Epilogue.
I have now told the singular, but veracious story of the Opera ghost.As I declared on the first page of this work, it is no longer possibleto deny that Erik really lived. There are to-day so many proofs of hisexistence within the reach of everybody that we can follow Erik'sactions logically through the whole tragedy of the Chagnys.
There is no need to repeat here how greatly the case excited thecapital. The kidnapping of the artist, the death of the Comte deChagny under such exceptional conditions, the disappearance of hisbrother, the drugging of the gas-man at the Opera and of his twoassistants: what tragedies, what passions, what crimes had surroundedthe idyll of Raoul and the sweet and charming Christine! ... What hadbecome of that wonderful, mysterious artist of whom the world wasnever, never to hear again? ... She was represented as the victim of arivalry between the two brothers; and nobody suspected what had reallyhappened, nobody understood that, as Raoul and Christine had bothdisappeared, both had withdrawn far from the world to enjoy a happinesswhich they would not have cared to make public after the inexplicabledeath of Count Philippe ... They took the train one day from "thenorthern railway station of the world." ... Possibly, I too shall takethe train at that station, one day, and go and seek around thy lakes, ONorway, O silent Scandinavia, for the perhaps still living traces ofRaoul and Christine and also of Mamma Valerius, who disappeared at thesame time! ... Possibly, some day, I shall hear the lonely echoes ofthe North repeat the singing of her who knew the Angel of Music! ...
Long after the case was pigeonholed by the unintelligent care of M. leJuge d'Instruction Faure, the newspapers made efforts, at intervals, tofathom the mystery. One evening paper alone, which knew all the gossipof 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 held the main proofs, whichcame to him with the pious relics promised by the ghost. It fell to mylot to complete those proofs with the aid of the daroga himself. Dayby day, I kept him informed of the progress of my inquiries; and hedirected them. He had not been to the Opera for years and years, buthe had preserved the most accurate recollection of the building, andthere was no better guide than he possible to help me discover its mostsecret recesses. He also told me where to gather further information,whom to ask; and he sent me to call on M. Poligny, at a moment when thepoor man was nearly drawing his last breath. I had no idea that he wasso very ill, and I shall never forget the effect which my questionsabout the ghost produced upon him. He looked at me as if I were thedevil and answered only in a few incoherent sentences, which showed,however--and that was the main thing--the extent of the perturbationwhich O. G., in his time, had brought into that already very restlesslife (for M. Poligny was what people call a man of pleasure).
When I came and told the Persian of the poor result of my visit to M.Poligny, the daroga gave a faint smile and said:
"Poligny never knew how far that extraordinary blackguard of an Erikhumbugged him."--The Persian, by the way, spoke of Erik sometimes as ademigod and sometimes as the lowest of the low--"Poligny wassuperstitious and Erik knew it. Erik knew most things about the publicand private affairs of the Opera. When M. Poligny heard a mysteriousvoice tell him, in Box Five, of the manner in which he used to spendhis time and abuse his partner's confidence, he did not wait to hearany more. Thinking at first that it was a voice from Heaven, hebelieved himself damned; and then, when the voice began to ask formoney, he saw that he was being victimized by a shrewd blackmailer towhom Debienne himself had fallen a prey. Both of them, already tiredof management for various reasons, went away without trying toinvestigate further into the personality of that curious O. G., who hadforced such a singular memorandum-book upon them. They bequeathed thewhole mystery to their successors and heaved a sigh of relief when theywere rid of a business that had puzzled them without amusing them inthe least."
I then spoke of the two successors and expressed my surprise that, inhis Memoirs of a Manager, M. Moncharmin should describe the Operaghost's behavior at such length in the first part of the book andhardly mention it at all in the second. In reply to this, the Persian,who knew the MEMOIRS as thoroughly as if he had written them himself,observed that I should find the explanation of the whole business if Iwould just recollect the few lines which Moncharmin devotes to theghost in the second part aforesaid. I quote these lines, which areparticularly interesting because they describe the very simple mannerin which the famous incident of the twenty-thousand francs was closed:
"As for O. G., some of whose curious tricks I have related in the firstpart of my Memoirs, I will only say that he redeemed by one spontaneousfine action all the worry which he had caused my dear friend andpartner and, I am bound to say, myself. He felt, no doubt, that thereare limits to a joke, especially when it is so expensive and when thecommissary of police has been informed, for, at the moment when we hadmade an appointment in our office with M. Mifroid to tell him the wholestory, a few days after the disappearance of Christine Daae, we found,on Richard's table, a large envelope, inscribed, in red ink, "WITH O.G.'S COMPLIMENTS." It contained the large sum of money which he hadsucceeded in playfully extracting, for the time being, from thetreasury. Richard was at once of the opinion that we must be contentwith that and drop the business. I agreed with Richard. All's wellthat ends well. What do you say, O. G.?"
Of course, Moncharmin, especially after the money had been restored,continued to believe that he had, for a short while, been the butt ofRichard's sense of humor, whereas Richard, on his side, was convincedthat Moncharmin had amused himself by inventing the whole of the affairof the Opera ghost, in order to revenge himself for a few jokes.
I asked the Persian to tell me by what trick the ghost had takentwenty-thousand francs from Richard's pocket in spite of thesafety-pin. He replied that he had not gone into this little detail,but that, if I myself cared to make an investigation on the spot, Ishould certainly find the solution to the riddle in the managers'office by remembering that Erik had not been nicknamed the trap-doorlover for nothing. I promised the Persian to do so as soon as I hadtime, and I may as well tell the reader at once that the results of myinvestigation were perfectly satisfactory; and I hardly believed that Ishould ever discover so many undeniable proofs of the authenticity ofthe feats ascribed to the ghost.
The Persian's manuscript, Christine Daae's papers, the statements madeto me by the people who used to work under MM. Richard and Moncharmin,by little Meg herself (the worthy Madame Giry, I am sorry to say, is nomore) and by Sorelli, who is now living in retirement at Louveciennes:all the documents relating to the existence of the ghost, which Ipropose to deposit in the archives of the Opera, have been checked andconfirmed by a number of important discoveries of which I am justlyproud. I have not been able to find the house on the lake, Erik havingblocked up all the secret entrances.[1] On the other hand, I havediscovered the secret passage of the Communists, the planking of whichis falling to pieces in parts, and also the trap-door through whichRaoul and the Persian penetrated into the cellars of the opera-house.In the Communists' dungeon, I noticed numbers of initials traced on thewalls by the unfortunate people confined in it; and among these were an"R" and a "C." R. C.: Raoul de Chagny. The letters are there to thisday.
If the reader will visit the Opera one morning and ask leave to strollwhere he pleases, without being accompanied by a stupid guide, let himgo to Box Five and knock with his fist or stick on the enormous columnthat separates this from the stage-box. He will find that the columnsounds hollow. After that, do not be astonished by the suggestion thatit was occupied by the voice of the ghost: there is room inside thecolumn for two men. If you are surprised that, when the variousincidents occurred, no one turned round to look at the column, you mustremember that it presented the appearance of solid marble, and that thevoice contained in it seemed rather to come from the opposite side,for, as we have seen, the ghost was an expert vent
riloquist.
The column was elaborately carved and decorated with the sculptor'schisel; and I do not despair of one day discovering the ornament thatcould be raised or lowered at will, so as to admit of the ghost'smysterious correspondence with Mme. Giry and of his generosity.
However, all these discoveries are nothing, to my mind, compared withthat which I was able to make, in the presence of the acting-manager,in the managers' office, within a couple of inches from the desk-chair,and which consisted of a trap-door, the width of a board in theflooring and the length of a man's fore-arm and no longer; a trap-doorthat falls back like the lid of a box; a trap-door through which I cansee a hand come and dexterously fumble at the pocket of a swallow-tailcoat.
That is the way the forty-thousand francs went! ... And that also isthe way by which, through some trick or other, they were returned.
Speaking about this to the Persian, I said:
"So we may take it, as the forty-thousand francs were returned, thatErik was simply amusing himself with that memorandum-book of his?"
"Don't you believe it!" he replied. "Erik wanted money. Thinkinghimself without the pale of humanity, he was restrained by no scruplesand he employed his extraordinary gifts of dexterity and imagination,which he had received by way of compensation for his extraordinaryuglinesss, to prey upon his fellow-men. His reason for restoring theforty-thousand francs, of his own accord, was that he no longer wantedit. He had relinquished his marriage with Christine Daae. He hadrelinquished everything above the surface of the earth."
According to the Persian's account, Erik was born in a small town notfar from Rouen. He was the son of a master-mason. He ran away at anearly age from his father's house, where his ugliness was a subject ofhorror and terror to his parents. For a time, he frequented the fairs,where a showman exhibited him as the "living corpse." He seems to havecrossed the whole of Europe, from fair to fair, and to have completedhis strange education as an artist and magician at the veryfountain-head of art and magic, among the Gipsies. A period of Erik'slife remained quite obscure. He was seen at the fair ofNijni-Novgorod, where he displayed himself in all his hideous glory.He already sang as nobody on this earth had ever sung before; hepractised ventriloquism and gave displays of legerdemain soextraordinary that the caravans returning to Asia talked about itduring the whole length of their journey. In this way, his reputationpenetrated the walls of the palace at Mazenderan, where the littlesultana, the favorite of the Shah-in-Shah, was boring herself to death.A dealer in furs, returning to Samarkand from Nijni-Novgorod, told ofthe marvels which he had seen performed in Erik's tent. The trader wassummoned to the palace and the daroga of Mazenderan was told toquestion him. Next the daroga was instructed to go and find Erik. Hebrought him to Persia, where for some months Erik's will was law. Hewas guilty of not a few horrors, for he seemed not to know thedifference between good and evil. He took part calmly in a number ofpolitical assassinations; and he turned his diabolical inventive powersagainst the Emir of Afghanistan, who was at war with the Persianempire. The Shah took a liking to him.
This was the time of the rosy hours of Mazenderan, of which thedaroga's narrative has given us a glimpse. Erik had very originalideas on the subject of architecture and thought out a palace much as aconjuror contrives a trick-casket. The Shah ordered him to construct anedifice of this kind. Erik did so; and the building appears to havebeen so ingenious that His Majesty was able to move about in it unseenand to disappear without a possibility of the trick's being discovered.When the Shah-in-Shah found himself the possessor of this gem, heordered Erik's yellow eyes to be put out. But he reflected that, evenwhen blind, Erik would still be able to build so remarkable a house foranother sovereign; and also that, as long as Erik was alive, some onewould know the secret of the wonderful palace. Erik's death wasdecided upon, together with that of all the laborers who had workedunder his orders. The execution of this abominable decree devolvedupon the daroga of Mazenderan. Erik had shown him some slight servicesand procured him many a hearty laugh. He saved Erik by providing himwith the means of escape, but nearly paid with his head for hisgenerous indulgence.
Fortunately for the daroga, a corpse, half-eaten by the birds of prey,was found on the shore of the Caspian Sea, and was taken for Erik'sbody, because the daroga's friends had dressed the remains in clothingthat belonged to Erik. The daroga was let off with the loss of theimperial favor, the confiscation of his property and an order ofperpetual banishment. As a member of the Royal House, however, hecontinued to receive a monthly pension of a few hundred francs from thePersian treasury; and on this he came to live in Paris.
As for Erik, he went to Asia Minor and thence to Constantinople, wherehe entered the Sultan's employment. In explanation of the serviceswhich he was able to render a monarch haunted by perpetual terrors, Ineed only say that it was Erik who constructed all the famoustrap-doors and secret chambers and mysterious strong-boxes which werefound at Yildiz-Kiosk after the last Turkish revolution. He alsoinvented those automata, dressed like the Sultan and resembling theSultan in all respects,[2] which made people believe that theCommander of the Faithful was awake at one place, when, in reality, hewas asleep elsewhere.
Of course, he had to leave the Sultan's service for the same reasonsthat made him fly from Persia: he knew too much. Then, tired of hisadventurous, formidable and monstrous life, he longed to be some one"like everybody else." And he became a contractor, like any ordinarycontractor, building ordinary houses with ordinary bricks. He tenderedfor part of the foundations in the Opera. His estimate was accepted.When he found himself in the cellars of the enormous playhouse, hisartistic, fantastic, wizard nature resumed the upper hand. Besides,was he not as ugly as ever? He dreamed of creating for his own use adwelling unknown to the rest of the earth, where he could hide frommen's eyes for all time.
The reader knows and guesses the rest. It is all in keeping with thisincredible and yet veracious story. Poor, unhappy Erik! Shall we pityhim? Shall we curse him? He asked only to be "some one," likeeverybody else. But he was too ugly! And he had to hide his genius ORUSE IT TO PLAY TRICKS WITH, when, with an ordinary face, he would havebeen one of the most distinguished of mankind! He had a heart thatcould have held the empire of the world; and, in the end, he had tocontent himself with a cellar. Ah, yes, we must needs pity the Operaghost.
I have prayed over his mortal remains, that God might show him mercynotwithstanding his crimes. Yes, I am sure, quite sure that I prayedbeside his body, the other day, when they took it from the spot wherethey were burying the phonographic records. It was his skeleton. Idid not recognize it by the ugliness of the head, for all men are uglywhen they have been dead as long as that, but by the plain gold ringwhich he wore and which Christine Daae had certainly slipped on hisfinger, when she came to bury him in accordance with her promise.
The skeleton was lying near the little well, in the place where theAngel of Music first held Christine Daae fainting in his tremblingarms, on the night when he carried her down to the cellars of theopera-house.
And, now, what do they mean to do with that skeleton? Surely they willnot bury it in the common grave! ... I say that the place of theskeleton of the Opera ghost is in the archives of the National Academyof Music. It is no ordinary skeleton.