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After all, who had seen him? You meet so many men in dress-clothes at the Opera who are not ghosts. But this dress-suit had a peculiarity of its own. It covered a skeleton. At least, so the ballet-girls said. And, of course, it had a death’s head.
No one had ever heard or seen anything like it. Daaé revealed a new Margarita that night, a Margarita of a splendor, a radiance hitherto unsuspected.
Christine’s voice, infinitely sad and trembling, as though accompanied by tears, replied: “How can you talk like that? When I sing only for you!”
None will ever be a true Parisian who has not learned to wear a mask of gaiety over his sorrows and one of sadness, boredom or indifference over his inward joy. You know that one of your friends is in trouble; do not try to console him: he will tell you that he is already comforted; but, should he have met with good fortune, be careful how you congratulate him: he thinks it so natural that he is surprised that you should speak of it.
I think that I shall not be far from the truth if I ascribe her action simply to fear. Yes, I believe that Christine Daaé was frightened by what had happened to her.
“I don’t know myself when I sing,” writes the poor child.
Little Christine asked her father if he had heard the Angel of Music. But Daddy Daaé shook his head sadly; and then his eyes lit up, as he said: “You will hear him one day, my child! When I am in Heaven, I will send him to you!”
He did not feel any hostility in her; far from it: the distressed affection shining in her eyes told him that. But why was this affection distressed?
The truth is that, if there was a cabal, it was led by Carlotta herself against poor Christine, who had no suspicion of it.
He now realized the possible state of mind of a girl brought up between a superstitious fiddler and a visionary old lady and he shuddered when he thought of the consequences of it all.
The somber picture which he had for a moment imagined of a Christine forgetting her duty to herself made way for his original conception of an unfortunate, innocent child, the victim of imprudence and exaggerated sensibility. To what extent, at this time, was she really a victim? Whose prisoner was she? Into what whirlpool had she been dragged?
After her father’s death, she acquired a distaste of everything in life, including her art. She went through the conservatoire like a poor soulless singing-machine. And, suddenly, she awoke as though through the intervention of a god.
But I shall snatch off his mask, as I shall snatch off my own; and, this time, we shall look each other in the face, he and I, with no veil and no lies between us; and I shall know whom you love and who loves you!”
Some one may have taken you in, played upon your innocence. I was a witness of it myself, at Perros…but
A smile of happiness appeared upon her bloodless lips, a smile like that of sick people when they receive the first hope of recovery.
“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.
“I am afraid now of going back to live with him…in the ground!”
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.
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.
“It is difficult not to cause him pain and yet to escape from him for good.”
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.
“You are frightened…but do you love me? If Erik were good-looking, would you love me, Christine?”
“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?”
How should I not believe you, when you are the only one to believe me…when you are the only one not to smile when Erik’s name is mentioned?”
He satisfied my curiosity, for Erik, who is a real monster—I have seen him at work in Persia, alas—is also, in certain respects, a regular child, vain and self-conceited, and there is nothing he loves so much, after astonishing people, as to prove all the really miraculous ingenuity of his mind.
No one knows better than he how to throw the Punjab lasso, for he is the king of stranglers even as he is the prince of conjurors.
declared, “the monster bound you…and he shall unbind you. You have only to play the necessary part! Remember that he loves you!” “Alas!” we heard. “Am I likely to forget it!”
