Richard and Moncharmin,
by little Meg herself (the worthy Madame Giry, I am sorry to say, is no
more) and by Sorelli, who is now living in retirement at Louveciennes:
all the documents relating to the existence of the ghost, which I
propose to deposit in the archives of the Opera, have been checked and
confirmed by a number of important discoveries of which I am justly
proud. I have not been able to find the house on the lake, Erik having
blocked up all the secret entrances. [1]  On the other hand, I have
discovered the secret passage of the Communists, the planking of which
is falling to pieces in parts, and also the trap-door through which
Raoul and the Persian penetrated into the cellars of the opera-house. In the Communists' dungeon, I noticed numbers of initials traced on the
walls 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 this
day. If the reader will visit the Opera one morning and ask leave to stroll
where he pleases, without being accompanied by a stupid guide, let him
go to Box Five and knock with his fist or stick on the enormous column
that separates this from the stage-box. He will find that the column
sounds hollow. After that, do not be astonished by the suggestion that
it was occupied by the voice of the ghost:  there is room inside the
column for two men. If you are surprised that, when the various
incidents occurred, no one turned round to look at the column, you must
remember that it presented the appearance of solid marble, and that the
voice contained in it seemed rather to come from the opposite side,
for, as we have seen, the ghost was an expert ventriloquist. The column was elaborately carved and decorated with the sculptor's
chisel; and I do not despair of one day discovering the ornament that
could be raised or lowered at will, so as to admit of the ghost's
mysterious correspondence with Mme. Giry and of his generosity. However, all these discoveries are nothing, to my mind, compared with
that 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 the
flooring and the length of a man's fore-arm and no longer; a trap-door
that falls back like the lid of a box; a trap-door through which I can
see a hand come and dexterously fumble at the pocket of a swallow-tail
coat. That is the way the forty-thousand francs went! ...  And that also is
the 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, that
Erik was simply amusing himself with that memorandum-book of his?" "Don't you believe it!" he replied. "Erik wanted money. Thinking
himself without the pale of humanity, he was restrained by no scruples
and he employed his extraordinary gifts of dexterity and imagination,
which he had received by way of compensation for his extraordinary
uglinesss, to prey upon his fellow-men. His reason for restoring the
forty-thousand francs, of his own accord, was that he no longer wanted
it. He had relinquished his marriage with Christine Daae. He had
relinquished everything above the surface of the earth." According to the Persian's account, Erik was born in a small town not
far from Rouen. He was the son of a master-mason. He ran away at an
early age from his father's house, where his ugliness was a subject of
horror and terror to his parents. For a time, he frequented the fairs,
where a showman exhibited him as the "living corpse." He seems to have
crossed the whole of Europe, from fair to fair, and to have completed
his strange education as an artist and magician at the very
fountain-head of art and magic, among the Gipsies. A period of Erik's
life remained quite obscure. He was seen at the fair of
Nijni-Novgorod, where he displayed himself in all his hideous glory. He already sang as nobody on this earth had ever sung before; he
practised ventriloquism and gave displays of legerdemain so
extraordinary that the caravans returning to Asia talked about it
during the whole length of their journey. In this way, his reputation
penetrated the walls of the palace at Mazenderan, where the little
sultana, the favorite of the Shah-in-Shah, was boring herself to death. A dealer in furs, returning to Samarkand from Nijni-Novgorod, told of
the marvels which he had seen performed in Erik's tent. The trader was
summoned to the palace and the daroga of Mazenderan was told to
question him. Next the daroga was instructed to go and find Erik. He
brought him to Persia, where for some months Erik's will was law. He
was guilty of not a few horrors, for he seemed not to know the
difference between good and evil. He took part calmly in a number of
political assassinations; and he turned his diabolical inventive powers
against the Emir of Afghanistan, who was at war with the Persian
empire. The Shah took a liking to him. This was the time of the rosy hours of Mazenderan, of which the
daroga's narrative has given us a glimpse. Erik had very original
ideas on the subject of architecture and thought out a palace much as a
conjuror contrives a trick-casket. The Shah ordered him to construct an
edifice of this kind. Erik did so; and the building appears to have
been so ingenious that His Majesty was able to move about in it unseen
and to disappear without a possibility of the trick's being discovered. When the Shah-in-Shah found himself the possessor of this gem, he
ordered Erik's yellow eyes to be put out. But he reflected that, even
when blind, Erik would still be able to build so remarkable a house for
another sovereign; and also that, as long as Erik was alive, some one
would know the secret of the wonderful palace. Erik's death was
decided upon, together with that of all the laborers who had worked
under his orders. The execution of this abominable decree devolved
upon the daroga of Mazenderan. Erik had shown him some slight services
and procured him many a hearty laugh. He saved Erik by providing him
with the means of escape, but nearly paid with his head for his
generous 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's
body, because the daroga's friends had dressed the remains in clothing
that belonged to Erik. The daroga was let off with the loss of the
imperial favor, the confiscation of his property and an order of
perpetual banishment. As a member of the Royal House, however, he
continued to receive a monthly pension of a few hundred francs from the
Persian treasury; and on this he came to live in Paris. As for Erik, he went to Asia Minor and thence to Constantinople, where
he entered the Sultan's employment.