Forget All You Know

Epilogue.

It was morning in the graveyard when Madame Giry found his body, prone over the grave she'd known he would flee to. It hurt her to see him like this, and even as she knelt to check for a pulse, she knew she would find nothing.

She had him taken in secret back to the opera house, and saw that he was buried beneath it, in the catacombs. She saw too that the passageways to his chambers were sealed, and that all of her accomplices were handsomely paid not to speak of it again. She contemplated writing to Miss Daae, of late the Vicontess de Chagne, but decided against it, thinking it better that she did not know.

It was not until many years later, when a young French writer was researching the incident of the chandelier, that Madame Giry every spoke of the lonely burial.

"It was terribly sad, monsuir, you must understand. Even though he was murderous, dangerous, and cruel, there was something to be said in the humanity that was left to him, and that was ripped from him by the death mask he wore for a face. He was a genius, monsuir, before he was a madman, and I think, even in his final moments, he was not as terrible as he seemed. Driven to monstrosity, yes, by a world to cruel to want him. But a monster from the start? No. A broken man.

"And I cannot help but to add this, though it seems without significance. Yet it was strange, and you are here to research the bizarre. When I came upon him, that next morning, alone in the graveyard...it seemed almost as if I could hear a voice, as of someone singing far away and very near all at once. And I could almost make it out to be his, impossible as that is, singing to her a final time. It could almost have been her voice in reply, like some distance dream.

"Perhaps he was calling to her a farewell, or asking for forgiveness. Or perhaps he was loved at last, in that distance land of the dead. Perhaps we shall never know."