And so was the forest!...And it was no use trying to take
him in...he was an old, experienced traveler...he had been
all over the place!
And he dragged himself along, saying: "Water! Water!"
And his mouth was open, as though he were drinking.
And my mouth was open too, as though I were drinking.
For we not only saw the water, but WE HEARD IT!...We heard
it flow, we heard it ripple!...Do you understand that word
"ripple?"...IT IS A SOUND WHICH YOU HEAR WITH YOUR TONGUE!
...You put your tongue out of your mouth to listen to it better!
Lastly--and this was the most pitiless torture of all--we heard
the rain and it was not raining! This was an infernal invention.
...Oh, I knew well enough how Erik obtained it! He filled
with little stones a very long and narrow box, broken up inside
with wooden and metal projections. The stones, in falling,
struck against these projections and rebounded from one to another;
and the result was a series of pattering sounds that exactly imitated
a rainstorm.
Ah, you should have seen us putting out our tongues and dragging ourselves
toward the rippling river-bank! Our eyes and ears were full of water,
but our tongues were hard and dry as horn!
When we reached the mirror, M. de Chagny licked it...and I
also licked the glass.
It was burning hot!
Then we rolled on the floor with a hoarse cry of despair.
M. de Chagny put the one pistol that was still loaded to his temple;
and I stared at the Punjab lasso at the foot of the iron tree.
I knew why the iron tree had returned, in this third change of scene!...
The iron tree was waiting for me!...
But, as I stared at the Punjab lasso, I saw a thing that made me
start so violently that M. de Chagny delayed his attempt at suicide.
I took his arm. And then I caught the pistol from him...and then
I dragged myself on my knees toward what I had seen.
I had discovered, near the Punjab lasso, in a groove in the floor,
a black-headed nail of which I knew the use. At last I had discovered
the spring! I felt the nail....I lifted a radiant face to
M. de Chagny....The black-headed nail yielded to my pressure....
And then....
And then we saw not a door opened in the wall, but a cellar-flap
released in the floor. Cool air came up to us from the black
hole below. We stooped over that square of darkness as though over
a limpid well. With our chins in the cool shade, we drank it in.
And we bent lower and lower over the trap-door. What could there
be in that cellar which opened before us? Water? Water to drink?
I thrust my arm into the darkness and came upon a stone and another
stone...a staircase...a dark staircase leading into the cellar.
The viscount wanted to fling himself down the hole; but I,
fearing a new trick of the monster's, stopped him, turned on
my dark lantern and went down first.
The staircase was a winding one and led down into pitchy darkness.
But oh, how deliciously cool were the darkness and the stairs?
The lake could not be far away.
We soon reached the bottom. Our eyes were beginning to accustom
themselves to the dark, to distinguish shapes around us...
circular shapes...on which I turned the light of my lantern.
Barrels!
We were in Erik's cellar: it was here that he must keep his wine
and perhaps his drinking-water. I knew that Erik was a great lover
of good wine. Ah, there was plenty to drink here!
M. de Chagny patted the round shapes and kept on saying:
"Barrels! Barrels! What a lot of barrels!..."
Indeed, there was quite a number of them, symmetrically arranged
in two rows, one on either side of us. They were small barrels
and I thought that Erik must have selected them of that size
to facilitate their carriage to the house on the lake.
We examined them successively, to see if one of them had not
a funnel, showing that it had been tapped at some time or another.
But all the barrels were hermetically closed.
Then, after half lifting one to make sure it was full, we went
on our knees and, with the blade of a small knife which I carried,
I prepared to stave in the bung-hole.
At that moment, I seemed to hear, coming from very far, a sort
of monotonous chant which I knew well, from often hearing it
in the streets of Paris:
"Barrels!...Barrels!...Any barrels to sell?"
My hand desisted from its work. M. de Chagny had also heard.
He said:
"That's funny! It sounds as if the barrel were singing!"
The song was renewed, farther away:
"Barrels!...Barrels!...Any barrels to sell?..."
"Oh, I swear," said the viscount, "that the tune dies away
in the barrel!..."
We stood up and went to look behind the barrel.
"It's inside," said M. de Chagny, "it's inside!"
But we heard nothing there and were driven to accuse the bad condition
of our senses. And we returned to the bung-hole. M. de Chagny
put his two hands together underneath it and, with a last effort,
I burst the bung.
"What's this?" cried the viscount. "This isn't water!"
The viscount put his two full hands close to my lantern....I
stooped to look...and at once threw away the lantern with such
violence that it broke and went out, leaving us in utter darkness.
What I had seen in M. de Chagny's hands...was gun-powder!
Chapter XXV The Scorpion or the Grasshopper: Which?
THE PERSIAN'S NARRATIVE CONCLUDED
The discovery flung us into a state of alarm that made us forget all
our past and present sufferings. We now knew all that the monster
meant to convey when he said to Christine Daae:
"Yes or no! If your answer is no, everybody will be dead AND BURIED!"
Yes, buried under the ruins of the Paris Grand Opera!
The monster had given her until eleven o'clock in the evening.
He had chosen his time well. There would be many people, many
"members of the human race," up there, in the resplendent theater.
What finer retinue could be expected for his funeral? He would go
down to the tomb escorted by the whitest shoulders in the world,
decked with the richest jewels.
Eleven o'clock to-morrow evening!
We were all to be blown up in the middle of the performance...
if Christine Daae said no!
Eleven o'clock to-morrow evening!...
And what else could Christine say but no? Would she not prefer
to espouse death itself rather than that living corpse? She did
not know that on her acceptance or refusal depended the awful fate
of many members of the human race!
Eleven o'clock to-morrow evening!
And we dragged ourselves through the darkness, feeling our way
to the stone steps, for the light in the trap-door overhead that
led to the room of mirrors was now extinguished; and we repeated
to ourselves:
"Eleven o'clock to-morrow evening!"
At last, I found the staircase. But, suddenly I drew myself up
on the first step, for a terrible thought had come to my mind:
"What is the time?"
Ah, what was the time?...For, after all, eleven o'clock to-morrow
evening might be now, might be this very moment! Who could tell us
the time? We seemed to have been imprisoned in that hell for days
and days...for years...since the beginning of the world.
Perhaps we should be blown up then and there! Ah, a sound! A crack!
"Did you hear that?...There, in the corner...good heavens!...
Like a sound of machinery!...Again!...Oh, for a light!...
Perhaps it's the machinery that is to blow everything up!...
I tell you, a cracking sound: are you deaf?"
M. de Chagny and I began to yell like madmen. Fear spurred us on.
We rushed up the treads of the staircase, stumbling as we went,
anything to escape the dark, to return to the mortal light of the room
of mirrors!
We found the trap-door still open, but it was now as dark
in the room of mirrors as in the cellar which we had left.
We dragged ourselves along the floor of the torture-chamber, the floor
that separated us from the powder-magazine. What was the time?
We shouted, we called: M. de Chagny to Christine, I to Erik.
I reminded him that I had saved his life. But no answer, save that
of our despair, of our madness: what was the time? We argued,
we tried to calculate the time which we had spent there, but we were
incapable of reasoning. If only we could see the face of a watch!...
Mine had stopped, but M. de Chagny's was still going...
He told me that he had wound it up before dressing for the Opera....
We had not a match upon us....And yet we must know....
M. de Chagny broke the glass of his watch and felt the two hands.
...He questioned the hands of the watch with his finger-tips,
going by the position of the ring of the watch....Judging
by the space between the hands, he thought it might be just eleven
o'clock!
But perhaps it was not the eleven o'clock of which we stood in dread.
Perhaps we had still twelve hours before us!
Suddenly, I exclaimed: "Hush!"
I seemed to hear footsteps in the next room. Some one tapped
against the wall. Christine Daae's voice said:
"Raoul! Raoul!" We were now all talking at once, on either side
of the wall. Christine sobbed; she was not sure that she would
find M. de Chagny alive. The monster had been terrible, it seemed,
had done nothing but rave, waiting for her to give him the "yes"
which she refused. And yet she had promised him that "yes," if he
would take her to the torture-chamber. But he had obstinately declined,
and had uttered hideous threats against all the members of the
human race! At last, after hours and hours of that hell, he had
that moment gone out, leaving her alone to reflect for the last time.
"Hours and hours? What is the time now? What is the time, Christine?"
"It is eleven o'clock! Eleven o'clock, all but five minutes!"
"But which eleven o'clock?"
"The eleven o'clock that is to decide life or death!...He told me
so just before he went....He is terrible....He is quite mad:
he tore off his mask and his yellow eyes shot flames!...He did
nothing but laugh!...He said, `I give you five minutes to spare
your blushes! Here,' he said, taking a key from the little bag
of life and death, `here is the little bronze key that opens the two
ebony caskets on the mantelpiece in the Louis-Philippe room.
...In one of the caskets, you will find a scorpion, in the other,
a grasshopper, both very cleverly imitated in Japanese bronze:
they will say yes or no for you. If you turn the scorpion round,
that will mean to me, when I return, that you have said yes.
The grasshopper will mean no.' And he laughed like a drunken demon.
I did nothing but beg and entreat him to give me the key of
the torture-chamber, promising to be his wife if he granted me
that request....But he told me that there was no future need
for that key and that he was going to throw it into the lake!...
And he again laughed like a drunken demon and left me. Oh, his last
words were, `The grasshopper! Be careful of the grasshopper!
A grasshopper does not only turn: it hops! It hops! And it hops
jolly high!'"
The five minutes had nearly elapsed and the scorpion and the grasshopper
were scratching at my brain. Nevertheless, I had sufficient
lucidity left to understand that, if the grasshopper were turned,
it would hop...and with it many members of the human race!
There was no doubt but that the grasshopper controlled an electric
current intended to blow up the powder-magazine!
M. de Chagny, who seemed to have recovered all his moral force
from hearing Christine's voice, explained to her, in a few
hurried words, the situation in which we and all the Opera were.
He told her to turn the scorpion at once.
There was a pause.
"Christine," I cried, "where are you?"
"By the scorpion."
"Don't touch it!"
The idea had come to me--for I knew my Erik--that the monster had
perhaps deceived the girl once more. Perhaps it was the scorpion
that would blow everything up. After all, why wasn't he there?
The five minutes were long past...and he was not back.
...Perhaps he had taken shelter and was waiting for the explosion!
...Why had he not returned?...He could not really expect
Christine ever to consent to become his voluntary prey!...Why
had he not returned?
"Don't touch the scorpion!" I said.
"Here he comes!" cried Christine. "I hear him! Here he is!"
We heard his steps approaching the Louis-Philippe room. He came
up to Christine, but did not speak. Then I raised my voice:
"Erik! It is I! Do you know me?"
With extraordinary calmness, he at once replied:
"So you are not dead in there? Well, then, see that you keep quiet."
I tried to speak, but he said coldly:
"Not a word, daroga, or I shall blow everything up." And he added,
"The honor rests with mademoiselle....Mademoiselle has not
touched the scorpion"--how deliberately he spoke!--"mademoiselle
has not touched the grasshopper"--with that composure!--"but it
is not too late to do the right thing. There, I open the caskets
without a key, for I am a trap-door lover and I open and shut
what I please and as I please. I open the little ebony caskets:
mademoiselle, look at the little dears inside. Aren't they pretty?
If you turn the grasshopper, mademoiselle, we shall all be blown up.
There is enough gun-powder under our feet to blow up a whole quarter
of Paris. If you turn the scorpion, mademoiselle, all that powder
will be soaked and drowned. Mademoiselle, to celebrate our wedding,
you shall make a very handsome present to a few hundred Parisians
who are at this moment applauding a poor masterpiece of Meyerbeer's
...you shall make them a present of their lives....For,
with your own fair hands, you shall turn the scorpion....
And merrily, merrily, we will be married!"
A pause; and then:
"If, in two minutes, mademoiselle, you have not turned the scorpion,
I shall turn the grasshopper...and the grasshopper, I tell you,
HOPS JOLLY HIGH!"
The terrible silence began anew. The Vicomte de Chagny,
realizing that there was nothing left to do but pray, went down
on his knees and prayed. As for me, my blood beat so fiercely
that I had to take my heart in both hands, lest it should burst.
At last, we heard Erik's voice:
"The two minutes are past....Good-by, mademoiselle.
...Hop, grasshopper! "Erik," cried Christine, "do you swear
to me, monster, do you swear to me that the scorpion is the one to turn?
"Yes, to hop at our wedding."
"Ah, you see! You said, to hop!"
"At our wedding, ingenuous child!...The scorpion opens the ball.
...But that will do!...You won't have the scorpion? Then I
turn the grasshopper!"
"Erik!"
"Enough!"
I was crying out in concert with Christine. M. de Chagny was still
on his knees, praying.
"Erik! I have turned the scorpion!"
Oh, the second through which we passed!
Waiting! Waiting to find ourselves in fragments, amid the roar
and the ruins!
Feeling something crack beneath our feet, hearing an appalling hiss
through the open trap-door, a hiss like the first sound of a rocket!
It came softly, at first, then louder, then very loud. But it
was not the hiss of fire. It was more like the hiss of water.
And now it became a gurgling sound: "Guggle! Guggle!"
We rushed to the trap-door. All our thirst, which vanished when
the terror came, now returned with the lapping of the water.
The water rose in the cellar, above the barrels, the powder-barrels--
"Barrels!...Barrels! Any barrels to sell?"--and we went down to it
with parched throats. It rose to our chins, to our mouths. And we drank.
We stood on the floor of the cellar and drank. And we went up the
stairs again in the dark, step by step, went up with the water.
The water came out of the cellar with us and spread over the floor
of the room. If, this went on, the whole house on the lake would
be swamped. The floor of the torture-chamber had itself become
a regular little lake, in which our feet splashed. Surely there
was water enough now! Erik must turn off the tap!
"Erik! Erik! That is water enough for the gunpowder! Turn off
the tap! Turn off the scorpion!"
But Erik did not reply. We heard nothing but the water rising:
it was half-way to our waists!
"Christine!" cried M. de Chagny. "Christine! The water is up
to our knees!"
But Christine did not reply....We heard nothing but the water rising.
No one, no one in the next room, no one to turn the tap, no one
to turn the scorpion!
We were all alone, in the dark, with the dark water that seized us
and clasped us and froze us!
"Erik! Erik!"
"Christine! Christine!"
By this time, we had lost our foothold and were spinning round
in the water, carried away by an irresistible whirl, for the water
turned with us and dashed us against the dark mirror, which thrust
us back again; and our throats, raised above the whirlpool,
roared aloud.
Were we to die here, drowned in the torture-chamber? I had never
seen that. Erik, at the time of the rosy hours of Mazenderan,
had never shown me that, through the little invisible window.
"Erik! Erik!" I cried. "I saved your life! Remember!...You
were sentenced to death! But for me, you would be dead now!...
Erik!"
We whirled around in the water like so much wreckage.
But, suddenly, my straying hands seized the trunk of the iron tree!
I called M. de Chagny, and we both hung to the branch of the iron tree.
And the water rose still higher.
"Oh! Oh! Can you remember? How much space is there between the branch
of the tree and the dome-shaped ceiling? Do try to remember!...
After all, the water may stop, it must find its level!...There,
I think it is stopping!...No, no, oh, horrible!...Swim!
Swim for your life!"
Our arms became entangled in the effort of swimming; we choked;
we fought in the dark water; already we could hardly breathe the dark
air above the dark water, the air which escaped, which we could hear
escaping through some vent-hole or other.
"Oh, let us turn and turn and turn until we find the air hole
and then glue our mouths to it!"
But I lost my strength; I tried to lay hold of the walls!
Oh, how those glass walls slipped from under my groping
fingers!...We whirled round again!...We began to sink!
...One last effort!...A last cry: "Erik!...Christine!..."
"Guggle, guggle, guggle!" in our ears. "Guggle! Guggle!" At the
bottom of the dark water, our ears went, "Guggle! Guggle!"
And, before losing consciousness entirely, I seemed to hear,
between two guggles:
"Barrels! Barrels! Any barrels to sell?"
Chapter XXVI The End of the Ghost's Love Story
The previous chapter marks the conclusion of the written narrative
which the Persian left behind him.
Notwithstanding the horrors of a situation which seemed definitely
to abandon them to their deaths, M. de Chagny and his companion
were saved by the sublime devotion of Christine Daae. And I
had the rest of the story from the lips of the daroga himself.
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