Myself, forgetting the forest, I tackled a gla.s.s panel and began to finger it in every direction, hunting for the weak point on which to press in order to turn the door in accordance with Erik"s system of pivots. This weak point might be a mere speck on the gla.s.s, no larger than a pea, under which the spring lay hidden. I hunted and hunted. I felt as high as my hands could reach. Erik was about the same height as myself and I thought that he would not have placed the spring higher than suited his stature.
While groping over the successive panels with the greatest care, I endeavored not to lose a minute, for I was feeling more and more overcome with the heat and we were literally roasting in that blazing forest.
I had been working like this for half an hour and had finished three panels, when, as ill-luck would have it, I turned round on hearing a muttered exclamation from the viscount.
"I am stifling," he said. "All those mirrors are sending out an infernal heat! Do you think you will find that spring soon? If you are much longer about it, we shall be roasted alive!"
I was not sorry to hear him talk like this. He had not said a word of the forest and I hoped that my companion"s reason would hold out some time longer against the torture. But he added: "What consoles me is that the monster has given Christine until eleven to-morrow evening. If we can"t get out of here and go to her a.s.sistance, at least we shall be dead before her! Then Erik"s ma.s.s can serve for all of us!"
And he gulped down a breath of hot air that nearly made him faint.
As I had not the same desperate reasons as M. le Vicomte for accepting death, I returned, after giving him a word of encouragement, to my panel, but I had made the mistake of taking a few steps while speaking and, in the tangle of the illusive forest, I was no longer able to find my panel for certain! I had to begin all over again, at random, feeling, fumbling, groping.
Now the fever laid hold of me in my turn...for I found nothing, absolutely nothing. In the next room, all was silence. We were quite lost in the forest, without an outlet, a compa.s.s, a guide or anything. Oh, I knew what awaited us if n.o.body came to our aid... or if I did not find the spring! But, look as I might, I found nothing but branches, beautiful branches that stood straight up before me, or spread gracefully over my head. But they gave no shade. And this was natural enough, as we were in an equatorial forest, with the sun right above our heads, an African forest.
M. de Chagny and I had repeatedly taken off our coats and put them on again, finding at one time that they made us feel still hotter and at another that they protected us against the heat. I was still making a moral resistance, but M. de Chagny seemed to me quite "gone." He pretended that he had been walking in that forest for three days and nights, without stopping, looking for Christine Daae! From time to time, he thought he saw her behind the trunk of a tree, or gliding between the branches; and he called to her with words of supplication that brought the tears to my eyes. And then, at last: "Oh, how thirsty I am!" he cried, in delirious accents.
I too was thirsty. My throat was on fire. And, yet, squatting on the floor, I went on hunting, hunting, hunting for the spring of the invisible door...especially as it was dangerous to remain in the forest as evening drew nigh. Already the shades of night were beginning to surround us. It had happened very quickly: night falls quickly in tropical countries...suddenly, with hardly any twilight.
Now night, in the forests of the equator, is always dangerous, particularly when, like ourselves, one has not the materials for a fire to keep off the beasts of prey. I did indeed try for a moment to break off the branches, which I would have lit with my dark lantern, but I knocked myself also against the mirrors and remembered, in time, that we had only images of branches to do with.
The heat did not go with the daylight; on the contrary, it was now still hotter under the blue rays of the moon. I urged the viscount to hold our weapons ready to fire and not to stray from camp, while I went on looking for my spring.
Suddenly, we heard a lion roaring a few yards away.
"Oh," whispered the viscount, "he is quite close!...Don"t you see him?...There...through the trees...in that thicket! If he roars again, I will fire!..."
And the roaring began again, louder than before. And the viscount fired, but I do not think that he hit the lion; only, he smashed a mirror, as I perceived the next morning, at daybreak. We must have covered a good distance during the night, for we suddenly found ourselves on the edge of the desert, an immense desert of sand, stones and rocks. It was really not worth while leaving the forest to come upon the desert. Tired out, I flung myself down beside the viscount, for I had had enough of looking for springs which I could not find.
I was quite surprised--and I said so to the viscount--that we had encountered no other dangerous animals during the night. Usually, after the lion came the leopard and sometimes the buzz of the tsetse fly. These were easily obtained effects; and I explained to M. de Chagny that Erik imitated the roar of a lion on a long tabour or timbrel, with an a.s.s"s skin at one end. Over this skin he tied a string of catgut, which was fastened at the middle to another similar string pa.s.sing through the whole length of the tabour. Erik had only to rub this string with a glove smeared with resin and, according to the manner in which he rubbed it, he imitated to perfection the voice of the lion or the leopard, or even the buzzing of the tsetse fly.
The idea that Erik was probably in the room beside us, working his trick, made me suddenly resolve to enter into a parley with him, for we must obviously give up all thought of taking him by surprise. And by this time he must be quite aware who were the occupants of his torture-chamber. I called him: "Erik! Erik!"
I shouted as loudly as I could across the desert, but there was no answer to my voice. All around us lay the silence and the bare immensity of that stony desert. What was to become of us in the midst of that awful solitude?
We were beginning literally to die of heat, hunger and thirst... of thirst especially. At last, I saw M. de Chagny raise himself on his elbow and point to a spot on the horizon. He had discovered an oasis!
Yes, far in the distance was an oasis...an oasis with limpid water, which reflected the iron trees!...Tush, it was the scene of the mirage....I recognized it at once...the worst of the three!...No one had been able to fight against it...no one. ...I did my utmost to keep my head AND NOT TO HOPE FOR WATER, because I knew that, if a man hoped for water, the water that reflected the iron tree, and if, after hoping for water, he struck against the mirror, then there was only one thing for him to do: to hang himself on the iron tree!
So I cried to M. de Chagny: "It"s the mirage!...It"s the mirage!...Don"t believe in the water!...It"s another trick of the mirrors!..."
Then he flatly told me to shut up, with my tricks of the mirrors, my springs, my revolving doors and my palaces of illusions! He angrily declared that I must be either blind or mad to imagine that all that water flowing over there, among those splendid, numberless trees, was not real water!...And the desert was real! ...And so was the forest!...And it was no use trying to take him in...he was an old, experienced traveler...he had been all over the place!
And he dragged himself along, saying: "Water! Water!"
And his mouth was open, as though he were drinking.
And my mouth was open too, as though I were drinking.
For we not only saw the water, but WE HEARD IT!...We heard it flow, we heard it ripple!...Do you understand that word "ripple?"...IT IS A SOUND WHICH YOU HEAR WITH YOUR TONGUE! ...You put your tongue out of your mouth to listen to it better!
Lastly--and this was the most pitiless torture of all--we heard the rain and it was not raining! This was an infernal invention. ...Oh, I knew well enough how Erik obtained it! He filled with little stones a very long and narrow box, broken up inside with wooden and metal projections. The stones, in falling, struck against these projections and rebounded from one to another; and the result was a series of pattering sounds that exactly imitated a rainstorm.
Ah, you should have seen us putting out our tongues and dragging ourselves toward the rippling river-bank! Our eyes and ears were full of water, but our tongues were hard and dry as horn!
When we reached the mirror, M. de Chagny licked it...and I also licked the gla.s.s.
It was burning hot!
Then we rolled on the floor with a hoa.r.s.e cry of despair. M. de Chagny put the one pistol that was still loaded to his temple; and I stared at the Punjab la.s.so at the foot of the iron tree. I knew why the iron tree had returned, in this third change of scene!... The iron tree was waiting for me!...
But, as I stared at the Punjab la.s.so, I saw a thing that made me start so violently that M. de Chagny delayed his attempt at suicide. I took his arm. And then I caught the pistol from him...and then I dragged myself on my knees toward what I had seen.
I had discovered, near the Punjab la.s.so, in a groove in the floor, a black-headed nail of which I knew the use. At last I had discovered the spring! I felt the nail....I lifted a radiant face to M. de Chagny....The black-headed nail yielded to my pressure....
And then....
And then we saw not a door opened in the wall, but a cellar-flap released in the floor. Cool air came up to us from the black hole below. We stooped over that square of darkness as though over a limpid well. With our chins in the cool shade, we drank it in. And we bent lower and lower over the trap-door. What could there be in that cellar which opened before us? Water? Water to drink?
I thrust my arm into the darkness and came upon a stone and another stone...a staircase...a dark staircase leading into the cellar. The viscount wanted to fling himself down the hole; but I, fearing a new trick of the monster"s, stopped him, turned on my dark lantern and went down first.
The staircase was a winding one and led down into pitchy darkness. But oh, how deliciously cool were the darkness and the stairs? The lake could not be far away.
We soon reached the bottom. Our eyes were beginning to accustom themselves to the dark, to distinguish shapes around us... circular shapes...on which I turned the light of my lantern.
Barrels!
We were in Erik"s cellar: it was here that he must keep his wine and perhaps his drinking-water. I knew that Erik was a great lover of good wine. Ah, there was plenty to drink here!
M. de Chagny patted the round shapes and kept on saying: "Barrels! Barrels! What a lot of barrels!..."
Indeed, there was quite a number of them, symmetrically arranged in two rows, one on either side of us. They were small barrels and I thought that Erik must have selected them of that size to facilitate their carriage to the house on the lake.
We examined them successively, to see if one of them had not a funnel, showing that it had been tapped at some time or another. But all the barrels were hermetically closed.
Then, after half lifting one to make sure it was full, we went on our knees and, with the blade of a small knife which I carried, I prepared to stave in the bung-hole.
At that moment, I seemed to hear, coming from very far, a sort of monotonous chant which I knew well, from often hearing it in the streets of Paris: "Barrels!...Barrels!...Any barrels to sell?"
My hand desisted from its work. M. de Chagny had also heard. He said: "That"s funny! It sounds as if the barrel were singing!"
The song was renewed, farther away: "Barrels!...Barrels!...Any barrels to sell?..."
"Oh, I swear," said the viscount, "that the tune dies away in the barrel!..."
We stood up and went to look behind the barrel.
"It"s inside," said M. de Chagny, "it"s inside!"
But we heard nothing there and were driven to accuse the bad condition of our senses. And we returned to the bung-hole. M. de Chagny put his two hands together underneath it and, with a last effort, I burst the bung.
"What"s this?" cried the viscount. "This isn"t water!"
The viscount put his two full hands close to my lantern....I stooped to look...and at once threw away the lantern with such violence that it broke and went out, leaving us in utter darkness.
What I had seen in M. de Chagny"s hands...was gun-powder!
Chapter XXV.
The Scorpion or the Gra.s.shopper: Which?
THE PERSIAN"S NARRATIVE CONCLUDED.
The discovery flung us into a state of alarm that made us forget all our past and present sufferings. We now knew all that the monster meant to convey when he said to Christine Daae: "Yes or no! If your answer is no, everybody will be dead AND BURIED!"
Yes, buried under the ruins of the Paris Grand Opera!
The monster had given her until eleven o"clock in the evening. He had chosen his time well. There would be many people, many "members of the human race," up there, in the resplendent theater. What finer retinue could be expected for his funeral? He would go down to the tomb escorted by the whitest shoulders in the world, decked with the richest jewels.
Eleven o"clock to-morrow evening!
We were all to be blown up in the middle of the performance... if Christine Daae said no!
Eleven o"clock to-morrow evening!...
And what else could Christine say but no? Would she not prefer to espouse death itself rather than that living corpse? She did not know that on her acceptance or refusal depended the awful fate of many members of the human race!
Eleven o"clock to-morrow evening!
And we dragged ourselves through the darkness, feeling our way to the stone steps, for the light in the trap-door overhead that led to the room of mirrors was now extinguished; and we repeated to ourselves: "Eleven o"clock to-morrow evening!"
At last, I found the staircase. But, suddenly I drew myself up on the first step, for a terrible thought had come to my mind: "What is the time?"
Ah, what was the time?...For, after all, eleven o"clock to-morrow evening might be now, might be this very moment! Who could tell us the time? We seemed to have been imprisoned in that h.e.l.l for days and days...for years...since the beginning of the world. Perhaps we should be blown up then and there! Ah, a sound! A crack! "Did you hear that?...There, in the corner...good heavens!... Like a sound of machinery!...Again!...Oh, for a light!... Perhaps it"s the machinery that is to blow everything up!... I tell you, a cracking sound: are you deaf?"
M. de Chagny and I began to yell like madmen. Fear spurred us on. We rushed up the treads of the staircase, stumbling as we went, anything to escape the dark, to return to the mortal light of the room of mirrors!
We found the trap-door still open, but it was now as dark in the room of mirrors as in the cellar which we had left. We dragged ourselves along the floor of the torture-chamber, the floor that separated us from the powder-magazine. What was the time? We shouted, we called: M. de Chagny to Christine, I to Erik. I reminded him that I had saved his life. But no answer, save that of our despair, of our madness: what was the time? We argued, we tried to calculate the time which we had spent there, but we were incapable of reasoning. If only we could see the face of a watch!... Mine had stopped, but M. de Chagny"s was still going... He told me that he had wound it up before dressing for the Opera.... We had not a match upon us....And yet we must know.... M. de Chagny broke the gla.s.s of his watch and felt the two hands. ...He questioned the hands of the watch with his finger-tips, going by the position of the ring of the watch....Judging by the s.p.a.ce between the hands, he thought it might be just eleven o"clock!
But perhaps it was not the eleven o"clock of which we stood in dread. Perhaps we had still twelve hours before us!
Suddenly, I exclaimed: "Hush!"
I seemed to hear footsteps in the next room. Some one tapped against the wall. Christine Daae"s voice said: "Raoul! Raoul!" We were now all talking at once, on either side of the wall. Christine sobbed; she was not sure that she would find M. de Chagny alive. The monster had been terrible, it seemed, had done nothing but rave, waiting for her to give him the "yes" which she refused. And yet she had promised him that "yes," if he would take her to the torture-chamber. But he had obstinately declined, and had uttered hideous threats against all the members of the human race! At last, after hours and hours of that h.e.l.l, he had that moment gone out, leaving her alone to reflect for the last time.
"Hours and hours? What is the time now? What is the time, Christine?"
"It is eleven o"clock! Eleven o"clock, all but five minutes!"
"But which eleven o"clock?"
"The eleven o"clock that is to decide life or death!...He told me so just before he went....He is terrible....He is quite mad: he tore off his mask and his yellow eyes shot flames!...He did nothing but laugh!...He said, `I give you five minutes to spare your blushes! Here," he said, taking a key from the little bag of life and death, `here is the little bronze key that opens the two ebony caskets on the mantelpiece in the Louis-Philippe room. ...In one of the caskets, you will find a scorpion, in the other, a gra.s.shopper, both very cleverly imitated in j.a.panese bronze: they will say yes or no for you. If you turn the scorpion round, that will mean to me, when I return, that you have said yes. The gra.s.shopper will mean no." And he laughed like a drunken demon. I did nothing but beg and entreat him to give me the key of the torture-chamber, promising to be his wife if he granted me that request....But he told me that there was no future need for that key and that he was going to throw it into the lake!... And he again laughed like a drunken demon and left me. Oh, his last words were, `The gra.s.shopper! Be careful of the gra.s.shopper! A gra.s.shopper does not only turn: it hops! It hops! And it hops jolly high!""
The five minutes had nearly elapsed and the scorpion and the gra.s.shopper were scratching at my brain. Nevertheless, I had sufficient lucidity left to understand that, if the gra.s.shopper were turned, it would hop...and with it many members of the human race! There was no doubt but that the gra.s.shopper controlled an electric current intended to blow up the powder-magazine!
M. de Chagny, who seemed to have recovered all his moral force from hearing Christine"s voice, explained to her, in a few hurried words, the situation in which we and all the Opera were. He told her to turn the scorpion at once.
There was a pause.
"Christine," I cried, "where are you?"
"By the scorpion."
"Don"t touch it!"
The idea had come to me--for I knew my Erik--that the monster had perhaps deceived the girl once more. Perhaps it was the scorpion that would blow everything up. After all, why wasn"t he there? The five minutes were long past...and he was not back. ...Perhaps he had taken shelter and was waiting for the explosion! ...Why had he not returned?...He could not really expect Christine ever to consent to become his voluntary prey!...Why had he not returned?
"Don"t touch the scorpion!" I said.
"Here he comes!" cried Christine. "I hear him! Here he is!"
We heard his steps approaching the Louis-Philippe room. He came up to Christine, but did not speak. Then I raised my voice: "Erik! It is I! Do you know me?"
With extraordinary calmness, he at once replied: "So you are not dead in there? Well, then, see that you keep quiet."
I tried to speak, but he said coldly: "Not a word, daroga, or I shall blow everything up." And he added, "The honor rests with mademoiselle....Mademoiselle has not touched the scorpion"--how deliberately he spoke!--"mademoiselle has not touched the gra.s.shopper"--with that composure!--"but it is not too late to do the right thing. There, I open the caskets without a key, for I am a trap-door lover and I open and shut what I please and as I please. I open the little ebony caskets: mademoiselle, look at the little dears inside. Aren"t they pretty? If you turn the gra.s.shopper, mademoiselle, we shall all be blown up. There is enough gun-powder under our feet to blow up a whole quarter of Paris. If you turn the scorpion, mademoiselle, all that powder will be soaked and drowned. Mademoiselle, to celebrate our wedding, you shall make a very handsome present to a few hundred Parisians who are at this moment applauding a poor masterpiece of Meyerbeer"s ...you shall make them a present of their lives....For, with your own fair hands, you shall turn the scorpion.... And merrily, merrily, we will be married!"
A pause; and then: "If, in two minutes, mademoiselle, you have not turned the scorpion, I shall turn the gra.s.shopper...and the gra.s.shopper, I tell you, HOPS JOLLY HIGH!"
The terrible silence began anew. The Vicomte de Chagny, realizing that there was nothing left to do but pray, went down on his knees and prayed. As for me, my blood beat so fiercely that I had to take my heart in both hands, lest it should burst. At last, we heard Erik"s voice: "The two minutes are past....Good-by, mademoiselle. ...Hop, gra.s.shopper! "Erik," cried Christine, "do you swear to me, monster, do you swear to me that the scorpion is the one to turn?
"Yes, to hop at our wedding."
"Ah, you see! You said, to hop!"
"At our wedding, ingenuous child!...The scorpion opens the ball. ...But that will do!...You won"t have the scorpion? Then I turn the gra.s.shopper!"
"Erik!"
"Enough!"