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The following day, Christine and Raoul
meet and decide to have a secret engagement, as Erik would be
very angry if he got to know that Christine had betrayed him.
After the engagement she goes away for two days and nobody has
any clue as to where she is. On her return she is constantly
with Raoul and she takes Raoul around the Opera House somehow
not willing to leave it. When they are exploring one of the
floors of the Opera House, they happen to find a trap door.
Christine implores Raoul not to go down below as all the
underground regions of the Opera belong to the Angel of Music.
Raoul insists that Christine tells him all that she knows about
Erik, whereupon she drags him to the roof of the Opera House so
that Erik may not hear them and then tells him all that she has
seen in her two days of absence. She tells him of the
underground lake below the Opera House and describes the Opera
Ghost saying that “ he is not an angel, nor a ghost nor a
genius...he is a man.” |
She tells him of the hideous face of Erik which she has seen on
unmasking him. Then she tells him about Erik’s musical piece called
‘ Don Juan Triumphant’ which he has spent twenty years writing and
which he wants to take to his grave with him. |
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Raoul asks Christine if she really loves
Erik and Christine tells him that the only reason she has told Erik
this lie is to ensure Raoul’s safety. She could never love Erik
because in him she sees, feels and smells death which itself
terrifies her. Unknown to them, Erik has followed them and suddenly
Raoul sees two glowing eyes and feels certain that Erik is present
but Christine nervously tries to reassure him that Erik is supposed
to be working on his piece ‘Don Juan Triumphant’ and so cannot be
anywhere near them. They go to Christine’s dressing room where they
decide to run away after the next evening’s performance and her
final meeting with Erik. It was then that Christine realizes that
the ring EriK had given her was missing from her finger. She is much
worried because the ring is a sort of safety net to protect her from
Erik. The next day Raoul makes all the arrangements for their escape
but that evening during the performance the lights suddenly go out
and Christine disappears. At first people think she is with Raoul,
but then he appears without her. He searches for her madly all over
the Opera House but she is nowhere to be found. He then sees the
Persian, the wise man who seems to know everything about the Opera
House. All he tells Raoul is that Erik’s affairs only concern him
and leaves.
Meanwhile the managers finally give in to the Opera Ghost’s demand
and decide to pay him the twenty thousand francs that he has asked
for. Then Mdm. Giry is called to their office and she tells them of
all the people that the Opera Ghost has helped to promote, including
her own daughter Meg who is to get the part of the empress. This has
convinced her of the existence of the Opera Ghost. The managers
decide to see for themselves if the Opera Ghost really exists. They
lock themselves into their office and M. Richard places the twenty
thousand francs in his coat and pins up the pocket. They decide that
if by midnight the money disappears, then they will also be forced
to believe in the existence of the Opera Ghost. Sure enough at 12’o’
clock the money had disappeared without the safety pin being
removed.
Raoul complains to the commissary about Erik but they begin to
suspect that he is not totally in his senses. They tell Raoul that
the abductee is probably his brother, the Comte de Chagny, who has
abducted Christine because he is against their marriage. Raoul is
very angry with his brother but on the way out he meets the Persian
once more and he explains to him that no one but Erik had the
ability to carry out such an abduction. He then takes Raoul to
Christine’s dressing room, hands him a revolver and shows him the
way to Erik’s underground world through a two way mirror. The
Parisian tells Raoul to be ready to fire in case they meet with some
unexpected danger. They meet up with a number of strange things
including a ‘head of fire’ who identifies himself as the rat
catcher. They reach the underground lake and the Parisian starts to
search the walls to see if he can find any loose stones so that they
can gain entry inside. Finding one stone loose they get in and see
that they are in some sort of room. The Persian sees a Punjab lasso
and gets terrified. Soon they realize that they are in a sort of
torture chamber, which is hexagonal in shape with cracked mirrors on
all sides. On one side is a tree so that when the room is lit up it
gets magnified and looks as if there is an entire forest of trees.
They find that there is no way to escape from here and that they are
trapped. While they are there the Persian tells Raoul all about Erik
and how he had tried many times to enter Erik’s house but had
failed. The only reason he was still alive was because he had once
saved the life of Erik. He also tells Raoul how Erik has mastered
the art of using the Punjab lasso and it was he who was responsible
for the hanging of Joseph Bouquet.
Meanwhile they hear Erik talking to Christine. He has given
Christine a choice. Either she must marry him or else everybody
would have to face the consequences because of her. They hear
Christine sobbing and then hear Erik leave the room. Raoul and the
Persian are able to communicate with Christine whom Erik has tied up
since she had tried to kill herself rather than be with Erik. Since
both Raoul and Christine are trapped they can do nothing. Soon Erik
returns. He senses Christine’s nervousness about the room next door.
He knows that someone is in the Torture room, a room of mental
torture where he has created all sorts of illusions to scare people,
literally to death. Now he tortures the Parisian and Raoul by
switching on a light and increasing the temperature of the room. The
room now looks and feels like a tropical forest. Soon the room
starts having it’s desired effect and Raoul begins to crumble under
the pressure. The Persian starts to search the walls to see if he
can find the spring that opens the door of the Torture room. Finally
he succeeds and a door opens which leads to a cellar filled with
barrels of gunpowder. Now they realize that if Christine refuses to
marry Erik, he plans to blow up the entire Opera House and everyone
in it. Erik has given Christine a scorpion and a grasshopper. If she
chooses the scorpion it would mean that she would marry Erik and
everything would be all right. , but if she choose the grasshopper,
then it would be a sign of refusal and Erik would kill everybody by
blowing up the Opera House. Erik gives Christine upto 11’o’clock
that evening to decide. When Christine sees that her refusal will
have such grave consequences, she decides to accept Erik’s offer.
Erik saves the lives of Raoul and the Persian and the last thing the
Persian hears is that he would soon take them back to the surface in
order to please his wife.
Some days later the Persian is recuperating in his flat in Paris
when Erik pays him a visit. The Persian asks him many questions
about Raoul and Christine. Erik replies that they are both alive.
The Persian then asks about Raul’s brother, the Count and Erik
informs him that he is dead but emphasizes that his death was an
accident. Finally he tells the Persian that he is going to die and
that he has given Christine orders to post his obituary in the
Epoque, which is a Parisian newspaper. He says that he has freed
Christine so that she can finally be with her true love, Raoul. This
is the last time that the Parisian sees Erik. Three weeks later the
Persian reads Erik’s obituary in the Epoque and knows that he is no
more.
Thus ends the story. In the end we see that Erik is neither an angel
nor a ghost but a person possessing all the qualities and feelings of
a human being. The Opera Ghost is a person who has been spurned even
by his mother because of his repulsive looks. He attempts to be a
normal human being but faces pain and misery throughout his
lifetime. We see that he does have a side that is capable of loving
when he falls in love with Christine but even this feeling is not
reciprocated. Finally when he realizes that he cannot have Christine
he frees her so that she can be with her true love, Raoul and gives
up his own life. Feared in life and remembered in death, the Phantom
of the Opera lives on forever.
Click here for part 1
of the summary of Phantom Of The Opera |
