a, sir!"

"Not so well as 'he' does!" said the Persian modestly.

And he pushed the young man into Christine's dressing-room, which was
as Raoul had left it a few minutes earlier.

Closing the door, the Persian went to a very thin partition that
separated the dressing-room from a big lumber-room next to it. He
listened and then coughed loudly.

There was a sound of some one stirring in the lumber-room; and, a few
seconds later, a finger tapped at the door.

"Come in," said the Persian.

A man entered, also wearing an astrakhan cap and dressed in a long
overcoat. He bowed and took a richly carved case from under his coat,
put it on the dressing-table, bowed once again and went to the door.

"Did no one see you come in, Darius?"

"No, master."

"Let no one see you go out."

The servant glanced down the passage and swiftly disappeared.

The Persian opened the case. It contained a pair of long pistols.

"When Christine Daae was carried off, sir, I sent word to my servant to
bring me these pistols. I have had them a long time and they can be
relied upon."

"Do you mean to fight a duel?" asked the young man.

"It will certainly be a duel which we shall have to fight," said the
other, examining the priming of his pistols. "And what a duel!"
Handing one of the pistols to Raoul, he added, "In this duel, we shall
be two to one; but you must be prepared for everything, for we shall be
fighting the most terrible adversary that you can imagine. But you
love Christine Daae, do you not?"

"I worship the ground she stands on! But you, sir, who do not love
her, tell me why I find you ready to risk your life for her! You must
certainly hate Erik!"

"No, sir," said the Persian sadly, "I do not hate him. If I hated him,
he would long ago have ceased doing harm."

"Has he done you harm?"

"I have forgiven him the harm which he has done me."

"I do not understand you. You treat him as a monster, you speak of his
crime, he has done you harm and I find in you the same inexplicable
pity that drove me to despair when I saw it in Christine!"

The Persian did not reply. He fetched a stool and set it against the
wall facing the great mirror that filled the whole of the wall-space
opposite. Then he climbed on the stool and, with his nose to the
wallpaper, seemed to be looking for something.

"Ah," he said, after a long search, "I have it!" And, raising his
finger above his head, he pressed against a corner in