He said, ‘I give you five minutes to spare your blushes! Here,’ he said, taking a key from the little bag of life and death, ‘here is the little bronze key that opens the two ebony caskets on the mantelpiece in the Louis-Philippe room. … In one of the caskets, you will find a scorpion, in the other, a grasshopper, both very cleverly imitated in Japanese bronze: they will say yes or no for you. If you turn the scorpion round, that will mean to me, when I return, that you have said yes. The grasshopper will mean no.’ And he laughed like a drunken demon. I did nothing but beg and entreat him to give me the key of the torture-chamber, promising to be his wife if he granted me that request. … But he told me that there was no future need for that key and that he was going to throw it into the lake! … And he again laughed like a drunken demon and left me. Oh, his last words were, ‘The grasshopper! Be careful of the grasshopper! A grasshopper does not only turn: it hops! It hops! And it hops jolly high!’ ”
The five minutes had nearly elapsed and the scorpion and the grasshopper were scratching at my brain. Nevertheless, I had sufficient lucidity left to understand that, if the grasshopper were turned, it would hop … and with it many members of the human race! There was no doubt but that the grasshopper controlled an electric current intended to blow up the powder-magazine!
M. de Chagny, who seemed to have recovered all his moral force from hearing Christine’s voice, explained to her, in a few hurried words, the situation in which we and all the Opera were. He told her to turn the scorpion at once.
There was a pause.
“Christine,” I cried, “where are you?”
“By the scorpion.”
“Don’t touch it!”