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. Erik returned with some little bottles which he placed on the
mantelpiece. And, again in a whisper, so as not to wake M. de Chagny,
he said to the Persian, after sitting down and feeling his pulse:

"You are now saved, both of you. And soon I shall take you up to the
surface of the earth, TO PLEASE MY WIFE." Thereupon he rose, without any further explanation, and disappeared
once more. 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. The Persian
still had in his ears the natural tone in which the other had said, "to
please my wife." Very gently, he called her again; but Christine was
wrapped up in her book and did not hear him. Erik returned, mixed the daroga a draft and advised him not to speak to
"his wife" again nor to any one, BECAUSE IT MIGHT BE VERY DANGEROUS TO
EVERYBODY'S HEALTH. 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 requiem mass which he had
heard from behind the wall of the torture-chamber, 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 determined to inform the police. Now
the case was in the hands of an examining-magistrate called Faure, an
incredulous, commonplace, superficial sort of person, (I write as I
think), with a mind utterly unprepared to receive a confidence of this
kind. M. Faure took down the daroga's depositions and proceeded to
treat him as a madman. Despairing of ever obtaining a hearing, the Persian sat down to write. As the police did not want his evidence, perhaps the press would be
glad of it; and he had just written the last line of the narrative I
have quoted in the preceding chapters, when Darius announced the visit
of a stranger who refused his name, who would not show his face and
declared simply that he did not intend to leave the place until he had
spoken to the daroga. The Persian at once felt who his singular visitor was and ordered him
to be shown in. The daroga was right. It was the ghost, it was Erik! He looked extremely weak and leaned against the wall, as though he were
afraid of falling. Taking off his hat, he revealed a forehead white as
wax. The rest of the horrible face was hidden by the mask. The Persian rose to his feet as Erik entered. "Murderer of Count Philippe, what have you done with his brother and
Christine Daae?" Erik staggered under this direct attack, kept silent for a moment,
dragged himself to a chair and heaved a deep sigh. Then, speaking in
short phrases and gasping for breath between the words:

"Daroga, don't talk to me ... about Count Philippe ... He was dead ...
by the time ... I left my house ... he was dead ... when ...  the siren
sang ... It was an ... accident ... a sad ... a very sad ... accident. He fell very awkwardly ... but simply and naturally ...  into the lake! ..."

"You lie!" shouted the Persian. Erik bowed his head and said:

"I have not come here ... to talk about Count Philippe ...  but to tell
you that ... I am going ... to die..."

"Where are Raoul de Chagny and Christine Daae?" "I am going to die." "Raoul de Chagny and Christine Daae?" "Of love ... daroga ... I am dying ... of love ... That is how it is
... loved her so! ... And I love her still ... daroga ... and I am
dying of love for her, I ... I tell you! ... If you knew how beautiful
she was ...  when she let me kiss her ... alive ... It was the first
... time, daroga, the first ... time I ever kissed a woman ... Yes,
alive ... I kissed her alive ... and she looked as beautiful as if she
had been dead!" The Persian shook Erik by the arm:

"Will you tell me if she is alive or dead." "Why do you shake me like that?" asked Erik, making an effort to speak
more connectedly. "I tell you that I am going to die... Yes, I kissed
her alive ..."

"And now she is dead?" "I tell you I kissed her just like that, on her forehead ...  and she
did not draw back her forehead from my lips! ... Oh, she is a good
girl! ... As to her being dead, I don't think so; but it has nothing to
do with me ...  No, no, she is not dead! And no one shall touch a hair
of her head! She is a good, honest girl, and she saved your life,
daroga, at a moment when I would not have given twopence for your
Persian skin. As a matter of fact, nobody bothered about you. Why
were you there with that little chap? You would have died as well as
he! My word, how she entreated me for her little chap! But I told her
that, as she had turned the scorpion, she had, through that very fact,
and of her own free will, become engaged to me and that she did not
need to have two men engaged to her, which was true enough. "As for you, you did not exist, you had ceased to exist, I tell you,
and you were going to die with the other! ... Only, mark me, daroga,
when you were yelling like the devil, because of the water, Christine
came to me with her beautiful blue eyes wide open, and swore to me, as
she hoped to be saved, that she consented to be MY LIVING WIFE! ...
Until then, in the depths of her eyes, daroga, I had always seen my
dead wife; it was the first time I saw MY LIVING WIFE there. She was
sincere, as she hoped to be saved. She would not kill herself.