" I tried to speak, but he said coldly:

“Not a word, daroga, or I shall blow everything up.” And he added, “The honor rests with mademoiselle … Mademoiselle has not touched the scorpion"—how deliberately he spoke!—"mademoiselle has not touched the grasshopper"—with that composure!—"but it is not too late to do the right thing. There, I open the caskets without a key, for I am a trap-door lover and I open and shut what I please and as I please. I open the little ebony caskets: mademoiselle, look at the little dears inside. Aren’t they pretty? If you turn the grasshopper, mademoiselle, we shall all be blown up. There is enough gun-powder under our feet to blow up a whole quarter of Paris. If you turn the scorpion, mademoiselle, all that powder will be soaked and drowned. Mademoiselle, to celebrate our wedding, you shall make a very handsome present to a few hundred Parisians who are at this moment applauding a poor masterpiece of Meyerbeer’s … you shall make them a present of their lives … For, with your own fair hands, you shall turn the scorpion … And merrily, merrily, we will be married!”

A pause; and then:

“If, in two minutes, mademoiselle, you have not turned the scorpion, I shall turn the grasshopper … and the grasshopper, I tell you, HOPS JOLLY HIGH!”

- Chapter 25: The Scorpion or the Grasshopper: Which? "

― Gaston Leroux , The Phantom of the Opera