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. It was
a bargain ... Half a minute later, all the water was back in the lake;
and I had a hard job with you, daroga, for, upon my honor, I thought
you were done for! ... However! ... There you were! ... It was
understood that I was to take you both up to the surface of the earth.
When, at last, I cleared the Louis-Philippe room of you, I came back
alone ..."
"What have you done with the Vicomte de Chagny?" asked the Persian,
interrupting him.
"Ah, you see, daroga, I couldn't carry HIM up like that, at once. ...
He was a hostage ... But I could not keep him in the house on the
lake, either, because of Christine; so I locked him up comfortably, I
chained him up nicely--a whiff of the Mazenderan scent had left him as
limp as a rag--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 ever hears you. Then I came back to
Christine, she was waiting for me."