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"Don't be afraid!" he said. "They are moving him to another room, that's all." She sank back, shuddering, her face hidden. The sound continued, seeming to come nearer the sound of a man's voice shrieking horribly for help, in piercing accents of terror that might have come from a torture-chamber. Suddenly the yells became articulate, resolved into words: "Anne! Anne! Anne!" in terrible crescendo.
"Yes, it's like the Musee Grevin ... But, say, Erik ... there are no tortures in there! ... What a fright you gave me!" "Why ... as there is no one there?" "Did you design that room? It's very handsome. You're a great artist, Erik." "Yes, a great artist, in my own line." "But tell me, Erik, why did you call that room the torture-chamber?" "Oh, it's very simple. First of all, what did you see?"
That path there leads to the torture-chamber, that is to say, to a small grated window, through which one can overlook that room. When King Henry was in special good-humor, he would resort with his friend to this grating to divert himself a little with the tortures of the damned and blasphemers.
The newspaper, as he turned from page to page, rustled with a slow and comfortable sound. Then suddenly he heard three terrible words: "You are cheatin'!" Such scenes often prove that there can be little of dramatic import in environment. Any room can present a tragic front; any room can be comic. This little den was now hideous as a torture-chamber.
"I saw a forest." "And what is in a forest?" "Trees." "And what is in a tree?" "Birds." "Did you see any birds?" "No, I did not see any birds." "Well, what did you see? Think! You saw branches And what are the branches?" asked the terrible voice. "THERE'S A GIBBET! That is why I call my wood the torture-chamber! ... You see, it's all a joke. I never express myself like other people.
"I don't like the way you said that! ... You're trembling... You're quite excited ... You're lying! ... That was a cry, there was a cry! ... There is some one in the torture-chamber! ... Ah, I understand now!" "There is no one there, Erik!" "I understand!" "No one!" "The man you want to marry, perhaps!" "I don't want to marry anybody, you know I don't." Another nasty chuckle.
Which leads us in turn to exclaim, "Surely, yea thrice surely, will hell never be wholly abolished or deprived of its last torture-chamber, while Christians require a painful place for those who boldly differ from them." Mr. Mivart, it is true, confesses that "those who are disturbed and distressed by difficulties about hell include many among the best of mankind."
The sounds breaking out so unexpectedly in the silent night were enough to freeze the blood in one's veins. I never heard such frantic screams like those that might come from a torture-chamber. One of the porters had become infuriated by one of the totos small boys who go along to help the porters and had started in to beat him.
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. And the figure of the masked man seemed all the more formidable in this old-fashioned, neat and trim little frame.
Christine sobbed; she was not sure that she would find M. de Chagny alive. The monster had been terrible, it seemed, had done nothing but rave, waiting for her to give him the "yes" which she refused. And yet she had promised him that "yes," if he would take her to the torture-chamber. But he had obstinately declined, and had uttered hideous threats against all the members of the human race!
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