As those of you know who have been following my posts about the Gaulois publication of Phantom, Leroux cut a large section out of Chapter 12 (“You Must Forget the Name of ‘the Man’s Voice’”) when he published his 1st Edition. For those of you who would like to see that omitted text in one place, here it is in its entirety:
Raoul spoke this “perhaps” with such love and despair that Christine was unable to hold back a sob; but the strength of her will quickly subdued her emotion, and she had the courage to question the young man without dwelling on her sorrow.
“Why have you asked me his name, since you know it?”
“To know that I was not dreaming! To know that I had really heard it!… … And now, Christine, you have nothing more to tell me!… Goodbye!…”
The young man bid farewell to Mama Valérius, who did not speak a word to detain him, since he had ceased to indulge her ward; then, more coldly still, he bowed before Christine, who did not return his farewell gesture, and “straight as an arrow,” but feebly, to the point where he thought he would faint as he took the third step that led him from Christine, he pushed open the chamber door and entered the sitting room.
The young woman’s hand, gentle upon his shoulder, stopped him there. They were alone, standing between the portraits of Professor Valérius and Daddy Daaé. Christine gestured toward them and said:
“If I swear to you, before them, that I love you, Raoul, will you believe me?”
“I will believe you, Christine,” assured the young man, who only asked to be consoled.
“Well, understand then, standing before them, Raoul, understand that if I have pitied Erik, it is because I love you!”
“Good Heavens!” breathed the Vicomte … and he sat down.
Needless to say, he wished to hear more, and the conversation was beginning to please him.
“Speak, Christine,” he begged… “Speak!… You have brought me back to life, for as I said farewell, I thought that I was going to die…”
She sat beside him, so close that he felt the movement of her gentle breath. He looked at her, unable to sate his gaze with this angel who loved him; but she did not look at him. And she spoke without seeing Raoul, or rather without looking in his direction. She saw him at first as a child, when he had collected her scarf from the sea, and she told him that from that day forward she had loved him, because he was courageous like a man; and then she reminded him of when he would sit by her side and listen to Daddy Daaé’s tales, and she loved him even more then because he was gentle like a girl; and then later, when he had returned, she had hated him, because he hadn’t dared to speak the words that her heart, unknowingly, was waiting to hear, and this was even further proof that she loved him. She had never stopped loving him with the most pure love, for as far back as she could remember.
Raoul, who was crying softly, took Christine’s hand and could not refrain from asking her why she had behaved in such an icy fashion with him when he had thrown himself at her feet in her dressing room, and why she had always attempted to rebuff him when he tried to meet with her.
She replied in a calm and serious voice:
“Because, rightly, I did not want to be compelled to tell you, my dear, what I am telling you today. It was my intention that you would always be unaware of the love that I have confessed to you.”
“And the reason for this?” implored Raoul anxiously.
“The reason was that I did not want to distract you from your duties, Raoul, and because I loved you enough to not want you to feel remorse. I live between these two images,” she added, gesturing to the portraits of her dear departed; “the day that I am no longer worthy of looking upon them, my dear, I shall die.”
“Christine, you shall be my wife!”
Raoul uttered these words while looking at the two witnesses who regarded him from their frames with exaggerated and stylized smiles. The young woman said to him calmly:
“I knew that you would be ready to commit such folly. And this is again why I have hidden from you the tenderness of my feelings, Raoul!”
“Where do you see folly in this?” protested the Vicomte naively. “Where is the folly in marrying you if I love you? And would you think me wise to marry someone that I didn’t love?”
“It is folly, my dear,” Christine persisted harshly, “it is folly for us to ‘get married at your age,’ you, the heir to the de Chagnys, and me, an actress and the daughter of a village fiddler, and this in spite of your family. I will never allow it! People would say that you had lost your mind, or that I had caused you to lose it, which would be worse!”
As harsh as the singer’s response had been, it had at least been tempered by the words, “at your age.” Raoul saw in this certain hope.
“I shall wait!” he cried, “I shall wait for as long as you wish, so that everyone shall know that my resolve is unshakable and that my heart is in agreement with my head.”
“Your brother will never consent to such a union!”
“I shall bring him round, Christine. When he sees me ready to die of despair, he will have to give in.”
“Your family will cast you out!”
“No, for you shall be with me, and when they see you, they will be unable to do without you. Oh, Christine, listen to me … if you wish it to be, nothing in the world can stop us from being happy!”
Christine had risen. She shook her head and a bitter smile passed across her pale lips.
“You must abandon this hope, my dear…”
“I swear to you that you shall be my wife!”
“And I,” cried Christine in an exclamation of peculiar sorrow… “and I, I have sworn that I shall never be!”
Raoul hesitated… He had no doubt misheard… He wanted to hear it again.
“You have sworn… You have sworn that you will never be my wife? Christine? And to whom, then, mademoiselle, have you made this fine oath, if not to the one whose gold ring you have accepted?”
Christine did not reply. Raoul pressed her to explain herself. The young man’s agitation was acute. The fire of jealousy was overcoming him anew. It frightened him.
“Take comfort!” she cried in a delirium where love and modesty engaged in the most seductive struggle… “I have sworn to myself that I would have no other husband but you.”
“Yes, but you will not marry me!” groaned Raoul. “This is a sorrowful remedy for my pain. What strange oaths, Christine! And how convoluted all of this is, even though I have esteemed you to be candor itself… What! You swear to yourself to have no other husband but me, and yet you make an oath to another that you will never marry me! To whom, then, Christine? I want to know… Wretch that I am, I already know! And you say that you love me and that you want me to believe you! You forget that I know the name of the man’s Voice!”
She took his hands then and looked at him with all of the pure affection of which she was capable, and the young man, beneath the gaze of those eyes, felt his pain already subsiding.
“Raoul,” she said, “I have given you the confession of my love to have the right to tell you: You must forget the man’s voice and never again even recall his name … and never again attempt to fathom the mystery of theman’s voice.”
“This mystery is so very terrible?”
She raised her lovely arms toward the two silent figures, witnesses half smiling, half saddened by these strange words; her eyes became gloomy, and her throat choked back a sob. She said:
“There is none more terrible on this earth!”
A silence separated the two youths. Raoul was overwhelmed. She continued to win him over…
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