The Setting Sun

The Setting Sun is the modest inn at Perros-Guirec where Christine Daae takes lodging on the anniversary of her father's death, and where the Vicomte Raoul de Chagny, following her letter, finds her. It is the physical and emotional meeting point for the two childhood friends, a place where the past resurfaces and where the mystery of the Angel of Music is first openly discussed between them. The inn serves as the backdrop for their strained reunion, their quarrel over the voice Raoul heard in her dressing-room, and Christine's nocturnal departure to the churchyard, making it a pivotal location in the early unfolding of the novel's central enigma.

Setting and Arrival

The inn is introduced as the place where Christine, described as a young lady who looked like a Parisian, had gone to Perros and put up at the inn known as the Setting Sun. Raoul, having missed the morning train and spent a dismal day in town, travels through the night on the Brittany express and then by diligence to Perros-Guirec. Upon his arrival, he walks into the smoky sitting-room of the Setting Sun and at once sees Christine standing before him, smiling and showing no astonishment. She greets him with the words, "So you have come," explaining that she felt she would find him there when she came back from mass, adding that her dead father had told her so at the church. This immediate, almost supernatural expectation sets the tone for the strange events that follow within the inn's walls.

The Reunion and the Quarrel

The Setting Sun is the site of the tense and emotionally charged reunion between Raoul and Christine. Inside its sitting-room, Raoul declares his love, asking if her father told her that he loves her and cannot live without her. Christine blushes, turns away her head, and dismisses his words as a dream, bursting into laughter to put herself in countenance. Their conversation quickly turns to the night of the gala performance, when Raoul, hidden in her dressing-room, overheard a man's voice telling her, "Christine, you must love me!" and her reply, "I sing only for you!" Christine, upon hearing that Raoul had listened behind the door, seizes his arm with unexpected strength, and a deathly pallor spreads over her face as he recounts the voice's words: "Your soul is a beautiful thing, child, and I thank you. No emperor ever received so fair a gift. The angels wept tonight." This confrontation, taking place in the inn's common room, reveals the depth of the mystery surrounding Christine and the voice, and it drives her to flee in great disorder to her room.

The Nocturnal Departure

The Setting Sun also becomes the stage for Christine's secretive nighttime activities. After their quarrel, Raoul dines alone in a gloomy mood, while Christine remains in her bedroom, refusing to come down. Later, at about half-past eleven, Raoul hears a light, stealthy step in the room next to his, and then sees Christine's white form slipping along the passage in the moonlight. He follows her, leaning over the baluster, and hears the landlady's voice say, "Don't lose the key," before the door facing the sea is opened and locked again. From his window, Raoul sees Christine's white form standing on the deserted quay. He climbs down a tree growing against the wall, unknown to the landlady, and follows her to the church, where he witnesses her kneeling at her father's grave and hearing the invisible music of The Resurrection of Lazarus. The next morning, Raoul is found half-frozen on the steps of the high altar and is brought back to the Setting Sun, where Christine, with the landlady's help, revives him. This sequence of events, centered on the inn, underscores the supernatural and secretive forces at play around Christine.

Narrative Significance

The Setting Sun functions as a threshold between the ordinary world and the extraordinary mystery that surrounds Christine Daae. It is a place of mundane reality—a smoky sitting-room, a landlady, a tree by the wall—yet it is also the point from which Christine departs into the night to commune with the invisible Angel of Music. The inn's domestic setting contrasts sharply with the supernatural events it hosts, highlighting the intrusion of the fantastic into everyday life. It is here that Raoul first learns the full extent of Christine's entanglement with the voice, and it is from here that he begins his desperate attempts to understand and save her. The inn thus serves as a crucial narrative anchor, grounding the ghostly legend in a tangible, believable location while simultaneously marking the beginning of Raoul's quest.