Summary
The Persian tells his account of his previous attempts to enter Erik’s house. One day when he thought he was alone, he stepped into the boat and rowed toward that part of the wall through which he had seen Erik disappear. It was then that he came into contact with the siren who guarded the approach, and whose charm was nearly fatal to him. As he was rowing, two monstrous arms from the water seized him by the neck, dragging him down with irresistible force. The Persian said he would have been lost had he not called out to Erik, who swam with him and laid him down gently on the bank. Erik asks the Persian why he tried to enter his house and told him to leave him (Erik) alone. Erik starts laughing, and the Persian scolds him for making light of the situation: Erik had promised the Persian that he would commit no more murders, and yet he was the one who made the chandelier fall in the Opera House. Erik denies having tampered the chandelier, laughing and saying that it was worn and old. From that day on, the Persian gave up all thought of penetrating into Erik’s lake house. In the days following, the Persian came to learn about Erik’s relationship with Christine.
The Persian attempted to learn more and watched on the bank of the lake, which annoyed Erik. Erik told the Persian to leave him and Christine alone or else people would die. Erik strikes a deal with the Persian that if he proves to the Persian that he is loved by Christine for his own sake, the Persian will leave him alone. To the Persian’s astonishment, Christine left the house on the lake and returned to it several times, without, apparently, being forced to do so. The Persian continued to be interested in the relations of Erik and Christine. The Persian thought that Erik – being driven from his house by jealousy – would thus enable him to enter it, without danger, through the passage that he discovered in the third cellar. It was important for everyone’s safety that he know what exactly was inside. The night Christine was abducted, the Persian recounts, he was prepared. He had Darius get two pistols. The rest of account recalls his encounter with Raoul and taking him along to Erik’s home. He notes that one of the most dangerous trapdoors that Erik setup throughout the Opera House was that of the torture chamber: it was inspired by the chamber that the Little Sultana of Persia (where Erik was before he came to Paris) had for the torture of unoffending citizens. Those thrown in were always at liberty to put an end to themselves with a Punjab lasso or bowstring, left for their use (if they wanted to kill themselves and end their misery) at the foot of an iron tree.
The account of the Persian continues, and he describes with considerable detail the contents of the chamber: the Persian and Raoul were in the center of a little six-cornered room, the sides of which were covered with mirrors from top to bottom. They hear a noise on their left, and recognize Erik’s voice. He is talking to Christine about his love and wanting to marry her. He leaves to attend to someone at the door, and it is then that Raoul calls out to Christine. She tells him that Erik had gone mad with love and that he had decided to kill everybody, including himself, if she did not consent to become his wife. He had given her till 11pm the next evening to make her decision. She must choose between the wedding mass and the requiem. Christine also notes that Erik has tied her down (because she tried to commit suicide – worrying Raoul even more), to which Raoul and the Persian respond with anger. She says that the key to the torture chamber is in Erik’s possession. Erik soon returns and apologizes to Christine for the interruption. Christine asks him to release her, and – after she promises not to kill herself before 11pm the next evening – he takes off her bonds. Erik then begins singing but suddenly stops after noticing that his bag (with the key to the torture chamber in it) disappeared.
The account of the Persian continues. Erik angrily asks Christine again what she has done with his bag. Christine runs back to the room, saying she is curious to see what is in the room (the torture chamber, that is) that he has never shown her. Erik soon recovers the bag from her, and hears something from within the torture chamber. Christine attempts to convince him that there is nothing there, but he decides to take a look for himself. Erik says that if there is someone on the inside, the spectator on the outside of the chamber is able to see through the invisible window light up at the top, near the ceiling. Erik only needs to draw the black curtain and put out the light in the bedroom.
The torture chamber is suddenly flooded with light. Christine insists on peeping through the little window to see if there is anyone in the chamber, and says that there is no one there. Erik attempts to distract Christine from the chamber by attempting a ventriloquist act, but is unsuccessful. She asks him to turn off the light in the chamber, but Erik does not. Instead he starts laughing so loud that the Persian and Raoul are unable to distinguish Christine’s supplicating cries. Raoul shouted and banged against the walls like a madman, and the Persian could not restrain him. They hear nothing but Erik’s laughter and then the sound of a body falling on the floor and being dragged along and a door slamming.
The Persian notes that the torture chamber is actually a palace of illusion, lined entirely with mirrors. There is no furniture, and the ceiling is capable of being lit up. The Persian calls it an “ingenious” system of electric heating, which allows the temperature of the walls and room to be increased at will. The Persian notes that there is only one possible outlet opening into the room (called the Louis-Philippe room) that Christine and Erik were in. But though this outlet looks like an ordinary door on Christine’s side, it is absolutely invisible to them on the inside. The Persian resolves to open it without even knowing where it was. But before they could look for the door, the Persian had to calm Raoul down, who was already acting like a madman: the chamber was taking its toll on him. The Persian attempts to induce Raoul to listen to reason and promised him that – if he let him work in peace, without shouting and walking up and down – he (the Persian) would be able to discover the trick of the door in less than an hour. Raoul lies flat on the floor and decides to wait until the Persian finds the door.
The Persian gets to work and begins to feel every panel, looking for the weak point on which to press in order to turn the door in accordance with Erik’s system of pivots. The Persian loses his place after taking a few steps away from the wall while talking to Raoul, and has to start all over again. They repeatedly have to take their coats off and put them on again: to cool down but also to protect against the heat. It is soon nighttime, but the heat does not go away with the daylight. The idea that Erik was probably in the room beside them, working his trick, made the Persian suddenly resolve to enter into a negotiation with him, because he (the Persian) thought that they needed to give up any hope of taking Erik by surprise. The Persian began shouting, but to no avail. The heat becomes so intense that both of them roll on the floor with a hoarse cry of despair. The Persian sees a groove in the floor near the Punjab lasso – specifically a black-headed nail that yields to pressure. The Persian pushes it, opening a cellar-flap in the floor. Cool air comes up from the black hole below. The Persian thrusts his arm into the hole and comes upon a staircase leading into the cellar. They soon reach the bottom, and find that the barrels in the cellar are not full of wine, but rather are full of gunpowder.
They realize that Erik plans to blow up the Opera House. They begin to yell like madmen, full of fear. They rush up the treads of the staircase to escape the dark cellar. They try to figure out the time, but they are unsuccessful. Then they hear footsteps in the next room. Christine calls out to them and says that it is only five minutes to 11pm. Erik comes into the room, and the Persian attempts to talk to him. Erik tells him to keep quiet and wait for Christine to make the decision. They wait in silence, and Raoul begins to pray, realizing there is nothing else that could be done. Christine decides to marry Erik; as a result, water rises in the cellar, above the barrels, and the Persian and Raoul drink the water to their satisfaction. The floor of the torture chamber soon becomes like a lake as the water continues to rise. They yell to Erik to shut off the water, but in the dark, the water seizes and freezes them. Their arms become entangled in the effort to swim. They choke and slowly lose their strength. Before losing consciousness, the Persian seems to hear someone ask if there any barrels to sell.
The previous chapter marks the conclusion of the written narrative of the Persian. It turns out Christine saves Raoul and the Persian. When the Persian opens his eyes, he finds himself lying on a bed. Raoul is on a sofa, beside a wardrobe. Erik asks the Persian how he is doing. Christine does not say a word, walking about noiselessly. Erik says that Raoul came to long before he (the Persian) did. Raoul is well and is asleep. Erik leaves the room and returns with some little bottles that he places on his mantelpiece. He tells the Persian that he will take both of them up to the surface of the earth to please Christine, his wife. Eventually the Persian falls asleep and does not wake until he is in his own room, nursed by Darius, who tells him that the night before, he was found propped against the door of his flat, where he had been brought by a stranger. As soon as the Persian recovers his strength, he sends to Count Philippe’s house to inquire after Raoul’s health. The answer is that Raoul was nowhere to be found, and that Philippe was found dead on the bank of the Opera Lake, on the Rue Scribe side (the Persian figures that Philippe, attempting to enter the underground labyrinth in search of Raoul, was killed by Erik’s siren). The Persian, determined to tell the press about what happened, is writing his narrative just as Erik knocks on his door.
Erik looks extremely weak and leans against the wall. Erik says that the death of Philippe was an accident, and that he was too late to save him: the siren had already killed him. Erik has come to the Persian to tell him that he is going to die of love. Erik says that he kissed Christine on her forehead and that she did not draw back her forehead from his lips. Erik says that although he took the Persian up to the surface, he locked Raoul up in the Communists’ dungeon, which is in the most deserted and remote part of the Opera, below the fifth cellar, where no one ever comes, and where no one can ever be heard. Then Erik came back for Christine, who was waiting for him. Both Erik and Christine cried together, and Erik then told her that she could marry Raoul when she pleased, because she had cried with him (Erik) and mingled her tears with his tears. Erik’s emotion is so great as he is telling the Persian his story that he has to tell the Persian not to look at him. The Persian’s heart is full of pity. Erik says he ultimately released Raoul and took him to Christine. Christine and Raoul kissed, and Erik made Christine promise that she would come back and visit him. Then Christine kissed Erik on the forehead. The Persian asks Erik no questions, reassured that Christine and Raoul were going to be together. Erik resumes his mask and tells Persian that when he is nearing his end, he will send for him. The Persian sees Erik to the door of his flat, and Darius helps him down to the street. Erik steps in the cab and the Persian hears him tell the driver to go to the Opera. Three weeks later, the Epoque newspaper publishes an advertisement that Erik is dead.
Leroux notes that there are many proofs of his existence within the reach of everybody, that they can follow Erik’s actions logically through the whole tragedy of the Chagnys. Raoul and Christine one day take the train from “the northern railway station of the world.” Mamma Valerius disappeared around the same time. The Persian alone knew the whole truth and held the main proofs, which came to him with the relics promised by Erik at the time of his death. Leroux debunks many of the mysteries of the ghost: how he took the money from the managers (through a trapbox that was within a couple of inches from Richard’s desk-chair) and even how he projected his voice within Box Five (the column in the Box presented the appearance of solid marble, where in fact it was actually hollow). He also notes that Erik was born in a small French town called Rouen and ran away from his father’s house, where his ugliness was a subject of horror and terror to his parents. He frequented fairs and circuses for some time and then went to the Persian Empire, where the Shah took a liking to him. Having built an impenetrable and magnificent palace for the Shah, Erik was seen as a liability because he might give away the information to someone else. He was thus put to death but the Persian saved him (and then the Persian moved to Paris). Erik went to Asia Minor and then to Paris, where he tendered for part of the foundations in the Opera. The rest is the subject of the book itself. The skeleton was lying near the little well, in the place where Erik held Christine fainting in his arms, on the night when he carried her down to the cellars of the Opera House.
Analysis
Most of the final chapters in the book are written from the perspective of the Persian, and we see the climax of the story: after Christine agrees to marry him, Erik floods the torture chamber with water. The Persian and Raoul scream for help, and after some pleading from Christine, Erik saves them. Emotions are high, and Erik seems to be softening immediately as a result of Christine’s agreement to marry him.
What we also see is the absence of any action-taking or decision-making on the part of Raoul. His character lacks almost all agency and importance in the final part of the story. Aside from yelling, banging on the chamber walls, acting fatalistic, and swimming for his life, Raoul does not do much. In fact, nothing he does helps Christine or the Persian in any significant way. Leroux seems to be suggesting that, in the end, Raoul the madman was really just all show.
The real credit actually goes to the Persian and Christine, both of whom go through great pains (Christine emotionally and the Persian both physically and emotionally) in the name of Raoul’s interests: Christine to save her lover and the Persian to save Raoul’s lover, Christine – but also the Opera House itself (which becomes evident after Christine tells them both about Erik’s plans to blow up the building).
A great deal of resolution takes place in a very short span of time: while building up to the climax takes many chapters (specifically the chapters concerning the Persian and Raoul’s journey to Erik’s house), the falling action is very sudden. The Persian wakes up in his own home and, soon thereafter, Erik comes to tell him that he has reunited Raoul and Christine and will be dying soon. Erik’s character development is incredibly fast and dynamic, and it is because he has given up everything and dies that he becomes a kind of tragic hero – whereas Raoul, on the other hand, is seen as something of a passive, static character.
In this way Erik also displays an immense amount of maturity, and it is evident that what Erik was looking for in Christine was not love so much as affection and acceptance. Since he was a child, Erik had been shunned and forced to move from place to place. He was always considered unique, and in the nick of time (but also what appears to be quite the delayed description of Erik’s childhood and later adventures on the part of Leroux) we see that what Erik could not receive from his parents or others that he had met in his life, he receives in Christine’s decision to kiss his forehead. All it took was one kind, accepting heart for Erik to change his outlook on life. In a heartbeat, he went from being selfish and immature to being generous, big-hearted, and empathetic.
