Christine! Christine!
Raoul’s first thought, after Christine Daaé’s fantastic disappearance, was to accuse Erik. He no longer doubted the almost supernatural powers of the Angel of Music, in this domain of the Opera in which he had set up his empire. And Raoul rushed on the stage, in a mad fit of love and despair.
“Christine! Christine!” he moaned, calling to her as he felt that she must be calling to him from the depths of that dark pit to which the monster had carried her. “Christine! Christine!”
And he seemed to hear the girl’s screams through the frail boards that separated him from her. He bent forward, he listened, … he wandered over the stage like a madman.
Ah, to descend, to descend into that pit of darkness every entrance to which was closed to him, … for the stairs that led below the stage were forbidden to one and all that night!
“Christine! Christine! …”
People pushed him aside, laughing. They made fun of him. They thought the poor lover’s brain was gone!
By what mad road, through what passages of mystery and darkness known to him alone had Erik dragged that pure-souled child to the awful haunt, with the Louis-Philippe room, opening out on the lake?
“Christine! Christine! … Why don’t you answer? … Are you alive? …”