Erik 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."
Erik left the room for a moment, and 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.
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.