nd, before losing consciousness entirely, I seemed to hear, between
two guggles:

"Barrels! Barrels! Any barrels to sell?"

Chapter XXVI The End of the Ghost's Love Story

The previous chapter marks the conclusion of the written narrative
which the Persian left behind him.

Notwithstanding the horrors of a situation which seemed definitely to
abandon them to their deaths, M. de Chagny and his companion were saved
by the sublime devotion of Christine Daae. And I had the rest of the
story from the lips of the daroga himself.

When I went to see him, he was still living in his little flat in the
Rue de Rivoli, opposite the Tuileries. He was very ill, and it
required all my ardor as an historian pledged to the truth to persuade
him to live the incredible tragedy over again for my benefit. His
faithful old servant Darius showed me in to him. The daroga received
me at a window overlooking the garden of the Tuileries. He still had
his magnificent eyes, but his poor face looked very worn. He had
shaved the whole of his head, which was usually covered with an
astrakhan cap; he was dressed in a long, plain coat and amused himself
by unconsciously twisting his thumbs inside the sleeves; but his mind
was quite clear, and he told me his story with perfect lucidity.

It seems that, when he opened his eyes, the daroga found himself lying
on a bed. M. de Chagny was on a sofa, beside the wardrobe. An angel
and a devil were watching over them.

After the deceptions and illusions of the torture-chamber, the
precision of the details of that quiet little middle-class room seemed
to have been invented for the express purpose of puzzling the mind of
the mortal rash enough to stray into that abode of living nightmare.
The wooden bedstead, the waxed mahogany chairs, the chest of drawers,
those brasses, the little square antimacassars carefully placed on the
backs of the chairs, the clock on the mantelpiece and the
harmless-looking ebony caskets at either end, lastly, the whatnot
filled with shells, with red pin-cushions, with mother-of-pearl boats
and an enormous ostrich-egg, the whole discreetly lighted by a shaded
lamp standing on a small round table: this collection of ugly,
peaceable, reasonable furniture, AT THE BOTTOM OF THE OPERA CELLARS,
bewildered the imagination more than all the late fantastic happenings.

And the figure of the masked man seemed all the more formidable in this
old-fashioned, neat and trim l