The Opera Ghost

Chapter 25: The End of the Ghost's Love Story

The previous chapter marks the conclusion of the written narrative that 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 courage and devotion of Christine Daae. And I had the rest of the story from the lips of the daroga (Persian police chief) himself.

When I went to see him, he was still living in his little flat in the Rue de Rivoli, opposite the Tuileries. He was very ill, and it required all my ardor as a historian pledged to the truth to persuade him to live the incredible tragedy over again for my benefit.

His faithful old servant Darius showed me into him. The daroga received me at a window overlooking the garden of the Tuileries. He still had his magnificent eyes, but his poor face looked very worn. He had shaved the whole of his head, which was usually covered with an astrakhan cap; he was dressed in a long, plain coat and amused himself by unconsciously twisting his thumbs inside the sleeves; but his mind was quite clear, and he told me his story with perfect lucidity.

It seems that, when he opened his eyes, the daroga found himself lying on a bed. M. de Chagny was on a sofa, beside the wardrobe. An angel was watching over them.

After the deceptions and illusions of the torture chamber, it was a relief to be in an ordinary-looking bedroom. The wooden bedstead, the waxed mahogany chairs, the chest of drawers, those brasses, the little square antimacassars carefully placed on the backs of the chairs, the clock on the mantelpiece and the harmless-looking ebony caskets at either end and lastly, the whatnot filled with shells, with red pin-cushions, with mother-of-pearl boats and an enormous ostrich-egg.

The whole was discreetly lighted by a shaded lamp standing on a small round table: this collection of ugly, peaceable, reasonable furniture, at the bottom of the Opera Palace cellars, bewildered the imagination more than all

Christine Daae did not say a word: she moved about noiselessly, like a sister of charity, who had taken a vow of silence. She brought a cup of cordial, or of hot tea, he did not remember which.

Christine poured a drop of rum into the daroga's cup and, pointing to the viscount, said:

"He came to himself long before we knew if you were still alive, daroga. He is quite well. He is asleep. We must not wake him."

The Persian raised himself on his elbow, looked around him and saw Christine Daae sitting by the fireside. He spoke to her, called her, but he was still very weak and fell back on his pillow. Christine came to him, laid her hand on his forehead and went away again. And the Persian remembered that, as she went, she did not give a glance at M. de Chagny, who, it is true, was sleeping peacefully; and she sat down again in her chair by the chimney-corner, silent as a sister of charity who had taken a vow of silence.

Where was Erik?

The Persian now looked at Christine's quiet profile under the lamp. She was reading a tiny book, with gilt edges, like a religious book. There are editions of THE IMITATION that look like that.

Very gently, he called her again; but Christine was wrapped up in her book and did not hear him.

Then he saw Erik, dead on the floor, covered in blood. Christine had found a knife and hidden it in her pocket. She had killed Erik when he was looking the other way.

Eventually, the Persian fell asleep, like M. de Chagny, and did not wake until he was in his own room, nursed by his faithful Darius, who told him that, on the night before, he was found propped against the door of his flat, where he had been brought by a stranger, who rang the bell before going away.

As soon as the daroga recovered his strength and his wits, he sent to Count Philippe's house to inquire after the viscount's health. The answer was that the young man had not been seen and that Count Philippe was dead. His body was found on the bank of the Opera lake, on the Rue-Scribe side.

The Persian remembered the funeral mass which he had heard from behind the wall of the torturechamber, and had no doubt concerning the crime and the criminal. Knowing Erik as he did, he easily reconstructed the tragedy.

Thinking that his brother had run away with Christine Daae, Philippe had dashed in pursuit of him along the Brussels Road, where he knew that everything was prepared for the elopement. Failing to find the pair, he hurried back to the Opera, remembered Raoul's strange confidence about his fantastic rival and learned that the viscount had made every effort to enter the cellars of the theater and that he had disappeared, leaving his hat in the prima donna's dressing-room beside an empty pistol-case.

And the count, who no longer entertained any doubt of his brother's madness, in his turn darted into that infernal underground maze. This was enough, in the Persian's eyes, to explain the discovery of the Comte de Chagny's corpse on the shore of the lake, where the siren, Erik's siren, kept watch.

The Persian did not hesitate. He was determined to inform the police. Now the case was in the hands of an examining-magistrate called Faure, an incredulous, commonplace, and superficial sort of person, with a mind utterly unprepared to receive a confidence of this kind. Faure took down the daroga's depositions and proceeded to treat him as a madman.

Despairing of never obtaining a hearing, the Persian sat down to write. As the police did not want his evidence, perhaps the press would be interested in it.

Once the newspapers heard the story, they were definitely interested. At first, Christine was represented as the victim of a rivalry between the two brothers; and nobody suspected what had really happened, nobody understood that, as Raoul and Christine had both disappeared, both had withdrawn far from the world to enjoy a happiness which they would not have cared to make public after the inexplicable death of Count Philippe.

They took the train one day from "the northern railway station of the world." . Possibly, I (the author) shall take the train at that station, one day, and go seek around the lakes. O Norway, O silent Scandinavia, for the hope of finding living traces of Raoul and Christine and also of Mamma Valerius, who disappeared at the same time! Possibly, someday, I shall hear the lonely echoes of the North repeat the singing of her who knew the Angel of Music!

Long after the case was pigeonholed by the unintelligent care of M. le Juge d'Instruction Faure, the newspapers made efforts, at intervals, to fathom the mystery. One evening paper alone, which knew all the gossip of the theaters, said:

"We recognize the touch of the Opera ghost."

And even that was written by way of irony.

The Persian alone knew the whole truth and it fell to my lot to complete those proofs with the aid of the daroga himself.