"If you can do nothing for Christine, at least let me die for her!"
The Persian tried to calm the young man.
"We have only one means of saving Christine Daae, believe me, which is to enter the house unperceived by the monster."
"And is there any hope of that, sir?"
"Ah, if I had not that hope, I would not have come to fetch you!"
"And how can one enter the house on the lake without crossing the lake?"
"From the third cellar, from which we were so unluckily driven away.
We will go back there now ...
I will tell you," said the Persian, with a sudden change in his voice,
"I will tell you the exact place, sir: it is between a set piece and a discarded scene from ROI DE LAHORE, exactly at the spot where Joseph Buquet died...
Come, sir, take courage and follow me!
And hold your hand at the level of your eyes! ...
But where are we?"
The Persian lit his lamp again and flung its rays down two enormous corridors that crossed each other at right angles.
"We must be," he said, "in the part used more particularly for the waterworks.
I see no fire coming from the furnaces."
He went in front of Raoul, seeking his road, stopping abruptly when he was afraid of meeting some waterman.
Then they had to protect themselves against the glow of a sort of underground forge, which the men were extinguishing, and at which Raoul recognized the demons whom Christine had seen at the time of her first captivity.
In this way, they gradually arrived beneath the huge cellars below the stage.
They must at this time have been at the very bottom of the "tub" and at an extremely great depth, when we remember that the earth was dug out at fifty feet below the water that lay under the whole of that part of Paris.
The Persian touched a partition-wall and said:
"If I am not mistaken, this is a wall that might easily belong to the house on the lake."
He was striking a partition-wall of the "tub," and perhaps it would be as well for the reader to know how the bottom and the partition-walls of the tub were built.
In order to prevent the water surrounding the building-operations from remaining in immediate contact with the walls supporting the whole of the theatrical machinery, the architect was obliged to build a double case in every direction.
The work of constructing this double case took a whole year.
It was the wall of the first inner case that the Persian struck when speaking to Raoul of the house on the lake.
To any one understanding the architecture of the edifice, the Persian's action would seem to indicate that Erik's mysterious house had been built in the double case, formed of a thick wall constructed as an embankment or dam, then of a brick wall, a tremendous layer of cement and another wall several yards in thickness. At the Persian's words, Raoul flung himself against the wall and listened eagerly.
But he heard nothing ... nothing ... except distant steps sounding on the floor of the upper portions of the theater.
The Persian darkened his lantern again.
"Look out!" he said.
"Keep your hand up!
And silence! For we shall try another way of getting in."
And he led him to the little staircase by which they had come down lately.
They went up, stopping at each step, peering into the darkness and the silence, till they came to the third cellar.
Here the Persian motioned to Raoul to go on his knees; and, in this way, crawling on both knees and one hand—for the other hand was held in the position indicated—they reached the end wall.
Against this wall stood a large discarded scene from the ROI DE LAHORE. Close to this scene was a set piece.
Between the scene and the set piece there was just room for a body ... for a body which one day was found hanging there. The body of Joseph Buquet.
The Persian, still kneeling, stopped and listened.
For a moment, he seemed to hesitate and looked at Raoul; then he turned his eyes upward, toward the second cellar, which sent down the faint glimmer of a lantern, through a cranny between two boards.
This glimmer seemed to trouble the Persian.
At last, he tossed his head and made up his mind to act.
He slipped between the set piece and the scene from the ROI DE LAHORE, with Raoul close upon his heels.
With his free hand, the Persian felt the wall.
Raoul saw him bear heavily upon the wall, just as he had pressed against the wall in Christine's dressing-room.
Then a stone gave way, leaving a hole in the wall.
This time, the Persian took his pistol from his pocket and made a sign to Raoul to do as he did.
He cocked the pistol. And, resolutely, still on his knees, he wiggled through the hole in the wall.
Raoul, who had wished to pass first, had to be content to follow him.
The hole was very narrow.
The Persian stopped almost at once.