“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.⁠ ⁠…”

Erik here rose solemnly. Then he continued, but, as he spoke, he was overcome by all his former emotion and began to tremble like a leaf: