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Title: The Phantom of the Opera

Author: Gaston Leroux

Release date: October 1, 1994 [eBook #175]
Most recently updated: January 8, 2025

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/175

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PHANTOM
OF THE OPERA ***

The Phantom of the Opera

by

Gaston Leroux

Author of "The Mystery of the Yellow Room" and
"The Perfume of the Lady in Black"

Contents
Chapter
PROLOGUE
I IS IT A GHOST?
II THE NEW MARGARITA
III THE MYSTERIOUS REASON
IV BOX FIVE
V THE ENCHANTED VIOLIN
VI A VISIT TO BOX FIVE
VII FAUST AND WHAT FOLLOWED
VIII THE MYSTERIOUS BROUGHAM
IX AT THE MASKED BALL
X FORGET THE NAME OF THE MAN'S VOICE
XI ABOVE THE TRAP-DOORS
XII APOLLO'S LYRE
XIII A MASTER-STROKE OF THE TRAP-DOOR
LOVER
XIV THE SINGULAR ATTITUDE OF A SAFETY-PIN
XV CHRISTINE! CHRISTINE!
XVI MME. GIRY'S REVELATIONS
XVII THE SAFETY-PIN AGAIN
XVIII THE COMMISSARY, THE VISCOUNT AND
THE PERSIAN
XIX THE VISCOUNT AND THE PERSIAN
XX IN THE CELLARS OF THE OPERA
XXI INTERESTING VICISSITUDES
XXII IN THE TORTURE CHAMBER
XXIII THE TORTURES BEGIN
XXIV BARRELS! BARRELS!

XXV THE SCORPION OR THE GRASSHOPPER:
WHICH
XXVI THE END OF THE GHOST'S LOVE STORY
EPILOGUE
(plus a "bonus chapter" called "THE PARIS
OPERA HOUSE")

The Phantom of the Opera

Prologue

IN WHICH THE AUTHOR OF THIS SINGULAR WORK INFORMS
THE READER HOW HE ACQUIRED THE CERTAINTY THAT THE
OPERA GHOST REALLY EXISTED

The Opera ghost really existed. He was not, as was long believed, a
creature of the imagination of the artists, the superstition of the managers,
or a product of the absurd and impressionable brains of the young ladies of
the ballet, their mothers, the box-keepers, the cloak-room attendants or the
concierge. Yes, he existed in flesh and blood, although he assumed the
complete appearance of a real phantom; that is to say, of a spectral shade.

When I began to ransack the archives of the National Academy of Music
I was at once struck by the surprising coincidences between the phenomena
ascribed to the "ghost" and the most extraordinary and fantastic tragedy that
ever excited the Paris upper classes; and I soon conceived the idea that this
tragedy might reasonably be explained by the phenomena in question. The
events do not date more than thirty years back; and it would not be difficult
to find at the present day, in the foyer of the ballet, old men of the highest
respectability, men upon whose word one could absolutely rely, who would

remember as though they happened yesterday the mysterious and dramatic
conditions that attended the kidnapping of Christine Daae, the
disappearance of the Vicomte de Chagny and the death of his elder brother,
Count Philippe, whose body was found on the bank of the lake that exists in
the lower cellars of the Opera on the Rue-Scribe side. But none of those
witnesses had until that day thought that there was any reason for
connecting the more or less legendary figure of the Opera ghost with that
terrible story.

The truth was slow to enter my mind, puzzled by an inquiry that at every
moment was complicated by events which, at first sight, might be looked
upon as superhuman; and more than once I was within an ace of
abandoning a task in which I was exhausting myself in the hopeless pursuit
of a vain image. At last, I received the proof that my presentiments had not
deceived me, and I was rewarded for all my efforts on the day when I
acquired the certainty that the Opera ghost was more than a mere shade.

On that day, I had spent long hours over THE MEMOIRS OF A
MANAGER, the light and frivolous work of the too-skeptical Moncharmin,
who, during his term at the Opera, understood nothing of the mysterious
behavior of the ghost and who was making all the fun of it that he could at
the very moment when he became the first victim of the curious financial
operation that went on inside the "magic envelope."

I had just left the library in despair, when I met the delightful acting-
manager of our National Academy, who stood chatting on a landing with a
lively and well-groomed little old man, to whom he introduced me gaily.
The acting-manager knew all about my investigations and how eagerly and
unsuccessfully I had been trying to discover the whereabouts of the
examining magistrate in the famous Chagny case, M. Faure. Nobody knew
what had become of him, alive or dead; and here he was back from Canada,
where he had spent fifteen years, and the first thing he had done, on his
return to Paris, was to come to the secretarial offices at the Opera and ask
for a free seat. The little old man was M. Faure himself.

We spent a good part of the evening together and he told me the whole
Chagny case as he had understood it at the time. He was bound to conclude
in favor of the madness of the viscount and the accidental death of the elder

brother, for lack of evidence to the contrary; but he was nevertheless
persuaded that a terrible tragedy had taken place between the two brothers
in connection with Christine Daae. He could not tell me what became of
Christine or the viscount. When I mentioned the ghost, he only laughed. He,
too, had been told of the curious manifestations that seemed to point to the
existence of an abnormal being, residing in one of the most mysterious
corners of the Opera, and he knew the story of the envelope; but he had
never seen anything in it worthy of his attention as magistrate in charge of
the Chagny case, and it was as much as he had done to listen to the
evidence of a witness who appeared of his own accord and declared that he
had often met the ghost. This witness was none other than the man whom
all Paris called the "Persian" and who was well-known to every subscriber
to the Opera. The magistrate took him for a visionary.

I was immensely interested by this story of the Persian. I wanted, if there
were still time, to find this valuable and eccentric witness. My luck began to
improve and I discovered him in his little flat in the Rue de Rivoli, where
he had lived ever since and where he died five months after my visit. I was
at first inclined to be suspicious; but when the Persian had told me, with
child-like candor, all that he knew about the ghost and had handed me the
proofs of the ghost's existence—including the strange correspondence of
Christine Daae—to do as I pleased with, I was no longer able to doubt. No,
the ghost was not a myth!

I have, I know, been told that this correspondence may have been forged
from first to last by a man whose imagination had certainly been fed on the
most seductive tales; but fortunately I discovered some of Christine's
writing outside the famous bundle of letters and, on a comparison between
the two, all my doubts were removed. I also went into the past history of the
Persian and found that he was an upright man, incapable of inventing a
story that might have defeated the ends of justice.

This, moreover, was the opinion of the more serious people who, at one
time or other, were mixed up in the Chagny case, who were friends of the
Chagny family, to whom I showed all my documents and set forth all my
inferences. In this connection, I should like to print a few lines which I
received from General D——:

SIR:

I can not urge you too strongly to publish the results of your inquiry. I
remember perfectly that, a few weeks before the disappearance of that great
singer, Christine Daae, and the tragedy which threw the whole of the
Faubourg Saint-Germain into mourning, there was a great deal of talk, in
the foyer of the ballet, on the subject of the "ghost;" and I believe that it
only ceased to be discussed in consequence of the later affair that excited us
all so greatly. But, if it be possible—as, after hearing you, I believe—to
explain the tragedy through the ghost, then I beg you sir, to talk to us about
the ghost again.

Mysterious though the ghost may at first appear, he will always be more
easily explained than the dismal story in which malevolent people have
tried to picture two brothers killing each other who had worshiped each
other all their lives.

Believe me, etc.

Lastly, with my bundle of papers in hand, I once more went over the
ghost's vast domain, the huge building which he had made his kingdom. All
that my eyes saw, all that my mind perceived, corroborated the Persian's
documents precisely; and a wonderful discovery crowned my labors in a
very definite fashion. It will be remembered that, later, when digging in the
substructure of the Opera, before burying the phonographic records of the
artist's voice, the workmen laid bare a corpse. Well, I was at once able to
prove that this corpse was that of the Opera ghost. I made the acting-
manager put this proof to the test with his own hand; and it is now a matter
of supreme indifference to me if the papers pretend that the body was that
of a victim of the Commune.

The wretches who were massacred, under the Commune, in the cellars of
the Opera, were not buried on this side; I will tell where their skeletons can
be found in a spot not very far from that immense crypt which was stocked
during the siege with all sorts of provisions. I came upon this track just
when I was looking for the remains of the Opera ghost, which I should
never have discovered but for the unheard-of chance described above.

But we will return to the corpse and what ought to be done with it. For
the present, I must conclude this very necessary introduction by thanking
M. Mifroid (who was the commissary of police called in for the first
investigations after the disappearance of Christine Daae), M. Remy, the late
secretary, M. Mercier, the late acting-manager, M. Gabriel, the late chorus-
master, and more particularly Mme. la Baronne de Castelot-Barbezac, who
was once the "little Meg" of the story (and who is not ashamed of it), the
most charming star of our admirable corps de ballet, the eldest daughter of
the worthy Mme. Giry, now deceased, who had charge of the ghost's private
box. All these were of the greatest assistance to me; and, thanks to them, I
shall be able to reproduce those hours of sheer love and terror, in their
smallest details, before the reader's eyes.

And I should be ungrateful indeed if I omitted, while standing on the
threshold of this dreadful and veracious story, to thank the present
management the Opera, which has so kindly assisted me in all my inquiries,
and M. Messager in particular, together with M. Gabion, the acting-
manager, and that most amiable of men, the architect intrusted with the
preservation of the building, who did not hesitate to lend me the works of
Charles Garnier, although he was almost sure that I would never return
them to him. Lastly, I must pay a public tribute to the generosity of my
friend and former collaborator, M. J. Le Croze, who allowed me to dip into
his splendid theatrical library and to borrow the rarest editions of books by
which he set great store.

GASTON LEROUX.

Chapter I Is it the Ghost?

It was the evening on which MM. Debienne and Poligny, the managers
of the Opera, were giving a last gala performance to mark their retirement.
Suddenly the dressing-room of La Sorelli, one of the principal dancers, was
invaded by half-a-dozen young ladies of the ballet, who had come up from

the stage after "dancing" Polyeucte. They rushed in amid great confusion,
some giving vent to forced and unnatural laughter, others to cries of terror.
Sorelli, who wished to be alone for a moment to "run through" the speech
which she was to make to the resigning managers, looked around angrily at
the mad and tumultuous crowd. It was little Jammes—the girl with the tip-
tilted nose, the forget-me-not eyes, the rose-red cheeks and the lily-white
neck and shoulders—who gave the explanation in a trembling voice:

"It's the ghost!" And she locked the door.

Sorelli's dressing-room was fitted up with official, commonplace
elegance. A pier-glass, a sofa, a dressing-table and a cupboard or two
provided the necessary furniture. On the walls hung a few engravings, relics
of the mother, who had known the glories of the old Opera in the Rue le
Peletier; portraits of Vestris, Gardel, Dupont, Bigottini. But the room
seemed a palace to the brats of the corps de ballet, who were lodged in
common dressing-rooms where they spent their time singing, quarreling,
smacking the dressers and hair-dressers and buying one another glasses of
cassis, beer, or even rhum, until the call-boy's bell rang.

Sorelli was very superstitious. She shuddered when she heard little
Jammes speak of the ghost, called her a "silly little fool" and then, as she
was the first to believe in ghosts in general, and the Opera ghost in
particular, at once asked for details:

"Have you seen him?"

"As plainly as I see you now!" said little Jammes, whose legs were
giving way beneath her, and she dropped with a moan into a chair.

Thereupon little Giry—the girl with eyes black as sloes, hair black as
ink, a swarthy complexion and a poor little skin stretched over poor little
bones—little Giry added:

"If that's the ghost, he's very ugly!"

"Oh, yes!" cried the chorus of ballet-girls.

And they all began to talk together. The ghost had appeared to them in
the shape of a gentleman in dress-clothes, who had suddenly stood before
them in the passage, without their knowing where he came from. He
seemed to have come straight through the wall.

"Pooh!" said one of them, who had more or less kept her head. "You see
the ghost everywhere!"

And it was true. For several months, there had been nothing discussed at
the Opera but this ghost in dress-clothes who stalked about the building,
from top to bottom, like a shadow, who spoke to nobody, to whom nobody
dared speak and who vanished as soon as he was seen, no one knowing how
or where. As became a real ghost, he made no noise in walking. People
began by laughing and making fun of this specter dressed like a man of
fashion or an undertaker; but the ghost legend soon swelled to enormous
proportions among the corps de ballet. All the girls pretended to have met
this supernatural being more or less often. And those who laughed the
loudest were not the most at ease. When he did not show himself, he
betrayed his presence or his passing by accident, comic or serious, for
which the general superstition held him responsible. Had any one met with
a fall, or suffered a practical joke at the hands of one of the other girls, or
lost a powderpuff, it was at once the fault of the ghost, of the Opera ghost.

After all, who had seen him? You meet so many men in dress-clothes at
the Opera who are not ghosts. But this dress-suit had a peculiarity of its
own. It covered a skeleton. At least, so the ballet-girls said. And, of course,
it had a death's head.

Was all this serious? The truth is that the idea of the skeleton came from
the description of the ghost given by Joseph Buquet, the chief scene-shifter,
who had really seen the ghost. He had run up against the ghost on the little
staircase, by the footlights, which leads to "the cellars." He had seen him for
a second—for the ghost had fled—and to any one who cared to listen to
him he said:

"He is extraordinarily thin and his dress-coat hangs on a skeleton frame.
His eyes are so deep that you can hardly see the fixed pupils. You just see
two big black holes, as in a dead man's skull. His skin, which is stretched

across his bones like a drumhead, is not white, but a nasty yellow. His nose
is so little worth talking about that you can't see it side-face; and THE
ABSENCE of that nose is a horrible thing TO LOOK AT. All the hair he has
is three or four long dark locks on his forehead and behind his ears."

This chief scene-shifter was a serious, sober, steady man, very slow at
imagining things. His words were received with interest and amazement;
and soon there were other people to say that they too had met a man in
dress-clothes with a death's head on his shoulders. Sensible men who had
wind of the story began by saying that Joseph Buquet had been the victim
of a joke played by one of his assistants. And then, one after the other, there
came a series of incidents so curious and so inexplicable that the very
shrewdest people began to feel uneasy.

For instance, a fireman is a brave fellow! He fears nothing, least of all
fire! Well, the fireman in question, who had gone to make a round of
inspection in the cellars and who, it seems, had ventured a little farther than
usual, suddenly reappeared on the stage, pale, scared, trembling, with his
eyes starting out of his head, and practically fainted in the arms of the proud
mother of little Jammes.[1] And why? Because he had seen coming toward
him, AT THE LEVEL OF HIS HEAD, BUT WITHOUT A BODY
ATTACHED TO IT, A HEAD OF FIRE! And, as I said, a fireman is not
afraid of fire.

The fireman's name was Pampin.

The corps de ballet was flung into consternation. At first sight, this fiery
head in no way corresponded with Joseph Buquet's description of the ghost.
But the young ladies soon persuaded themselves that the ghost had several
heads, which he changed about as he pleased. And, of course, they at once
imagined that they were in the greatest danger. Once a fireman did not
hesitate to faint, leaders and front-row and back-row girls alike had plenty
of excuses for the fright that made them quicken their pace when passing
some dark corner or ill-lighted corridor. Sorelli herself, on the day after the
adventure of the fireman, placed a horseshoe on the table in front of the
stage-door-keeper's box, which every one who entered the Opera otherwise
than as a spectator must touch before setting foot on the first tread of the
staircase. This horse-shoe was not invented by me—any more than any

other part of this story, alas!—and may still be seen on the table in the
passage outside the stage-door-keeper's box, when you enter the Opera
through the court known as the Cour de l'Administration.

To return to the evening in question.

"It's the ghost!" little Jammes had cried.

An agonizing silence now reigned in the dressing-room. Nothing was
heard but the hard breathing of the girls. At last, Jammes, flinging herself
upon the farthest corner of the wall, with every mark of real terror on her
face, whispered:

"Listen!"

Everybody seemed to hear a rustling outside the door. There was no
sound of footsteps. It was like light silk sliding over the panel. Then it
stopped.

Sorelli tried to show more pluck than the others. She went up to the door
and, in a quavering voice, asked:

"Who's there?"

But nobody answered. Then feeling all eyes upon her, watching her last
movement, she made an effort to show courage, and said very loudly:

"Is there any one behind the door?"

"Oh, yes, yes! Of course there is!" cried that little dried plum of a Meg
Giry, heroically holding Sorelli back by her gauze skirt. "Whatever you do,
don't open the door! Oh, Lord, don't open the door!"

But Sorelli, armed with a dagger that never left her, turned the key and
drew back the door, while the ballet-girls retreated to the inner dressing-
room and Meg Giry sighed:

"Mother! Mother!"

Sorelli looked into the passage bravely. It was empty; a gas-flame, in its
glass prison, cast a red and suspicious light into the surrounding darkness,
without succeeding in dispelling it. And the dancer slammed the door again,
with a deep sigh.

"No," she said, "there is no one there."

"Still, we saw him!" Jammes declared, returning with timid little steps to
her place beside Sorelli. "He must be somewhere prowling about. I shan't
go back to dress. We had better all go down to the foyer together, at once,
for the 'speech,' and we will come up again together."

And the child reverently touched the little coral finger-ring which she
wore as a charm against bad luck, while Sorelli, stealthily, with the tip of
her pink right thumb-nail, made a St. Andrew's cross on the wooden ring
which adorned the fourth finger of her left hand. She said to the little ballet-
girls:

"Come, children, pull yourselves together! I dare say no one has ever
seen the ghost."

"Yes, yes, we saw him—we saw him just now!" cried the girls. "He had
his death's head and his dress-coat, just as when he appeared to Joseph
Buquet!"

"And Gabriel saw him too!" said Jammes. "Only yesterday! Yesterday
afternoon—in broad day-light——"

"Gabriel, the chorus-master?"

"Why, yes, didn't you know?"

"And he was wearing his dress-clothes, in broad daylight?"

"Who? Gabriel?"

"Why, no, the ghost!"

"Certainly! Gabriel told me so himself. That's what he knew him by.
Gabriel was in the stage-manager's office. Suddenly the door opened and
the Persian entered. You know the Persian has the evil eye——"

"Oh, yes!" answered the little ballet-girls in chorus, warding off ill-luck
by pointing their forefinger and little finger at the absent Persian, while
their second and third fingers were bent on the palm and held down by the
thumb.

"And you know how superstitious Gabriel is," continued Jammes.
"However, he is always polite. When he meets the Persian, he just puts his
hand in his pocket and touches his keys. Well, the moment the Persian
appeared in the doorway, Gabriel gave one jump from his chair to the lock
of the cupboard, so as to touch iron! In doing so, he tore a whole skirt of his
overcoat on a nail. Hurrying to get out of the room, he banged his forehead
against a hat-peg and gave himself a huge bump; then, suddenly stepping
back, he skinned his arm on the screen, near the piano; he tried to lean on
the piano, but the lid fell on his hands and crushed his fingers; he rushed out
of the office like a madman, slipped on the staircase and came down the
whole of the first flight on his back. I was just passing with mother. We
picked him up. He was covered with bruises and his face was all over
blood. We were frightened out of our lives, but, all at once, he began to
thank Providence that he had got off so cheaply. Then he told us what had
frightened him. He had seen the ghost behind the Persian, THE GHOST
WITH THE DEATH'S HEAD just like Joseph Buquet's description!"

Jammes had told her story ever so quickly, as though the ghost were at
her heels, and was quite out of breath at the finish. A silence followed,
while Sorelli polished her nails in great excitement. It was broken by little
Giry, who said:

"Joseph Buquet would do better to hold his tongue."

"Why should he hold his tongue?" asked somebody.

"That's mother's opinion," replied Meg, lowering her voice and looking
all about her as though fearing lest other ears than those present might
overhear.

"And why is it your mother's opinion?"

"Hush! Mother says the ghost doesn't like being talked about."

"And why does your mother say so?"

"Because—because—nothing—"

This reticence exasperated the curiosity of the young ladies, who
crowded round little Giry, begging her to explain herself. They were there,
side by side, leaning forward simultaneously in one movement of entreaty
and fear, communicating their terror to one another, taking a keen pleasure
in feeling their blood freeze in their veins.

"I swore not to tell!" gasped Meg.

But they left her no peace and promised to keep the secret, until Meg,
burning to say all she knew, began, with her eyes fixed on the door:

"Well, it's because of the private box."

"What private box?"

"The ghost's box!"

"Has the ghost a box? Oh, do tell us, do tell us!"

"Not so loud!" said Meg. "It's Box Five, you know, the box on the grand
tier, next to the stage-box, on the left."

"Oh, nonsense!"

"I tell you it is. Mother has charge of it. But you swear you won't say a
word?"

"Of course, of course."

"Well, that's the ghost's box. No one has had it for over a month, except
the ghost, and orders have been given at the box-office that it must never be

sold."

"And does the ghost really come there?"

"Yes."

"Then somebody does come?"

"Why, no! The ghost comes, but there is nobody there."

The little ballet-girls exchanged glances. If the ghost came to the box, he
must be seen, because he wore a dress-coat and a death's head. This was
what they tried to make Meg understand, but she replied:

"That's just it! The ghost is not seen. And he has no dress-coat and no
head! All that talk about his death's head and his head of fire is nonsense!
There's nothing in it. You only hear him when he is in the box. Mother has
never seen him, but she has heard him. Mother knows, because she gives
him his program."

Sorelli interfered.

"Giry, child, you're getting at us!"

Thereupon little Giry began to cry.

"I ought to have held my tongue—if mother ever came to know! But I
was quite right, Joseph Buquet had no business to talk of things that don't
concern him—it will bring him bad luck—mother was saying so last night
——"

There was a sound of hurried and heavy footsteps in the passage and a
breathless voice cried:

"Cecile! Cecile! Are you there?"

"It's mother's voice," said Jammes. "What's the matter?"

She opened the door. A respectable lady, built on the lines of a
Pomeranian grenadier, burst into the dressing-room and dropped groaning
into a vacant arm-chair. Her eyes rolled madly in her brick-dust colored
face.

"How awful!" she said. "How awful!"

"What? What?"

"Joseph Buquet!"

"What about him?"

"Joseph Buquet is dead!"

The room became filled with exclamations, with astonished outcries,
with scared requests for explanations.

"Yes, he was found hanging in the third-floor cellar!"

"It's the ghost!" little Giry blurted, as though in spite of herself; but she
at once corrected herself, with her hands pressed to her mouth: "No, no!—I,
didn't say it!—I didn't say it!——"

All around her, her panic-stricken companions repeated under their
breaths:

"Yes—it must be the ghost!"

Sorelli was very pale.

"I shall never be able to recite my speech," she said.

Ma Jammes gave her opinion, while she emptied a glass of liqueur that
happened to be standing on a table; the ghost must have something to do
with it.

The truth is that no one ever knew how Joseph Buquet met his death.
The verdict at the inquest was "natural suicide." In his Memoirs of

Manager, M. Moncharmin, one of the joint managers who succeeded MM.
Debienne and Poligny, describes the incident as follows:

"A grievous accident spoiled the little party which MM. Debienne and
Poligny gave to celebrate their retirement. I was in the manager's office,
when Mercier, the acting-manager, suddenly came darting in. He seemed
half mad and told me that the body of a scene-shifter had been found
hanging in the third cellar under the stage, between a farm-house and a
scene from the Roi de Lahore. I shouted:

"'Come and cut him down!'

"By the time I had rushed down the staircase and the Jacob's ladder, the
man was no longer hanging from his rope!"

So this is an event which M. Moncharmin thinks natural. A man hangs at
the end of a rope; they go to cut him down; the rope has disappeared. Oh,
M. Moncharmin found a very simple explanation! Listen to him:

"It was just after the ballet; and leaders and dancing-girls lost no time in
taking their precautions against the evil eye."

There you are! Picture the corps de ballet scuttling down the Jacob's
ladder and dividing the suicide's rope among themselves in less time than it
takes to write! When, on the other hand, I think of the exact spot where the
body was discovered—the third cellar underneath the stage!—imagine that
SOMEBODY must have been interested in seeing that the rope disappeared
after it had effected its purpose; and time will show if I am wrong.

The horrid news soon spread all over the Opera, where Joseph Buquet
was very popular. The dressing-rooms emptied and the ballet-girls,
crowding around Sorelli like timid sheep around their shepherdess, made
for the foyer through the ill-lit passages and staircases, trotting as fast as
their little pink legs could carry them.

[1] I have the anecdote, which is quite authentic, from M. Pedro Gailhard himself, the late manager
of the Opera.

Chapter II The New Margarita

On the first landing, Sorelli ran against the Comte de Chagny, who was
coming up-stairs. The count, who was generally so calm, seemed greatly
excited.

"I was just going to you," he said, taking off his hat. "Oh, Sorelli, what
an evening! And Christine Daae: what a triumph!"

"Impossible!" said Meg Giry. "Six months ago, she used to sing like a
CROCK! But do let us get by, my dear count," continues the brat, with a
saucy curtsey. "We are going to inquire after a poor man who was found
hanging by the neck."

Just then the acting-manager came fussing past and stopped when he
heard this remark.

"What!" he exclaimed roughly. "Have you girls heard already? Well,
please forget about it for tonight—and above all don't let M. Debienne and
M. Poligny hear; it would upset them too much on their last day."

They all went on to the foyer of the ballet, which was already full of
people. The Comte de Chagny was right; no gala performance ever equalled
this one. All the great composers of the day had conducted their own works
in turns. Faure and Krauss had sung; and, on that evening, Christine Daae
had revealed her true self, for the first time, to the astonished and
enthusiastic audience. Gounod had conducted the Funeral March of a
Marionnette; Reyer, his beautiful overture to Siguar; Saint Saens, the Danse
Macabre and a Reverie Orientale; Massenet, an unpublished Hungarian
march; Guiraud, his Carnaval; Delibes, the Valse Lente from Sylvia and the

Pizzicati from Coppelia. Mlle. Krauss had sung the bolero in the Vespri
Siciliani; and Mlle. Denise Bloch the drinking song in Lucrezia Borgia.

But the real triumph was reserved for Christine Daae, who had begun by
singing a few passages from Romeo and Juliet. It was the first time that the
young artist sang in this work of Gounod, which had not been transferred to
the Opera and which was revived at the Opera Comique after it had been
produced at the old Theatre Lyrique by Mme. Carvalho. Those who heard
her say that her voice, in these passages, was seraphic; but this was nothing
to the superhuman notes that she gave forth in the prison scene and the final
trio in FAUST, which she sang in the place of La Carlotta, who was ill. No
one had ever heard or seen anything like it.

Daae revealed a new Margarita that night, a Margarita of a splendor, a
radiance hitherto unsuspected. The whole house went mad, rising to its feet,
shouting, cheering, clapping, while Christine sobbed and fainted in the arms
of her fellow-singers and had to be carried to her dressing-room. A few
subscribers, however, protested. Why had so great a treasure been kept from
them all that time? Till then, Christine Daae had played a good Siebel to
Carlotta's rather too splendidly material Margarita. And it had needed
Carlotta's incomprehensible and inexcusable absence from this gala night
for the little Daae, at a moment's warning, to show all that she could do in a
part of the program reserved for the Spanish diva! Well, what the
subscribers wanted to know was, why had Debienne and Poligny applied to
Daae, when Carlotta was taken ill? Did they know of her hidden genius?
And, if they knew of it, why had they kept it hidden? And why had she kept
it hidden? Oddly enough, she was not known to have a professor of singing
at that moment. She had often said she meant to practise alone for the
future. The whole thing was a mystery.

The Comte de Chagny, standing up in his box, listened to all this frenzy
and took part in it by loudly applauding. Philippe Georges Marie Comte de
Chagny was just forty-one years of age. He was a great aristocrat and a
good-looking man, above middle height and with attractive features, in
spite of his hard forehead and his rather cold eyes. He was exquisitely polite
to the women and a little haughty to the men, who did not always forgive
him for his successes in society. He had an excellent heart and an

irreproachable conscience. On the death of old Count Philibert, he became
the head of one of the oldest and most distinguished families in France,
whose arms dated back to the fourteenth century. The Chagnys owned a
great deal of property; and, when the old count, who was a widower, died, it
was no easy task for Philippe to accept the management of so large an
estate. His two sisters and his brother, Raoul, would not hear of a division
and waived their claim to their shares, leaving themselves entirely in
Philippe's hands, as though the right of primogeniture had never ceased to
exist. When the two sisters married, on the same day, they received their
portion from their brother, not as a thing rightfully belonging to them, but
as a dowry for which they thanked him.

The Comtesse de Chagny, nee de Moerogis de La Martyniere, had died
in giving birth to Raoul, who was born twenty years after his elder brother.
At the time of the old count's death, Raoul was twelve years of age.
Philippe busied himself actively with the youngster's education. He was
admirably assisted in this work first by his sisters and afterward by an old
aunt, the widow of a naval officer, who lived at Brest and gave young Raoul
a taste for the sea. The lad entered the Borda training-ship, finished his
course with honors and quietly made his trip round the world. Thanks to
powerful influence, he had just been appointed a member of the official
expedition on board the Requin, which was to be sent to the Arctic Circle in
search of the survivors of the D'Artoi's expedition, of whom nothing had
been heard for three years. Meanwhile, he was enjoying a long furlough
which would not be over for six months; and already the dowagers of the
Faubourg Saint-Germain were pitying the handsome and apparently delicate
stripling for the hard work in store for him.

The shyness of the sailor-lad—I was almost saying his innocence—was
remarkable. He seemed to have but just left the women's apron-strings. As a
matter of fact, petted as he was by his two sisters and his old aunt, he had
retained from this purely feminine education manners that were almost
candid and stamped with a charm that nothing had yet been able to sully. He
was a little over twenty-one years of age and looked eighteen. He had a
small, fair mustache, beautiful blue eyes and a complexion like a girl's.

Philippe spoiled Raoul. To begin with, he was very proud of him and
pleased to foresee a glorious career for his junior in the navy in which one
of their ancestors, the famous Chagny de La Roche, had held the rank of
admiral. He took advantage of the young man's leave of absence to show
him Paris, with all its luxurious and artistic delights. The count considered
that, at Raoul's age, it is not good to be too good. Philippe himself had a
character that was very well-balanced in work and pleasure alike; his
demeanor was always faultless; and he was incapable of setting his brother
a bad example. He took him with him wherever he went. He even
introduced him to the foyer of the ballet. I know that the count was said to
be "on terms" with Sorelli. But it could hardly be reckoned as a crime for
this nobleman, a bachelor, with plenty of leisure, especially since his sisters
were settled, to come and spend an hour or two after dinner in the company
of a dancer, who, though not so very, very witty, had the finest eyes that
ever were seen! And, besides, there are places where a true Parisian, when
he has the rank of the Comte de Chagny, is bound to show himself; and at
that time the foyer of the ballet at the Opera was one of those places.

Lastly, Philippe would perhaps not have taken his brother behind the
scenes of the Opera if Raoul had not been the first to ask him, repeatedly
renewing his request with a gentle obstinacy which the count remembered
at a later date.

On that evening, Philippe, after applauding the Daae, turned to Raoul
and saw that he was quite pale.

"Don't you see," said Raoul, "that the woman's fainting?"

"You look like fainting yourself," said the count. "What's the matter?"

But Raoul had recovered himself and was standing up.

"Let's go and see," he said, "she never sang like that before."

The count gave his brother a curious smiling glance and seemed quite
pleased. They were soon at the door leading from the house to the stage.
Numbers of subscribers were slowly making their way through. Raoul tore
his gloves without knowing what he was doing and Philippe had much too

kind a heart to laugh at him for his impatience. But he now understood why
Raoul was absent-minded when spoken to and why he always tried to turn
every conversation to the subject of the Opera.

They reached the stage and pushed through the crowd of gentlemen,
scene-shifters, supers and chorus-girls, Raoul leading the way, feeling that
his heart no longer belonged to him, his face set with passion, while Count
Philippe followed him with difficulty and continued to smile. At the back of
the stage, Raoul had to stop before the inrush of the little troop of ballet-
girls who blocked the passage which he was trying to enter. More than one
chaffing phrase darted from little made-up lips, to which he did not reply;
and at last he was able to pass, and dived into the semi-darkness of a
corridor ringing with the name of "Daae! Daae!" The count was surprised to
find that Raoul knew the way. He had never taken him to Christine's
himself and came to the conclusion that Raoul must have gone there alone
while the count stayed talking in the foyer with Sorelli, who often asked
him to wait until it was her time to "go on" and sometimes handed him the
little gaiters in which she ran down from her dressing-room to preserve the
spotlessness of her satin dancing-shoes and her flesh-colored tights. Sorelli
had an excuse; she had lost her mother.

Postponing his usual visit to Sorelli for a few minutes, the count
followed his brother down the passage that led to Daae's dressing-room and
saw that it had never been so crammed as on that evening, when the whole
house seemed excited by her success and also by her fainting fit. For the
girl had not yet come to; and the doctor of the theater had just arrived at the
moment when Raoul entered at his heels. Christine, therefore, received the
first aid of the one, while opening her eyes in the arms of the other. The
count and many more remained crowding in the doorway.

"Don't you think, Doctor, that those gentlemen had better clear the
room?" asked Raoul coolly. "There's no breathing here."

"You're quite right," said the doctor.

And he sent every one away, except Raoul and the maid, who looked at
Raoul with eyes of the most undisguised astonishment. She had never seen
him before and yet dared not question him; and the doctor imagined that the

young man was only acting as he did because he had the right to. The
viscount, therefore, remained in the room watching Christine as she slowly
returned to life, while even the joint managers, Debienne and Poligny, who
had come to offer their sympathy and congratulations, found themselves
thrust into the passage among the crowd of dandies. The Comte de Chagny,
who was one of those standing outside, laughed:

"Oh, the rogue, the rogue!" And he added, under his breath: "Those
youngsters with their school-girl airs! So he's a Chagny after all!"

He turned to go to Sorelli's dressing-room, but met her on the way, with
her little troop of trembling ballet-girls, as we have seen.

Meanwhile, Christine Daae uttered a deep sigh, which was answered by
a groan. She turned her head, saw Raoul and started. She looked at the
doctor, on whom she bestowed a smile, then at her maid, then at Raoul
again.

"Monsieur," she said, in a voice not much above a whisper, "who are
you?"

"Mademoiselle," replied the young man, kneeling on one knee and
pressing a fervent kiss on the diva's hand, "I AM THE LITTLE BOY WHO
WENT INTO THE SEA TO RESCUE YOUR SCARF."

Christine again looked at the doctor and the maid; and all three began to
laugh.

Raoul turned very red and stood up.

"Mademoiselle," he said, "since you are pleased not to recognize me, I
should like to say something to you in private, something very important."

"When I am better, do you mind?" And her voice shook. "You have been
very good."

"Yes, you must go," said the doctor, with his pleasantest smile. "Leave
me to attend to mademoiselle."

"I am not ill now," said Christine suddenly, with strange and unexpected
energy.

She rose and passed her hand over her eyelids.

"Thank you, Doctor. I should like to be alone. Please go away, all of you.
Leave me. I feel very restless this evening."

The doctor tried to make a short protest, but, perceiving the girl's evident
agitation, he thought the best remedy was not to thwart her. And he went
away, saying to Raoul, outside:

"She is not herself to-night. She is usually so gentle."

Then he said good night and Raoul was left alone. The whole of this part
of the theater was now deserted. The farewell ceremony was no doubt
taking place in the foyer of the ballet. Raoul thought that Daae might go to
it and he waited in the silent solitude, even hiding in the favoring shadow of
a doorway. He felt a terrible pain at his heart and it was of this that he
wanted to speak to Daae without delay.

Suddenly the dressing-room door opened and the maid came out by
herself, carrying bundles. He stopped her and asked how her mistress was.
The woman laughed and said that she was quite well, but that he must not
disturb her, for she wished to be left alone. And she passed on. One idea
alone filled Raoul's burning brain: of course, Daae wished to be left alone
FOR HIM! Had he not told her that he wanted to speak to her privately?

Hardly breathing, he went up to the dressing-room and, with his ear to
the door to catch her reply, prepared to knock. But his hand dropped. He
had heard A MAN'S VOICE in the dressing-room, saying, in a curiously
masterful tone:

"Christine, you must love me!"

And Christine's voice, infinitely sad and trembling, as though
accompanied by tears, replied:

"How can you talk like that? WHEN I SING ONLY FOR YOU!"

Raoul leaned against the panel to ease his pain. His heart, which had
seemed gone for ever, returned to his breast and was throbbing loudly. The
whole passage echoed with its beating and Raoul's ears were deafened.
Surely, if his heart continued to make such a noise, they would hear it
inside, they would open the door and the young man would be turned away
in disgrace. What a position for a Chagny! To be caught listening behind a
door! He took his heart in his two hands to make it stop.

The man's voice spoke again: "Are you very tired?"

"Oh, to-night I gave you my soul and I am dead!" Christine replied.

"Your soul is a beautiful thing, child," replied the grave man's voice,
"and I thank you. No emperor ever received so fair a gift. THE ANGELS
WEPT TONIGHT."

Raoul heard nothing after that. Nevertheless, he did not go away, but, as
though he feared lest he should be caught, he returned to his dark corner,
determined to wait for the man to leave the room. At one and the same time,
he had learned what love meant, and hatred. He knew that he loved. He
wanted to know whom he hated. To his great astonishment, the door opened
and Christine Daae appeared, wrapped in furs, with her face hidden in a
lace veil, alone. She closed the door behind her, but Raoul observed that she
did not lock it. She passed him. He did not even follow her with his eyes,
for his eyes were fixed on the door, which did not open again.

When the passage was once more deserted, he crossed it, opened the
door of the dressing-room, went in and shut the door. He found himself in
absolute darkness. The gas had been turned out.

"There is some one here!" said Raoul, with his back against the closed
door, in a quivering voice. "What are you hiding for?"

All was darkness and silence. Raoul heard only the sound of his own
breathing. He quite failed to see that the indiscretion of his conduct was
exceeding all bounds.

"You shan't leave this until I let you!" he exclaimed. "If you don't
answer, you are a coward! But I'll expose you!"

And he struck a match. The blaze lit up the room. There was no one in
the room! Raoul, first turning the key in the door, lit the gas-jets. He went
into the dressing-closet, opened the cupboards, hunted about, felt the walls
with his moist hands. Nothing!

"Look here!" he said, aloud. "Am I going mad?"

He stood for ten minutes listening to the gas flaring in the silence of the
empty room; lover though he was, he did not even think of stealing a ribbon
that would have given him the perfume of the woman he loved. He went
out, not knowing what he was doing nor where he was going. At a given
moment in his wayward progress, an icy draft struck him in the face. He
found himself at the bottom of a staircase, down which, behind him, a
procession of workmen were carrying a sort of stretcher, covered with a
white sheet.

"Which is the way out, please?" he asked of one of the men.

"Straight in front of you, the door is open. But let us pass."

Pointing to the stretcher, he asked mechanically: "What's that?"

The workmen answered:

"'That' is Joseph Buquet, who was found in the third cellar, hanging
between a farm-house and a scene from the ROI DE LAHORE."

He took off his hat, fell back to make room for the procession and went
out.

Chapter III The Mysterious Reason

During this time, the farewell ceremony was taking place. I have already
said that this magnificent function was being given on the occasion of the
retirement of M. Debienne and M. Poligny, who had determined to "die
game," as we say nowadays. They had been assisted in the realization of
their ideal, though melancholy, program by all that counted in the social and
artistic world of Paris. All these people met, after the performance, in the
foyer of the ballet, where Sorelli waited for the arrival of the retiring
managers with a glass of champagne in her hand and a little prepared
speech at the tip of her tongue. Behind her, the members of the Corps de
Ballet, young and old, discussed the events of the day in whispers or
exchanged discreet signals with their friends, a noisy crowd of whom
surrounded the supper-tables arranged along the slanting floor.

A few of the dancers had already changed into ordinary dress; but most
of them wore their skirts of gossamer gauze; and all had thought it the right
thing to put on a special face for the occasion: all, that is, except little
Jammes, whose fifteen summers—happy age!—seemed already to have
forgotten the ghost and the death of Joseph Buquet. She never ceased to
laugh and chatter, to hop about and play practical jokes, until Mm.
Debienne and Poligny appeared on the steps of the foyer, when she was
severely called to order by the impatient Sorelli.

Everybody remarked that the retiring managers looked cheerful, as is the
Paris way. None will ever be a true Parisian who has not learned to wear a
mask of gaiety over his sorrows and one of sadness, boredom or
indifference over his inward joy. You know that one of your friends is in
trouble; do not try to console him: he will tell you that he is already
comforted; but, should he have met with good fortune, be careful how you
congratulate him: he thinks it so natural that he is surprised that you should
speak of it. In Paris, our lives are one masked ball; and the foyer of the
ballet is the last place in which two men so "knowing" as M. Debienne and
M. Poligny would have made the mistake of betraying their grief, however
genuine it might be. And they were already smiling rather too broadly upon
Sorelli, who had begun to recite her speech, when an exclamation from that
little madcap of a Jammes broke the smile of the managers so brutally that
the expression of distress and dismay that lay beneath it became apparent to
all eyes:

"The Opera ghost!"

Jammes yelled these words in a tone of unspeakable terror; and her
finger pointed, among the crowd of dandies, to a face so pallid, so
lugubrious and so ugly, with two such deep black cavities under the
straddling eyebrows, that the death's head in question immediately scored a
huge success.

"The Opera ghost! The Opera ghost!" Everybody laughed and pushed his
neighbor and wanted to offer the Opera ghost a drink, but he was gone. He
had slipped through the crowd; and the others vainly hunted for him, while
two old gentlemen tried to calm little Jammes and while little Giry stood
screaming like a peacock.

Sorelli was furious; she had not been able to finish her speech; the
managers, had kissed her, thanked her and run away as fast as the ghost
himself. No one was surprised at this, for it was known that they were to go
through the same ceremony on the floor above, in the foyer of the singers,
and that finally they were themselves to receive their personal friends, for
the last time, in the great lobby outside the managers' office, where a
regular supper would be served.

Here they found the new managers, M. Armand Moncharmin and M.
Firmin Richard, whom they hardly knew; nevertheless, they were lavish in
protestations of friendship and received a thousand flattering compliments
in reply, so that those of the guests who had feared that they had a rather
tedious evening in store for them at once put on brighter faces. The supper
was almost gay and a particularly clever speech of the representative of the
government, mingling the glories of the past with the successes of the
future, caused the greatest cordiality to prevail.

The retiring managers had already handed over to their successors the
two tiny master-keys which opened all the doors—thousands of doors—of
the Opera house. And those little keys, the object of general curiosity, were
being passed from hand to hand, when the attention of some of the guests
was diverted by their discovery, at the end of the table, of that strange, wan
and fantastic face, with the hollow eyes, which had already appeared in the
foyer of the ballet and been greeted by little Jammes' exclamation:

"The Opera ghost!"

There sat the ghost, as natural as could be, except that he neither ate nor
drank. Those who began by looking at him with a smile ended by turning
away their heads, for the sight of him at once provoked the most funereal
thoughts. No one repeated the joke of the foyer, no one exclaimed:

"There's the Opera ghost!"

He himself did not speak a word and his very neighbors could not have
stated at what precise moment he had sat down between them; but every
one felt that if the dead did ever come and sit at the table of the living, they
could not cut a more ghastly figure. The friends of Firmin Richard and
Armand Moncharmin thought that this lean and skinny guest was an
acquaintance of Debienne's or Poligny's, while Debienne's and Poligny's
friends believed that the cadaverous individual belonged to Firmin Richard
and Armand Moncharmin's party.

The result was that no request was made for an explanation; no
unpleasant remark; no joke in bad taste, which might have offended this
visitor from the tomb. A few of those present who knew the story of the
ghost and the description of him given by the chief scene-shifter—they did
not know of Joseph Buquet's death—thought, in their own minds, that the
man at the end of the table might easily have passed for him; and yet,
according to the story, the ghost had no nose and the person in question had.
But M. Moncharmin declares, in his Memoirs, that the guest's nose was
transparent: "long, thin and transparent" are his exact words. I, for my part,
will add that this might very well apply to a false nose. M. Moncharmin
may have taken for transparency what was only shininess. Everybody
knows that orthopaedic science provides beautiful false noses for those who
have lost their noses naturally or as the result of an operation.

Did the ghost really take a seat at the managers' supper-table that night,
uninvited? And can we be sure that the figure was that of the Opera ghost
himself? Who would venture to assert as much? I mention the incident, not
because I wish for a second to make the reader believe—or even to try to
make him believe—that the ghost was capable of such a sublime piece of
impudence; but because, after all, the thing is impossible.

M. Armand Moncharmin, in chapter eleven of his Memoirs, says:

"When I think of this first evening, I can not separate the secret confided
to us by MM. Debienne and Poligny in their office from the presence at our
supper of that GHOSTLY person whom none of us knew."

What happened was this: Mm. Debienne and Poligny, sitting at the
center of the table, had not seen the man with the death's head. Suddenly he
began to speak.

"The ballet-girls are right," he said. "The death of that poor Buquet is
perhaps not so natural as people think."

Debienne and Poligny gave a start.

"Is Buquet dead?" they cried.

"Yes," replied the man, or the shadow of a man, quietly. "He was found,
this evening, hanging in the third cellar, between a farm-house and a scene
from the Roi de Lahore."

The two managers, or rather ex-managers, at once rose and stared
strangely at the speaker. They were more excited than they need have been,
that is to say, more excited than any one need be by the announcement of
the suicide of a chief scene-shifter. They looked at each other. They had
both turned whiter than the table-cloth. At last, Debienne made a sign to
Mm. Richard and Moncharmin; Poligny muttered a few words of excuse to
the guests; and all four went into the managers' office. I leave M.
Moncharmin to complete the story. In his Memoirs, he says:

"Mm. Debienne and Poligny seemed to grow more and more excited,
and they appeared to have something very difficult to tell us. First, they
asked us if we knew the man, sitting at the end of the table, who had told
them of the death of Joseph Buquet; and, when we answered in the
negative, they looked still more concerned. They took the master-keys from
our hands, stared at them for a moment and advised us to have new locks
made, with the greatest secrecy, for the rooms, closets and presses that we
might wish to have hermetically closed. They said this so funnily that we

began to laugh and to ask if there were thieves at the Opera. They replied
that there was something worse, which was the GHOST. We began to laugh
again, feeling sure that they were indulging in some joke that was intended
to crown our little entertainment. Then, at their request, we became
'serious,' resolving to humor them and to enter into the spirit of the game.
They told us that they never would have spoken to us of the ghost, if they
had not received formal orders from the ghost himself to ask us to be
pleasant to him and to grant any request that he might make. However, in
their relief at leaving a domain where that tyrannical shade held sway, they
had hesitated until the last moment to tell us this curious story, which our
skeptical minds were certainly not prepared to entertain. But the
announcement of the death of Joseph Buquet had served them as a brutal
reminder that, whenever they had disregarded the ghost's wishes, some
fantastic or disastrous event had brought them to a sense of their
dependence.

"During these unexpected utterances made in a tone of the most secret
and important confidence, I looked at Richard. Richard, in his student days,
had acquired a great reputation for practical joking, and he seemed to relish
the dish which was being served up to him in his turn. He did not miss a
morsel of it, though the seasoning was a little gruesome because of the
death of Buquet. He nodded his head sadly, while the others spoke, and his
features assumed the air of a man who bitterly regretted having taken over
the Opera, now that he knew that there was a ghost mixed up in the
business. I could think of nothing better than to give him a servile imitation
of this attitude of despair. However, in spite of all our efforts, we could not,
at the finish, help bursting out laughing in the faces of MM. Debienne and
Poligny, who, seeing us pass straight from the gloomiest state of mind to
one of the most insolent merriment, acted as though they thought that we
had gone mad.

"The joke became a little tedious; and Richard asked half-seriously and
half in jest:

"'But, after all, what does this ghost of yours want?'

"M. Poligny went to his desk and returned with a copy of the
memorandum-book. The memorandum-book begins with the well-known

words saying that 'the management of the Opera shall give to the
performance of the National Academy of Music the splendor that becomes
the first lyric stage in France' and ends with Clause 98, which says that the
privilege can be withdrawn if the manager infringes the conditions
stipulated in the memorandum-book. This is followed by the conditions,
which are four in number.

"The copy produced by M. Poligny was written in black ink and exactly
similar to that in our possession, except that, at the end, it contained a
paragraph in red ink and in a queer, labored handwriting, as though it had
been produced by dipping the heads of matches into the ink, the writing of a
child that has never got beyond the down-strokes and has not learned to join
its letters. This paragraph ran, word for word, as follows:

"'5. Or if the manager, in any month, delay for more than a fortnight the
payment of the allowance which he shall make to the Opera ghost, an
allowance of twenty thousand francs a month, say two hundred and forty
thousand francs a year.'

"M. Poligny pointed with a hesitating finger to this last clause, which we
certainly did not expect.

"'Is this all? Does he not want anything else?' asked Richard, with the
greatest coolness.

"'Yes, he does,' replied Poligny.

"And he turned over the pages of the memorandum-book until he came
to the clause specifying the days on which certain private boxes were to be
reserved for the free use of the president of the republic, the ministers and
so on. At the end of this clause, a line had been added, also in red ink:

"'Box Five on the grand tier shall be placed at the disposal of the Opera
ghost for every performance.'

"When we saw this, there was nothing else for us to do but to rise from
our chairs, shake our two predecessors warmly by the hand and
congratulate them on thinking of this charming little joke, which proved

that the old French sense of humor was never likely to become extinct.
Richard added that he now understood why MM. Debienne and Poligny
were retiring from the management of the National Academy of Music.
Business was impossible with so unreasonable a ghost.

"'Certainly, two hundred and forty thousand francs are not be picked up
for the asking,' said M. Poligny, without moving a muscle of his face. 'And
have you considered what the loss over Box Five meant to us? We did not
sell it once; and not only that, but we had to return the subscription: why,
it's awful! We really can't work to keep ghosts! We prefer to go away!'

"'Yes,' echoed M. Debienne, 'we prefer to go away. Let us go.'"

"And he stood up. Richard said: 'But, after all all, it seems to me that you
were much too kind to the ghost. If I had such a troublesome ghost as that, I
should not hesitate to have him arrested.'

"'But how? Where?' they cried, in chorus. 'We have never seen him!'

"'But when he comes to his box?'

"'WE HAVE NEVER SEEN HIM IN HIS BOX.'

"'Then sell it.'

"'Sell the Opera ghost's box! Well, gentlemen, try it.'

"Thereupon we all four left the office. Richard and I had 'never laughed
so much in our lives.'"

Chapter IV Box Five

Armand Moncharmin wrote such voluminous Memoirs during the fairly
long period of his co-management that we may well ask if he ever found

time to attend to the affairs of the Opera otherwise than by telling what
went on there. M. Moncharmin did not know a note of music, but he called
the minister of education and fine arts by his Christian name, had dabbled a
little in society journalism and enjoyed a considerable private income.
Lastly, he was a charming fellow and showed that he was not lacking in
intelligence, for, as soon as he made up his mind to be a sleeping partner in
the Opera, he selected the best possible active manager and went straight to
Firmin Richard.

Firmin Richard was a very distinguished composer, who had published a
number of successful pieces of all kinds and who liked nearly every form of
music and every sort of musician. Clearly, therefore, it was the duty of
every sort of musician to like M. Firmin Richard. The only things to be said
against him were that he was rather masterful in his ways and endowed with
a very hasty temper.

The first few days which the partners spent at the Opera were given over
to the delight of finding themselves the head of so magnificent an
enterprise; and they had forgotten all about that curious, fantastic story of
the ghost, when an incident occurred that proved to them that the joke—if
joke it were—was not over. M. Firmin Richard reached his office that
morning at eleven o'clock. His secretary, M. Remy, showed him half a
dozen letters which he had not opened because they were marked "private."
One of the letters had at once attracted Richard's attention not only because
the envelope was addressed in red ink, but because he seemed to have seen
the writing before. He soon remembered that it was the red handwriting in
which the memorandum-book had been so curiously completed. He
recognized the clumsy childish hand. He opened the letter and read:

DEAR MR. MANAGER:

I am sorry to have to trouble you at a time when you must be so very
busy, renewing important engagements, signing fresh ones and generally
displaying your excellent taste. I know what you have done for Carlotta,
Sorelli and little Jammes and for a few others whose admirable qualities of
talent or genius you have suspected.

Of course, when I use these words, I do not mean to apply them to La
Carlotta, who sings like a squirt and who ought never to have been allowed
to leave the Ambassadeurs and the Cafe Jacquin; nor to La Sorelli, who
owes her success mainly to the coach-builders; nor to little Jammes, who
dances like a calf in a field. And I am not speaking of Christine Daae either,
though her genius is certain, whereas your jealousy prevents her from
creating any important part. When all is said, you are free to conduct your
little business as you think best, are you not?

All the same, I should like to take advantage of the fact that you have not
yet turned Christine Daae out of doors by hearing her this evening in the
part of Siebel, as that of Margarita has been forbidden her since her triumph
of the other evening; and I will ask you not to dispose of my box to-day nor
on the FOLLOWING DAYS, for I can not end this letter without telling you
how disagreeably surprised I have been once or twice, to hear, on arriving at
the Opera, that my box had been sold, at the box-office, by your orders.

I did not protest, first, because I dislike scandal, and, second, because I
thought that your predecessors, MM. Debienne and Poligny, who were
always charming to me, had neglected, before leaving, to mention my little
fads to you. I have now received a reply from those gentlemen to my letter
asking for an explanation, and this reply proves that you know all about my
Memorandum-Book and, consequently, that you are treating me with
outrageous contempt. IF YOU WISH TO LIVE IN PEACE, YOU MUST
NOT BEGIN BY TAKING AWAY MY PRIVATE BOX.

Believe me to be, dear Mr. Manager, without prejudice to these little
observations,

Your Most Humble and Obedient Servant,
OPERA GHOST.

The letter was accompanied by a cutting from the agony-column of the
Revue Theatrale, which ran:

O. G.—There is no excuse for R. and M. We told them and left your
memorandum-book in their hands. Kind regards.

M. Firmin Richard had hardly finished reading this letter when M.
Armand Moncharmin entered, carrying one exactly similar. They looked at
each other and burst out laughing.

"They are keeping up the joke," said M. Richard, "but I don't call it
funny."

"What does it all mean?" asked M. Moncharmin. "Do they imagine that,
because they have been managers of the Opera, we are going to let them
have a box for an indefinite period?"

"I am not in the mood to let myself be laughed at long," said Firmin
Richard.

"It's harmless enough," observed Armand Moncharmin. "What is it they
really want? A box for to-night?"

M. Firmin Richard told his secretary to send Box Five on the grand tier
to Mm. Debienne and Poligny, if it was not sold. It was not. It was sent off
to them. Debienne lived at the corner of the Rue Scribe and the Boulevard
des Capucines; Poligny, in the Rue Auber. O. Ghost's two letters had been
posted at the Boulevard des Capucines post-office, as Moncharmin
remarked after examining the envelopes.

"You see!" said Richard.

They shrugged their shoulders and regretted that two men of that age
should amuse themselves with such childish tricks.

"They might have been civil, for all that!" said Moncharmin. "Did you
notice how they treat us with regard to Carlotta, Sorelli and Little Jammes?"

"Why, my dear fellow, these two are mad with jealousy! To think that
they went to the expense of, an advertisement in the Revue Theatrale! Have
they nothing better to do?"

"By the way," said Moncharmin, "they seem to be greatly interested in
that little Christine Daae!"

"You know as well as I do that she has the reputation of being quite
good," said Richard.

"Reputations are easily obtained," replied Moncharmin. "Haven't I a
reputation for knowing all about music? And I don't know one key from
another."

"Don't be afraid: you never had that reputation," Richard declared.

Thereupon he ordered the artists to be shown in, who, for the last two
hours, had been walking up and down outside the door behind which fame
and fortune—or dismissal—awaited them.

The whole day was spent in discussing, negotiating, signing or
cancelling contracts; and the two overworked managers went to bed early,
without so much as casting a glance at Box Five to see whether M.
Debienne and M. Poligny were enjoying the performance.

Next morning, the managers received a card of thanks from the ghost:

DEAR, MR. MANAGER:

Thanks. Charming evening. Daae exquisite. Choruses want waking up.
Carlotta a splendid commonplace instrument. Will write you soon for the
240,000 francs, or 233,424 fr. 70 c., to be correct. Mm. Debienne and
Poligny have sent me the 6,575 fr. 30 c. representing the first ten days of
my allowance for the current year; their privileges finished on the evening
of the tenth inst.

Kind regards. O. G.

On the other hand, there was a letter from Mm. Debienne and Poligny:

GENTLEMEN:

We are much obliged for your kind thought of us, but you will easily
understand that the prospect of again hearing Faust, pleasant though it is to
ex-managers of the Opera, can not make us forget that we have no right to
occupy Box Five on the grand tier, which is the exclusive property of HIM

of whom we spoke to you when we went through the memorandum-book
with you for the last time. See Clause 98, final paragraph.

Accept, gentlemen, etc.

"Oh, those fellows are beginning to annoy me!" shouted Firmin Richard,
snatching up the letter.

And that evening Box Five was sold.

The next morning, Mm. Richard and Moncharmin, on reaching their
office, found an inspector's report relating to an incident that had happened,
the night before, in Box Five. I give the essential part of the report:

I was obliged to call in a municipal guard twice, this evening, to clear
Box Five on the grand tier, once at the beginning and once in the middle of
the second act. The occupants, who arrived as the curtain rose on the second
act, created a regular scandal by their laughter and their ridiculous
observations. There were cries of "Hush!" all around them and the whole
house was beginning to protest, when the box-keeper came to fetch me. I
entered the box and said what I thought necessary. The people did not seem
to me to be in their right mind; and they made stupid remarks. I said that, if
the noise was repeated, I should be compelled to clear the box. The moment
I left, I heard the laughing again, with fresh protests from the house. I
returned with a municipal guard, who turned them out. They protested, still
laughing, saying they would not go unless they had their money back. At
last, they became quiet and I allowed them to enter the box again. The
laughter at once recommenced; and, this time, I had them turned out
definitely.

"Send for the inspector," said Richard to his secretary, who had already
read the report and marked it with blue pencil.

M. Remy, the secretary, had foreseen the order and called the inspector
at once.

"Tell us what happened," said Richard bluntly.

The inspector began to splutter and referred to the report.

"Well, but what were those people laughing at?" asked Moncharmin.

"They must have been dining, sir, and seemed more inclined to lark
about than to listen to good music. The moment they entered the box, they
came out again and called the box-keeper, who asked them what they
wanted. They said, 'Look in the box: there's no one there, is there?' 'No,'
said the woman. 'Well,' said they, 'when we went in, we heard a voice
saying THAT THE BOX WAS TAKEN!'"

M. Moncharmin could not help smiling as he looked at M. Richard; but
M. Richard did not smile. He himself had done too much in that way in his
time not to recognize, in the inspector's story, all the marks of one of those
practical jokes which begin by amusing and end by enraging the victims.
The inspector, to curry favor with M. Moncharmin, who was smiling,
thought it best to give a smile too. A most unfortunate smile! M. Richard
glared at his subordinate, who thenceforth made it his business to display a
face of utter consternation.

"However, when the people arrived," roared Richard, "there was no one
in the box, was there?"

"Not a soul, sir, not a soul! Nor in the box on the right, nor in the box on
the left: not a soul, sir, I swear! The box-keeper told it me often enough,
which proves that it was all a joke."

"Oh, you agree, do you?" said Richard. "You agree! It's a joke! And you
think it funny, no doubt?"

"I think it in very bad taste, sir."

"And what did the box-keeper say?"

"Oh, she just said that it was the Opera ghost. That's all she said!"

And the inspector grinned. But he soon found that he had made a
mistake in grinning, for the words had no sooner left his mouth than M.

Richard, from gloomy, became furious.

"Send for the box-keeper!" he shouted. "Send for her! This minute! This
minute! And bring her in to me here! And turn all those people out!"

The inspector tried to protest, but Richard closed his mouth with an
angry order to hold his tongue. Then, when the wretched man's lips seemed
shut for ever, the manager commanded him to open them once more.

"Who is this 'Opera ghost?'" he snarled.

But the inspector was by this time incapable of speaking a word. He
managed to convey, by a despairing gesture, that he knew nothing about it,
or rather that he did not wish to know.

"Have you ever seen him, have you seen the Opera ghost?"

The inspector, by means of a vigorous shake of the head, denied ever
having seen the ghost in question.

"Very well!" said M. Richard coldly.

The inspector's eyes started out of his head, as though to ask why the
manager had uttered that ominous "Very well!"

"Because I'm going to settle the account of any one who has not seen
him!" explained the manager. "As he seems to be everywhere, I can't have
people telling me that they see him nowhere. I like people to work for me
when I employ them!"

Having said this, M. Richard paid no attention to the inspector and
discussed various matters of business with his acting-manager, who had
entered the room meanwhile. The inspector thought he could go and was
gently—oh, so gently!—sidling toward the door, when M. Richard nailed
the man to the floor with a thundering:

"Stay where you are!"

M. Remy had sent for the box-keeper to the Rue de Provence, close to
the Opera, where she was engaged as a porteress. She soon made her
appearance.

"What's your name?"

"Mme. Giry. You know me well enough, sir; I'm the mother of little Giry,
little Meg, what!"

This was said in so rough and solemn a tone that, for a moment, M.
Richard was impressed. He looked at Mme. Giry, in her faded shawl, her
worn shoes, her old taffeta dress and dingy bonnet. It was quite evident
from the manager's attitude, that he either did not know or could not
remember having met Mme. Giry, nor even little Giry, nor even "little
Meg!" But Mme. Giry's pride was so great that the celebrated box-keeper
imagined that everybody knew her.

"Never heard of her!" the manager declared. "But that's no reason, Mme.
Giry, why I shouldn't ask you what happened last night to make you and the
inspector call in a municipal guard."

"I was just wanting to see you, sir, and talk to you about it, so that you
mightn't have the same unpleasantness as M. Debienne and M. Poligny.
They wouldn't listen to me either, at first."

"I'm not asking you about all that. I'm asking what happened last night."

Mme. Giry turned purple with indignation. Never had she been spoken
to like that. She rose as though to go, gathering up the folds of her skirt and
waving the feathers of her dingy bonnet with dignity, but, changing her
mind, she sat down again and said, in a haughty voice:

"I'll tell you what happened. The ghost was annoyed again!"

Thereupon, as M. Richard was on the point of bursting out, M.
Moncharmin interfered and conducted the interrogatory, whence it appeared
that Mme. Giry thought it quite natural that a voice should be heard to say
that a box was taken, when there was nobody in the box. She was unable to

explain this phenomenon, which was not new to her, except by the
intervention of the ghost. Nobody could see the ghost in his box, but
everybody could hear him. She had often heard him; and they could believe
her, for she always spoke the truth. They could ask M. Debienne and M.
Poligny, and anybody who knew her; and also M. Isidore Saack, who had
had a leg broken by the ghost!

"Indeed!" said Moncharmin, interrupting her. "Did the ghost break poor
Isidore Saack's leg?"

Mme. Giry opened her eyes with astonishment at such ignorance.
However, she consented to enlighten those two poor innocents. The thing
had happened in M. Debienne and M. Poligny's time, also in Box Five and
also during a performance of FAUST. Mme. Giry coughed, cleared her
throat—it sounded as though she were preparing to sing the whole of
Gounod's score—and began:

"It was like this, sir. That night, M. Maniera and his lady, the jewelers in
the Rue Mogador, were sitting in the front of the box, with their great
friend, M. Isidore Saack, sitting behind Mme. Maniera. Mephistopheles was
singing"—Mme. Giry here burst into song herself—"'Catarina, while you
play at sleeping,' and then M. Maniera heard a voice in his right ear (his
wife was on his left) saying, 'Ha, ha! Julie's not playing at sleeping!' His
wife happened to be called Julie. So. M. Maniera turns to the right to see
who was talking to him like that. Nobody there! He rubs his ear and asks
himself, if he's dreaming. Then Mephistopheles went on with his serenade...
But, perhaps I'm boring you gentlemen?"

"No, no, go on."

"You are too good, gentlemen," with a smirk. "Well, then,
Mephistopheles went on with his serenade"—Mme. Giry, burst into song
again—"'Saint, unclose thy portals holy and accord the bliss, to a mortal
bending lowly, of a pardon-kiss.' And then M. Maniera again hears the
voice in his right ear, saying, this time, 'Ha, ha! Julie wouldn't mind
according a kiss to Isidore!' Then he turns round again, but, this time, to the
left; and what do you think he sees? Isidore, who had taken his lady's hand
and was covering it with kisses through the little round place in the glove—

like this, gentlemen"—rapturously kissing the bit of palm left bare in the
middle of her thread gloves. "Then they had a lively time between them!
Bang! Bang! M. Maniera, who was big and strong, like you, M. Richard,
gave two blows to M. Isidore Saack, who was small and weak like M.
Moncharmin, saving his presence. There was a great uproar. People in the
house shouted, 'That will do! Stop them! He'll kill him!' Then, at last, M.
Isidore Saack managed to run away."

"Then the ghost had not broken his leg?" asked M. Moncharmin, a little
vexed that his figure had made so little impression on Mme. Giry.

"He did break it for him, sir," replied Mme. Giry haughtily. "He broke it
for him on the grand staircase, which he ran down too fast, sir, and it will be
long before the poor gentleman will be able to go up it again!"

"Did the ghost tell you what he said in M. Maniera's right ear?" asked M.
Moncharmin, with a gravity which he thought exceedingly humorous.

"No, sir, it was M. Maniera himself. So——"

"But you have spoken to the ghost, my good lady?"

"As I'm speaking to you now, my good sir!" Mme. Giry replied.

"And, when the ghost speaks to you, what does he say?"

"Well, he tells me to bring him a footstool!"

This time, Richard burst out laughing, as did Moncharmin and Remy, the
secretary. Only the inspector, warned by experience, was careful not to
laugh, while Mme. Giry ventured to adopt an attitude that was positively
threatening.

"Instead of laughing," she cried indignantly, "you'd do better to do as M.
Poligny did, who found out for himself."

"Found out about what?" asked Moncharmin, who had never been so
much amused in his life.

"About the ghost, of course! ... Look here ..."

She suddenly calmed herself, feeling that this was a solemn moment in
her life:

"LOOK HERE," she repeated. "They were playing La Juive. M. Poligny
thought he would watch the performance from the ghost's box... Well, when
Leopold cries, 'Let us fly!'—you know—and Eleazer stops them and says,
'Whither go ye?' ... well, M. Poligny—I was watching him from the back of
the next box, which was empty—M. Poligny got up and walked out quite
stiffly, like a statue, and before I had time to ask him, 'Whither go ye?' like
Eleazer, he was down the staircase, but without breaking his leg.

"Still, that doesn't let us know how the Opera ghost came to ask you for
a footstool," insisted M. Moncharmin.

"Well, from that evening, no one tried to take the ghost's private box
from him. The manager gave orders that he was to have it at each
performance. And, whenever he came, he asked me for a footstool."

"Tut, tut! A ghost asking for a footstool! Then this ghost of yours is a
woman?"

"No, the ghost is a man."

"How do you know?"

"He has a man's voice, oh, such a lovely man's voice! This is what
happens: When he comes to the opera, it's usually in the middle of the first
act. He gives three little taps on the door of Box Five. The first time I heard
those three taps, when I knew there was no one in the box, you can think
how puzzled I was! I opened the door, listened, looked; nobody! And then I
heard a voice say, 'Mme. Jules' my poor husband's name was Jules—'a
footstool, please.' Saving your presence, gentlemen, it made me feel all-
overish like. But the voice went on, 'Don't be frightened, Mme. Jules, I'm
the Opera ghost!' And the voice was so soft and kind that I hardly felt
frightened. THE VOICE WAS SITTING IN THE CORNER CHAIR, ON
THE RIGHT, IN THE FRONT ROW."

"Was there any one in the box on the right of Box Five?" asked
Moncharmin.

"No; Box Seven, and Box Three, the one on the left, were both empty.
The curtain had only just gone up."

"And what did you do?"

"Well, I brought the footstool. Of course, it wasn't for himself he wanted
it, but for his lady! But I never heard her nor saw her."

"Eh? What? So now the ghost is married!" The eyes of the two managers
traveled from Mme. Giry to the inspector, who, standing behind the box-
keeper, was waving his arms to attract their attention. He tapped his
forehead with a distressful forefinger, to convey his opinion that the widow
Jules Giry was most certainly mad, a piece of pantomime which confirmed
M. Richard in his determination to get rid of an inspector who kept a lunatic
in his service. Meanwhile, the worthy lady went on about her ghost, now
painting his generosity:

"At the end of the performance, he always gives me two francs,
sometimes five, sometimes even ten, when he has been many days without
coming. Only, since people have begun to annoy him again, he gives me
nothing at all.

"Excuse me, my good woman," said Moncharmin, while Mme. Giry
tossed the feathers in her dingy hat at this persistent familiarity, "excuse me,
how does the ghost manage to give you your two francs?"

"Why, he leaves them on the little shelf in the box, of course. I find them
with the program, which I always give him. Some evenings, I find flowers
in the box, a rose that must have dropped from his lady's bodice ... for he
brings a lady with him sometimes; one day, they left a fan behind them."

"Oh, the ghost left a fan, did he? And what did you do with it?"

"Well, I brought it back to the box next night."

Here the inspector's voice was raised.

"You've broken the rules; I shall have to fine you, Mme. Giry."

"Hold your tongue, you fool!" muttered M. Firmin Richard.

"You brought back the fan. And then?"

"Well, then, they took it away with them, sir; it was not there at the end
of the performance; and in its place they left me a box of English sweets,
which I'm very fond of. That's one of the ghost's pretty thoughts."

"That will do, Mme. Giry. You can go."

When Mme. Giry had bowed herself out, with the dignity that never
deserted her, the manager told the inspector that they had decided to
dispense with that old madwoman's services; and, when he had gone in his
turn, they instructed the acting-manager to make up the inspector's
accounts. Left alone, the managers told each other of the idea which they
both had in mind, which was that they should look into that little matter of
Box Five themselves.

Chapter V The Enchanted Violin

Christine Daae, owing to intrigues to which I will return later, did not
immediately continue her triumph at the Opera. After the famous gala night,
she sang once at the Duchess de Zurich's; but this was the last occasion on
which she was heard in private. She refused, without plausible excuse, to
appear at a charity concert to which she had promised her assistance. She
acted throughout as though she were no longer the mistress of her own
destiny and as though she feared a fresh triumph.

She knew that the Comte de Chagny, to please his brother, had done his
best on her behalf with M. Richard; and she wrote to thank him and also to

ask him to cease speaking in her favor. Her reason for this curious attitude
was never known. Some pretended that it was due to overweening pride;
others spoke of her heavenly modesty. But people on the stage are not so
modest as all that; and I think that I shall not be far from the truth if I
ascribe her action simply to fear. Yes, I believe that Christine Daae was
frightened by what had happened to her. I have a letter of Christine's (it
forms part of the Persian's collection), relating to this period, which
suggests a feeling of absolute dismay:

"I don't know myself when I sing," writes the poor child.

She showed herself nowhere; and the Vicomte de Chagny tried in vain to
meet her. He wrote to her, asking to call upon her, but despaired of
receiving a reply when, one morning, she sent him the following note:

MONSIEUR:

I have not forgotten the little boy who went into the sea to rescue my
scarf. I feel that I must write to you to-day, when I am going to Perros, in
fulfilment of a sacred duty. To-morrow is the anniversary of the death of my
poor father, whom you knew and who was very fond of you. He is buried
there, with his violin, in the graveyard of the little church, at the bottom of
the slope where we used to play as children, beside the road where, when
we were a little bigger, we said good-by for the last time.

The Vicomte de Chagny hurriedly consulted a railway guide, dressed as
quickly as he could, wrote a few lines for his valet to take to his brother and
jumped into a cab which brought him to the Gare Montparnasse just in time
to miss the morning train. He spent a dismal day in town and did not
recover his spirits until the evening, when he was seated in his compartment
in the Brittany express. He read Christine's note over and over again,
smelling its perfume, recalling the sweet pictures of his childhood, and
spent the rest of that tedious night journey in feverish dreams that began
and ended with Christine Daae. Day was breaking when he alighted at
Lannion. He hurried to the diligence for Perros-Guirec. He was the only
passenger. He questioned the driver and learned that, on the evening of the
previous day, a young lady who looked like a Parisian had gone to Perros
and put up at the inn known as the Setting Sun.

The nearer he drew to her, the more fondly he remembered the story of
the little Swedish singer. Most of the details are still unknown to the public.

There was once, in a little market-town not far from Upsala, a peasant
who lived there with his family, digging the earth during the week and
singing in the choir on Sundays. This peasant had a little daughter to whom
he taught the musical alphabet before she knew how to read. Daae's father
was a great musician, perhaps without knowing it. Not a fiddler throughout
the length and breadth of Scandinavia played as he did. His reputation was
widespread and he was always invited to set the couples dancing at
weddings and other festivals. His wife died when Christine was entering
upon her sixth year. Then the father, who cared only for his daughter and
his music, sold his patch of ground and went to Upsala in search of fame
and fortune. He found nothing but poverty.

He returned to the country, wandering from fair to fair, strumming his
Scandinavian melodies, while his child, who never left his side, listened to
him in ecstasy or sang to his playing. One day, at Ljimby Fair, Professor
Valerius heard them and took them to Gothenburg. He maintained that the
father was the first violinist in the world and that the daughter had the
making of a great artist. Her education and instruction were provided for.
She made rapid progress and charmed everybody with her prettiness, her
grace of manner and her genuine eagerness to please.

When Valerius and his wife went to settle in France, they took Daae and
Christine with them. "Mamma" Valerius treated Christine as her daughter.
As for Daae, he began to pine away with homesickness. He never went out
of doors in Paris, but lived in a sort of dream which he kept up with his
violin. For hours at a time, he remained locked up in his bedroom with his
daughter, fiddling and singing, very, very softly. Sometimes Mamma
Valerius would come and listen behind the door, wipe away a tear and go
down-stairs again on tiptoe, sighing for her Scandinavian skies.

Daae seemed not to recover his strength until the summer, when the
whole family went to stay at Perros-Guirec, in a far-away corner of
Brittany, where the sea was of the same color as in his own country. Often
he would play his saddest tunes on the beach and pretend that the sea
stopped its roaring to listen to them. And then he induced Mamma Valerius

to indulge a queer whim of his. At the time of the "pardons," or Breton
pilgrimages, the village festival and dances, he went off with his fiddle, as
in the old days, and was allowed to take his daughter with him for a week.
They gave the smallest hamlets music to last them for a year and slept at
night in a barn, refusing a bed at the inn, lying close together on the straw,
as when they were so poor in Sweden. At the same time, they were very
neatly dressed, made no collection, refused the halfpence offered them; and
the people around could not understand the conduct of this rustic fiddler,
who tramped the roads with that pretty child who sang like an angel from
Heaven. They followed them from village to village.

One day, a little boy, who was out with his governess, made her take a
longer walk than he intended, for he could not tear himself from the little
girl whose pure, sweet voice seemed to bind him to her. They came to the
shore of an inlet which is still called Trestraou, but which now, I believe,
harbors a casino or something of the sort. At that time, there was nothing
but sky and sea and a stretch of golden beach. Only, there was also a high
wind, which blew Christine's scarf out to sea. Christine gave a cry and put
out her arms, but the scarf was already far on the waves. Then she heard a
voice say:

"It's all right, I'll go and fetch your scarf out of the sea."

And she saw a little boy running fast, in spite of the outcries and the
indignant protests of a worthy lady in black. The little boy ran into the sea,
dressed as he was, and brought her back her scarf. Boy and scarf were both
soaked through. The lady in black made a great fuss, but Christine laughed
merrily and kissed the little boy, who was none other than the Vicomte
Raoul de Chagny, staying at Lannion with his aunt.

During the season, they saw each other and played together almost every
day. At the aunt's request, seconded by Professor Valerius, Daae consented
to give the young viscount some violin lessons. In this way, Raoul learned
to love the same airs that had charmed Christine's childhood. They also both
had the same calm and dreamy little cast of mind. They delighted in stories,
in old Breton legends; and their favorite sport was to go and ask for them at
the cottage-doors, like beggars:

"Ma'am ..." or, "Kind gentleman ... have you a little story to tell us,
please?"

And it seldom happened that they did not have one "given" them; for
nearly every old Breton grandame has, at least once in her life, seen the
"korrigans" dance by moonlight on the heather.

But their great treat was, in the twilight, in the great silence of the
evening, after the sun had set in the sea, when Daae came and sat down by
them on the roadside and, in a low voice, as though fearing lest he should
frighten the ghosts whom he evoked, told them the legends of the land of
the North. And, the moment he stopped, the children would ask for more.

There was one story that began:

"A king sat in a little boat on one of those deep, still lakes that open like
a bright eye in the midst of the Norwegian mountains ..."

And another:

"Little Lotte thought of everything and nothing. Her hair was golden as
the sun's rays and her soul as clear and blue as her eyes. She wheedled her
mother, was kind to her doll, took great care of her frock and her little red
shoes and her fiddle, but most of all loved, when she went to sleep, to hear
the Angel of Music."

While the old man told this story, Raoul looked at Christine's blue eyes
and golden hair; and Christine thought that Lotte was very lucky to hear the
Angel of Music when she went to sleep. The Angel of Music played a part
in all Daddy Daae's tales; and he maintained that every great musician,
every great artist received a visit from the Angel at least once in his life.
Sometimes the Angel leans over their cradle, as happened to Lotte, and that
is how there are little prodigies who play the fiddle at six better than men at
fifty, which, you must admit, is very wonderful. Sometimes, the Angel
comes much later, because the children are naughty and won't learn their
lessons or practise their scales. And, sometimes, he does not come at all,
because the children have a bad heart or a bad conscience.

No one ever sees the Angel; but he is heard by those who are meant to
hear him. He often comes when they least expect him, when they are sad
and disheartened. Then their ears suddenly perceive celestial harmonies, a
divine voice, which they remember all their lives. Persons who are visited
by the Angel quiver with a thrill unknown to the rest of mankind. And they
can not touch an instrument, or open their mouths to sing, without
producing sounds that put all other human sounds to shame. Then people
who do not know that the Angel has visited those persons say that they have
genius.

Little Christine asked her father if he had heard the Angel of Music. But
Daddy Daae shook his head sadly; and then his eyes lit up, as he said:

"You will hear him one day, my child! When I am in Heaven, I will send
him to you!"

Daddy was beginning to cough at that time.

Three years later, Raoul and Christine met again at Perros. Professor
Valerius was dead, but his widow remained in France with Daddy Daae and
his daughter, who continued to play the violin and sing, wrapping in their
dream of harmony their kind patroness, who seemed henceforth to live on
music alone. The young man, as he now was, had come to Perros on the
chance of finding them and went straight to the house in which they used to
stay. He first saw the old man; and then Christine entered, carrying the tea-
tray. She flushed at the sight of Raoul, who went up to her and kissed her.
She asked him a few questions, performed her duties as hostess prettily,
took up the tray again and left the room. Then she ran into the garden and
took refuge on a bench, a prey to feelings that stirred her young heart for
the first time. Raoul followed her and they talked till the evening, very
shyly. They were quite changed, cautious as two diplomatists, and told each
other things that had nothing to do with their budding sentiments. When
they took leave of each other by the roadside, Raoul, pressing a kiss on
Christine's trembling hand, said:

"Mademoiselle, I shall never forget you!"

And he went away regretting his words, for he knew that Christine could
not be the wife of the Vicomte de Chagny.

As for Christine, she tried not to think of him and devoted herself wholly
to her art. She made wonderful progress and those who heard her
prophesied that she would be the greatest singer in the world. Meanwhile,
the father died; and, suddenly, she seemed to have lost, with him, her voice,
her soul and her genius. She retained just, but only just, enough of this to
enter the CONSERVATOIRE, where she did not distinguish herself at all,
attending the classes without enthusiasm and taking a prize only to please
old Mamma Valerius, with whom she continued to live.

The first time that Raoul saw Christine at the Opera, he was charmed by
the girl's beauty and by the sweet images of the past which it evoked, but
was rather surprised at the negative side of her art. He returned to listen to
her. He followed her in the wings. He waited for her behind a Jacob's
ladder. He tried to attract her attention. More than once, he walked after her
to the door of her box, but she did not see him. She seemed, for that matter,
to see nobody. She was all indifference. Raoul suffered, for she was very
beautiful and he was shy and dared not confess his love, even to himself.
And then came the lightning-flash of the gala performance: the heavens torn
asunder and an angel's voice heard upon earth for the delight of mankind
and the utter capture of his heart.

And then ... and then there was that man's voice behind the door—"You
must love me!"—and no one in the room...

Why did she laugh when he reminded her of the incident of the scarf?
Why did she not recognize him? And why had she written to him? ...

Perros was reached at last. Raoul walked into the smoky sitting-room of
the Setting Sun and at once saw Christine standing before him, smiling and
showing no astonishment.

"So you have come," she said. "I felt that I should find you here, when I
came back from mass. Some one told me so, at the church."

"Who?" asked Raoul, taking her little hand in his.

"Why, my poor father, who is dead."

There was a silence; and then Raoul asked:

"Did your father tell you that I love you, Christine, and that I can not live
without you?"

Christine blushed to the eyes and turned away her head. In a trembling
voice, she said:

"Me? You are dreaming, my friend!"

And she burst out laughing, to put herself in countenance.

"Don't laugh, Christine; I am quite serious," Raoul answered.

And she replied gravely: "I did not make you come to tell me such things
as that."

"You 'made me come,' Christine; you knew that your letter would not
leave me indignant and that I should hasten to Perros. How can you have
thought that, if you did not think I loved you?"

"I thought you would remember our games here, as children, in which
my father so often joined. I really don't know what I thought... Perhaps I
was wrong to write to you ... This anniversary and your sudden appearance
in my room at the Opera, the other evening, reminded me of the time long
past and made me write to you as the little girl that I then was..."

There was something in Christine's attitude that seemed to Raoul not
natural. He did not feel any hostility in her; far from it: the distressed
affection shining in her eyes told him that. But why was this affection
distressed? That was what he wished to know and what was irritating him.

"When you saw me in your dressing-room, was that the first time you
noticed me, Christine?"

She was incapable of lying.

"No," she said, "I had seen you several times in your brother's box. And
also on the stage."

"I thought so!" said Raoul, compressing his lips. "But then why, when
you saw me in your room, at your feet, reminding you that I had rescued
your scarf from the sea, why did you answer as though you did not know
me and also why did you laugh?"

The tone of these questions was so rough that Christine stared at Raoul
without replying. The young man himself was aghast at the sudden quarrel
which he had dared to raise at the very moment when he had resolved to
speak words of gentleness, love and submission to Christine. A husband, a
lover with all rights, would talk no differently to a wife, a mistress who had
offended him. But he had gone too far and saw no other way out of the
ridiculous position than to behave odiously.

"You don't answer!" he said angrily and unhappily. "Well, I will answer
for you. It was because there was some one in the room who was in your
way, Christine, some one that you did not wish to know that you could be
interested in any one else!"

"If any one was in my way, my friend," Christine broke in coldly, "if any
one was in my way, that evening, it was yourself, since I told you to leave
the room!"

"Yes, so that you might remain with the other!"

"What are you saying, monsieur?" asked the girl excitedly. "And to what
other do you refer?"

"To the man to whom you said, 'I sing only for you! ... to-night I gave
you my soul and I am dead!'"

Christine seized Raoul's arm and clutched it with a strength which no
one would have suspected in so frail a creature.

"Then you were listening behind the door?"

"Yes, because I love you everything ... And I heard everything ..."

"You heard what?"

And the young girl, becoming strangely calm, released Raoul's arm.

"He said to you, 'Christine, you must love me!'"

At these words, a deathly pallor spread over Christine's face, dark rings
formed round her eyes, she staggered and seemed on the point of swooning.
Raoul darted forward, with arms outstretched, but Christine had overcome
her passing faintness and said, in a low voice:

"Go on! Go on! Tell me all you heard!"

At an utter loss to understand, Raoul answered: "I heard him reply, when
you said you had given him your soul, 'Your soul is a beautiful thing, child,
and I thank you. No emperor ever received so fair a gift. The angels wept
tonight.'"

Christine carried her hand to her heart, a prey to indescribable emotion.
Her eyes stared before her like a madwoman's. Raoul was terror-stricken.
But suddenly Christine's eyes moistened and two great tears trickled, like
two pearls, down her ivory cheeks.

"Christine!"

"Raoul!"

The young man tried to take her in his arms, but she escaped and fled in
great disorder.

While Christine remained locked in her room, Raoul was at his wit's end
what to do. He refused to breakfast. He was terribly concerned and bitterly
grieved to see the hours, which he had hoped to find so sweet, slip past
without the presence of the young Swedish girl. Why did she not come to
roam with him through the country where they had so many memories in
common? He heard that she had had a mass said, that morning, for the
repose of her father's soul and spent a long time praying in the little church

and on the fiddler's tomb. Then, as she seemed to have nothing more to do
at Perros and, in fact, was doing nothing there, why did she not go back to
Paris at once?

Raoul walked away, dejectedly, to the graveyard in which the church
stood and was indeed alone among the tombs, reading the inscriptions; but,
when he turned behind the apse, he was suddenly struck by the dazzling
note of the flowers that straggled over the white ground. They were
marvelous red roses that had blossomed in the morning, in the snow, giving
a glimpse of life among the dead, for death was all around him. It also, like
the flowers, issued from the ground, which had flung back a number of its
corpses. Skeletons and skulls by the hundred were heaped against the wall
of the church, held in position by a wire that left the whole gruesome stack
visible. Dead men's bones, arranged in rows, like bricks, to form the first
course upon which the walls of the sacristy had been built. The door of the
sacristy opened in the middle of that bony structure, as is often seen in old
Breton churches.

Raoul said a prayer for Daae and then, painfully impressed by all those
eternal smiles on the mouths of skulls, he climbed the slope and sat down
on the edge of the heath overlooking the sea. The wind fell with the
evening. Raoul was surrounded by icy darkness, but he did not feel the
cold. It was here, he remembered, that he used to come with little Christine
to see the Korrigans dance at the rising of the moon. He had never seen any,
though his eyes were good, whereas Christine, who was a little
shortsighted, pretended that she had seen many. He smiled at the thought
and then suddenly gave a start. A voice behind him said:

"Do you think the Korrigans will come this evening?"

It was Christine. He tried to speak. She put her gloved hand on his
mouth.

"Listen, Raoul. I have decided to tell you something serious, very serious
... Do you remember the legend of the Angel of Music?"

"I do indeed," he said. "I believe it was here that your father first told it
to us."

"And it was here that he said, 'When I am in Heaven, my child, I will
send him to you.' Well, Raoul, my father is in Heaven, and I have been
visited by the Angel of Music."

"I have no doubt of it," replied the young man gravely, for it seemed to
him that his friend, in obedience to a pious thought, was connecting the
memory of her father with the brilliancy of her last triumph.

Christine appeared astonished at the Vicomte de Chagny's coolness:

"How do you understand it?" she asked, bringing her pale face so close
to his that he might have thought that Christine was going to give him a
kiss; but she only wanted to read his eyes in spite of the dark.

"I understand," he said, "that no human being can sing as you sang the
other evening without the intervention of some miracle. No professor on
earth can teach you such accents as those. You have heard the Angel of
Music, Christine."

"Yes," she said solemnly, "IN MY DRESSING-ROOM. That is where he
comes to give me my lessons daily."

"In your dressing-room?" he echoed stupidly.

"Yes, that is where I have heard him; and I have not been the only one to
hear him."

"Who else heard him, Christine?"

"You, my friend."

"I? I heard the Angel of Music?"

"Yes, the other evening, it was he who was talking when you were
listening behind the door. It was he who said, 'You must love me.' But I then
thought that I was the only one to hear his voice. Imagine my astonishment
when you told me, this morning, that you could hear him too."

Raoul burst out laughing. The first rays of the moon came and shrouded
the two young people in their light. Christine turned on Raoul with a hostile
air. Her eyes, usually so gentle, flashed fire.

"What are you laughing at? YOU think you heard a man's voice, I
suppose?"

"Well! ..." replied the young man, whose ideas began to grow confused
in the face of Christine's determined attitude.

"It's you, Raoul, who say that? You, an old playfellow of my own! A
friend of my father's! But you have changed since those days. What are you
thinking of? I am an honest girl, M. le Vicomte de Chagny, and I don't lock
myself up in my dressing-room with men's voices. If you had opened the
door, you would have seen that there was nobody in the room!"

"That's true! I did open the door, when you were gone, and I found no
one in the room."

"So you see! ... Well?"

The viscount summoned up all his courage.

"Well, Christine, I think that somebody is making game of you."

She gave a cry and ran away. He ran after her, but, in a tone of fierce
anger, she called out: "Leave me! Leave me!" And she disappeared.

Raoul returned to the inn feeling very weary, very low-spirited and very
sad. He was told that Christine had gone to her bedroom saying that she
would not be down to dinner. Raoul dined alone, in a very gloomy mood.
Then he went to his room and tried to read, went to bed and tried to sleep.
There was no sound in the next room.

The hours passed slowly. It was about half-past eleven when he
distinctly heard some one moving, with a light, stealthy step, in the room
next to his. Then Christine had not gone to bed! Without troubling for a
reason, Raoul dressed, taking care not to make a sound, and waited. Waited

for what? How could he tell? But his heart thumped in his chest when he
heard Christine's door turn slowly on its hinges. Where could she be going,
at this hour, when every one was fast asleep at Perros? Softly opening the
door, he saw Christine's white form, in the moonlight, slipping along the
passage. She went down the stairs and he leaned over the baluster above
her. Suddenly he heard two voices in rapid conversation. He caught one
sentence: "Don't lose the key."

It was the landlady's voice. The door facing the sea was opened and
locked again. Then all was still.

Raoul ran back to his room and threw back the window. Christine's white
form stood on the deserted quay.

The first floor of the Setting Sun was at no great height and a tree
growing against the wall held out its branches to Raoul's impatient arms and
enabled him to climb down unknown to the landlady. Her amazement,
therefore, was all the greater when, the next morning, the young man was
brought back to her half frozen, more dead than alive, and when she learned
that he had been found stretched at full length on the steps of the high altar
of the little church. She ran at once to tell Christine, who hurried down and,
with the help of the landlady, did her best to revive him. He soon opened his
eyes and was not long in recovering when he saw his friend's charming face
leaning over him.

A few weeks later, when the tragedy at the Opera compelled the
intervention of the public prosecutor, M. Mifroid, the commissary of police,
examined the Vicomte de Chagny touching the events of the night at Perros.
I quote the questions and answers as given in the official report pp. 150 et
seq.:

Q. "Did Mlle. Daae not see you come down from your room by the
curious road which you selected?"

R. "No, monsieur, no, although, when walking behind her, I took no
pains to deaden the sound of my footsteps. In fact, I was anxious that she
should turn round and see me. I realized that I had no excuse for following
her and that this way of spying on her was unworthy of me. But she seemed

not to hear me and acted exactly as though I were not there. She quietly left
the quay and then suddenly walked quickly up the road. The church-clock
had struck a quarter to twelve and I thought that this must have made her
hurry, for she began almost to run and continued hastening until she came
to the church."

Q. "Was the gate open?"

R. "Yes, monsieur, and this surprised me, but did not seem to surprise
Mlle. Daae."

Q. "Was there no one in the churchyard?"

R. "I did not see any one; and, if there had been, I must have seen him.
The moon was shining on the snow and made the night quite light."

Q. "Was it possible for any one to hide behind the tombstones?"

R. "No, monsieur. They were quite small, poor tombstones, partly hidden
under the snow, with their crosses just above the level of the ground. The
only shadows were those of the crosses and ourselves. The church stood out
quite brightly. I never saw so clear a night. It was very fine and very cold
and one could see everything."

Q. "Are you at all superstitious?"

R. "No, monsieur, I am a practising Catholic,"

Q. "In what condition of mind were you?"

R. "Very healthy and peaceful, I assure you. Mlle. Daae's curious action
in going out at that hour had worried me at first; but, as soon as I saw her go
to the churchyard, I thought that she meant to fulfil some pious duty on her
father's grave and I considered this so natural that I recovered all my
calmness. I was only surprised that she had not heard me walking behind
her, for my footsteps were quite audible on the hard snow. But she must
have been taken up with her intentions and I resolved not to disturb her. She
knelt down by her father's grave, made the sign of the cross and began to

pray. At that moment, it struck midnight. At the last stroke, I saw Mlle.
Daae life{sic} her eyes to the sky and stretch out her arms as though in
ecstasy. I was wondering what the reason could be, when I myself raised
my head and everything within me seemed drawn toward the invisible,
WHICH WAS PLAYING THE MOST PERFECT MUSIC! Christine and I
knew that music; we had heard it as children. But it had never been
executed with such divine art, even by M. Daae. I remembered all that
Christine had told me of the Angel of Music. The air was The Resurrection
of Lazarus, which old M. Daae used to play to us in his hours of
melancholy and of faith. If Christine's Angel had existed, he could not have
played better, that night, on the late musician's violin. When the music
stopped, I seemed to hear a noise from the skulls in the heap of bones; it
was as though they were chuckling and I could not help shuddering."

Q. "Did it not occur to you that the musician might be hiding behind that
very heap of bones?"

R. "It was the one thought that did occur to me, monsieur, so much so
that I omitted to follow Mlle. Daae, when she stood up and walked slowly
to the gate. She was so much absorbed just then that I am not surprised that
she did not see me."

Q. "Then what happened that you were found in the morning lying half-
dead on the steps of the high altar?"

R. "First a skull rolled to my feet ... then another ... then another ... It was
as if I were the mark of that ghastly game of bowls. And I had an idea that
false step must have destroyed the balance of the structure behind which
our musician was concealed. This surmise seemed to be confirmed when I
saw a shadow suddenly glide along the sacristy wall. I ran up. The shadow
had already pushed open the door and entered the church. But I was quicker
than the shadow and caught hold of a corner of its cloak. At that moment,
we were just in front of the high altar; and the moonbeams fell straight upon
us through the stained-glass windows of the apse. As I did not let go of the
cloak, the shadow turned round; and I saw a terrible death's head, which
darted a look at me from a pair of scorching eyes. I felt as if I were face to
face with Satan; and, in the presence of this unearthly apparition, my heart

gave way, my courage failed me ... and I remember nothing more until I
recovered consciousness at the Setting Sun."

Chapter VI A Visit to Box Five

We left M. Firmin Richard and M. Armand Moncharmin at the moment
when they were deciding "to look into that little matter of Box Five."

Leaving behind them the broad staircase which leads from the lobby
outside the managers' offices to the stage and its dependencies, they crossed
the stage, went out by the subscribers' door and entered the house through
the first little passage on the left. Then they made their way through the
front rows of stalls and looked at Box Five on the grand tier. They could not
see it well, because it was half in darkness and because great covers were
flung over the red velvet of the ledges of all the boxes.

They were almost alone in the huge, gloomy house; and a great silence
surrounded them. It was the time when most of the stage-hands go out for a
drink. The staff had left the boards for the moment, leaving a scene half set.
A few rays of light, a wan, sinister light, that seemed to have been stolen
from an expiring luminary, fell through some opening or other upon an old
tower that raised its pasteboard battlements on the stage; everything, in this
deceptive light, adopted a fantastic shape. In the orchestra stalls, the drugget
covering them looked like an angry sea, whose glaucous waves had been
suddenly rendered stationary by a secret order from the storm phantom,
who, as everybody knows, is called Adamastor. MM. Moncharmin and
Richard were the shipwrecked mariners amid this motionless turmoil of a
calico sea. They made for the left boxes, plowing their way like sailors who
leave their ship and try to struggle to the shore. The eight great polished
columns stood up in the dusk like so many huge piles supporting the
threatening, crumbling, big-bellied cliffs whose layers were represented by
the circular, parallel, waving lines of the balconies of the grand, first and
second tiers of boxes. At the top, right on top of the cliff, lost in M.

Lenepveu's copper ceiling, figures grinned and grimaced, laughed and
jeered at MM. Richard and Moncharmin's distress. And yet these figures
were usually very serious. Their names were Isis, Amphitrite, Hebe,
Pandora, Psyche, Thetis, Pomona, Daphne, Clytie, Galatea and Arethusa.
Yes, Arethusa herself and Pandora, whom we all know by her box, looked
down upon the two new managers of the Opera, who ended by clutching at
some piece of wreckage and from there stared silently at Box Five on the
grand tier.

I have said that they were distressed. At least, I presume so. M.
Moncharmin, in any case, admits that he was impressed. To quote his own
words, in his Memoirs:

"This moonshine about the Opera ghost in which, since we first took
over the duties of MM. Poligny and Debienne, we had been so nicely
steeped"—Moncharmin's style is not always irreproachable—"had no doubt
ended by blinding my imaginative and also my visual faculties. It may be
that the exceptional surroundings in which we found ourselves, in the midst
of an incredible silence, impressed us to an unusual extent. It may be that
we were the sport of a kind of hallucination brought about by the semi-
darkness of the theater and the partial gloom that filled Box Five. At any
rate, I saw and Richard also saw a shape in the box. Richard said nothing,
nor I either. But we spontaneously seized each other's hand. We stood like
that for some minutes, without moving, with our eyes fixed on the same
point; but the figure had disappeared. Then we went out and, in the lobby,
communicated our impressions to each other and talked about 'the shape.'
The misfortune was that my shape was not in the least like Richard's. I had
seen a thing like a death's head resting on the ledge of the box, whereas
Richard saw the shape of an old woman who looked like Mme. Giry. We
soon discovered that we had really been the victims of an illusion,
whereupon, without further delay and laughing like madmen, we ran to Box
Five on the grand tier, went inside and found no shape of any kind."

Box Five is just like all the other grand tier boxes. There is nothing to
distinguish it from any of the others. M. Moncharmin and M. Richard,
ostensibly highly amused and laughing at each other, moved the furniture of
the box, lifted the cloths and the chairs and particularly examined the arm-

chair in which "the man's voice" used to sit. But they saw that it was a
respectable arm-chair, with no magic about it. Altogether, the box was the
most ordinary box in the world, with its red hangings, its chairs, its carpet
and its ledge covered in red velvet. After, feeling the carpet in the most
serious manner possible, and discovering nothing more here or anywhere
else, they went down to the corresponding box on the pit tier below. In Box
Five on the pit tier, which is just inside the first exit from the stalls on the
left, they found nothing worth mentioning either.

"Those people are all making fools of us!" Firmin Richard ended by
exclaiming. "It will be FAUST on Saturday: let us both see the performance
from Box Five on the grand tier!"

Chapter VII Faust and What Followed

On the Saturday morning, on reaching their office, the joint managers
found a letter from O. G. worded in these terms:

MY DEAR MANAGERS:

So it is to be war between us?

If you still care for peace, here is my ultimatum. It consists of the four
following conditions:

1. You must give me back my private box; and I wish it to be at my free
disposal from henceforward.

2. The part of Margarita shall be sung this evening by Christine Daae.
Never mind about Carlotta; she will be ill.

3. I absolutely insist upon the good and loyal services of Mme. Giry, my
box-keeper, whom you will reinstate in her functions forthwith.

4. Let me know by a letter handed to Mme. Giry, who will see that it
reaches me, that you accept, as your predecessors did, the conditions in my
memorandum-book relating to my monthly allowance. I will inform you
later how you are to pay it to me.

If you refuse, you will give FAUST to-night in a house with a curse upon
it.

Take my advice and be warned in time. O. G.

"Look here, I'm getting sick of him, sick of him!" shouted Richard,
bringing his fists down on his office-table.

Just then, Mercier, the acting-manager, entered.

"Lachenel would like to see one of you gentlemen," he said. "He says
that his business is urgent and he seems quite upset."

"Who's Lachenel?" asked Richard.

"He's your stud-groom."

"What do you mean? My stud-groom?"

"Yes, sir," explained Mercier, "there are several grooms at the Opera and
M. Lachenel is at the head of them."

"And what does this groom do?"

"He has the chief management of the stable."

"What stable?"

"Why, yours, sir, the stable of the Opera."

"Is there a stable at the Opera? Upon my word, I didn't know. Where is
it?"

"In the cellars, on the Rotunda side. It's a very important department; we
have twelve horses."

"Twelve horses! And what for, in Heaven's name?"

"Why, we want trained horses for the processions in the Juive, The
Profeta and so on; horses 'used to the boards.' It is the grooms' business to
teach them. M. Lachenel is very clever at it. He used to manage Franconi's
stables."

"Very well ... but what does he want?"

"I don't know; I never saw him in such a state."

"He can come in."

M. Lachenel came in, carrying a riding-whip, with which he struck his
right boot in an irritable manner.

"Good morning, M. Lachenel," said Richard, somewhat impressed. "To
what do we owe the honor of your visit?"

"Mr. Manager, I have come to ask you to get rid of the whole stable."

"What, you want to get rid of our horses?"

"I'm not talking of the horses, but of the stablemen."

"How many stablemen have you, M. Lachenel?"

"Six stablemen! That's at least two too many."

"These are 'places,'" Mercier interposed, "created and forced upon us by
the under-secretary for fine arts. They are filled by protegees of the
government and, if I may venture to ..."

"I don't care a hang for the government!" roared Richard. "We don't need
more than four stablemen for twelve horses."

"Eleven," said the head riding-master, correcting him.

"Twelve," repeated Richard.

"Eleven," repeated Lachenel.

"Oh, the acting-manager told me that you had twelve horses!"

"I did have twelve, but I have only eleven since Cesar was stolen."

And M. Lachenel gave himself a great smack on the boot with his whip.

"Has Cesar been stolen?" cried the acting-manager. "Cesar, the white
horse in the Profeta?"

"There are not two Cesars," said the stud-groom dryly. "I was ten years
at Franconi's and I have seen plenty of horses in my time. Well, there are
not two Cesars. And he's been stolen."

"How?"

"I don't know. Nobody knows. That's why I have come to ask you to
sack the whole stable."

"What do your stablemen say?"

"All sorts of nonsense. Some of them accuse the supers. Others pretend
that it's the acting-manager's doorkeeper ..."

"My doorkeeper? I'll answer for him as I would for myself!" protested
Mercier.

"But, after all, M. Lachenel," cried Richard, "you must have some idea."

"Yes, I have," M. Lachenel declared. "I have an idea and I'll tell you
what it is. There's no doubt about it in my mind." He walked up to the two
managers and whispered. "It's the ghost who did the trick!"

Richard gave a jump.

"What, you too! You too!"

"How do you mean, I too? Isn't it natural, after what I saw?"

"What did you see?"

"I saw, as clearly as I now see you, a black shadow riding a white horse
that was as like Cesar as two peas!"

"And did you run after them?"

"I did and I shouted, but they were too fast for me and disappeared in the
darkness of the underground gallery."

M. Richard rose. "That will do, M. Lachenel. You can go ... We will
lodge a complaint against THE GHOST."

"And sack my stable?"

"Oh, of course! Good morning."

M. Lachenel bowed and withdrew. Richard foamed at the mouth.

"Settle that idiot's account at once, please."

"He is a friend of the government representative's!" Mercier ventured to
say.

"And he takes his vermouth at Tortoni's with Lagrene, Scholl and
Pertuiset, the lion-hunter," added Moncharmin. "We shall have the whole
press against us! He'll tell the story of the ghost; and everybody will be
laughing at our expense! We may as well be dead as ridiculous!"

"All right, say no more about it."

At that moment the door opened. It must have been deserted by its usual
Cerberus, for Mme. Giry entered without ceremony, holding a letter in her
hand, and said hurriedly:

"I beg your pardon, excuse me, gentlemen, but I had a letter this morning
from the Opera ghost. He told me to come to you, that you had something
to ..."

She did not complete the sentence. She saw Firmin Richard's face; and it
was a terrible sight. He seemed ready to burst. He said nothing, he could not
speak. But suddenly he acted. First, his left arm seized upon the quaint
person of Mme. Giry and made her describe so unexpected a semicircle that
she uttered a despairing cry. Next, his right foot imprinted its sole on the
black taffeta of a skirt which certainly had never before undergone a similar
outrage in a similar place. The thing happened so quickly that Mme. Giry,
when in the passage, was still quite bewildered and seemed not to
understand. But, suddenly, she understood; and the Opera rang with her
indignant yells, her violent protests and threats.

About the same time, Carlotta, who had a small house of her own in the
Rue du Faubourg St. Honore, rang for her maid, who brought her letters to
her bed. Among them was an anonymous missive, written in red ink, in a
hesitating, clumsy hand, which ran:

If you appear to-night, you must be prepared for a great misfortune at the
moment when you open your mouth to sing ... a misfortune worse than
death.

The letter took away Carlotta's appetite for breakfast. She pushed back
her chocolate, sat up in bed and thought hard. It was not the first letter of
the kind which she had received, but she never had one couched in such
threatening terms.

She thought herself, at that time, the victim of a thousand jealous
attempts and went about saying that she had a secret enemy who had sworn
to ruin her. She pretended that a wicked plot was being hatched against her,
a cabal which would come to a head one of those days; but she added that
she was not the woman to be intimidated.

The truth is that, if there was a cabal, it was led by Carlotta herself
against poor Christine, who had no suspicion of it. Carlotta had never
forgiven Christine for the triumph which she had achieved when taking her

place at a moment's notice. When Carlotta heard of the astounding
reception bestowed upon her understudy, she was at once cured of an
incipient attack of bronchitis and a bad fit of sulking against the
management and lost the slightest inclination to shirk her duties. From that
time, she worked with all her might to "smother" her rival, enlisting the
services of influential friends to persuade the managers not to give Christine
an opportunity for a fresh triumph. Certain newspapers which had begun to
extol the talent of Christine now interested themselves only in the fame of
Carlotta. Lastly, in the theater itself, the celebrated, but heartless and
soulless diva made the most scandalous remarks about Christine and tried to
cause her endless minor unpleasantnesses.

When Carlotta had finished thinking over the threat contained in the
strange letter, she got up.

"We shall see," she said, adding a few oaths in her native Spanish with a
very determined air.

The first thing she saw, when looking out of her window, was a hearse.
She was very superstitious; and the hearse and the letter convinced her that
she was running the most serious dangers that evening. She collected all her
supporters, told them that she was threatened at that evening's performance
with a plot organized by Christine Daae and declared that they must play a
trick upon that chit by filling the house with her, Carlotta's, admirers. She
had no lack of them, had she? She relied upon them to hold themselves
prepared for any eventuality and to silence the adversaries, if, as she feared,
they created a disturbance.

M. Richard's private secretary called to ask after the diva's health and
returned with the assurance that she was perfectly well and that, "were she
dying," she would sing the part of Margarita that evening. The secretary
urged her, in his chief's name, to commit no imprudence, to stay at home all
day and to be careful of drafts; and Carlotta could not help, after he had
gone, comparing this unusual and unexpected advice with the threats
contained in the letter.

It was five o'clock when the post brought a second anonymous letter in
the same hand as the first. It was short and said simply:

You have a bad cold. If you are wise, you will see that it is madness to
try to sing to-night.

Carlotta sneered, shrugged her handsome shoulders and sang two or
three notes to reassure herself.

Her friends were faithful to their promise. They were all at the Opera
that night, but looked round in vain for the fierce conspirators whom they
were instructed to suppress. The only unusual thing was the presence of M.
Richard and M. Moncharmin in Box Five. Carlotta's friends thought that,
perhaps, the managers had wind, on their side, of the proposed disturbance
and that they had determined to be in the house, so as to stop it then and
there; but this was unjustifiable supposition, as the reader knows. M.
Richard and M. Moncharmin were thinking of nothing but their ghost.

"Vain! In vain do I call, through my vigil weary, On creation and its
Lord! Never reply will break the silence dreary! No sign! No single word!"

The famous baritone, Carolus Fonta, had hardly finished Doctor Faust's
first appeal to the powers of darkness, when M. Firmin Richard, who was
sitting in the ghost's own chair, the front chair on the right, leaned over to
his partner and asked him chaffingly:

"Well, has the ghost whispered a word in your ear yet?"

"Wait, don't be in such a hurry," replied M. Armand Moncharmin, in the
same gay tone. "The performance has only begun and you know that the
ghost does not usually come until the middle of the first act."

The first act passed without incident, which did not surprise Carlotta's
friends, because Margarita does not sing in this act. As for the managers,
they looked at each other, when the curtain fell.

"That's one!" said Moncharmin.

"Yes, the ghost is late," said Firmin Richard.

"It's not a bad house," said Moncharmin, "for 'a house with a curse on
it.'"

M. Richard smiled and pointed to a fat, rather vulgar woman, dressed in
black, sitting in a stall in the middle of the auditorium with a man in a
broadcloth frock-coat on either side of her.

"Who on earth are 'those?'" asked Moncharmin.

"'Those,' my dear fellow, are my concierge, her husband and her
brother."

"Did you give them their tickets?"

"I did ... My concierge had never been to the Opera—this is, the first
time—and, as she is now going to come every night, I wanted her to have a
good seat, before spending her time showing other people to theirs."

Moncharmin asked what he meant and Richard answered that he had
persuaded his concierge, in whom he had the greatest confidence, to come
and take Mme. Giry's place. Yes, he would like to see if, with that woman
instead of the old lunatic, Box Five would continue to astonish the natives?

"By the way," said Moncharmin, "you know that Mother Giry is going to
lodge a complaint against you."

"With whom? The ghost?"

The ghost! Moncharmin had almost forgotten him. However, that
mysterious person did nothing to bring himself to the memory of the
managers; and they were just saying so to each other for the second time,
when the door of the box suddenly opened to admit the startled stage-
manager.

"What's the matter?" they both asked, amazed at seeing him there at such
a time.

"It seems there's a plot got up by Christine Daae's friends against
Carlotta. Carlotta's furious."

"What on earth ... ?" said Richard, knitting his brows.

But the curtain rose on the kermess scene and Richard made a sign to the
stage-manager to go away. When the two were alone again, Moncharmin
leaned over to Richard:

"Then Daae has friends?" he asked.

"Yes, she has."

"Whom?"

Richard glanced across at a box on the grand tier containing no one but
two men.

"The Comte de Chagny?"

"Yes, he spoke to me in her favor with such warmth that, if I had not
known him to be Sorelli's friend ..."

"Really? Really?" said Moncharmin. "And who is that pale young man
beside him?"

"That's his brother, the viscount."

"He ought to be in his bed. He looks ill."

The stage rang with gay song:
"Red or white liquor,
Coarse or fine!
What can it matter,
So we have wine?"

Students, citizens, soldiers, girls and matrons whirled light-heartedly
before the inn with the figure of Bacchus for a sign. Siebel made her
entrance. Christine Daae looked charming in her boy's clothes; and
Carlotta's partisans expected to hear her greeted with an ovation which
would have enlightened them as to the intentions of her friends. But nothing
happened.

On the other hand, when Margarita crossed the stage and sang the only
two lines allotted her in this second act:
"No, my lord, not a lady am I, nor yet a beauty,
And do not need an arm to help me on my way,"

Carlotta was received with enthusiastic applause. It was so unexpected
and so uncalled for that those who knew nothing about the rumors looked at
one another and asked what was happening. And this act also was finished
without incident.

Then everybody said: "Of course, it will be during the next act."

Some, who seemed to be better informed than the rest, declared that the
"row" would begin with the ballad of the KING OF THULE and rushed to
the subscribers' entrance to warn Carlotta. The managers left the box during
the entr'acte to find out more about the cabal of which the stage-manager
had spoken; but they soon returned to their seats, shrugging their shoulders
and treating the whole affair as silly.

The first thing they saw, on entering the box, was a box of English
sweets on the little shelf of the ledge. Who had put it there? They asked the
box-keepers, but none of them knew. Then they went back to the shelf and,
next to the box of sweets, found an opera glass. They looked at each other.
They had no inclination to laugh. All that Mme. Giry had told them returned
to their memory ... and then ... and then ... they seemed to feel a curious sort
of draft around them ... They sat down in silence.

The scene represented Margarita's garden:
"Gentle flow'rs in the dew,
Be message from me ..."

As she sang these first two lines, with her bunch of roses and lilacs in
her hand, Christine, raising her head, saw the Vicomte de Chagny in his
box; and, from that moment, her voice seemed less sure, less crystal-clear
than usual. Something seemed to deaden and dull her singing...

"What a queer girl she is!" said one of Carlotta's friends in the stalls,
almost aloud. "The other day she was divine; and to-night she's simply
bleating. She has no experience, no training."
"Gentle flow'rs, lie ye there
And tell her from me ..."

The viscount put his head under his hands and wept. The count, behind
him, viciously gnawed his mustache, shrugged his shoulders and frowned.
For him, usually so cold and correct, to betray his inner feelings like that,
by outward signs, the count must be very angry. He was. He had seen his
brother return from a rapid and mysterious journey in an alarming state of
health. The explanation that followed was unsatisfactory and the count
asked Christine Daae for an appointment. She had the audacity to reply that
she could not see either him or his brother...
"Would she but deign to hear me
And with one smile to cheer me ..."

"The little baggage!" growled the count.

And he wondered what she wanted. What she was hoping for... She was
a virtuous girl, she was said to have no friend, no protector of any sort ...
That angel from the North must be very artful!

Raoul, behind the curtain of his hands that veiled his boyish tears,
thought only of the letter which he received on his return to Paris, where
Christine, fleeing from Perros like a thief in the night, had arrived before
him:

MY DEAR LITTLE PLAYFELLOW:

You must have the courage not to see me again, not to speak of me
again. If you love me just a little, do this for me, for me who will never
forget you, my dear Raoul. My life depends upon it. Your life depends upon
it. YOUR LITTLE CHRISTINE.

Thunders of applause. Carlotta made her entrance.

"I wish I could but know who was he
That addressed me,
If he was noble, or, at least, what his name is ..."

When Margarita had finished singing the ballad of the KING OF
THULE, she was loudly cheered and again when she came to the end of the
jewel song:
"Ah, the joy of past compare
These jewels bright to wear! ..."

Thenceforth, certain of herself, certain of her friends in the house,
certain of her voice and her success, fearing nothing, Carlotta flung herself
into her part without restraint of modesty ... She was no longer Margarita,
she was Carmen. She was applauded all the more; and her debut with Faust
seemed about to bring her a new success, when suddenly ... a terrible thing
happened.

Faust had knelt on one knee:
"Let me gaze on the form below me,
While from yonder ether blue
Look how the star of eve, bright and tender,
lingers o'er me,
To love thy beauty too!"

And Margarita replied:
"Oh, how strange!
Like a spell does the evening bind me!
And a deep languid charm
I feel without alarm
With its melody enwind me
And all my heart subdue."

At that moment, at that identical moment, the terrible thing happened...
Carlotta croaked like a toad:

"Co-ack!"

There was consternation on Carlotta's face and consternation on the
faces of all the audience. The two managers in their box could not suppress
an exclamation of horror. Every one felt that the thing was not natural, that

there was witchcraft behind it. That toad smelt of brimstone. Poor,
wretched, despairing, crushed Carlotta!

The uproar in the house was indescribable. If the thing had happened to
any one but Carlotta, she would have been hooted. But everybody knew
how perfect an instrument her voice was; and there was no display of anger,
but only of horror and dismay, the sort of dismay which men would have
felt if they had witnessed the catastrophe that broke the arms of the Venus
de Milo... And even then they would have seen ... and understood ...

But here that toad was incomprehensible! So much so that, after some
seconds spent in asking herself if she had really heard that note, that sound,
that infernal noise issue from her throat, she tried to persuade herself that it
was not so, that she was the victim of an illusion, an illusion of the ear, and
not of an act of treachery on the part of her voice....

Meanwhile, in Box Five, Moncharmin and Richard had turned very pale.
This extraordinary and inexplicable incident filled them with a dread which
was the more mysterious inasmuch as for some little while, they had fallen
within the direct influence of the ghost. They had felt his breath.
Moncharmin's hair stood on end. Richard wiped the perspiration from his
forehead. Yes, the ghost was there, around them, behind them, beside them;
they felt his presence without seeing him, they heard his breath, close,
close, close to them! ... They were sure that there were three people in the
box ... They trembled ... They thought of running away ... They dared not ...
They dared not make a movement or exchange a word that would have told
the ghost that they knew that he was there! ... What was going to happen?

This happened.

"Co-ack!" Their joint exclamation of horror was heard all over the
house. THEY FELT THAT THEY WERE SMARTING UNDER THE
GHOST'S ATTACKS. Leaning over the ledge of their box, they stared at
Carlotta as though they did not recognize her. That infernal girl must have
given the signal for some catastrophe. Ah, they were waiting for the
catastrophe! The ghost had told them it would come! The house had a curse
upon it! The two managers gasped and panted under the weight of the
catastrophe. Richard's stifled voice was heard calling to Carlotta:

"Well, go on!"

No, Carlotta did not go on ... Bravely, heroically, she started afresh on
the fatal line at the end of which the toad had appeared.

An awful silence succeeded the uproar. Carlotta's voice alone once more
filled the resounding house:

"I feel without alarm ..."

The audience also felt, but not without alarm. ..
"I feel without alarm ...
I feel without alarm—co-ack!
With its melody enwind me—co-ack!
And all my heart sub—co-ack!"

The toad also had started afresh!

The house broke into a wild tumult. The two managers collapsed in their
chairs and dared not even turn round; they had not the strength; the ghost
was chuckling behind their backs! And, at last, they distinctly heard his
voice in their right ears, the impossible voice, the mouthless voice, saying:

"SHE IS SINGING TO-NIGHT TO BRING THE CHANDELIER
DOWN!"

With one accord, they raised their eyes to the ceiling and uttered a
terrible cry. The chandelier, the immense mass of the chandelier was
slipping down, coming toward them, at the call of that fiendish voice.
Released from its hook, it plunged from the ceiling and came smashing into
the middle of the stalls, amid a thousand shouts of terror. A wild rush for the
doors followed.

The papers of the day state that there were numbers wounded and one
killed. The chandelier had crashed down upon the head of the wretched
woman who had come to the Opera for the first time in her life, the one
whom M. Richard had appointed to succeed Mme. Giry, the ghost's box-

keeper, in her functions! She died on the spot and, the next morning, a
newspaper appeared with this heading:

TWO HUNDRED KILOS ON THE HEAD OF A CONCIERGE

That was her sole epitaph!

Chapter VIII The Mysterious Brougham

That tragic evening was bad for everybody. Carlotta fell ill. As for
Christine Daae, she disappeared after the performance. A fortnight elapsed
during which she was seen neither at the Opera nor outside.

Raoul, of course, was the first to be astonished at the prima donna's
absence. He wrote to her at Mme. Valerius' flat and received no reply. His
grief increased and he ended by being seriously alarmed at never seeing her
name on the program. FAUST was played without her.

One afternoon he went to the managers' office to ask the reason of
Christine's disappearance. He found them both looking extremely worried.
Their own friends did not recognize them: they had lost all their gaiety and
spirits. They were seen crossing the stage with hanging heads, care-worn
brows, pale cheeks, as though pursued by some abominable thought or a
prey to some persistent sport of fate.

The fall of the chandelier had involved them in no little responsibility;
but it was difficult to make them speak about it. The inquest had ended in a
verdict of accidental death, caused by the wear and tear of the chains by
which the chandelier was hung from the ceiling; but it was the duty of both
the old and the new managers to have discovered this wear and tear and to
have remedied it in time. And I feel bound to say that MM. Richard and
Moncharmin at this time appeared so changed, so absent-minded, so
mysterious, so incomprehensible that many of the subscribers thought that
some event even more horrible than the fall of the chandelier must have
affected their state of mind.

In their daily intercourse, they showed themselves very impatient, except
with Mme. Giry, who had been reinstated in her functions. And their
reception of the Vicomte de Chagny, when he came to ask about Christine,
was anything but cordial. They merely told him that she was taking a

holiday. He asked how long the holiday was for, and they replied curtly that
it was for an unlimited period, as Mlle. Daae had requested leave of absence
for reasons of health.

"Then she is ill!" he cried. "What is the matter with her?"

"We don't know."

"Didn't you send the doctor of the Opera to see her?"

"No, she did not ask for him; and, as we trust her, we took her word."

Raoul left the building a prey to the gloomiest thoughts. He resolved,
come what might, to go and inquire of Mamma Valerius. He remembered
the strong phrases in Christine's letter, forbidding him to make any attempt
to see her. But what he had seen at Perros, what he had heard behind the
dressing-room door, his conversation with Christine at the edge of the moor
made him suspect some machination which, devilish though it might be,
was none the less human. The girl's highly strung imagination, her
affectionate and credulous mind, the primitive education which had
surrounded her childhood with a circle of legends, the constant brooding
over her dead father and, above all, the state of sublime ecstasy into which
music threw her from the moment that this art was made manifest to her in
certain exceptional conditions, as in the churchyard at Perros; all this
seemed to him to constitute a moral ground only too favorable for the
malevolent designs of some mysterious and unscrupulous person. Of whom
was Christine Daae the victim? This was the very reasonable question
which Raoul put to himself as he hurried off to Mamma Valerius.

He trembled as he rang at a little flat in the Rue Notre-Dame-des-
Victoires. The door was opened by the maid whom he had seen coming out
of Christine's dressing-room one evening. He asked if he could speak to
Mme. Valerius. He was told that she was ill in bed and was not receiving
visitors.

"Take in my card, please," he said.

The maid soon returned and showed him into a small and scantily
furnished drawing-room, in which portraits of Professor Valerius and old
Daae hung on opposite walls.

"Madame begs Monsieur le Vicomte to excuse her," said the servant.
"She can only see him in her bedroom, because she can no longer stand on
her poor legs."

Five minutes later, Raoul was ushered into an ill-lit room where he at
once recognized the good, kind face of Christine's benefactress in the semi-
darkness of an alcove. Mamma Valerius' hair was now quite white, but her
eyes had grown no older; never, on the contrary, had their expression been
so bright, so pure, so child-like.

"M. de Chagny!" she cried gaily, putting out both her hands to her
visitor. "Ah, it's Heaven that sends you here! ... We can talk of HER."

This last sentence sounded very gloomily in the young man's ears. He at
once asked:

"Madame ... where is Christine?"

And the old lady replied calmly:

"She is with her good genius!"

"What good genius?" exclaimed poor Raoul.

"Why, the Angel of Music!"

The viscount dropped into a chair. Really? Christine was with the Angel
of Music? And there lay Mamma Valerius in bed, smiling to him and
putting her finger to her lips, to warn him to be silent! And she added:

"You must not tell anybody!"

"You can rely on me," said Raoul.

He hardly knew what he was saying, for his ideas about Christine,
already greatly confused, were becoming more and more entangled; and it
seemed as if everything was beginning to turn around him, around the
room, around that extraordinary good lady with the white hair and forget-
me-not eyes.

"I know! I know I can!" she said, with a happy laugh. "But why don't
you come near me, as you used to do when you were a little boy? Give me
your hands, as when you brought me the story of little Lotte, which Daddy
Daae had told you. I am very fond of you, M. Raoul, you know. And so is
Christine too!"

"She is fond of me!" sighed the young man. He found a difficulty in
collecting his thoughts and bringing them to bear on Mamma Valerius'
"good genius," on the Angel of Music of whom Christine had spoken to him
so strangely, on the death's head which he had seen in a sort of nightmare
on the high altar at Perros and also on the Opera ghost, whose fame had
come to his ears one evening when he was standing behind the scenes,
within hearing of a group of scene-shifters who were repeating the ghastly
description which the hanged man, Joseph Buquet, had given of the ghost
before his mysterious death.

He asked in a low voice: "What makes you think that Christine is fond of
me, madame?"

"She used to speak of you every day."

"Really? ... And what did she tell you?"

"She told me that you had made her a proposal!"

And the good old lady began laughing wholeheartedly. Raoul sprang
from his chair, flushing to the temples, suffering agonies.

"What's this? Where are you going? Sit down again at once, will you? ...
Do you think I will let you go like that? ... If you're angry with me for
laughing, I beg your pardon... After all, what has happened isn't your fault...
Didn't you know? ... Did you think that Christine was free? ..."

"Is Christine engaged to be married?" the wretched Raoul asked, in a
choking voice.

"Why no! Why no! ... You know as well as I do that Christine couldn't
marry, even if she wanted to!"

"But I don't know anything about it! ... And why can't Christine marry?"

"Because of the Angel of Music, of course! ..."

"I don't follow ..."

"Yes, he forbids her to! ..."

"He forbids her! ... The Angel of Music forbids her to marry!"

"Oh, he forbids her ... without forbidding her. It's like this: he tells her
that, if she got married, she would never hear him again. That's all! ... And
that he would go away for ever! ... So, you understand, she can't let the
Angel of Music go. It's quite natural."

"Yes, yes," echoed Raoul submissively, "it's quite natural."

"Besides, I thought Christine had told you all that, when she met you at
Perros, where she went with her good genius."

"Oh, she went to Perros with her good genius, did she?"

"That is to say, he arranged to meet her down there, in Perros
churchyard, at Daae's grave. He promised to play her The Resurrection of
Lazarus on her father's violin!"

Raoul de Chagny rose and, with a very authoritative air, pronounced
these peremptory words:

"Madame, you will have the goodness to tell me where that genius
lives."

The old lady did not seem surprised at this indiscreet command. She
raised her eyes and said:

"In Heaven!"

Such simplicity baffled him. He did not know what to say in the
presence of this candid and perfect faith in a genius who came down nightly
from Heaven to haunt the dressing-rooms at the Opera.

He now realized the possible state of mind of a girl brought up between
a superstitious fiddler and a visionary old lady and he shuddered when he
thought of the consequences of it all.

"Is Christine still a good girl?" he asked suddenly, in spite of himself.

"I swear it, as I hope to be saved!" exclaimed the old woman, who, this
time, seemed to be incensed. "And, if you doubt it, sir, I don't know what
you are here for!"

Raoul tore at his gloves.

"How long has she known this 'genius?'"

"About three months ... Yes, it's quite three months since he began to
give her lessons."

The viscount threw up his arms with a gesture of despair.

"The genius gives her lessons! ... And where, pray?"

"Now that she has gone away with him, I can't say; but, up to a fortnight
ago, it was in Christine's dressing-room. It would be impossible in this little
flat. The whole house would hear them. Whereas, at the Opera, at eight
o'clock in the morning, there is no one about, do you see!"

"Yes, I see! I see!" cried the viscount.

And he hurriedly took leave of Mme. Valerius, who asked herself if the
young nobleman was not a little off his head.

He walked home to his brother's house in a pitiful state. He could have
struck himself, banged his head against the walls! To think that he had
believed in her innocence, in her purity! The Angel of Music! He knew him
now! He saw him! It was beyond a doubt some unspeakable tenor, a good-
looking jackanapes, who mouthed and simpered as he sang! He thought
himself as absurd and as wretched as could be. Oh, what a miserable, little,
insignificant, silly young man was M. le Vicomte de Chagny! thought
Raoul, furiously. And she, what a bold and damnable sly creature!

His brother was waiting for him and Raoul fell into his arms, like a
child. The count consoled him, without asking for explanations; and Raoul
would certainly have long hesitated before telling him the story of the
Angel of Music. His brother suggested taking him out to dinner. Overcome
as he was with despair, Raoul would probably have refused any invitation
that evening, if the count had not, as an inducement, told him that the lady
of his thoughts had been seen, the night before, in company of the other sex
in the Bois. At first, the viscount refused to believe; but he received such
exact details that he ceased protesting. She had been seen, it appeared,
driving in a brougham, with the window down. She seemed to be slowly
taking in the icy night air. There was a glorious moon shining. She was
recognized beyond a doubt. As for her companion, only his shadowy outline
was distinguished leaning back in the dark. The carriage was going at a
walking pace in a lonely drive behind the grand stand at Longchamp.

Raoul dressed in frantic haste, prepared to forget his distress by flinging
himself, as people say, into "the vortex of pleasure." Alas, he was a very
sorry guest and, leaving his brother early, found himself, by ten o'clock in
the evening, in a cab, behind the Longchamp race-course.

It was bitterly cold. The road seemed deserted and very bright under the
moonlight. He told the driver to wait for him patiently at the corner of a
near turning and, hiding himself as well as he could, stood stamping his feet
to keep warm. He had been indulging in this healthy exercise for half an
hour or so, when a carriage turned the corner of the road and came quietly
in his direction, at a walking pace.

As it approached, he saw that a woman was leaning her head from the
window. And, suddenly, the moon shed a pale gleam over her features.

"Christine!"

The sacred name of his love had sprung from his heart and his lips. He
could not keep it back... He would have given anything to withdraw it, for
that name, proclaimed in the stillness of the night, had acted as though it
were the preconcerted signal for a furious rush on the part of the whole
turn-out, which dashed past him before he could put into execution his plan
of leaping at the horses' heads. The carriage window had been closed and
the girl's face had disappeared. And the brougham, behind which he was
now running, was no more than a black spot on the white road.

He called out again: "Christine!"

No reply. And he stopped in the midst of the silence.

With a lack-luster eye, he stared down that cold, desolate road and into
the pale, dead night. Nothing was colder than his heart, nothing half so
dead: he had loved an angel and now he despised a woman!

Raoul, how that little fairy of the North has trifled with you! Was it
really, was it really necessary to have so fresh and young a face, a forehead
so shy and always ready to cover itself with the pink blush of modesty in
order to pass in the lonely night, in a carriage and pair, accompanied by a
mysterious lover? Surely there should be some limit to hypocrisy and lying!
...

She had passed without answering his cry ... And he was thinking of
dying; and he was twenty years old! ...

His valet found him in the morning sitting on his bed. He had not
undressed and the servant feared, at the sight of his face, that some disaster
had occurred. Raoul snatched his letters from the man's hands. He had
recognized Christine's paper and hand-writing. She said:

DEAR:

Go to the masked ball at the Opera on the night after to-morrow. At
twelve o'clock, be in the little room behind the chimney-place of the big

crush-room. Stand near the door that leads to the Rotunda. Don't mention
this appointment to any one on earth. Wear a white domino and be carefully
masked. As you love me, do not let yourself be recognized. CHRISTINE.

Chapter IX At the Masked Ball

The envelope was covered with mud and unstamped. It bore the words
"To be handed to M. le Vicomte Raoul de Chagny," with the address in
pencil. It must have been flung out in the hope that a passer-by would pick
up the note and deliver it, which was what happened. The note had been
picked up on the pavement of the Place de l'Opera.

Raoul read it over again with fevered eyes. No more was needed to
revive his hope. The somber picture which he had for a moment imagined
of a Christine forgetting her duty to herself made way for his original
conception of an unfortunate, innocent child, the victim of imprudence and
exaggerated sensibility. To what extent, at this time, was she really a
victim? Whose prisoner was she? Into what whirlpool had she been
dragged? He asked himself these questions with a cruel anguish; but even
this pain seemed endurable beside the frenzy into which he was thrown at
the thought of a lying and deceitful Christine. What had happened? What
influence had she undergone? What monster had carried her off and by
what means? ...

By what means indeed but that of music? He knew Christine's story.
After her father's death, she acquired a distaste of everything in life,
including her art. She went through the CONSERVATOIRE like a poor
soulless singing-machine. And, suddenly, she awoke as though through the
intervention of a god. The Angel of Music appeared upon the scene! She
sang Margarita in FAUST and triumphed! ...

The Angel of Music! ... For three months the Angel of Music had been
giving Christine lessons ... Ah, he was a punctual singing-master! ... And

now he was taking her for drives in the Bois! ...

Raoul's fingers clutched at his flesh, above his jealous heart. In his
inexperience, he now asked himself with terror what game the girl was
playing? Up to what point could an opera-singer make a fool of a good-
natured young man, quite new to love? O misery! ...

Thus did Raoul's thoughts fly from one extreme to the other. He no
longer knew whether to pity Christine or to curse her; and he pitied and
cursed her turn and turn about. At all events, he bought a white domino.

The hour of the appointment came at last. With his face in a mask
trimmed with long, thick lace, looking like a pierrot in his white wrap, the
viscount thought himself very ridiculous. Men of the world do not go to the
Opera ball in fancy-dress! It was absurd. One thought, however, consoled
the viscount: he would certainly never be recognized!

This ball was an exceptional affair, given some time before Shrovetide,
in honor of the anniversary of the birth of a famous draftsman; and it was
expected to be much gayer, noisier, more Bohemian than the ordinary
masked ball. Numbers of artists had arranged to go, accompanied by a
whole cohort of models and pupils, who, by midnight, began to create a
tremendous din. Raoul climbed the grand staircase at five minutes to
twelve, did not linger to look at the motley dresses displayed all the way up
the marble steps, one of the richest settings in the world, allowed no
facetious mask to draw him into a war of wits, replied to no jests and shook
off the bold familiarity of a number of couples who had already become a
trifle too gay. Crossing the big crush-room and escaping from a mad whirl
of dancers in which he was caught for a moment, he at last entered the room
mentioned in Christine's letter. He found it crammed; for this small space
was the point where all those who were going to supper in the Rotunda
crossed those who were returning from taking a glass of champagne. The
fun, here, waxed fast and furious.

Raoul leaned against a door-post and waited. He did not wait long. A
black domino passed and gave a quick squeeze to the tips of his fingers. He
understood that it was she and followed her:

"Is that you, Christine?" he asked, between his teeth.

The black domino turned round promptly and raised her finger to her
lips, no doubt to warn him not to mention her name again. Raoul continued
to follow her in silence.

He was afraid of losing her, after meeting her again in such strange
circumstances. His grudge against her was gone. He no longer doubted that
she had "nothing to reproach herself with," however peculiar and
inexplicable her conduct might seem. He was ready to make any display of
clemency, forgiveness or cowardice. He was in love. And, no doubt, he
would soon receive a very natural explanation of her curious absence.

The black domino turned back from time to time to see if the white
domino was still following.

As Raoul once more passed through the great crush-room, this time in
the wake of his guide, he could not help noticing a group crowding round a
person whose disguise, eccentric air and gruesome appearance were causing
a sensation. It was a man dressed all in scarlet, with a huge hat and feathers
on the top of a wonderful death's head. From his shoulders hung an
immense red-velvet cloak, which trailed along the floor like a king's train;
and on this cloak was embroidered, in gold letters, which every one read
and repeated aloud, "Don't touch me! I am Red Death stalking abroad!"

Then one, greatly daring, did try to touch him ... but a skeleton hand shot
out of a crimson sleeve and violently seized the rash one's wrist; and he,
feeling the clutch of the knucklebones, the furious grasp of Death, uttered a
cry of pain and terror. When Red Death released him at last, he ran away
like a very madman, pursued by the jeers of the bystanders.

It was at this moment that Raoul passed in front of the funereal
masquerader, who had just happened to turn in his direction. And he nearly
exclaimed:

"The death's head of Perros-Guirec!"

He had recognized him! ... He wanted to dart forward, forgetting
Christine; but the black domino, who also seemed a prey to some strange
excitement, caught him by the arm and dragged him from the crush-room,
far from the mad crowd through which Red Death was stalking...

The black domino kept on turning back and, apparently, on two
occasions saw something that startled her, for she hurried her pace and
Raoul's as though they were being pursued.

They went up two floors. Here, the stairs and corridors were almost
deserted. The black domino opened the door of a private box and beckoned
to the white domino to follow her. Then Christine, whom he recognized by
the sound of her voice, closed the door behind them and warned him, in a
whisper, to remain at the back of the box and on no account to show
himself. Raoul took off his mask. Christine kept hers on. And, when Raoul
was about to ask her to remove it, he was surprised to see her put her ear to
the partition and listen eagerly for a sound outside. Then she opened the
door ajar, looked out into the corridor and, in a low voice, said:

"He must have gone up higher." Suddenly she exclaimed: "He is coming
down again!"

She tried to close the door, but Raoul prevented her; for he had seen, on
the top step of the staircase that led to the floor above, A RED FOOT,
followed by another ... and slowly, majestically, the whole scarlet dress of
Red Death met his eyes. And he once more saw the death's head of Perros-
Guirec.

"It's he!" he exclaimed. "This time, he shall not escape me! ..."

But Christian{sic} had slammed the door at the moment when Raoul
was on the point of rushing out. He tried to push her aside.

"Whom do you mean by 'he'?" she asked, in a changed voice. "Who shall
not escape you?"

Raoul tried to overcome the girl's resistance by force, but she repelled
him with a strength which he would not have suspected in her. He

understood, or thought he understood, and at once lost his temper.

"Who?" he repeated angrily. "Why, he, the man who hides behind that
hideous mask of death! ... The evil genius of the churchyard at Perros! ...
Red Death! ... In a word, madam, your friend ... your Angel of Music! ...
But I shall snatch off his mask, as I shall snatch off my own; and, this time,
we shall look each other in the face, he and I, with no veil and no lies
between us; and I shall know whom you love and who loves you!"

He burst into a mad laugh, while Christine gave a disconsolate moan
behind her velvet mask. With a tragic gesture, she flung out her two arms,
which fixed a barrier of white flesh against the door.

"In the name of our love, Raoul, you shall not pass! ..."

He stopped. What had she said? ... In the name of their love? ... Never
before had she confessed that she loved him. And yet she had had
opportunities enough ... Pooh, her only object was to gain a few seconds! ...
She wished to give the Red Death time to escape ... And, in accents of
childish hatred, he said:

"You lie, madam, for you do not love me and you have never loved me!
What a poor fellow I must be to let you mock and flout me as you have
done! Why did you give me every reason for hope, at Perros ... for honest
hope, madam, for I am an honest man and I believed you to be an honest
woman, when your only intention was to deceive me! Alas, you have
deceived us all! You have taken a shameful advantage of the candid
affection of your benefactress herself, who continues to believe in your
sincerity while you go about the Opera ball with Red Death! ... I despise
you! ..."

And he burst into tears. She allowed him to insult her. She thought of but
one thing, to keep him from leaving the box.

"You will beg my pardon, one day, for all those ugly words, Raoul, and
when you do I shall forgive you!"

He shook his head. "No, no, you have driven me mad! When I think that
I had only one object in life: to give my name to an opera wench!"

"Raoul! ... How can you?"

"I shall die of shame!"

"No, dear, live!" said Christine's grave and changed voice. "And ... good-
by. Good-by, Raoul ..."

The boy stepped forward, staggering as he went. He risked one more
sarcasm:

"Oh, you must let me come and applaud you from time to time!"

"I shall never sing again, Raoul! ..."

"Really?" he replied, still more satirically. "So he is taking you off the
stage: I congratulate you! ... But we shall meet in the Bois, one of these
evenings!"

"Not in the Bois nor anywhere, Raoul: you shall not see me again ..."

"May one ask at least to what darkness you are returning? ... For what
hell are you leaving, mysterious lady ... or for what paradise?"

"I came to tell you, dear, but I can't tell you now ... you would not
believe me! You have lost faith in me, Raoul; it is finished!"

She spoke in such a despairing voice that the lad began to feel remorse
for his cruelty.

"But look here!" he cried. "Can't you tell me what all this means! ... You
are free, there is no one to interfere with you... You go about Paris ... You
put on a domino to come to the ball... Why do you not go home? ... What
have you been doing this past fortnight? ... What is this tale about the Angel
of Music, which you have been telling Mamma Valerius? Some one may
have taken you in, played upon your innocence. I was a witness of it
myself, at Perros ... but you know what to believe now! You seem to me

quite sensible, Christine. You know what you are doing ... And meanwhile
Mamma Valerius lies waiting for you at home and appealing to your 'good
genius!' ... Explain yourself, Christine, I beg of you! Any one might have
been deceived as I was. What is this farce?"

Christine simply took off her mask and said: "Dear, it is a tragedy!"

Raoul now saw her face and could not restrain an exclamation of
surprise and terror. The fresh complexion of former days was gone. A
mortal pallor covered those features, which he had known so charming and
so gentle, and sorrow had furrowed them with pitiless lines and traced dark
and unspeakably sad shadows under her eyes.

"My dearest! My dearest!" he moaned, holding out his arms. "You
promised to forgive me ..."

"Perhaps! ... Some day, perhaps!" she said, resuming her mask; and she
went away, forbidding him, with a gesture, to follow her.

He tried to disobey her; but she turned round and repeated her gesture of
farewell with such authority that he dared not move a step.

He watched her till she was out of sight. Then he also went down among
the crowd, hardly knowing what he was doing, with throbbing temples and
an aching heart; and, as he crossed the dancing-floor, he asked if anybody
had seen Red Death. Yes, every one had seen Red Death; but Raoul could
not find him; and, at two o'clock in the morning, he turned down the
passage, behind the scenes, that led to Christine Daae's dressing-room.

His footsteps took him to that room where he had first known suffering.
He tapped at the door. There was no answer. He entered, as he had entered
when he looked everywhere for "the man's voice." The room was empty. A
gas-jet was burning, turned down low. He saw some writing-paper on a
little desk. He thought of writing to Christine, but he heard steps in the
passage. He had only time to hide in the inner room, which was separated
from the dressing-room by a curtain.

Christine entered, took off her mask with a weary movement and flung it
on the table. She sighed and let her pretty head fall into her two hands.
What was she thinking of? Of Raoul? No, for Raoul heard her murmur:
"Poor Erik!"

At first, he thought he must be mistaken. To begin with, he was
persuaded that, if any one was to be pitied, it was he, Raoul. It would have
been quite natural if she had said, "Poor Raoul," after what had happened
between them. But, shaking her head, she repeated: "Poor Erik!"

What had this Erik to do with Christine's sighs and why was she pitying
Erik when Raoul was so unhappy?

Christine began to write, deliberately, calmly and so placidly that Raoul,
who was still trembling from the effects of the tragedy that separated them,
was painfully impressed.

"What coolness!" he said to himself.

She wrote on, filling two, three, four sheets. Suddenly, she raised her
head and hid the sheets in her bodice ... She seemed to be listening ... Raoul
also listened ... Whence came that strange sound, that distant rhythm? ... A
faint singing seemed to issue from the walls ... yes, it was as though the
walls themselves were singing! ... The song became plainer ... the words
were now distinguishable ... he heard a voice, a very beautiful, very soft,
very captivating voice ... but, for all its softness, it remained a male voice ...
The voice came nearer and nearer ... it came through the wall ... it
approached ... and now the voice was IN THE ROOM, in front of Christine.
Christine rose and addressed the voice, as though speaking to some one:

"Here I am, Erik," she said. "I am ready. But you are late."

Raoul, peeping from behind the curtain, could not believe his eyes,
which showed him nothing. Christine's face lit up. A smile of happiness
appeared upon her bloodless lips, a smile like that of sick people when they
receive the first hope of recovery.

The voice without a body went on singing; and certainly Raoul had
never in his life heard anything more absolutely and heroically sweet, more
gloriously insidious, more delicate, more powerful, in short, more
irresistibly triumphant. He listened to it in a fever and he now began to
understand how Christine Daae was able to appear one evening, before the
stupefied audience, with accents of a beauty hitherto unknown, of a
superhuman exaltation, while doubtless still under the influence of the
mysterious and invisible master.

The voice was singing the Wedding-night Song from Romeo and Juliet.
Raoul saw Christine stretch out her arms to the voice as she had done, in
Perros churchyard, to the invisible violin playing The Resurrection of
Lazarus. And nothing could describe the passion with which the voice sang:

"Fate links thee to me for ever and a day!"

The strains went through Raoul's heart. Struggling against the charm that
seemed to deprive him of all his will and all his energy and of almost all his
lucidity at the moment when he needed them most, he succeeded in drawing
back the curtain that hid him and he walked to where Christine stood. She
herself was moving to the back of the room, the whole wall of which was
occupied by a great mirror that reflected her image, but not his, for he was
just behind her and entirely covered by her.

"Fate links thee to me for ever and a day!"

Christine walked toward her image in the glass and the image came
toward her. The two Christines—the real one and the reflection—ended by
touching; and Raoul put out his arms to clasp the two in one embrace. But,
by a sort of dazzling miracle that sent him staggering, Raoul was suddenly
flung back, while an icy blast swept over his face; he saw, not two, but four,
eight, twenty Christines spinning round him, laughing at him and fleeing so
swiftly that he could not touch one of them. At last, everything stood still
again; and he saw himself in the glass. But Christine had disappeared.

He rushed up to the glass. He struck at the walls. Nobody! And
meanwhile the room still echoed with a distant passionate singing:

"Fate links thee to me for ever and a day!"

Which way, which way had Christine gone? ... Which way would she
return? ...

Would she return? Alas, had she not declared to him that everything was
finished? And was the voice not repeating:

"Fate links thee to me for ever and a day!"

To me? To whom?

Then, worn out, beaten, empty-brained, he sat down on the chair which
Christine had just left. Like her, he let his head fall into his hands. When he
raised it, the tears were streaming down his young cheeks, real, heavy tears
like those which jealous children shed, tears that wept for a sorrow which
was in no way fanciful, but which is common to all the lovers on earth and
which he expressed aloud:

"Who is this Erik?" he said.

Chapter X Forget the Name of the Man's Voice

The day after Christine had vanished before his eyes in a sort of
dazzlement that still made him doubt the evidence of his senses, M. le
Vicomte de Chagny called to inquire at Mamma Valerius'. He came upon a
charming picture. Christine herself was seated by the bedside of the old
lady, who was sitting up against the pillows, knitting. The pink and white
had returned to the young girl's cheeks. The dark rings round her eyes had
disappeared. Raoul no longer recognized the tragic face of the day before. If
the veil of melancholy over those adorable features had not still appeared to
the young man as the last trace of the weird drama in whose toils that
mysterious child was struggling, he could have believed that Christine was
not its heroine at all.

She rose, without showing any emotion, and offered him her hand. But
Raoul's stupefaction was so great that he stood there dumfounded, without a
gesture, without a word.

"Well, M. de Chagny," exclaimed Mamma Valerius, "don't you know our
Christine? Her good genius has sent her back to us!"

"Mamma!" the girl broke in promptly, while a deep blush mantled to her
eyes. "I thought, mamma, that there was to be no more question of that! ...
You know there is no such thing as the Angel of Music!"

"But, child, he gave you lessons for three months!"

"Mamma, I have promised to explain everything to you one of these
days; and I hope to do so but you have promised me, until that day, to be
silent and to ask me no more questions whatever!"

"Provided that you promised never to leave me again! But have you
promised that, Christine?"

"Mamma, all this can not interest M. de Chagny."

"On the contrary, mademoiselle," said the young man, in a voice which
he tried to make firm and brave, but which still trembled, "anything that
concerns you interests me to an extent which perhaps you will one day
understand. I do not deny that my surprise equals my pleasure at finding
you with your adopted mother and that, after what happened between us
yesterday, after what you said and what I was able to guess, I hardly
expected to see you here so soon. I should be the first to delight at your
return, if you were not so bent on preserving a secrecy that may be fatal to
you ... and I have been your friend too long not to be alarmed, with Mme.
Valerius, at a disastrous adventure which will remain dangerous so long as
we have not unraveled its threads and of which you will certainly end by
being the victim, Christine."

At these words, Mamma Valerius tossed about in her bed.

"What does this mean?" she cried. "Is Christine in danger?"

"Yes, madame," said Raoul courageously, notwithstanding the signs
which Christine made to him.

"My God!" exclaimed the good, simple old woman, gasping for breath.
"You must tell me everything, Christine! Why did you try to reassure me?
And what danger is it, M. de Chagny?"

"An impostor is abusing her good faith."

"Is the Angel of Music an impostor?"

"She told you herself that there is no Angel of Music."

"But then what is it, in Heaven's name? You will be the death of me!"

"There is a terrible mystery around us, madame, around you, around
Christine, a mystery much more to be feared than any number of ghosts or
genii!"

Mamma Valerius turned a terrified face to Christine, who had already
run to her adopted mother and was holding her in her arms.

"Don't believe him, mummy, don't believe him," she repeated.

"Then tell me that you will never leave me again," implored the widow.

Christine was silent and Raoul resumed.

"That is what you must promise, Christine. It is the only thing that can
reassure your mother and me. We will undertake not to ask you a single
question about the past, if you promise us to remain under our protection in
future."

"That is an undertaking which I have not asked of you and a promise
which I refuse to make you!" said the young girl haughtily. "I am mistress
of my own actions, M. de Chagny: you have no right to control them, and I
will beg you to desist henceforth. As to what I have done during the last
fortnight, there is only one man in the world who has the right to demand an

account of me: my husband! Well, I have no husband and I never mean to
marry!"

She threw out her hands to emphasize her words and Raoul turned pale,
not only because of the words which he had heard, but because he had
caught sight of a plain gold ring on Christine's finger.

"You have no husband and yet you wear a wedding-ring."

He tried to seize her hand, but she swiftly drew it back.

"That's a present!" she said, blushing once more and vainly striving to
hide her embarrassment.

"Christine! As you have no husband, that ring can only have been given
by one who hopes to make you his wife! Why deceive us further? Why
torture me still more? That ring is a promise; and that promise has been
accepted!"

"That's what I said!" exclaimed the old lady.

"And what did she answer, madame?"

"What I chose," said Christine, driven to exasperation. "Don't you think,
monsieur, that this cross-examination has lasted long enough? As far as I
am concerned ..."

Raoul was afraid to let her finish her speech. He interrupted her:

"I beg your pardon for speaking as I did, mademoiselle. You know the
good intentions that make me meddle, just now, in matters which, you no
doubt think, have nothing to do with me. But allow me to tell you what I
have seen—and I have seen more than you suspect, Christine—or what I
thought I saw, for, to tell you the truth, I have sometimes been inclined to
doubt the evidence of my eyes."

"Well, what did you see, sir, or think you saw?"

"I saw your ecstasy AT THE SOUND OF THE VOICE, Christine: the
voice that came from the wall or the next room to yours ... yes, YOUR
ECSTASY! And that is what makes me alarmed on your behalf. You are
under a very dangerous spell. And yet it seems that you are aware of the
imposture, because you say to-day THAT THERE IS NO ANGEL OF
MUSIC! In that case, Christine, why did you follow him that time? Why
did you stand up, with radiant features, as though you were really hearing
angels? ... Ah, it is a very dangerous voice, Christine, for I myself, when I
heard it, was so much fascinated by it that you vanished before my eyes
without my seeing which way you passed! Christine, Christine, in the name
of Heaven, in the name of your father who is in Heaven now and who loved
you so dearly and who loved me too, Christine, tell us, tell your
benefactress and me, to whom does that voice belong? If you do, we will
save you in spite of yourself. Come, Christine, the name of the man! The
name of the man who had the audacity to put a ring on your finger!"

"M. de Chagny," the girl declared coldly, "you shall never know!"

Thereupon, seeing the hostility with which her ward had addressed the
viscount, Mamma Valerius suddenly took Christine's part.

"And, if she does love that man, Monsieur le Vicomte, even then it is no
business of yours!"

"Alas, madame," Raoul humbly replied, unable to restrain his tears,
"alas, I believe that Christine really does love him! ... But it is not only that
which drives me to despair; for what I am not certain of, madame, is that
the man whom Christine loves is worthy of her love!"

"It is for me to be the judge of that, monsieur!" said Christine, looking
Raoul angrily in the face.

"When a man," continued Raoul, "adopts such romantic methods to
entice a young girl's affections. .."

"The man must be either a villain, or the girl a fool: is that it?"

"Christine!"

"Raoul, why do you condemn a man whom you have never seen, whom
no one knows and about whom you yourself know nothing?"

"Yes, Christine ... Yes ... I at least know the name that you thought to
keep from me for ever ... The name of your Angel of Music, mademoiselle,
is Erik!"

Christine at once betrayed herself. She turned as white as a sheet and
stammered: "Who told you?"

"You yourself!"

"How do you mean?"

"By pitying him the other night, the night of the masked ball. When you
went to your dressing-room, did you not say, 'Poor Erik?' Well, Christine,
there was a poor Raoul who overheard you."

"This is the second time that you have listened behind the door, M. de
Chagny!"

"I was not behind the door ... I was in the dressing-room, in the inner
room, mademoiselle."

"Oh, unhappy man!" moaned the girl, showing every sign of
unspeakable terror. "Unhappy man! Do you want to be killed?"

"Perhaps."

Raoul uttered this "perhaps" with so much love and despair in his voice
that Christine could not keep back a sob. She took his hands and looked at
him with all the pure affection of which she was capable:

"Raoul," she said, "forget THE MAN'S VOICE and do not even
remember its name... You must never try to fathom the mystery of THE
MAN'S VOICE."

"Is the mystery so very terrible?"

"There is no more awful mystery on this earth. Swear to me that you will
make no attempt to find out," she insisted. "Swear to me that you will never
come to my dressing-room, unless I send for you."

"Then you promise to send for me sometimes, Christine?"

"I promise."

"When?"

"To-morrow."

"Then I swear to do as you ask."

He kissed her hands and went away, cursing Erik and resolving to be
patient.

Chapter XI Above the Trap-Doors

The next day, he saw her at the Opera. She was still wearing the plain
gold ring. She was gentle and kind to him. She talked to him of the plans
which he was forming, of his future, of his career.

He told her that the date of the Polar expedition had been put forward
and that he would leave France in three weeks, or a month at latest. She
suggested, almost gaily, that he must look upon the voyage with delight, as
a stage toward his coming fame. And when he replied that fame without
love was no attraction in his eyes, she treated him as a child whose sorrows
were only short-lived.

"How can you speak so lightly of such serious things?" he asked.
"Perhaps we shall never see each other again! I may die during that
expedition."

"Or I," she said simply.

She no longer smiled or jested. She seemed to be thinking of some new
thing that had entered her mind for the first time. Her eyes were all aglow
with it.

"What are you thinking of, Christine?"

"I am thinking that we shall not see each other again ..."

"And does that make you so radiant?"

"And that, in a month, we shall have to say good-by for ever!"

"Unless, Christine, we pledge our faith and wait for each other for ever."

She put her hand on his mouth.

"Hush, Raoul! ... You know there is no question of that ... And we shall
never be married: that is understood!"

She seemed suddenly almost unable to contain an overpowering gaiety.
She clapped her hands with childish glee. Raoul stared at her in amazement.

"But ... but," she continued, holding out her two hands to Raoul, or
rather giving them to him, as though she had suddenly resolved to make
him a present of them, "but if we can not be married, we can ... we can be
engaged! Nobody will know but ourselves, Raoul. There have been plenty
of secret marriages: why not a secret engagement? ... We are engaged, dear,
for a month! In a month, you will go away, and I can be happy at the
thought of that month all my life long!"

She was enchanted with her inspiration. Then she became serious again.

"This," she said, "IS A HAPPINESS THAT WILL HARM NO ONE."

Raoul jumped at the idea. He bowed to Christine and said:

"Mademoiselle, I have the honor to ask for your hand."

"Why, you have both of them already, my dear betrothed! ... Oh, Raoul,
how happy we shall be! ... We must play at being engaged all day long."

It was the prettiest game in the world and they enjoyed it like the
children that they were. Oh, the wonderful speeches they made to each
other and the eternal vows they exchanged! They played at hearts as other
children might play at ball; only, as it was really their two hearts that they
flung to and fro, they had to be very, very handy to catch them, each time,
without hurting them.

One day, about a week after the game began, Raoul's heart was badly
hurt and he stopped playing and uttered these wild words:

"I shan't go to the North Pole!"

Christine, who, in her innocence, had not dreamed of such a possibility,
suddenly discovered the danger of the game and reproached herself bitterly.
She did not say a word in reply to Raoul's remark and went straight home.

This happened in the afternoon, in the singer's dressing-room, where
they met every day and where they amused themselves by dining on three
biscuits, two glasses of port and a bunch of violets. In the evening, she did
not sing; and he did not receive his usual letter, though they had arranged to
write to each other daily during that month. The next morning, he ran off to
Mamma Valerius, who told him that Christine had gone away for two days.
She had left at five o'clock the day before.

Raoul was distracted. He hated Mamma Valerius for giving him such
news as that with such stupefying calmness. He tried to sound her, but the
old lady obviously knew nothing.

Christine returned on the following day. She returned in triumph. She
renewed her extraordinary success of the gala performance. Since the
adventure of the "toad," Carlotta had not been able to appear on the stage.
The terror of a fresh "co-ack" filled her heart and deprived her of all her
power of singing; and the theater that had witnessed her incomprehensible
disgrace had become odious to her. She contrived to cancel her contract.

Daae was offered the vacant place for the time. She received thunders of
applause in the Juive.

The viscount, who, of course, was present, was the only one to suffer on
hearing the thousand echoes of this fresh triumph; for Christine still wore
her plain gold ring. A distant voice whispered in the young man's ear:

"She is wearing the ring again to-night; and you did not give it to her.
She gave her soul again tonight and did not give it to you... If she will not
tell you what she has been doing the past two days ... you must go and ask
Erik!"

He ran behind the scenes and placed himself in her way. She saw him for
her eyes were looking for him. She said:

"Quick! Quick! ... Come!"

And she dragged him to her dressing-room.

Raoul at once threw himself on his knees before her. He swore to her
that he would go and he entreated her never again to withhold a single hour
of the ideal happiness which she had promised him. She let her tears flow.
They kissed like a despairing brother and sister who have been smitten with
a common loss and who meet to mourn a dead parent.

Suddenly, she snatched herself from the young man's soft and timid
embrace, seemed to listen to something, and, with a quick gesture, pointed
to the door. When he was on the threshold, she said, in so low a voice that
the viscount guessed rather than heard her words:

"To-morrow, my dear betrothed! And be happy, Raoul: I sang for you to-
night!"

He returned the next day. But those two days of absence had broken the
charm of their delightful make-believe. They looked at each other, in the
dressing-room, with their sad eyes, without exchanging a word. Raoul had
to restrain himself not to cry out:

"I am jealous! I am jealous! I am jealous!"

But she heard him all the same. Then she said:

"Come for a walk, dear. The air will do you good."

Raoul thought that she would propose a stroll in the country, far from
that building which he detested as a prison whose jailer he could feel
walking within the walls ... the jailer Erik ... But she took him to the stage
and made him sit on the wooden curb of a well, in the doubtful peace and
coolness of a first scene set for the evening's performance.

On another day, she wandered with him, hand in, hand, along the
deserted paths of a garden whose creepers had been cut out by a decorator's
skilful hands. It was as though the real sky, the real flowers, the real earth
were forbidden her for all time and she condemned to breathe no other air
than that of the theater. An occasional fireman passed, watching over their
melancholy idyll from afar. And she would drag him up above the clouds, in
the magnificent disorder of the grid, where she loved to make him giddy by
running in front of him along the frail bridges, among the thousands of
ropes fastened to the pulleys, the windlasses, the rollers, in the midst of a
regular forest of yards and masts. If he hesitated, she said, with an adorable
pout of her lips:

"You, a sailor!"

And then they returned to terra firma, that is to say, to some passage that
led them to the little girls' dancing-school, where brats between six and ten
were practising their steps, in the hope of becoming great dancers one day,
"covered with diamonds ..." Meanwhile, Christine gave them sweets
instead.

She took him to the wardrobe and property-rooms, took him all over her
empire, which was artificial, but immense, covering seventeen stories from
the ground-floor to the roof and inhabited by an army of subjects. She
moved among them like a popular queen, encouraging them in their labors,
sitting down in the workshops, giving words of advice to the workmen
whose hands hesitated to cut into the rich stuffs that were to clothe heroes.

There were inhabitants of that country who practised every trade. There
were cobblers, there were goldsmiths. All had learned to know her and to
love her, for she always interested herself in all their troubles and all their
little hobbies.

She knew unsuspected corners that were secretly occupied by little old
couples. She knocked at their door and introduced Raoul to them as a
Prince Charming who had asked for her hand; and the two of them, sitting
on some worm-eaten "property," would listen to the legends of the Opera,
even as, in their childhood, they had listened to the old Breton tales. Those
old people remembered nothing outside the Opera. They had lived there for
years without number. Past managements had forgotten them; palace
revolutions had taken no notice of them; the history of France had run its
course unknown to them; and nobody recollected their existence.

The precious days sped in this way; and Raoul and Christine, by
affecting excessive interest in outside matters, strove awkwardly to hide
from each other the one thought of their hearts. One fact was certain, that
Christine, who until then had shown herself the stronger of the two, became
suddenly inexpressibly nervous. When on their expeditions, she would start
running without reason or else suddenly stop; and her hand, turning ice-cold
in a moment, would hold the young man back. Sometimes her eyes seemed
to pursue imaginary shadows. She cried, "This way," and "This way," and
"This way," laughing a breathless laugh that often ended in tears. Then
Raoul tried to speak, to question her, in spite of his promises. But, even
before he had worded his question, she answered feverishly:

"Nothing ... I swear it is nothing."

Once, when they were passing before an open trapdoor on the stage,
Raoul stopped over the dark cavity.

"You have shown me over the upper part of your empire, Christine, but
there are strange stories told of the lower part. Shall we go down?"

She caught him in her arms, as though she feared to see him disappear
down the black hole, and, in a trembling voice, whispered:

"Never! ... I will not have you go there! ... Besides, it's not mine ...
EVERYTHING THAT IS UNDERGROUND BELONGS TO HIM!"

Raoul looked her in the eyes and said roughly:

"So he lives down there, does he?"

"I never said so ... Who told you a thing like that? Come away! I
sometimes wonder if you are quite sane, Raoul ... You always take things in
such an impossible way ... Come along! Come!"

And she literally dragged him away, for he was obstinate and wanted to
remain by the trap-door; that hole attracted him.

Suddenly, the trap-door was closed and so quickly that they did not even
see the hand that worked it; and they remained quite dazed.

"Perhaps HE was there," Raoul said, at last.

She shrugged her shoulders, but did not seem easy.

"No, no, it was the 'trap-door-shutters.' They must do something, you
know ... They open and shut the trap-doors without any particular reason ...
It's like the 'door-shutters:' they must spend their time somehow."

"But suppose it were HE, Christine?"

"No, no! He has shut himself up, he is working."

"Oh, really! He's working, is he?"

"Yes, he can't open and shut the trap-doors and work at the same time."
She shivered.

"What is he working at?"

"Oh, something terrible! ... But it's all the better for us... When he's
working at that, he sees nothing; he does not eat, drink, or breathe for days
and nights at a time ... he becomes a living dead man and has no time to

amuse himself with the trap-doors." She shivered again. She was still
holding him in her arms. Then she sighed and said, in her turn:

"Suppose it were HE!"

"Are you afraid of him?"

"No, no, of course not," she said.

For all that, on the next day and the following days, Christine was
careful to avoid the trap-doors. Her agitation only increased as the hours
passed. At last, one afternoon, she arrived very late, with her face so
desperately pale and her eyes so desperately red, that Raoul resolved to go
to all lengths, including that which he foreshadowed when he blurted out
that he would not go on the North Pole expedition unless she first told him
the secret of the man's voice.

"Hush! Hush, in Heaven's name! Suppose HE heard you, you
unfortunate Raoul!"

And Christine's eyes stared wildly at everything around her.

"I will remove you from his power, Christine, I swear it. And you shall
not think of him any more."

"Is it possible?"

She allowed herself this doubt, which was an encouragement, while
dragging the young man up to the topmost floor of the theater, far, very far
from the trap-doors.

"I shall hide you in some unknown corner of the world, where HE can
not come to look for you. You will be safe; and then I shall go away ... as
you have sworn never to marry."

Christine seized Raoul's hands and squeezed them with incredible
rapture. But, suddenly becoming alarmed again, she turned away her head.

"Higher!" was all she said. "Higher still!"

And she dragged him up toward the summit.

He had a difficulty in following her. They were soon under the very roof,
in the maze of timber-work. They slipped through the buttresses, the rafters,
the joists; they ran from beam to beam as they might have run from tree to
tree in a forest.

And, despite the care which she took to look behind her at every
moment, she failed to see a shadow which followed her like her own
shadow, which stopped when she stopped, which started again when she did
and which made no more noise than a well-conducted shadow should. As
for Raoul, he saw nothing either; for, when he had Christine in front of him,
nothing interested him that happened behind.

Chapter XII Apollo's Lyre

On this way, they reached the roof. Christine tripped over it as lightly as
a swallow. Their eyes swept the empty space between the three domes and
the triangular pediment. She breathed freely over Paris, the whole valley of
which was seen at work below. She called Raoul to come quite close to her
and they walked side by side along the zinc streets, in the leaden avenues;
they looked at their twin shapes in the huge tanks, full of stagnant water,
where, in the hot weather, the little boys of the ballet, a score or so, learn to
swim and dive.

The shadow had followed behind them clinging to their steps; and the
two children little suspected its presence when they at last sat down,
trustingly, under the mighty protection of Apollo, who, with a great bronze
gesture, lifted his huge lyre to the heart of a crimson sky.

It was a gorgeous spring evening. Clouds, which had just received their
gossamer robe of gold and purple from the setting sun, drifted slowly by;
and Christine said to Raoul:

"Soon we shall go farther and faster than the clouds, to the end of the
world, and then you will leave me, Raoul. But, if, when the moment comes
for you to take me away, I refuse to go with you—well you must carry me
off by force!"

"Are you afraid that you will change your mind, Christine?"

"I don't know," she said, shaking her head in an odd fashion. "He is a
demon!" And she shivered and nestled in his arms with a moan. "I am afraid
now of going back to live with him ... in the ground!"

"What compels you to go back, Christine?"

"If I do not go back to him, terrible misfortunes may happen! ... But I
can't do it, I can't do it! ... I know one ought to be sorry for people who live
underground ... But he is too horrible! And yet the time is at hand; I have
only a day left; and, if I do not go, he will come and fetch me with his
voice. And he will drag me with him, underground, and go on his knees
before me, with his death's head. And he will tell me that he loves me! And
he will cry! Oh, those tears, Raoul, those tears in the two black eye-sockets
of the death's head! I can not see those tears flow again!"

She wrung her hands in anguish, while Raoul pressed her to his heart.

"No, no, you shall never again hear him tell you that he loves you! You
shall not see his tears! Let us fly, Christine, let us fly at once!"

And he tried to drag her away, then and there. But she stopped him.

"No, no," she said, shaking her head sadly. "Not now! ... It would be too
cruel ... let him hear me sing to-morrow evening ... and then we will go
away. You must come and fetch me in my dressing-room at midnight
exactly. He will then be waiting for me in the dining-room by the lake ... we
shall be free and you shall take me away ... You must promise me that,
Raoul, even if I refuse; for I feel that, if I go back this time, I shall perhaps
never return."

And she gave a sigh to which it seemed to her that another sigh, behind
her, replied.

"Didn't you hear?"

Her teeth chattered.

"No," said Raoul, "I heard nothing."

"It is too terrible," she confessed, "to be always trembling like this! ...
And yet we run no danger here; we are at home, in the sky, in the open air,
in the light. The sun is flaming; and night-birds can not bear to look at the
sun. I have never seen him by daylight ... it must be awful! ... Oh, the first
time I saw him! ... I thought that he was going to die."

"Why?" asked Raoul, really frightened at the aspect which this strange
confidence was taking.

"BECAUSE I HAD SEEN HIM!"

This time, Raoul and Christine turned round at the same time:

"There is some one in pain," said Raoul. "Perhaps some one has been
hurt. Did you hear?"

"I can't say," Christine confessed. "Even when he is not there, my ears
are full of his sighs. Still, if you heard ..."

They stood up and looked around them. They were quite alone on the
immense lead roof. They sat down again and Raoul said:

"Tell me how you saw him first."

"I had heard him for three months without seeing him. The first time I
heard it, I thought, as you did, that that adorable voice was singing in
another room. I went out and looked everywhere; but, as you know, Raoul,
my dressing-room is very much by itself; and I could not find the voice
outside my room, whereas it went on steadily inside. And it not only sang,
but it spoke to me and answered my questions, like a real man's voice, with

this difference, that it was as beautiful as the voice of an angel. I had never
got the Angel of Music whom my poor father had promised to send me as
soon as he was dead. I really think that Mamma Valerius was a little bit to
blame. I told her about it; and she at once said, 'It must be the Angel; at any
rate, you can do no harm by asking him.' I did so; and the man's voice
replied that, yes, it was the Angel's voice, the voice which I was expecting
and which my father had promised me. From that time onward, the voice
and I became great friends. It asked leave to give me lessons every day. I
agreed and never failed to keep the appointment which it gave me in my
dressing-room. You have no idea, though you have heard the voice, of what
those lessons were like."

"No, I have no idea," said Raoul. "What was your accompaniment?"

"We were accompanied by a music which I do not know: it was behind
the wall and wonderfully accurate. The voice seemed to understand mine
exactly, to know precisely where my father had left off teaching me. In a
few weeks' time, I hardly knew myself when I sang. I was even frightened. I
seemed to dread a sort of witchcraft behind it; but Mamma Valerius
reassured me. She said that she knew I was much too simple a girl to give
the devil a hold on me ... My progress, by the voice's own order, was kept a
secret between the voice, Mamma Valerius and myself. It was a curious
thing, but, outside the dressing-room, I sang with my ordinary, every-day
voice and nobody noticed anything. I did all that the voice asked. It said,
'Wait and see: we shall astonish Paris!' And I waited and lived on in a sort
of ecstatic dream. It was then that I saw you for the first time one evening,
in the house. I was so glad that I never thought of concealing my delight
when I reached my dressing-room. Unfortunately, the voice was there
before me and soon noticed, by my air, that something had happened. It
asked what was the matter and I saw no reason for keeping our story secret
or concealing the place which you filled in my heart. Then the voice was
silent. I called to it, but it did not reply; I begged and entreated, but in vain.
I was terrified lest it had gone for good. I wish to Heaven it had, dear! ...
That night, I went home in a desperate condition. I told Mamma Valerius,
who said, 'Why, of course, the voice is jealous!' And that, dear, first
revealed to me that I loved you."

Christine stopped and laid her head on Raoul's shoulder. They sat like
that for a moment, in silence, and they did not see, did not perceive the
movement, at a few steps from them, of the creeping shadow of two great
black wings, a shadow that came along the roof so near, so near them that it
could have stifled them by closing over them.

"The next day," Christine continued, with a sigh, "I went back to my
dressing-room in a very pensive frame of mind. The voice was there, spoke
to me with great sadness and told me plainly that, if I must bestow my heart
on earth, there was nothing for the voice to do but to go back to Heaven.
And it said this with such an accent of HUMAN sorrow that I ought then
and there to have suspected and begun to believe that I was the victim of
my deluded senses. But my faith in the voice, with which the memory of
my father was so closely intermingled, remained undisturbed. I feared
nothing so much as that I might never hear it again; I had thought about my
love for you and realized all the useless danger of it; and I did not even
know if you remembered me. Whatever happened, your position in society
forbade me to contemplate the possibility of ever marrying you; and I swore
to the voice that you were no more than a brother to me nor ever would be
and that my heart was incapable of any earthly love. And that, dear, was
why I refused to recognize or see you when I met you on the stage or in the
passages. Meanwhile, the hours during which the voice taught me were
spent in a divine frenzy, until, at last, the voice said to me, 'You can now,
Christine Daae, give to men a little of the music of Heaven.' I don't know
how it was that Carlotta did not come to the theater that night nor why I was
called upon to sing in her stead; but I sang with a rapture I had never known
before and I felt for a moment as if my soul were leaving my body!"

"Oh, Christine," said Raoul, "my heart quivered that night at every
accent of your voice. I saw the tears stream down your cheeks and I wept
with you. How could you sing, sing like that while crying?"

"I felt myself fainting," said Christine, "I closed my eyes. When I opened
them, you were by my side. But the voice was there also, Raoul! I was
afraid for your sake and again I would not recognize you and began to
laugh when you reminded me that you had picked up my scarf in the sea! ...
Alas, there is no deceiving the voice! ... The voice recognized you and the

voice was jealous! ... It said that, if I did not love you, I would not avoid
you, but treat you like any other old friend. It made me scene upon scene.
At last, I said to the voice, 'That will do! I am going to Perros to-morrow, to
pray on my father's grave, and I shall ask M. Raoul de Chagny to go with
me.' 'Do as you please,' replied the voice, 'but I shall be at Perros too, for I
am wherever you are, Christine; and, if you are still worthy of me, if you
have not lied to me, I will play you The Resurrection of Lazarus, on the
stroke of midnight, on your father's tomb and on your father's violin.' That,
dear, was how I came to write you the letter that brought you to Perros.
How could I have been so beguiled? How was it, when I saw the personal,
the selfish point of view of the voice, that I did not suspect some impostor?
Alas, I was no longer mistress of myself: I had become his thing!"

"But, after all," cried Raoul, "you soon came to know the truth! Why did
you not at once rid yourself of that abominable nightmare?"

"Know the truth, Raoul? Rid myself of that nightmare? But, my poor
boy, I was not caught in the nightmare until the day when I learned the
truth! ... Pity me, Raoul, pity me! ... You remember the terrible evening
when Carlotta thought that she had been turned into a toad on the stage and
when the house was suddenly plunged in darkness through the chandelier
crashing to the floor? There were killed and wounded that night and the
whole theater rang with terrified screams. My first thought was for you and
the voice. I was at once easy, where you were concerned, for I had seen you
in your brother's box and I knew that you were not in danger. But the voice
had told me that it would be at the performance and I was really afraid for
it, just as if it had been an ordinary person who was capable of dying. I
thought to myself, 'The chandelier may have come down upon the voice.' I
was then on the stage and was nearly running into the house, to look for the
voice among the killed and wounded, when I thought that, if the voice was
safe, it would be sure to be in my dressing-room and I rushed to my room.
The voice was not there. I locked my door and, with tears in my eyes,
besought it, if it were still alive, to manifest itself to me. The voice did not
reply, but suddenly I heard a long, beautiful wail which I knew well. It is
the plaint of Lazarus when, at the sound of the Redeemer's voice, he begins
to open his eyes and see the light of day. It was the music which you and I,
Raoul, heard at Perros. And then the voice began to sing the leading phrase,

'Come! And believe in me! Whoso believes in me shall live! Walk! Whoso
hath believed in me shall never die! ...' I can not tell you the effect which
that music had upon me. It seemed to command me, personally, to come, to
stand up and come to it. It retreated and I followed. 'Come! And believe in
me!' I believed in it, I came ... I came and—this was the extraordinary thing
—my dressing-room, as I moved, seemed to lengthen out ... to lengthen out
... Evidently, it must have been an effect of mirrors ... for I had the mirror in
front of me ... And, suddenly, I was outside the room without knowing
how!"

"What! Without knowing how? Christine, Christine, you must really stop
dreaming!"

"I was not dreaming, dear, I was outside my room without knowing how.
You, who saw me disappear from my room one evening, may be able to
explain it; but I can not. I can only tell you that, suddenly, there was no
mirror before me and no dressing-room. I was in a dark passage, I was
frightened and I cried out. It was quite dark, but for a faint red glimmer at a
distant corner of the wall. I tried out. My voice was the only sound, for the
singing and the violin had stopped. And, suddenly, a hand was laid on mine
... or rather a stone-cold, bony thing that seized my wrist and did not let go.
I cried out again. An arm took me round the waist and supported me. I
struggled for a little while and then gave up the attempt. I was dragged
toward the little red light and then I saw that I was in the hands of a man
wrapped in a large cloak and wearing a mask that hid his whole face. I
made one last effort; my limbs stiffened, my mouth opened to scream, but a
hand closed it, a hand which I felt on my lips, on my skin ... a hand that
smelt of death. Then I fainted away.

"When I opened my eyes, we were still surrounded by darkness. A
lantern, standing on the ground, showed a bubbling well. The water
splashing from the well disappeared, almost at once, under the floor on
which I was lying, with my head on the knee of the man in the black cloak
and the black mask. He was bathing my temples and his hands smelt of
death. I tried to push them away and asked, 'Who are you? Where is the
voice?' His only answer was a sigh. Suddenly, a hot breath passed over my
face and I perceived a white shape, beside the man's black shape, in the

darkness. The black shape lifted me on to the white shape, a glad neighing
greeted my astounded ears and I murmured, 'Cesar!' The animal quivered.
Raoul, I was lying half back on a saddle and I had recognized the white
horse out of the PROFETA, which I had so often fed with sugar and sweets.
I remembered that, one evening, there was a rumor in the theater that the
horse had disappeared and that it had been stolen by the Opera ghost. I
believed in the voice, but had never believed in the ghost. Now, however, I
began to wonder, with a shiver, whether I was the ghost's prisoner. I called
upon the voice to help me, for I should never have imagined that the voice
and the ghost were one. You have heard about the Opera ghost, have you
not, Raoul?"

"Yes, but tell me what happened when you were on the white horse of
the Profeta?"

"I made no movement and let myself go. The black shape held me up,
and I made no effort to escape. A curious feeling of peacefulness came over
me and I thought that I must be under the influence of some cordial. I had
the full command of my senses; and my eyes became used to the darkness,
which was lit, here and there, by fitful gleams. I calculated that we were in
a narrow circular gallery, probably running all round the Opera, which is
immense, underground. I had once been down into those cellars, but had
stopped at the third floor, though there were two lower still, large enough to
hold a town. But the figures of which I caught sight had made me run away.
There are demons down there, quite black, standing in front of boilers, and
they wield shovels and pitchforks and poke up fires and stir up flames and,
if you come too near them, they frighten you by suddenly opening the red
mouths of their furnaces ... Well, while Cesar was quietly carrying me on
his back, I saw those black demons in the distance, looking quite small, in
front of the red fires of their furnaces: they came into sight, disappeared and
came into sight again, as we went on our winding way. At last, they
disappeared altogether. The shape was still holding me up and Cesar walked
on, unled and sure-footed. I could not tell you, even approximately, how
long this ride lasted; I only know that we seemed to turn and turn and often
went down a spiral stair into the very heart of the earth. Even then, it may
be that my head was turning, but I don't think so: no, my mind was quite
clear. At last, Cesar raised his nostrils, sniffed the air and quickened his

pace a little. I felt a moistness in the air and Cesar stopped. The darkness
had lifted. A sort of bluey light surrounded us. We were on the edge of a
lake, whose leaden waters stretched into the distance, into the darkness; but
the blue light lit up the bank and I saw a little boat fastened to an iron ring
on the wharf!"

"A boat!"

"Yes, but I knew that all that existed and that there was nothing
supernatural about that underground lake and boat. But think of the
exceptional conditions in which I arrived upon that shore! I don't know
whether the effects of the cordial had worn off when the man's shape lifted
me into the boat, but my terror began all over again. My gruesome escort
must have noticed it, for he sent Cesar back and I heard his hoofs trampling
up a staircase while the man jumped into the boat, untied the rope that held
it and seized the oars. He rowed with a quick, powerful stroke; and his eyes,
under the mask, never left me. We slipped across the noiseless water in the
bluey light which I told you of; then we were in the dark again and we
touched shore. And I was once more taken up in the man's arms. I cried
aloud. And then, suddenly, I was silent, dazed by the light... Yes, a dazzling
light in the midst of which I had been put down. I sprang to my feet. I was
in the middle of a drawing-room that seemed to me to be decorated,
adorned and furnished with nothing but flowers, flowers both magnificent
and stupid, because of the silk ribbons that tied them to baskets, like those
which they sell in the shops on the boulevards. They were much too
civilized flowers, like those which I used to find in my dressing-room after
a first night. And, in the midst of all these flowers, stood the black shape of
the man in the mask, with arms crossed, and he said, 'Don't be afraid,
Christine; you are in no danger.' IT WAS THE VOICE!

"My anger equaled my amazement. I rushed at the mask and tried to
snatch it away, so as to see the face of the voice. The man said, 'You are in
no danger, so long as you do not touch the mask.' And, taking me gently by
the wrists, he forced me into a chair and then went down on his knees
before me and said nothing more! His humility gave me back some of my
courage; and the light restored me to the realties of life. However
extraordinary the adventure might be, I was now surrounded by mortal,

visible, tangible things. The furniture, the hangings, the candles, the vases
and the very flowers in their baskets, of which I could almost have told
whence they came and what they cost, were bound to confine my
imagination to the limits of a drawing-room quite as commonplace as any
that, at least, had the excuse of not being in the cellars of the Opera. I had,
no doubt, to do with a terrible, eccentric person, who, in some mysterious
fashion, had succeeded in taking up his abode there, under the Opera house,
five stories below the level of the ground. And the voice, the voice which I
had recognized under the mask, was on its knees before me, WAS A MAN!
And I began to cry... The man, still kneeling, must have understood the
cause of my tears, for he said, 'It is true, Christine! ... I am not an Angel, nor
a genius, nor a ghost ... I am Erik!'"

Christine's narrative was again interrupted. An echo behind them seemed
to repeat the word after her.

"Erik!"

What echo? ... They both turned round and saw that night had fallen.
Raoul made a movement as though to rise, but Christine kept him beside
her.

"Don't go," she said. "I want you to know everything HERE!"

"But why here, Christine? I am afraid of your catching cold."

"We have nothing to fear except the trap-doors, dear, and here we are
miles away from the trap-doors ... and I am not allowed to see you outside
the theater. This is not the time to annoy him. We must not arouse his
suspicion."

"Christine! Christine! Something tells me that we are wrong to wait till
to-morrow evening and that we ought to fly at once."

"I tell you that, if he does not hear me sing tomorrow, it will cause him
infinite pain."

"It is difficult not to cause him pain and yet to escape from him for
good."

"You are right in that, Raoul, for certainly he will die of my flight." And
she added in a dull voice, "But then it counts both ways ... for we risk his
killing us."

"Does he love you so much?"

"He would commit murder for me."

"But one can find out where he lives. One can go in search of him. Now
that we know that Erik is not a ghost, one can speak to him and force him to
answer!"

Christine shook her head.

"No, no! There is nothing to be done with Erik except to run away!"

"Then why, when you were able to run away, did you go back to him?"

"Because I had to. And you will understand that when I tell you how I
left him."

"Oh, I hate him!" cried Raoul. "And you, Christine, tell me, do you hate
him too?"

"No," said Christine simply.

"No, of course not ... Why, you love him! Your fear, your terror, all of
that is just love and love of the most exquisite kind, the kind which people
do not admit even to themselves," said Raoul bitterly. "The kind that gives
you a thrill, when you think of it... Picture it: a man who lives in a palace
underground!" And he gave a leer.

"Then you want me to go back there?" said the young girl cruelly. "Take
care, Raoul; I have told you: I should never return!"

There was an appalling silence between the three of them: the two who
spoke and the shadow that listened, behind them.

"Before answering that," said Raoul, at last, speaking very slowly, "I
should like to know with what feeling he inspires you, since you do not hate
him."

"With horror!" she said. "That is the terrible thing about it. He fills me
with horror and I do not hate him. How can I hate him, Raoul? Think of
Erik at my feet, in the house on the lake, underground. He accuses himself,
he curses himself, he implores my forgiveness! ... He confesses his cheat.
He loves me! He lays at my feet an immense and tragic love... He has
carried me off for love! ... He has imprisoned me with him, underground,
for love! ... But he respects me: he crawls, he moans, he weeps! ... And,
when I stood up, Raoul, and told him that I could only despise him if he did
not, then and there, give me my liberty ... he offered it ... he offered to show
me the mysterious road ... Only ... only he rose too ... and I was made to
remember that, though he was not an angel, nor a ghost, nor a genius, he
remained the voice ... for he sang. And I listened ... and stayed! ... That
night, we did not exchange another word. He sang me to sleep.

"When I woke up, I was alone, lying on a sofa in a simply furnished
little bedroom, with an ordinary mahogany bedstead, lit by a lamp standing
on the marble top of an old Louis-Philippe chest of drawers. I soon
discovered that I was a prisoner and that the only outlet from my room led
to a very comfortable bath-room. On returning to the bedroom, I saw on the
chest of drawers a note, in red ink, which said, 'My dear Christine, you need
have no concern as to your fate. You have no better nor more respectful
friend in the world than myself. You are alone, at present, in this home
which is yours. I am going out shopping to fetch you all the things that you
can need.' I felt sure that I had fallen into the hands of a madman. I ran
round my little apartment, looking for a way of escape which I could not
find. I upbraided myself for my absurd superstition, which had caused me
to fall into the trap. I felt inclined to laugh and to cry at the same time.

"This was the state of mind in which Erik found me. After giving three
taps on the wall, he walked in quietly through a door which I had not
noticed and which he left open. He had his arms full of boxes and parcels

and arranged them on the bed, in a leisurely fashion, while I overwhelmed
him with abuse and called upon him to take off his mask, if it covered the
face of an honest man. He replied serenely, 'You shall never see Erik's face.'
And he reproached me with not having finished dressing at that time of day:
he was good enough to tell me that it was two o'clock in the afternoon. He
said he would give me half an hour and, while he spoke, wound up my
watch and set it for me. After which, he asked me to come to the dining-
room, where a nice lunch was waiting for us.

"I was very angry, slammed the door in his face and went to the bath-
room ... When I came out again, feeling greatly refreshed, Erik said that he
loved me, but that he would never tell me so except when I allowed him
and that the rest of the time would be devoted to music. 'What do you mean
by the rest of the time?' I asked. 'Five days,' he said, with decision. I asked
him if I should then be free and he said, 'You will be free, Christine, for,
when those five days are past, you will have learned not to see me; and
then, from time to time, you will come to see your poor Erik!' He pointed to
a chair opposite him, at a small table, and I sat down, feeling greatly
perturbed. However, I ate a few prawns and the wing of a chicken and
drank half a glass of tokay, which he had himself, he told me, brought from
the Konigsberg cellars. Erik did not eat or drink. I asked him what his
nationality was and if that name of Erik did not point to his Scandinavian
origin. He said that he had no name and no country and that he had taken
the name of Erik by accident.

"After lunch, he rose and gave me the tips of his fingers, saying he
would like to show me over his flat; but I snatched away my hand and gave
a cry. What I had touched was cold and, at the same time, bony; and I
remembered that his hands smelt of death. 'Oh, forgive me!' he moaned.
And he opened a door before me. 'This is my bedroom, if you care to see it.
It is rather curious.' His manners, his words, his attitude gave me confidence
and I went in without hesitation. I felt as if I were entering the room of a
dead person. The walls were all hung with black, but, instead of the white
trimmings that usually set off that funereal upholstery, there was an
enormous stave of music with the notes of the DIES IRAE, many times
repeated. In the middle of the room was a canopy, from which hung curtains
of red brocaded stuff, and, under the canopy, an open coffin. 'That is where

I sleep,' said Erik. 'One has to get used to everything in life, even to
eternity.' The sight upset me so much that I turned away my head.

"Then I saw the keyboard of an organ which filled one whole side of the
walls. On the desk was a music-book covered with red notes. I asked leave
to look at it and read, 'Don Juan Triumphant.' 'Yes,' he said, 'I compose
sometimes.' I began that work twenty years ago. When I have finished, I
shall take it away with me in that coffin and never wake up again.' 'You
must work at it as seldom as you can,' I said. He replied, 'I sometimes work
at it for fourteen days and nights together, during which I live on music
only, and then I rest for years at a time.' 'Will you play me something out of
your Don Juan Triumphant?' I asked, thinking to please him. 'You must
never ask me that,' he said, in a gloomy voice. 'I will play you Mozart, if
you like, which will only make you weep; but my Don Juan, Christine,
burns; and yet he is not struck by fire from Heaven.' Thereupon we returned
to the drawing-room. I noticed that there was no mirror in the whole
apartment. I was going to remark upon this, but Erik had already sat down
to the piano. He said, 'You see, Christine, there is some music that is so
terrible that it consumes all those who approach it. Fortunately, you have
not come to that music yet, for you would lose all your pretty coloring and
nobody would know you when you returned to Paris. Let us sing something
from the Opera, Christine Daae.' He spoke these last words as though he
were flinging an insult at me."

"What did you do?"

"I had no time to think about the meaning he put into his words. We at
once began the duet in Othello and already the catastrophe was upon us. I
sang Desdemona with a despair, a terror which I had never displayed
before. As for him, his voice thundered forth his revengeful soul at every
note. Love, jealousy, hatred, burst out around us in harrowing cries. Erik's
black mask made me think of the natural mask of the Moor of Venice. He
was Othello himself. Suddenly, I felt a need to see beneath the mask. I
wanted to know the FACE of the voice, and, with a movement which I was
utterly unable to control, swiftly my fingers tore away the mask. Oh, horror,
horror, horror!"

Christine stopped, at the thought of the vision that had scared her, while
the echoes of the night, which had repeated the name of Erik, now thrice
moaned the cry:

"Horror! ... Horror! ... Horror!"

Raoul and Christine, clasping each other closely, raised their eyes to the
stars that shone in a clear and peaceful sky. Raoul said:

"Strange, Christine, that this calm, soft night should be so full of
plaintive sounds. One would think that it was sorrowing with us."

"When you know the secret, Raoul, your ears, like mine, will be full of
lamentations."

She took Raoul's protecting hands in hers and, with a long shiver,
continued:

"Yes, if I lived to be a hundred, I should always hear the superhuman cry
of grief and rage which he uttered when the terrible sight appeared before
my eyes ... Raoul, you have seen death's heads, when they have been dried
and withered by the centuries, and, perhaps, if you were not the victim of a
nightmare, you saw HIS death's head at Perros. And then you saw Red
Death stalking about at the last masked ball. But all those death's heads
were motionless and their dumb horror was not alive. But imagine, if you
can, Red Death's mask suddenly coming to life in order to express, with the
four black holes of its eyes, its nose, and its mouth, the extreme anger, the
mighty fury of a demon; AND NOT A RAY OF LIGHT FROM THE
SOCKETS, for, as I learned later, you can not see his blazing eyes except in
the dark.

"I fell back against the wall and he came up to me, grinding his teeth,
and, as I fell upon my knees, he hissed mad, incoherent words and curses at
me. Leaning over me, he cried, 'Look! You want to see! See! Feast your
eyes, glut your soul on my cursed ugliness! Look at Erik's face! Now you
know the face of the voice! You were not content to hear me, eh? You
wanted to know what I looked like! Oh, you women are so inquisitive!
Well, are you satisfied? I'm a very good-looking fellow, eh? ... When a

woman has seen me, as you have, she belongs to me. She loves me for ever.
I am a kind of Don Juan, you know!' And, drawing himself up to his full
height, with his hand on his hip, wagging the hideous thing that was his
head on his shoulders, he roared, 'Look at me! I AM DON JUAN
TRIUMPHANT!' And, when I turned away my head and begged for mercy,
he drew it to him, brutally, twisting his dead fingers into my hair."

"Enough! Enough!" cried Raoul. "I will kill him. In Heaven's name,
Christine, tell me where the dining-room on the lake is! I must kill him!"

"Oh, be quiet, Raoul, if you want to know!"

"Yes, I want to know how and why you went back; I must know! ... But,
in any case, I will kill him!"

"Oh, Raoul, listen, listen! ... He dragged me by my hair and then ... and
then ... Oh, it is too horrible!"

"Well, what? Out with it!" exclaimed Raoul fiercely. "Out with it,
quick!"

"Then he hissed at me. 'Ah, I frighten you, do I? ... I dare say! ... Perhaps
you think that I have another mask, eh, and that this ... this ... my head is a
mask? Well,' he roared, 'tear it off as you did the other! Come! Come along!
I insist! Your hands! Your hands! Give me your hands!' And he seized my
hands and dug them into his awful face. He tore his flesh with my nails, tore
his terrible dead flesh with my nails! ... 'Know,' he shouted, while his throat
throbbed and panted like a furnace, 'know that I am built up of death from
head to foot and that it is a corpse that loves you and adores you and will
never, never leave you! ... Look, I am not laughing now, I am crying, crying
for you, Christine, who have torn off my mask and who therefore can never
leave me again! ... As long as you thought me handsome, you could have
come back, I know you would have come back ... but, now that you know
my hideousness, you would run away for good... So I shall keep you here!
... Why did you want to see me? Oh, mad Christine, who wanted to see me!
... When my own father never saw me and when my mother, so as not to see
me, made me a present of my first mask!'

"He had let go of me at last and was dragging himself about on the floor,
uttering terrible sobs. And then he crawled away like a snake, went into his
room, closed the door and left me alone to my reflections. Presently I heard
the sound of the organ; and then I began to understand Erik's contemptuous
phrase when he spoke about Opera music. What I now heard was utterly
different from what I had heard up to then. His Don Juan Triumphant (for I
had not a doubt but that he had rushed to his masterpiece to forget the
horror of the moment) seemed to me at first one long, awful, magnificent
sob. But, little by little, it expressed every emotion, every suffering of
which mankind is capable. It intoxicated me; and I opened the door that
separated us. Erik rose, as I entered, BUT DARED NOT TURN IN MY
DIRECTION. 'Erik,' I cried, 'show me your face without fear! I swear that
you are the most unhappy and sublime of men; and, if ever again I shiver
when I look at you, it will be because I am thinking of the splendor of your
genius!' Then Erik turned round, for he believed me, and I also had faith in
myself. He fell at my feet, with words of love ... with words of love in his
dead mouth ... and the music had ceased ... He kissed the hem of my dress
and did not see that I closed my eyes.

"What more can I tell you, dear? You now know the tragedy. It went on
for a fortnight—a fortnight during which I lied to him. My lies were as
hideous as the monster who inspired them; but they were the price of my
liberty. I burned his mask; and I managed so well that, even when he was
not singing, he tried to catch my eye, like a dog sitting by its master. He was
my faithful slave and paid me endless little attentions. Gradually, I gave
him such confidence that he ventured to take me walking on the banks of
the lake and to row me in the boat on its leaden waters; toward the end of
my captivity he let me out through the gates that closed the underground
passages in the Rue Scribe. Here a carriage awaited us and took us to the
Bois. The night when we met you was nearly fatal to me, for he is terribly
jealous of you and I had to tell him that you were soon going away ... Then,
at last, after a fortnight of that horrible captivity, during which I was filled
with pity, enthusiasm, despair and horror by turns, he believed me when I
said, 'I WILL COME BACK!'"

"And you went back, Christine," groaned Raoul.

"Yes, dear, and I must tell you that it was not his frightful threats when
setting me free that helped me to keep my word, but the harrowing sob
which he gave on the threshold of the tomb. ... That sob attached me to the
unfortunate man more than I myself suspected when saying good-by to him.
Poor Erik! Poor Erik!"

"Christine," said Raoul, rising, "you tell me that you love me; but you
had recovered your liberty hardly a few hours before you returned to Erik!
Remember the masked ball!"

"Yes; and do you remember those hours which I passed with you, Raoul
... to the great danger of both of us?"

"I doubted your love for me, during those hours."

"Do you doubt it still, Raoul? ... Then know that each of my visits to
Erik increased my horror of him; for each of those visits, instead of calming
him, as I hoped, made him mad with love! And I am so frightened, so
frightened! ..."

"You are frightened ... but do you love me? If Erik were good-looking,
would you love me, Christine?"

She rose in her turn, put her two trembling arms round the young man's
neck and said:

"Oh, my betrothed of a day, if I did not love you, I would not give you
my lips! Take them, for the first time and the last."

He kissed her lips; but the night that surrounded them was rent asunder,
they fled as at the approach of a storm and their eyes, filled with dread of
Erik, showed them, before they disappeared, high up above them, an
immense night-bird that stared at them with its blazing eyes and seemed to
cling to the string of Apollo's lyre.

Chapter XIII A Master-Stroke of the Trap-Door Lover

Raoul and Christine ran, eager to escape from the roof and the blazing
eyes that showed only in the dark; and they did not stop before they came to
the eighth floor on the way down.

There was no performance at the Opera that night and the passages were
empty. Suddenly, a queer-looking form stood before them and blocked the
road:

"No, not this way!"

And the form pointed to another passage by which they were to reach the
wings. Raoul wanted to stop and ask for an explanation. But the form,
which wore a sort of long frock-coat and a pointed cap, said:

"Quick! Go away quickly!"

Christine was already dragging Raoul, compelling him to start running
again.

"But who is he? Who is that man?" he asked.

Christine replied: "It's the Persian."

"What's he doing here?"

"Nobody knows. He is always in the Opera."

"You are making me run away, for the first time in my life. If we really
saw Erik, what I ought to have done was to nail him to Apollo's lyre, just as
we nail the owls to the walls of our Breton farms; and there would have
been no more question of him."

"My dear Raoul, you would first have had to climb up to Apollo's lyre:
that is no easy matter."

"The blazing eyes were there!"

"Oh, you are getting like me now, seeing him everywhere! What I took
for blazing eyes was probably a couple of stars shining through the strings
of the lyre."

And Christine went down another floor, with Raoul following her.

"As you have quite made up your mind to go, Christine, I assure you it
would be better to go at once. Why wait for to-morrow? He may have heard
us to-night."

"No, no, he is working, I tell you, at his Don Juan Triumphant and not
thinking of us."

"You're so sure of that you keep on looking behind you!"

"Come to my dressing-room."

"Hadn't we better meet outside the Opera?"

"Never, till we go away for good! It would bring us bad luck, if I did not
keep my word. I promised him to see you only here."

"It's a good thing for me that he allowed you even that. Do you know,"
said Raoul bitterly, "that it was very plucky of you to let us play at being
engaged?"

"Why, my dear, he knows all about it! He said, 'I trust you, Christine. M.
de Chagny is in love with you and is going abroad. Before he goes, I want
him to be as happy as I am.' Are people so unhappy when they love?"

"Yes, Christine, when they love and are not sure of being loved."

They came to Christine's dressing-room.

"Why do you think that you are safer in this room than on the stage?"
asked Raoul. "You heard him through the walls here, therefore he can
certainly hear us."

"No. He gave me his word not to be behind the walls of my dressing-
room again and I believe Erik's word. This room and my bedroom on the
lake are for me, exclusively, and not to be approached by him."

"How can you have gone from this room into that dark passage,
Christine? Suppose we try to repeat your movements; shall we?"

"It is dangerous, dear, for the glass might carry me off again; and,
instead of running away, I should be obliged to go to the end of the secret
passage to the lake and there call Erik."

"Would he hear you?"

"Erik will hear me wherever I call him. He told me so. He is a very
curious genius. You must not think, Raoul, that he is simply a man who
amuses himself by living underground. He does things that no other man
could do; he knows things which nobody in the world knows."

"Take care, Christine, you are making a ghost of him again!"

"No, he is not a ghost; he is a man of Heaven and earth, that is all."

"A man of Heaven and earth ... that is all! ... A nice way to speak of him!
... And are you still resolved to run away from him?"

"Yes, to-morrow."

"To-morrow, you will have no resolve left!"

"Then, Raoul, you must run away with me in spite of myself; is that
understood?"

"I shall be here at twelve to-morrow night; I shall keep my promise,
whatever happens. You say that, after listening to the performance, he is to
wait for you in the dining-room on the lake?"

"Yes."

"And how are you to reach him, if you don't know how to go out by the
glass?"

"Why, by going straight to the edge of the lake."

Christine opened a box, took out an enormous key and showed it to
Raoul.

"What's that?" he asked.

"The key of the gate to the underground passage in the Rue Scribe."

"I understand, Christine. It leads straight to the lake. Give it to me,
Christine, will you?"

"Never!" she said. "That would be treacherous!"

Suddenly Christine changed color. A mortal pallor overspread her
features.

"Oh heavens!" she cried. "Erik! Erik! Have pity on me!"

"Hold your tongue!" said Raoul. "You told me he could hear you!"

But the singer's attitude became more and more inexplicable. She wrung
her fingers, repeating, with a distraught air:

"Oh, Heaven! Oh, Heaven!"

"But what is it? What is it?" Raoul implored.

"The ring ... the gold ring he gave me."

"Oh, so Erik gave you that ring!"

"You know he did, Raoul! But what you don't know is that, when he
gave it to me, he said, 'I give you back your liberty, Christine, on condition
that this ring is always on your finger. As long as you keep it, you will be
protected against all danger and Erik will remain your friend. But woe to

you if you ever part with it, for Erik will have his revenge!' ... My dear, my
dear, the ring is gone! ... Woe to us both!"

They both looked for the ring, but could not find it. Christine refused to
be pacified.

"It was while I gave you that kiss, up above, under Apollo's lyre," she
said. "The ring must have slipped from my finger and dropped into the
street! We can never find it. And what misfortunes are in store for us now!
Oh, to run away!"

"Let us run away at once," Raoul insisted, once more.

She hesitated. He thought that she was going to say yes... Then her
bright pupils became dimmed and she said:

"No! To-morrow!"

And she left him hurriedly, still wringing and rubbing her fingers, as
though she hoped to bring the ring back like that.

Raoul went home, greatly perturbed at all that he had heard.

[Illustration: They Sat Like that for a Moment in Silence]

"If I don't save her from the hands of that humbug," he said, aloud, as he
went to bed, "she is lost. But I shall save her."

He put out his lamp and felt a need to insult Erik in the dark. Thrice
over, he shouted:

"Humbug! ... Humbug! ... Humbug!"

But, suddenly, he raised himself on his elbow. A cold sweat poured from
his temples. Two eyes, like blazing coals, had appeared at the foot of his
bed. They stared at him fixedly, terribly, in the darkness of the night.

Raoul was no coward; and yet he trembled. He put out a groping,
hesitating hand toward the table by his bedside. He found the matches and

lit his candle. The eyes disappeared.

Still uneasy in his mind, he thought to himself:

"She told me that HIS eyes only showed in the dark. His eyes have
disappeared in the light, but HE may be there still."

And he rose, hunted about, went round the room. He looked under his
bed, like a child. Then he thought himself absurd, got into bed again and
blew out the candle. The eyes reappeared.

He sat up and stared back at them with all the courage he possessed.
Then he cried:

"Is that you, Erik? Man, genius, or ghost, is it you?"

He reflected: "If it's he, he's on the balcony!"

Then he ran to the chest of drawers and groped for his revolver. He
opened the balcony window, looked out, saw nothing and closed the
window again. He went back to bed, shivering, for the night was cold, and
put the revolver on the table within his reach.

The eyes were still there, at the foot of the bed. Were they between the
bed and the window-pane or behind the pane, that is to say, on the balcony?
That was what Raoul wanted to know. He also wanted to know if those eyes
belonged to a human being... He wanted to know everything. Then,
patiently, calmly, he seized his revolver and took aim. He aimed a little
above the two eyes. Surely, if they were eyes and if above those two eyes
there was a forehead and if Raoul was not too clumsy ...

The shot made a terrible din amid the silence of the slumbering house.
And, while footsteps came hurrying along the passages, Raoul sat up with
outstretched arm, ready to fire again, if need be.

This time, the two eyes had disappeared.

Servants appeared, carrying lights; Count Philippe, terribly anxious:

"What is it?"

"I think I have been dreaming," replied the young man. "I fired at two
stars that kept me from sleeping."

"You're raving! Are you ill? For God's sake, tell me, Raoul: what
happened?"

And the count seized hold of the revolver.

"No, no, I'm not raving... Besides, we shall soon see ..."

He got out of bed, put on a dressing-gown and slippers, took a light from
the hands of a servant and, opening the window, stepped out on the balcony.

The count saw that the window had been pierced by a bullet at a man's
height. Raoul was leaning over the balcony with his candle: "Aha!" he said.
"Blood! ... Blood! ... Here, there, more blood! ... That's a good thing! A
ghost who bleeds is less dangerous!" he grinned.

"Raoul! Raoul! Raoul!"

The count was shaking him as though he were trying to waken a sleep-
walker.

"But, my dear brother, I'm not asleep!" Raoul protested impatiently.
"You can see the blood for yourself. I thought I had been dreaming and
firing at two stars. It was Erik's eyes ... and here is his blood! ... After all,
perhaps I was wrong to shoot; and Christine is quite capable of never
forgiving me ... All this would not have happened if I had drawn the
curtains before going to bed."

"Raoul, have you suddenly gone mad? Wake up!"

"What, still? You would do better to help me find Erik ... for, after all, a
ghost who bleeds can always be found."

The count's valet said:

"That is so, sir; there is blood on the balcony."

The other man-servant brought a lamp, by the light of which they
examined the balcony carefully. The marks of blood followed the rail till
they reached a gutter-spout; then they went up the gutter-spout.

"My dear fellow," said Count Philippe, "you have fired at a cat."

"The misfortune is," said Raoul, with a grin, "that it's quite possible.
With Erik, you never know. Is it Erik? Is it the cat? Is it the ghost? No, with
Erik, you can't tell!"

Raoul went on making this strange sort of remarks which corresponded
so intimately and logically with the preoccupation of his brain and which, at
the same time, tended to persuade many people that his mind was unhinged.
The count himself was seized with this idea; and, later, the examining
magistrate, on receiving the report of the commissary of police, came to the
same conclusion.

"Who is Erik?" asked the count, pressing his brother's hand.

"He is my rival. And, if he's not dead, it's a pity."

He dismissed the servants with a wave of the hand and the two Chagnys
were left alone. But the men were not out of earshot before the count's valet
heard Raoul say, distinctly and emphatically:

"I shall carry off Christine Daae to-night."

This phrase was afterward repeated to M. Faure, the examining-
magistrate. But no one ever knew exactly what passed between the two
brothers at this interview. The servants declared that this was not their first
quarrel. Their voices penetrated the wall; and it was always an actress
called Christine Daae that was in question.

At breakfast—the early morning breakfast, which the count took in his
study—Philippe sent for his brother. Raoul arrived silent and gloomy. The

scene was a very short one. Philippe handed his brother a copy of the
Epoque and said:

"Read that!"

The viscount read:

"The latest news in the Faubourg is that there is a promise of marriage
between Mlle. Christine Daae, the opera-singer, and M. le Vicomte Raoul
de Chagny. If the gossips are to be credited, Count Philippe has sworn that,
for the first time on record, the Chagnys shall not keep their promise. But,
as love is all-powerful, at the Opera as—and even more than—elsewhere,
we wonder how Count Philippe intends to prevent the viscount, his brother,
from leading the new Margarita to the altar. The two brothers are said to
adore each other; but the count is curiously mistaken if he imagines that
brotherly love will triumph over love pure and simple."

"You see, Raoul," said the count, "you are making us ridiculous! That
little girl has turned your head with her ghost-stories."

The viscount had evidently repeated Christine's narrative to his brother,
during the night. All that he now said was:

"Good-by, Philippe."

"Have you quite made up your mind? You are going to-night? With her?"

No reply.

"Surely you will not do anything so foolish? I SHALL know how to
prevent you!"

"Good-by, Philippe," said the viscount again and left the room.

This scene was described to the examining-magistrate by the count
himself, who did not see Raoul again until that evening, at the Opera, a few
minutes before Christine's disappearance.

Raoul, in fact, devoted the whole day to his preparations for the flight.
The horses, the carriage, the coachman, the provisions, the luggage, the
money required for the journey, the road to be taken (he had resolved not to
go by train, so as to throw the ghost off the scent): all this had to be settled
and provided for; and it occupied him until nine o'clock at night.

At nine o'clock, a sort of traveling-barouche with the curtains of its
windows close-down, took its place in the rank on the Rotunda side. It was
drawn by two powerful horses driven by a coachman whose face was
almost concealed in the long folds of a muffler. In front of this traveling-
carriage were three broughams, belonging respectively to Carlotta, who had
suddenly returned to Paris, to Sorelli and, at the head of the rank, to Comte
Philippe de Chagny. No one left the barouche. The coachman remained on
his box, and the three other coachmen remained on theirs.

A shadow in a long black cloak and a soft black felt hat passed along the
pavement between the Rotunda and the carriages, examined the barouche
carefully, went up to the horses and the coachman and then moved away
without saying a word, The magistrate afterward believed that this shadow
was that of the Vicomte Raoul de Chagny; but I do not agree, seeing that
that evening, as every evening, the Vicomte de Chagny was wearing a tall
hat, which hat, besides, was subsequently found. I am more inclined to
think that the shadow was that of the ghost, who knew all about the whole
affair, as the reader will soon perceive.

They were giving FAUST, as it happened, before a splendid house. The
Faubourg was magnificently represented; and the paragraph in that
morning's EPOQUE had already produced its effect, for all eyes were
turned to the box in which Count Philippe sat alone, apparently in a very
indifferent and careless frame of mind. The feminine element in the brilliant
audience seemed curiously puzzled; and the viscount's absence gave rise to
any amount of whispering behind the fans. Christine Daae met with a rather
cold reception. That special audience could not forgive her for aiming so
high.

The singer noticed this unfavorable attitude of a portion of the house and
was confused by it.

The regular frequenters of the Opera, who pretended to know the truth
about the viscount's love-story, exchanged significant smiles at certain
passages in Margarita's part; and they made a show of turning and looking
at Philippe de Chagny's box when Christine sang:
"I wish I could but know who was he
That addressed me,
If he was noble, or, at least, what his name is."

The count sat with his chin on his hand and seemed to pay no attention
to these manifestations. He kept his eyes fixed on the stage; but his thoughts
appeared to be far away.

Christine lost her self-assurance more and more. She trembled. She felt
on the verge of a breakdown ... Carolus Fonta wondered if she was ill, if she
could keep the stage until the end of the Garden Act. In the front of the
house, people remembered the catastrophe that had befallen Carlotta at the
end of that act and the historic "co-ack" which had momentarily interrupted
her career in Paris.

Just then, Carlotta made her entrance in a box facing the stage, a
sensational entrance. Poor Christine raised her eyes upon this fresh subject
of excitement. She recognized her rival. She thought she saw a sneer on her
lips. That saved her. She forgot everything, in order to triumph once more.

From that moment the prima donna sang with all her heart and soul. She
tried to surpass all that she had done till then; and she succeeded. In the last
act when she began the invocation to the angels, she made all the members
of the audience feel as though they too had wings.

In the center of the amphitheater a man stood up and remained standing,
facing the singer. It was Raoul.

"Holy angel, in Heaven blessed ..."

And Christine, her arms outstretched, her throat filled with music, the
glory of her hair falling over her bare shoulders, uttered the divine cry:

"My spirit longs with thee to rest!"

It was at that moment that the stage was suddenly plunged in darkness. It
happened so quickly that the spectators hardly had time to utter a sound of
stupefaction, for the gas at once lit up the stage again. But Christine Daae
was no longer there!

What had become of her? What was that miracle? All exchanged glances
without understanding, and the excitement at once reached its height. Nor
was the tension any less great on the stage itself. Men rushed from the
wings to the spot where Christine had been singing that very instant. The
performance was interrupted amid the greatest disorder.

Where had Christine gone? What witchcraft had snatched her, away
before the eyes of thousands of enthusiastic onlookers and from the arms of
Carolus Fonta himself? It was as though the angels had really carried her up
"to rest."

Raoul, still standing up in the amphitheater, had uttered a cry. Count
Philippe had sprung to his feet in his box. People looked at the stage, at the
count, at Raoul, and wondered if this curious event was connected in any
way with the paragraph in that morning's paper. But Raoul hurriedly left his
seat, the count disappeared from his box and, while the curtain was
lowered, the subscribers rushed to the door that led behind the scenes. The
rest of the audience waited amid an indescribable hubbub. Every one spoke
at once. Every one tried to suggest an explanation of the extraordinary
incident.

At last, the curtain rose slowly and Carolus Fonta stepped to the
conductor's desk and, in a sad and serious voice, said:

"Ladies and gentlemen, an unprecedented event has taken place and
thrown us into a state of the greatest alarm. Our sister-artist, Christine Daae,
has disappeared before our eyes and nobody can tell us how!"

Chapter XIV The Singular Attitude of a Safety-Pin

Behind the curtain, there was an indescribable crowd. Artists, scene-
shifters, dancers, supers, choristers, subscribers were all asking questions,
shouting and hustling one another.

"What became of her?"

"She's run away."

"With the Vicomte de Chagny, of course!"

"No, with the count!"

"Ah, here's Carlotta! Carlotta did the trick!"

"No, it was the ghost!" And a few laughed, especially as a careful
examination of the trap-doors and boards had put the idea of an accident out
of the question.

Amid this noisy throng, three men stood talking in a low voice and with
despairing gestures. They were Gabriel, the chorus-master; Mercier, the
acting-manager; and Remy, the secretary. They retired to a corner of the
lobby by which the stage communicates with the wide passage leading to
the foyer of the ballet. Here they stood and argued behind some enormous
"properties."

"I knocked at the door," said Remy. "They did not answer. Perhaps they
are not in the office. In any case, it's impossible to find out, for they took
the keys with them."

"They" were obviously the managers, who had given orders, during the
last entr'acte, that they were not to be disturbed on any pretext whatever.
They were not in to anybody.

"All the same," exclaimed Gabriel, "a singer isn't run away with, from
the middle of the stage, every day!"

"Did you shout that to them?" asked Mercier, impatiently.

"I'll go back again," said Remy, and disappeared at a run.

Thereupon the stage-manager arrived.

"Well, M. Mercier, are you coming? What are you two doing here?
You're wanted, Mr. Acting-Manager."

"I refuse to know or to do anything before the commissary arrives,"
declared Mercier. "I have sent for Mifroid. We shall see when he comes!"

"And I tell you that you ought to go down to the organ at once."

"Not before the commissary comes."

"I've been down to the organ myself already."

"Ah! And what did you see?"

"Well, I saw nobody! Do you hear—nobody!"

"What do you want me to do down there for{sic}?"

"You're right!" said the stage-manager, frantically pushing his hands
through his rebellious hair. "You're right! But there might be some one at
the organ who could tell us how the stage came to be suddenly darkened.
Now Mauclair is nowhere to be found. Do you understand that?"

Mauclair was the gas-man, who dispensed day and night at will on the
stage of the Opera.

"Mauclair is not to be found!" repeated Mercier, taken aback. "Well,
what about his assistants?"

"There's no Mauclair and no assistants! No one at the lights, I tell you!
You can imagine," roared the stage-manager, "that that little girl must have
been carried off by somebody else: she didn't run away by herself! It was a
calculated stroke and we have to find out about it ... And what are the
managers doing all this time? ... I gave orders that no one was to go down to
the lights and I posted a fireman in front of the gas-man's box beside the
organ. Wasn't that right?"

"Yes, yes, quite right, quite right. And now let's wait for the
commissary."

The stage-manager walked away, shrugging his shoulders, fuming,
muttering insults at those milksops who remained quietly squatting in a
corner while the whole theater was topsyturvy{sic}.

Gabriel and Mercier were not so quiet as all that. Only they had received
an order that paralyzed them. The managers were not to be disturbed on any
account. Remy had violated that order and met with no success.

At that moment he returned from his new expedition, wearing a
curiously startled air.

"Well, have you seen them?" asked Mercier.

"Moncharmin opened the door at last. His eyes were starting out of his
head. I thought he meant to strike me. I could not get a word in; and what
do you think he shouted at me? 'Have you a safety-pin?' 'No!' 'Well, then,
clear out!' I tried to tell him that an unheard-of thing had happened on the
stage, but he roared, 'A safety-pin! Give me a safety-pin at once!' A boy
heard him—he was bellowing like a bull—ran up with a safety-pin and
gave it to him; whereupon Moncharmin slammed the door in my face, and
there you are!"

"And couldn't you have said, 'Christine Daae.'"

"I should like to have seen you in my place. He was foaming at the
mouth. He thought of nothing but his safety-pin. I believe, if they hadn't
brought him one on the spot, he would have fallen down in a fit! ... Oh, all
this isn't natural; and our managers are going mad! ... Besides, it can't go on
like this! I'm not used to being treated in that fashion!"

Suddenly Gabriel whispered:

"It's another trick of O. G.'s."

Rimy gave a grin, Mercier a sigh and seemed about to speak ... but,
meeting Gabriel's eye, said nothing.

However, Mercier felt his responsibility increased as the minutes passed
without the managers' appearing; and, at last, he could stand it no longer.

"Look here, I'll go and hunt them out myself!"

Gabriel, turning very gloomy and serious, stopped him.

"Be careful what you're doing, Mercier! If they're staying in their office,
it's probably because they have to! O. G. has more than one trick in his
bag!"

But Mercier shook his head.

"That's their lookout! I'm going! If people had listened to me, the police
would have known everything long ago!"

And he went.

"What's everything?" asked Remy. "What was there to tell the police?
Why don't you answer, Gabriel? ... Ah, so you know something! Well, you
would do better to tell me, too, if you don't want me to shout out that you
are all going mad! ... Yes, that's what you are: mad!"

Gabriel put on a stupid look and pretended not to understand the private
secretary's unseemly outburst.

"What 'something' am I supposed to know?" he said. "I don't know what
you mean."

Remy began to lose his temper.

"This evening, Richard and Moncharmin were behaving like lunatics,
here, between the acts."

"I never noticed it," growled Gabriel, very much annoyed.

"Then you're the only one! ... Do you think that I didn't see them? ... And
that M. Parabise, the manager of the Credit Central, noticed nothing? ...
And that M. de La Borderie, the ambassador, has no eyes to see with? ...
Why, all the subscribers were pointing at our managers!"

"But what were our managers doing?" asked Gabriel, putting on his most
innocent air.

"What were they doing? You know better than any one what they were
doing! ... You were there! ... And you were watching them, you and
Mercier! ... And you were the only two who didn't laugh."

"I don't understand!"

Gabriel raised his arms and dropped them to his sides again, which
gesture was meant to convey that the question did not interest him in the
least. Remy continued:

"What is the sense of this new mania of theirs? WHY WON'T THEY
HAVE ANY ONE COME NEAR THEM NOW?"

"What? WON'T THEY HAVE ANY ONE COME NEAR THEM?"

"AND THEY WON'T LET ANY ONE TOUCH THEM!"

"Really? Have you noticed THAT THEY WON'T LET ANY ONE
TOUCH THEM? That is certainly odd!"

"Oh, so you admit it! And high time, too! And THEN, THEY WALK
BACKWARD!"

"BACKWARD! You have seen our managers WALK BACKWARD?
Why, I thought that only crabs walked backward!"

"Don't laugh, Gabriel; don't laugh!"

"I'm not laughing," protested Gabriel, looking as solemn as a judge.

"Perhaps you can tell me this, Gabriel, as you're an intimate friend of the
management: When I went up to M. Richard, outside the foyer, during the
Garden interval, with my hand out before me, why did M. Moncharmin
hurriedly whisper to me, 'Go away! Go away! Whatever you do, don't touch
M. le Directeur!' Am I supposed to have an infectious disease?"

"It's incredible!"

"And, a little later, when M. de La Borderie went up to M. Richard,
didn't you see M. Moncharmin fling himself between them and hear him
exclaim, 'M. l'Ambassadeur I entreat you not to touch M. le Directeur'?"

"It's terrible! ... And what was Richard doing meanwhile?"

"What was he doing? Why, you saw him! He turned about, BOWED IN
FRONT OF HIM, THOUGH THERE WAS NOBODY IN FRONT OF
HIM, AND WITHDREW BACKWARD."

"BACKWARD?"

"And Moncharmin, behind Richard, also turned about; that is, he
described a semicircle behind Richard and also WALKED BACKWARD!
... And they went LIKE THAT to the staircase leading to the managers'
office: BACKWARD, BACKWARD, BACKWARD! ... Well, if they are not
mad, will you explain what it means?"

"Perhaps they were practising a figure in the ballet," suggested Gabriel,
without much conviction in his voice.

The secretary was furious at this wretched joke, made at so dramatic a
moment. He knit his brows and contracted his lips. Then he put his mouth
to Gabriel's ear:

"Don't be so sly, Gabriel. There are things going on for which you and
Mercier are partly responsible."

"What do you mean?" asked Gabriel.

"Christine Daae is not the only one who suddenly disappeared to-night."

"Oh, nonsense!"

"There's no nonsense about it. Perhaps you can tell me why, when
Mother Giry came down to the foyer just now, Mercier took her by the hand
and hurried her away with him?"

"Really?" said Gabriel, "I never saw it."

"You did see it, Gabriel, for you went with Mercier and Mother Giry to
Mercier's office. Since then, you and Mercier have been seen, but no one
has seen Mother Giry."

"Do you think we've eaten her?"

"No, but you've locked her up in the office; and any one passing the
office can hear her yelling, 'Oh, the scoundrels! Oh, the scoundrels!'"

At this point of this singular conversation, Mercier arrived, all out of
breath.

"There!" he said, in a gloomy voice. "It's worse than ever! ... I shouted,
'It's a serious matter! Open the door! It's I, Mercier.' I heard footsteps. The
door opened and Moncharmin appeared. He was very pale. He said, 'What
do you want?' I answered, 'Some one has run away with Christine Daae.'
What do you think he said? 'And a good job, too!' And he shut the door,
after putting this in my hand."

Mercier opened his hand; Remy and Gabriel looked.

"The safety-pin!" cried Remy.

"Strange! Strange!" muttered Gabriel, who could not help shivering.

Suddenly a voice made them all three turn round.

"I beg your pardon, gentlemen. Could you tell me where Christine Daae
is?"

In spite of the seriousness of the circumstances, the absurdity of the
question would have made them roar with laughter, if they had not caught
sight of a face so sorrow-stricken that they were at once seized with pity. It
was the Vicomte Raoul de Chagny.

Chapter XV Christine! Christine!

Raoul's first thought, after Christine Daae's fantastic disappearance, was
to accuse Erik. He no longer doubted the almost supernatural powers of the
Angel of Music, in this domain of the Opera in which he had set up his
empire. And Raoul rushed on the stage, in a mad fit of love and despair.

"Christine! Christine!" he moaned, calling to her as he felt that she must
be calling to him from the depths of that dark pit to which the monster had
carried her. "Christine! Christine!"

And he seemed to hear the girl's screams through the frail boards that
separated him from her. He bent forward, he listened, ... he wandered over
the stage like a madman. Ah, to descend, to descend into that pit of darkness
every entrance to which was closed to him, ... for the stairs that led below
the stage were forbidden to one and all that night!

"Christine! Christine! ..."

People pushed him aside, laughing. They made fun of him. They thought
the poor lover's brain was gone!

By what mad road, through what passages of mystery and darkness
known to him alone had Erik dragged that pure-souled child to the awful
haunt, with the Louis-Philippe room, opening out on the lake?

"Christine! Christine! ... Why don't you answer? ... Are you alive? ..."

Hideous thoughts flashed through Raoul's congested brain. Of course,
Erik must have discovered their secret, must have known that Christine had
played him false. What a vengeance would be his!

And Raoul thought again of the yellow stars that had come, the night
before, and roamed over his balcony. Why had he not put them out for

good? There were some men's eyes that dilated in the darkness and shone
like stars or like cats' eyes. Certainly Albinos, who seemed to have rabbits'
eyes by day, had cats' eyes at night: everybody knew that! ... Yes, yes, he
had undoubtedly fired at Erik. Why had he not killed him? The monster had
fled up the gutter-spout like a cat or a convict who—everybody knew that
also—would scale the very skies, with the help of a gutter-spout ... No
doubt Erik was at that time contemplating some decisive step against Raoul,
but he had been wounded and had escaped to turn against poor Christine
instead.

Such were the cruel thoughts that haunted Raoul as he ran to the singer's
dressing-room.

"Christine! Christine!"

Bitter tears scorched the boy's eyelids as he saw scattered over the
furniture the clothes which his beautiful bride was to have worn at the hour
of their flight. Oh, why had she refused to leave earlier?

Why had she toyed with the threatening catastrophe? Why toyed with
the monster's heart? Why, in a final access of pity, had she insisted on
flinging, as a last sop to that demon's soul, her divine song:

"Holy angel, in Heaven blessed,
My spirit longs with thee to rest!"

Raoul, his throat filled with sobs, oaths and insults, fumbled awkwardly
at the great mirror that had opened one night, before his eyes, to let
Christine pass to the murky dwelling below. He pushed, pressed, groped
about, but the glass apparently obeyed no one but Erik ... Perhaps actions
were not enough with a glass of the kind? Perhaps he was expected to utter
certain words? When he was a little boy, he had heard that there were things
that obeyed the spoken word!

Suddenly, Raoul remembered something about a gate opening into the
Rue Scribe, an underground passage running straight to the Rue Scribe from
the lake ... Yes, Christine had told him about that... And, when he found that
the key was no longer in the box, he nevertheless ran to the Rue Scribe.

Outside, in the street, he passed his trembling hands over the huge stones,
felt for outlets ... met with iron bars ... were those they? ... Or these? ... Or
could it be that air-hole? ... He plunged his useless eyes through the bars ...
How dark it was in there! ... He listened ... All was silence! ... He went
round the building ... and came to bigger bars, immense gates! ... It was the
entrance to the Cour de l'Administration.

Raoul rushed into the doorkeeper's lodge.

"I beg your pardon, madame, could you tell me where to find a gate or
door, made of bars, iron bars, opening into the Rue Scribe ... and leading to
the lake? ... You know the lake I mean? ... Yes, the underground lake ...
under the Opera."

"Yes, sir, I know there is a lake under the Opera, but I don't know which
door leads to it. I have never been there!"

"And the Rue Scribe, madame, the Rue Scribe? Have you never been to
the Rue Scribe?"

The woman laughed, screamed with laughter! Raoul darted away,
roaring with anger, ran up-stairs, four stairs at a time, down-stairs, rushed
through the whole of the business side of the opera-house, found himself
once more in the light of the stage.

He stopped, with his heart thumping in his chest: suppose Christine Daae
had been found? He saw a group of men and asked:

"I beg your pardon, gentlemen. Could you tell me where Christine Daae
is?"

And somebody laughed.

At the same moment the stage buzzed with a new sound and, amid a
crowd of men in evening-dress, all talking and gesticulating together,
appeared a man who seemed very calm and displayed a pleasant face, all
pink and chubby-cheeked, crowned with curly hair and lit up by a pair of

wonderfully serene blue eyes. Mercier, the acting-manager, called the
Vicomte de Chagny's attention to him and said:

"This is the gentleman to whom you should put your question, monsieur.
Let me introduce Mifroid, the commissary of police."

"Ah, M. le Vicomte de Chagny! Delighted to meet you, monsieur," said
the commissary. "Would you mind coming with me? ... And now where are
the managers? ... Where are the managers?"

Mercier did not answer, and Remy, the secretary, volunteered the
information that the managers were locked up in their office and that they
knew nothing as yet of what had happened.

"You don't mean to say so! Let us go up to the office!"

And M. Mifroid, followed by an ever-increasing crowd, turned toward
the business side of the building. Mercier took advantage of the confusion
to slip a key into Gabriel's hand:

"This is all going very badly," he whispered. "You had better let Mother
Giry out."

And Gabriel moved away.

They soon came to the managers' door. Mercier stormed in vain: the door
remained closed.

"Open in the name of the law!" commanded M. Mifroid, in a loud and
rather anxious voice.

At last the door was opened. All rushed in to the office, on the
commissary's heels.

Raoul was the last to enter. As he was about to follow the rest into the
room, a hand was laid on his shoulder and he heard these words spoken in
his ear:

"ERIK'S SECRETS CONCERN NO ONE BUT HIMSELF!"

He turned around, with a stifled exclamation. The hand that was laid on
his shoulder was now placed on the lips of a person with an ebony skin,
with eyes of jade and with an astrakhan cap on his head: the Persian! The
stranger kept up the gesture that recommended discretion and then, at the
moment when the astonished viscount was about to ask the reason of his
mysterious intervention, bowed and disappeared.

Chapter XVI Mme. Giry's Astounding Revelations
as to Her Personal Relations with the Opera Ghost

Before following the commissary into the manager's office I must
describe certain extraordinary occurrences that took place in that office
which Remy and Mercier had vainly tried to enter and into which MM.
Richard and Moncharmin had locked themselves with an object which the
reader does not yet know, but which it is my duty, as an historian, to reveal
without further postponement.

I have had occasion to say that the managers' mood had undergone a
disagreeable change for some time past and to convey the fact that this
change was due not only to the fall of the chandelier on the famous night of
the gala performance.

The reader must know that the ghost had calmly been paid his first
twenty thousand francs. Oh, there had been wailing and gnashing of teeth,
indeed! And yet the thing had happened as simply as could be.

One morning, the managers found on their table an envelope addressed
to "Monsieur O. G. (private)" and accompanied by a note from O. G.
himself:

The time has come to carry out the clause in the memorandum-book.
Please put twenty notes of a thousand francs each into this envelope, seal it

with your own seal and hand it to Mme. Giry, who will do what is
necessary.

The managers did not hesitate; without wasting time in asking how these
confounded communications came to be delivered in an office which they
were careful to keep locked, they seized this opportunity of laying hands,
on the mysterious blackmailer. And, after telling the whole story, under the
promise of secrecy, to Gabriel and Mercier, they put the twenty thousand
francs into the envelope and without asking for explanations, handed it to
Mme. Giry, who had been reinstated in her functions. The box-keeper
displayed no astonishment. I need hardly say that she was well watched.
She went straight to the ghost's box and placed the precious envelope on the
little shelf attached to the ledge. The two managers, as well as Gabriel and
Mercier, were hidden in such a way that they did not lose sight of the
envelope for a second during the performance and even afterward, for, as
the envelope had not moved, those who watched it did not move either; and
Mme. Giry went away while the managers, Gabriel and Mercier were still
there. At last, they became tired of waiting and opened the envelope, after
ascertaining that the seals had not been broken.

At first sight, Richard and Moncharmin thought that the notes were still
there; but soon they perceived that they were not the same. The twenty real
notes were gone and had been replaced by twenty notes, of the "Bank of St.
Farce"![1]

The managers' rage and fright were unmistakable. Moncharmin wanted
to send for the commissary of police, but Richard objected. He no doubt
had a plan, for he said:

"Don't let us make ourselves ridiculous! All Paris would laugh at us. O.
G. has won the first game: we will win the second."

He was thinking of the next month's allowance.

Nevertheless, they had been so absolutely tricked that they were bound
to suffer a certain dejection. And, upon my word, it was not difficult to
understand. We must not forget that the managers had an idea at the back of
their minds, all the time, that this strange incident might be an unpleasant

practical joke on the part of their predecessors and that it would not do to
divulge it prematurely. On the other hand, Moncharmin was sometimes
troubled with a suspicion of Richard himself, who occasionally took
fanciful whims into his head. And so they were content to await events,
while keeping an eye on Mother Giry. Richard would not have her spoken
to.

"If she is a confederate," he said, "the notes are gone long ago. But, in
my opinion, she is merely an idiot."

"She's not the only idiot in this business," said Moncharmin pensively.

"Well, who could have thought it?" moaned Richard. "But don't be afraid
... next time, I shall have taken my precautions."

The next time fell on the same day that beheld the disappearance of
Christine Daae. In the morning, a note from the ghost reminded them that
the money was due. It read:

Do just as you did last time. It went very well. Put the twenty thousand
in the envelope and hand it to our excellent Mme. Giry.

And the note was accompanied by the usual envelope. They had only to
insert the notes.

This was done about half an hour before the curtain rose on the first act
of Faust. Richard showed the envelope to Moncharmin. Then he counted
the twenty thousand-franc notes in front of him and put the notes into the
envelope, but without closing it.

"And now," he said, "let's have Mother Giry in."

The old woman was sent for. She entered with a sweeping courtesy. She
still wore her black taffeta dress, the color of which was rapidly turning to
rust and lilac, to say nothing of the dingy bonnet. She seemed in a good
temper. She at once said:

"Good evening, gentlemen! It's for the envelope, I suppose?"

"Yes, Mme. Giry," said Richard, most amiably. "For the envelope ... and
something else besides."

"At your service, M. Richard, at your service. And what is the something
else, please?"

"First of all, Mme. Giry, I have a little question to put to you."

"By all means, M. Richard: Mme. Giry is here to answer you."

"Are you still on good terms with the ghost?"

"Couldn't be better, sir; couldn't be better."

"Ah, we are delighted ... Look here, Mme. Giry," said Richard, in the
tone of making an important confidence. "We may just as well tell you,
among ourselves ... you're no fool!"

"Why, sir," exclaimed the box-keeper, stopping the pleasant nodding of
the black feathers in her dingy bonnet, "I assure you no one has ever
doubted that!"

"We are quite agreed and we shall soon understand one another. The
story of the ghost is all humbug, isn't it? ... Well, still between ourselves, ...
it has lasted long enough."

Mme. Giry looked at the managers as though they were talking Chinese.
She walked up to Richard's table and asked, rather anxiously:

"What do you mean? I don't understand."

"Oh, you, understand quite well. In any case, you've got to understand...
And, first of all, tell us his name."

"Whose name?"

"The name of the man whose accomplice you are, Mme. Giry!"

"I am the ghost's accomplice? I? ... His accomplice in what, pray?"

"You do all he wants."

"Oh! He's not very troublesome, you know."

"And does he still tip you?"

"I mustn't complain."

"How much does he give you for bringing him that envelope?"

"Ten francs."

"You poor thing! That's not much, is it?

"Why?"

"I'll tell you that presently, Mme. Giry. Just now we should like to know
for what extraordinary reason you have given yourself body and soul, to
this ghost ... Mme. Giry's friendship and devotion are not to be bought for
five francs or ten francs."

"That's true enough ... And I can tell you the reason, sir. There's no
disgrace about it... on the contrary."

"We're quite sure of that, Mme. Giry!"

"Well, it's like this ... only the ghost doesn't like me to talk about his
business."

"Indeed?" sneered Richard.

"But this is a matter that concerns myself alone ... Well, it was in Box
Five one evening, I found a letter addressed to myself, a sort of note written
in red ink. I needn't read the letter to you sir; I know it by heart, and I shall
never forget it if I live to be a hundred!"

And Mme. Giry, drawing herself up, recited the letter with touching
eloquence:

MADAM:

1825. Mlle. Menetrier, leader of the ballet, became Marquise de Cussy.

1832. Mlle. Marie Taglioni, a dancer, became Comtesse Gilbert des
Voisins.

1846. La Sota, a dancer, married a brother of the King of Spain.

1847. Lola Montes, a dancer, became the morganatic wife of King Louis
of Bavaria and was created Countess of Landsfeld.

1848. Mlle. Maria, a dancer, became Baronne d'Herneville.

1870. Theresa Hessier, a dancer, married Dom Fernando, brother to the
King of Portugal.

Richard and Moncharmin listened to the old woman, who, as she
proceeded with the enumeration of these glorious nuptials, swelled out,
took courage and, at last, in a voice bursting with pride, flung out the last
sentence of the prophetic letter:

1885. Meg Giry, Empress!

Exhausted by this supreme effort, the box-keeper fell into a chair,
saying:

"Gentlemen, the letter was signed, 'Opera Ghost.' I had heard much of
the ghost, but only half believed in him. From the day when he declared
that my little Meg, the flesh of my flesh, the fruit of my womb, would be
empress, I believed in him altogether."

And really it was not necessary to make a long study of Mme. Giry's
excited features to understand what could be got out of that fine intellect
with the two words "ghost" and "empress."

But who pulled the strings of that extraordinary puppet? That was the
question.

"You have never seen him; he speaks to you and you believe all he
says?" asked Moncharmin.

"Yes. To begin with, I owe it to him that my little Meg was promoted to
be the leader of a row. I said to the ghost, 'If she is to be empress in 1885,
there is no time to lose; she must become a leader at once.' He said, 'Look
upon it as done.' And he had only a word to say to M. Poligny and the thing
was done."

"So you see that M. Poligny saw him!"

"No, not any more than I did; but he heard him. The ghost said a word in
his ear, you know, on the evening when he left Box Five, looking so
dreadfully pale."

Moncharmin heaved a sigh. "What a business!" he groaned.

"Ah!" said Mme. Giry. "I always thought there were secrets between the
ghost and M. Poligny. Anything that the ghost asked M. Poligny to do M.
Poligny did. M. Poligny could refuse the ghost nothing."

"You hear, Richard: Poligny could refuse the ghost nothing."

"Yes, yes, I hear!" said Richard. "M. Poligny is a friend of the ghost;
and, as Mme. Giry is a friend of M. Poligny, there we are! ... But I don't
care a hang about M. Poligny," he added roughly. "The only person whose
fate really interests me is Mme. Giry... Mme. Giry, do you know what is in
this envelope?"

"Why, of course not," she said.

"Well, look."

Mine. Giry looked into the envelope with a lackluster eye, which soon
recovered its brilliancy.

"Thousand-franc notes!" she cried.

"Yes, Mme. Giry, thousand-franc notes! And you knew it!"

"I, sir? I? ... I swear ..."

"Don't swear, Mme. Giry! ... And now I will tell you the second reason
why I sent for you. Mme. Giry, I am going to have you arrested."

The two black feathers on the dingy bonnet, which usually affected the
attitude of two notes of interrogation, changed into two notes of
exclamation; as for the bonnet itself, it swayed in menace on the old lady's
tempestuous chignon. Surprise, indignation, protest and dismay were
furthermore displayed by little Meg's mother in a sort of extravagant
movement of offended virtue, half bound, half slide, that brought her right
under the nose of M. Richard, who could not help pushing back his chair.

"HAVE ME ARRESTED!"

The mouth that spoke those words seemed to spit the three teeth that
were left to it into Richard's face.

M. Richard behaved like a hero. He retreated no farther. His threatening
forefinger seemed already to be pointing out the keeper of Box Five to the
absent magistrates.

"I am going to have you arrested, Mme. Giry, as a thief!"

"Say that again!"

And Mme. Giry caught Mr. Manager Richard a mighty box on the ear,
before Mr. Manager Moncharmin had time to intervene. But it was not the
withered hand of the angry old beldame that fell on the managerial ear, but
the envelope itself, the cause of all the trouble, the magic envelope that
opened with the blow, scattering the bank-notes, which escaped in a
fantastic whirl of giant butterflies.

The two managers gave a shout, and the same thought made them both
go on their knees, feverishly, picking up and hurriedly examining the
precious scraps of paper.

"Are they still genuine, Moncharmin?"

"Are they still genuine, Richard?"

"Yes, they are still genuine!"

Above their heads, Mme. Giry's three teeth were clashing in a noisy
contest, full of hideous interjections. But all that could be clearly
distinguished was this LEIT-MOTIF:

"I, a thief! ... I, a thief, I?"

She choked with rage. She shouted:

"I never heard of such a thing!"

And, suddenly, she darted up to Richard again.

"In any case," she yelped, "you, M. Richard, ought to know better than I
where the twenty thousand francs went to!"

"I?" asked Richard, astounded. "And how should I know?"

Moncharmin, looking severe and dissatisfied, at once insisted that the
good lady should explain herself.

"What does this mean, Mme. Giry?" he asked. "And why do you say that
M. Richard ought to know better than you where the twenty-thousand
francs went to?"

As for Richard, who felt himself turning red under Moncharmin's eyes,
he took Mme. Giry by the wrist and shook it violently. In a voice growling
and rolling like thunder, he roared:

"Why should I know better than you where the twenty-thousand francs
went to? Why? Answer me!"

"Because they went into your pocket!" gasped the old woman, looking at
him as if he were the devil incarnate.

Richard would have rushed upon Mme. Giry, if Moncharmin had not
stayed his avenging hand and hastened to ask her, more gently:

"How can you suspect my partner, M. Richard, of putting twenty-
thousand francs in his pocket?"

"I never said that," declared Mme. Giry, "seeing that it was myself who
put the twenty-thousand francs into M. Richard's pocket." And she added,
under her voice, "There! It's out! ... And may the ghost forgive me!"

Richard began bellowing anew, but Moncharmin authoritatively ordered
him to be silent.

"Allow me! Allow me! Let the woman explain herself. Let me question
her." And he added: "It is really astonishing that you should take up such a
tone! ... We are on the verge of clearing up the whole mystery. And you're in
a rage! ... You're wrong to behave like that... I'm enjoying myself
immensely."

Mme. Giry, like the martyr that she was, raised her head, her face
beaming with faith in her own innocence.

"You tell me there were twenty-thousand francs in the envelope which I
put into M. Richard's pocket; but I tell you again that I knew nothing about
it ... Nor M. Richard either, for that matter!"

"Aha!" said Richard, suddenly assuming a swaggering air which
Moncharmin did not like. "I knew nothing either! You put twenty-thousand
francs in my pocket and I knew nothing either! I am very glad to hear it,
Mme. Giry!"

"Yes," the terrible dame agreed, "yes, it's true. We neither of us knew
anything. But you, you must have ended by finding out!"

Richard would certainly have swallowed Mme. Giry alive, if
Moncharmin had not been there! But Moncharmin protected her. He
resumed his questions:

"What sort of envelope did you put in M. Richard's pocket? It was not
the one which we gave you, the one which you took to Box Five before our
eyes; and yet that was the one which contained the twenty-thousand francs."

"I beg your pardon. The envelope which M. le Directeur gave me was
the one which I slipped into M. le Directeur's pocket," explained Mme.
Giry. "The one which I took to the ghost's box was another envelope, just
like it, which the ghost gave me beforehand and which I hid up my sleeve."

So saying, Mme. Giry took from her sleeve an envelope ready prepared
and similarly addressed to that containing the twenty-thousand francs. The
managers took it from her. They examined it and saw that it was fastened
with seals stamped with their own managerial seal. They opened it. It
contained twenty Bank of St. Farce notes like those which had so much
astounded them the month before.

"How simple!" said Richard.

"How simple!" repeated Moncharmin. And he continued with his eyes
fixed upon Mme. Giry, as though trying to hypnotize her.

"So it was the ghost who gave you this envelope and told you to
substitute it for the one which we gave you? And it was the ghost who told
you to put the other into M. Richard's pocket?"

"Yes, it was the ghost."

"Then would you mind giving us a specimen of your little talents? Here
is the envelope. Act as though we knew nothing."

"As you please, gentlemen."

Mme. Giry took the envelope with the twenty notes inside it and made
for the door. She was on the point of going out when the two managers
rushed at her:

"Oh, no! Oh, no! We're not going to be 'done' a second time! Once
bitten, twice shy!"

"I beg your pardon, gentlemen," said the old woman, in self-excuse,
"you told me to act as though you knew nothing ... Well, if you knew
nothing, I should go away with your envelope!"

"And then how would you slip it into my pocket?" argued Richard,
whom Moncharmin fixed with his left eye, while keeping his right on Mme.
Giry: a proceeding likely to strain his sight, but Moncharmin was prepared
to go to any length to discover the truth.

"I am to slip it into your pocket when you least expect it, sir. You know
that I always take a little turn behind the scenes, in the course of the
evening, and I often go with my daughter to the ballet-foyer, which I am
entitled to do, as her mother; I bring her her shoes, when the ballet is about
to begin ... in fact, I come and go as I please ... The subscribers come and go
too... So do you, sir ... There are lots of people about ... I go behind you and
slip the envelope into the tail-pocket of your dress-coat ... There's no
witchcraft about that!"

"No witchcraft!" growled Richard, rolling his eyes like Jupiter Tonans.
"No witchcraft! Why, I've just caught you in a lie, you old witch!"

Mme. Giry bristled, with her three teeth sticking out of her mouth.

"And why, may I ask?"

"Because I spent that evening watching Box Five and the sham envelope
which you put there. I did not go to the ballet-foyer for a second."

"No, sir, and I did not give you the envelope that evening, but at the next
performance ... on the evening when the under-secretary of state for fine
arts ..."

At these words, M. Richard suddenly interrupted Mme. Giry:

"Yes, that's true, I remember now! The under-secretary went behind the
scenes. He asked for me. I went down to the ballet-foyer for a moment. I
was on the foyer steps ... The under-secretary and his chief clerk were in the
foyer itself. I suddenly turned around ... you had passed behind me, Mme.

Giry ... You seemed to push against me ... Oh, I can see you still, I can see
you still!"

"Yes, that's it, sir, that's it. I had just finished my little business. That
pocket of yours, sir, is very handy!"

And Mme. Giry once more suited the action to the word, She passed
behind M. Richard and, so nimbly that Moncharmin himself was impressed
by it, slipped the envelope into the pocket of one of the tails of M. Richard's
dress-coat.

"Of course!" exclaimed Richard, looking a little pale. "It's very clever of
O. G. The problem which he had to solve was this: how to do away with
any dangerous intermediary between the man who gives the twenty-
thousand francs and the man who receives it. And by far the best thing he
could hit upon was to come and take the money from my pocket without
my noticing it, as I myself did not know that it was there. It's wonderful!"

"Oh, wonderful, no doubt!" Moncharmin agreed. "Only, you forget,
Richard, that I provided ten-thousand francs of the twenty and that nobody
put anything in my pocket!"

[1] Flash notes drawn on the "Bank of St. Farce" in France correspond with those drawn on the
"Bank of Engraving" in England.—Translator's Note.

Chapter XVII The Safety-Pin Again

Moncharmin's last phrase so dearly expressed the suspicion in which he
now held his partner that it was bound to cause a stormy explanation, at the
end of which it was agreed that Richard should yield to all Moncharmin's
wishes, with the object of helping him to discover the miscreant who was
victimizing them.

This brings us to the interval after the Garden Act, with the strange
conduct observed by M. Remy and those curious lapses from the dignity
that might be expected of the managers. It was arranged between Richard
and Moncharmin, first, that Richard should repeat the exact movements
which he had made on the night of the disappearance of the first twenty-
thousand francs; and, second, that Moncharmin should not for an instant
lose sight of Richard's coat-tail pocket, into which Mme. Giry was to slip
the twenty-thousand francs.

M. Richard went and placed himself at the identical spot where he had
stood when he bowed to the under-secretary for fine arts. M. Moncharmin
took up his position a few steps behind him.

Mme. Giry passed, rubbed up against M. Richard, got rid of her twenty-
thousand francs in the manager's coat-tail pocket and disappeared ... Or
rather she was conjured away. In accordance with the instructions received
from Moncharmin a few minutes earlier, Mercier took the good lady to the
acting-manager's office and turned the key on her, thus making it
impossible for her to communicate with her ghost.

Meanwhile, M. Richard was bending and bowing and scraping and
walking backward, just as if he had that high and mighty minister, the
under-secretary for fine arts, before him. Only, though these marks of
politeness would have created no astonishment if the under-secretary of
state had really been in front of M. Richard, they caused an easily
comprehensible amazement to the spectators of this very natural but quite
inexplicable scene when M. Richard had no body in front of him.

M. Richard bowed ... to nobody; bent his back ... before nobody; and
walked backward ... before nobody ... And, a few steps behind him, M.
Moncharmin did the same thing that he was doing in addition to pushing
away M. Remy and begging M. de La Borderie, the ambassador, and the
manager of the Credit Central "not to touch M. le Directeur."

Moncharmin, who had his own ideas, did not want Richard to come to
him presently, when the twenty-thousand francs were gone, and say:

"Perhaps it was the ambassador ... or the manager of the Credit Central
... or Remy."

The more so as, at the time of the first scene, as Richard himself
admitted, Richard had met nobody in that part of the theater after Mme.
Giry had brushed up against him...

Having begun by walking backward in order to bow, Richard continued
to do so from prudence, until he reached the passage leading to the offices
of the management. In this way, he was constantly watched by Moncharmin
from behind and himself kept an eye on any one approaching from the
front. Once more, this novel method of walking behind the scenes, adopted
by the managers of our National Academy of Music, attracted attention; but
the managers themselves thought of nothing but their twenty-thousand
francs.

On reaching the half-dark passage, Richard said to Moncharmin, in a
low voice:

"I am sure that nobody has touched me ... You had now better keep at
some distance from me and watch me till I come to door of the office: it is
better not to arouse suspicion and we can see anything that happens."

But Moncharmin replied. "No, Richard, no! You walk ahead and I'll
walk immediately behind you! I won't leave you by a step!"

"But, in that case," exclaimed Richard, "they will never steal our twenty-
thousand francs!"

"I should hope not, indeed!" declared Moncharmin.

"Then what we are doing is absurd!"

"We are doing exactly what we did last time ... Last time, I joined you as
you were leaving the stage and followed close behind you down this
passage."

"That's true!" sighed Richard, shaking his head and passively obeying
Moncharmin.

Two minutes later, the joint managers locked themselves into their
office. Moncharmin himself put the key in his pocket:

"We remained locked up like this, last time," he said, "until you left the
Opera to go home."

"That's so. No one came and disturbed us, I suppose?"

"No one."

"Then," said Richard, who was trying to collect his memory, "then I
must certainly have been robbed on my way home from the Opera."

"No," said Moncharmin in a drier tone than ever, "no, that's impossible.
For I dropped you in my cab. The twenty-thousand francs disappeared at
your place: there's not a shadow of a doubt about that."

"It's incredible!" protested Richard. "I am sure of my servants ... and if
one of them had done it, he would have disappeared since."

Moncharmin shrugged his shoulders, as though to say that he did not
wish to enter into details, and Richard began to think that Moncharmin was
treating him in a very insupportable fashion.

"Moncharmin, I've had enough of this!"

"Richard, I've had too much of it!"

"Do you dare to suspect me?"

"Yes, of a silly joke."

"One doesn't joke with twenty-thousand francs."

"That's what I think," declared Moncharmin, unfolding a newspaper and
ostentatiously studying its contents.

"What are you doing?" asked Richard. "Are you going to read the paper
next?"

"Yes, Richard, until I take you home."

"Like last time?"

"Yes, like last time."

Richard snatched the paper from Moncharmin's hands. Moncharmin
stood up, more irritated than ever, and found himself faced by an
exasperated Richard, who, crossing his arms on his chest, said:

"Look here, I'm thinking of this, I'M THINKING OF WHAT I MIGHT
THINK if, like last time, after my spending the evening alone with you, you
brought me home and if, at the moment of parting, I perceived that twenty-
thousand francs had disappeared from my coat-pocket ... like last time."

"And what might you think?" asked Moncharmin, crimson with rage.

"I might think that, as you hadn't left me by a foot's breadth and as, by
your own wish, you were the only one to approach me, like last time, I
might think that, if that twenty-thousand francs was no longer in my pocket,
it stood a very good chance of being in yours!"

Moncharmin leaped up at the suggestion.

"Oh!" he shouted. "A safety-pin!"

"What do you want a safety-pin for?"

"To fasten you up with! ... A safety-pin! ... A safety-pin!"

"You want to fasten me with a safety-pin?"

"Yes, to fasten you to the twenty-thousand francs! Then, whether it's
here, or on the drive from here to your place, or at your place, you will feel
the hand that pulls at your pocket and you will see if it's mine! Oh, so you're
suspecting me now, are you? A safety-pin!"

And that was the moment when Moncharmin opened the door on the
passage and shouted:

"A safety-pin! ... somebody give me a safety-pin!"

And we also know how, at the same moment, Remy, who had no safety-
pin, was received by Moncharmin, while a boy procured the pin so eagerly
longed for. And what happened was this: Moncharmin first locked the door
again. Then he knelt down behind Richard's back.

"I hope," he said, "that the notes are still there?"

"So do I," said Richard.

"The real ones?" asked Moncharmin, resolved not to be "had" this time.

"Look for yourself," said Richard. "I refuse to touch them."

Moncharmin took the envelope from Richard's pocket and drew out the
bank-notes with a trembling hand, for, this time, in order frequently to make
sure of the presence of the notes, he had not sealed the envelope nor even
fastened it. He felt reassured on finding that they were all there and quite
genuine. He put them back in the tail-pocket and pinned them with great
care. Then he sat down behind Richard's coat-tails and kept his eyes fixed
on them, while Richard, sitting at his writing-table, did not stir.

"A little patience, Richard," said Moncharmin. "We have only a few
minutes to wait ... The clock will soon strike twelve. Last time, we left at
the last stroke of twelve."

"Oh, I shall have all the patience necessary!"

The time passed, slow, heavy, mysterious, stifling. Richard tried to
laugh.

"I shall end by believing in the omnipotence of the ghost," he said. "Just
now, don't you find something uncomfortable, disquieting, alarming in the
atmosphere of this room?"

"You're quite right," said Moncharmin, who was really impressed.

"The ghost!" continued Richard, in a low voice, as though fearing lest he
should be overheard by invisible ears. "The ghost! Suppose, all the same, it
were a ghost who puts the magic envelopes on the table ... who talks in Box
Five ... who killed Joseph Buquet ... who unhooked the chandelier ... and
who robs us! For, after all, after all, after all, there is no one here except you
and me, and, if the notes disappear and neither you nor I have anything to
do with it, well, we shall have to believe in the ghost ... in the ghost."

At that moment, the clock on the mantlepiece gave its warning click and
the first stroke of twelve struck.

The two managers shuddered. The perspiration streamed from their
foreheads. The twelfth stroke sounded strangely in their ears.

When the clock stopped, they gave a sigh and rose from their chairs.

"I think we can go now," said Moncharmin.

"I think so," Richard agreed.

"Before we go, do you mind if I look in your pocket?"

"But, of course, Moncharmin, YOU MUST! ... Well?" he asked, as
Moncharmin was feeling at the pocket.

"Well, I can feel the pin."

"Of course, as you said, we can't be robbed without noticing it."

But Moncharmin, whose hands were still fumbling, bellowed:

"I can feel the pin, but I can't feel the notes!"

"Come, no joking, Moncharmin! ... This isn't the time for it."

"Well, feel for yourself."

Richard tore off his coat. The two managers turned the pocket inside out.
THE POCKET WAS EMPTY. And the curious thing was that the pin
remained, stuck in the same place.

Richard and Moncharmin turned pale. There was no longer any doubt
about the witchcraft.

"The ghost!" muttered Moncharmin.

But Richard suddenly sprang upon his partner.

"No one but you has touched my pocket! Give me back my twenty-
thousand francs! ... Give me back my twenty-thousand francs! ..."

"On my soul," sighed Moncharmin, who was ready to swoon, "on my
soul, I swear that I haven't got it!"

Then somebody knocked at the door. Moncharmin opened it
automatically, seemed hardly to recognize Mercier, his business-manager,
exchanged a few words with him, without knowing what he was saying
and, with an unconscious movement, put the safety-pin, for which he had
no further use, into the hands of his bewildered subordinate ...

Chapter XVIII The Commissary, The Viscount and the Persian

The first words of the commissary of police, on entering the managers'
office, were to ask after the missing prima donna.

"Is Christine Daae here?"

"Christine Daae here?" echoed Richard. "No. Why?"

As for Moncharmin, he had not the strength left to utter a word.

Richard repeated, for the commissary and the compact crowd which had
followed him into the office observed an impressive silence.

"Why do you ask if Christine Daae is here, M. LE COMMISSAIRE?"

"Because she has to be found," declared the commissary of police
solemnly.

"What do you mean, she has to be found? Has she disappeared?"

"In the middle of the performance!"

"In the middle of the performance? This is extraordinary!"

"Isn't it? And what is quite as extraordinary is that you should first learn
it from me!"

"Yes," said Richard, taking his head in his hands and muttering. "What is
this new business? Oh, it's enough to make a man send in his resignation!"

And he pulled a few hairs out of his mustache without even knowing
what he was doing.

"So she ... so she disappeared in the middle of the performance?" he
repeated.

"Yes, she was carried off in the Prison Act, at the moment when she was
invoking the aid of the angels; but I doubt if she was carried off by an
angel."

"And I am sure that she was!"

Everybody looked round. A young man, pale and trembling with
excitement, repeated:

"I am sure of it!"

"Sure of what?" asked Mifroid.

"That Christine Daae was carried off by an angel, M. LE
COMMISSAIRE and I can tell you his name."

"Aha, M. le Vicomte de Chagny! So you maintain that Christine Daae
was carried off by an angel: an angel of the Opera, no doubt?"

"Yes, monsieur, by an angel of the Opera; and I will tell you where he
lives ... when we are alone."

"You are right, monsieur."

And the commissary of police, inviting Raoul to take a chair, cleared the
room of all the rest, excepting the managers.

Then Raoul spoke:

"M. le Commissaire, the angel is called Erik, he lives in the Opera and
he is the Angel of Music!"

"The Angel of Music! Really! That is very curious! ... The Angel of
Music!" And, turning to the managers, M. Mifroid asked, "Have you an
Angel of Music on the premises, gentlemen?"

Richard and Moncharmin shook their heads, without even speaking.

"Oh," said the viscount, "those gentlemen have heard of the Opera ghost.
Well, I am in a position to state that the Opera ghost and the Angel of Music
are one and the same person; and his real name is Erik."

M. Mifroid rose and looked at Raoul attentively.

"I beg your pardon, monsieur but is it your intention to make fun of the
law? And, if not, what is all this about the Opera ghost?"

"I say that these gentlemen have heard of him."

"Gentlemen, it appears that you know the Opera ghost?"

Richard rose, with the remaining hairs of his mustache in his hand.

"No, M. Commissary, no, we do not know him, but we wish that we did,
for this very evening he has robbed us of twenty-thousand francs!"

And Richard turned a terrible look on Moncharmin, which seemed to
say:

"Give me back the twenty-thousand francs, or I'll tell the whole story."

Moncharmin understood what he meant, for, with a distracted gesture, he
said:

"Oh, tell everything and have done with it!"

As for Mifroid, he looked at the managers and at Raoul by turns and
wondered whether he had strayed into a lunatic asylum. He passed his hand
through his hair.

"A ghost," he said, "who, on the same evening, carries off an opera-
singer and steals twenty-thousand francs is a ghost who must have his
hands very full! If you don't mind, we will take the questions in order. The
singer first, the twenty-thousand francs after. Come, M. de Chagny, let us
try to talk seriously. You believe that Mlle. Christine Daae has been carried
off by an individual called Erik. Do you know this person? Have you seen
him?"

"Yes."

"Where?"

"In a church yard."

M. Mifroid gave a start, began to scrutinize Raoul again and said:

"Of course! ... That's where ghosts usually hang out! ... And what were
you doing in that churchyard?"

"Monsieur," said Raoul, "I can quite understand how absurd my replies
must seem to you. But I beg you to believe that I am in full possession of
my faculties. The safety of the person dearest to me in the world is at stake.

I should like to convince you in a few words, for time is pressing and every
minute is valuable. Unfortunately, if I do not tell you the strangest story that
ever was from the beginning, you will not believe me. I will tell you all I
know about the Opera ghost, M. Commissary. Alas, I do not know much!
..."

"Never mind, go on, go on!" exclaimed Richard and Moncharmin,
suddenly greatly interested.

Unfortunately for their hopes of learning some detail that could put them
on the track of their hoaxer, they were soon compelled to accept the fact
that M. Raoul de Chagny had completely lost his head. All that story about
Perros-Guirec, death's heads and enchanted violins, could only have taken
birth in the disordered brain of a youth mad with love. It was evident, also,
that Mr. Commissary Mifroid shared their view; and the magistrate would
certainly have cut short the incoherent narrative if circumstances had not
taken it upon themselves to interrupt it.

The door opened and a man entered, curiously dressed in an enormous
frock-coat and a tall hat, at once shabby and shiny, that came down to his
ears. He went up to the commissary and spoke to him in a whisper. It was
doubtless a detective come to deliver an important communication.

During this conversation, M. Mifroid did not take his eyes off Raoul. At
last, addressing him, he said:

"Monsieur, we have talked enough about the ghost. We will now talk
about yourself a little, if you have no objection: you were to carry off Mlle.
Christine Daae to-night?"

"Yes, M. le Commissaire."

"After the performance?"

"Yes, M. le Commissaire."

"All your arrangements were made?"

"Yes, M. le Commissaire."

"The carriage that brought you was to take you both away... There were
fresh horses in readiness at every stage ..."

"That is true, M. le Commissaire."

"And nevertheless your carriage is still outside the Rotunda awaiting
your orders, is it not?"

"Yes, M. le Commissaire."

"Did you know that there were three other carriages there, in addition to
yours?"

"I did not pay the least attention."

"They were the carriages of Mlle. Sorelli, which could not find room in
the Cour de l'Administration; of Carlotta; and of your brother, M. le Comte
de Chagny..."

"Very likely..."

"What is certain is that, though your carriage and Sorelli's and Carlotta's
are still there, by the Rotunda pavement, M. le Comte de Chagny's carriage
is gone."

"This has nothing to say to ..."

"I beg your pardon. Was not M. le Comte opposed to your marriage with
Mlle. Daae?"

"That is a matter that only concerns the family."

"You have answered my question: he was opposed to it ... and that was
why you were carrying Christine Daae out of your brother's reach... Well,
M. de Chagny, allow me to inform you that your brother has been smarter
than you! It is he who has carried off Christine Daae!"

"Oh, impossible!" moaned Raoul, pressing his hand to his heart. "Are
you sure?"

"Immediately after the artist's disappearance, which was procured by
means which we have still to ascertain, he flung into his carriage, which
drove right across Paris at a furious pace."

"Across Paris?" asked poor Raoul, in a hoarse voice. "What do you mean
by across Paris?"

"Across Paris and out of Paris ... by the Brussels road."

"Oh," cried the young man, "I shall catch them!" And he rushed out of
the office.

"And bring her back to us!" cried the commisary gaily ... "Ah, that's a
trick worth two of the Angel of Music's!"

And, turning to his audience, M. Mifroid delivered a little lecture on
police methods.

"I don't know for a moment whether M. le Comte de Chagny has really
carried Christine Daae off or not ... but I want to know and I believe that, at
this moment, no one is more anxious to inform us than his brother ... And
now he is flying in pursuit of him! He is my chief auxiliary! This,
gentlemen, is the art of the police, which is believed to be so complicated
and which, nevertheless appears so simple as soon its you see that it
consists in getting your work done by people who have nothing to do with
the police."

But M. le Commissaire de Police Mifroid would not have been quite so
satisfied with himself if he had known that the rush of his rapid emissary
was stopped at the entrance to the very first corridor. A tall figure blocked
Raoul's way.

"Where are you going so fast, M. de Chagny?" asked a voice.

Raoul impatiently raised his eyes and recognized the astrakhan cap of an
hour ago. He stopped:

"It's you!" he cried, in a feverish voice. "You, who know Erik's secrets
and don't want me to speak of them. Who are you?"

"You know who I am! ... I am the Persian!"

Chapter XIX The Viscount and the Persian

Raoul now remembered that his brother had once shown him that
mysterious person, of whom nothing was known except that he was a
Persian and that he lived in a little old-fashioned flat in the Rue de Rivoli.

The man with the ebony skin, the eyes of jade and the astrakhan cap bent
over Raoul.

"I hope, M. de Chagny," he said, "that you have not betrayed Erik's
secret?"

"And why should I hesitate to betray that monster, sir?" Raoul rejoined
haughtily, trying to shake off the intruder. "Is he your friend, by any
chance?"

"I hope that you said nothing about Erik, sir, because Erik's secret is also
Christine Daae's and to talk about one is to talk about the other!"

"Oh, sir," said Raoul, becoming more and more impatient, "you seem to
know about many things that interest me; and yet I have no time to listen to
you!"

"Once more, M. de Chagny, where are you going so fast?"

"Can not you guess? To Christine Daae's assistance..."

"Then, sir, stay here, for Christine Daae is here!"

"With Erik?"

"With Erik."

"How do you know?"

"I was at the performance and no one in the world but Erik could
contrive an abduction like that! ... Oh," he said, with a deep sigh, "I
recognized the monster's touch! ..."

"You know him then?"

The Persian did not reply, but heaved a fresh sigh.

"Sir," said Raoul, "I do not know what your intentions are, but can you
do anything to help me? I mean, to help Christine Daae?"

"I think so, M. de Chagny, and that is why I spoke to you."

"What can you do?"

"Try to take you to her ... and to him."

"If you can do me that service, sir, my life is yours! ... One word more:
the commissary of police tells me that Christine Daae has been carried off
by my brother, Count Philippe."

"Oh, M. de Chagny, I don't believe a word of it."

"It's not possible, is it?"

"I don't know if it is possible or not; but there are ways and ways of
carrying people off; and M. le Comte Philippe has never, as far as I know,
had anything to do with witchcraft."

"Your arguments are convincing, sir, and I am a fool! ... Oh, let us make
haste! I place myself entirely in your hands! ... How should I not believe

you, when you are the only one to believe me ... when you are the only one
not to smile when Erik's name is mentioned?"

And the young man impetuously seized the Persian's hands. They were
ice-cold.

"Silence!" said the Persian, stopping and listening to the distant sounds
of the theater. "We must not mention that name here. Let us say 'he' and
'him;' then there will be less danger of attracting his attention."

"Do you think he is near us?"

"It is quite possible, Sir, if he is not, at this moment, with his victim, IN
THE HOUSE ON THE LAKE."

"Ah, so you know that house too?"

"If he is not there, he may be here, in this wall, in this floor, in this
ceiling! ... Come!"

And the Persian, asking Raoul to deaden the sound of his footsteps, led
him down passages which Raoul had never seen before, even at the time
when Christine used to take him for walks through that labyrinth.

"If only Darius has come!" said the Persian.

"Who is Darius?"

"Darius? My servant."

They were now in the center of a real deserted square, an immense
apartment ill-lit by a small lamp. The Persian stopped Raoul and, in the
softest of whispers, asked:

"What did you say to the commissary?"

"I said that Christine Daae's abductor was the Angel of Music, ALIAS
the Opera ghost, and that the real name was ..."

"Hush! ... And did he believe you?"

"No."

"He attached no importance to what you said?"

"No."

"He took you for a bit of a madman?"

"Yes."

"So much the better!" sighed the Persian.

And they continued their road. After going up and down several
staircases which Raoul had never seen before, the two men found
themselves in front of a door which the Persian opened with a master-key.
The Persian and Raoul were both, of course, in dress-clothes; but, whereas
Raoul had a tall hat, the Persian wore the astrakhan cap which I have
already mentioned. It was an infringement of the rule which insists upon the
tall hat behind the scenes; but in France foreigners are allowed every
license: the Englishman his traveling-cap, the Persian his cap of astrakhan.

"Sir," said the Persian, "your tall hat will be in your way: you would do
well to leave it in the dressing-room."

"What dressing-room?" asked Raoul.

"Christine Daae's."

And the Persian, letting Raoul through the door which he had just
opened, showed him the actress' room opposite. They were at the end of the
passage the whole length of which Raoul had been accustomed to traverse
before knocking at Christine's door.

"How well you know the Opera, sir!"

"Not so well as 'he' does!" said the Persian modestly.

And he pushed the young man into Christine's dressing-room, which was
as Raoul had left it a few minutes earlier.

Closing the door, the Persian went to a very thin partition that separated
the dressing-room from a big lumber-room next to it. He listened and then
coughed loudly.

There was a sound of some one stirring in the lumber-room; and, a few
seconds later, a finger tapped at the door.

"Come in," said the Persian.

A man entered, also wearing an astrakhan cap and dressed in a long
overcoat. He bowed and took a richly carved case from under his coat, put
it on the dressing-table, bowed once again and went to the door.

"Did no one see you come in, Darius?"

"No, master."

"Let no one see you go out."

The servant glanced down the passage and swiftly disappeared.

The Persian opened the case. It contained a pair of long pistols.

"When Christine Daae was carried off, sir, I sent word to my servant to
bring me these pistols. I have had them a long time and they can be relied
upon."

"Do you mean to fight a duel?" asked the young man.

"It will certainly be a duel which we shall have to fight," said the other,
examining the priming of his pistols. "And what a duel!" Handing one of
the pistols to Raoul, he added, "In this duel, we shall be two to one; but you
must be prepared for everything, for we shall be fighting the most terrible
adversary that you can imagine. But you love Christine Daae, do you not?"

"I worship the ground she stands on! But you, sir, who do not love her,
tell me why I find you ready to risk your life for her! You must certainly
hate Erik!"

"No, sir," said the Persian sadly, "I do not hate him. If I hated him, he
would long ago have ceased doing harm."

"Has he done you harm?"

"I have forgiven him the harm which he has done me."

"I do not understand you. You treat him as a monster, you speak of his
crime, he has done you harm and I find in you the same inexplicable pity
that drove me to despair when I saw it in Christine!"

The Persian did not reply. He fetched a stool and set it against the wall
facing the great mirror that filled the whole of the wall-space opposite.
Then he climbed on the stool and, with his nose to the wallpaper, seemed to
be looking for something.

"Ah," he said, after a long search, "I have it!" And, raising his finger
above his head, he pressed against a corner in the pattern of the paper. Then
he turned round and jumped off the stool:

"In half a minute," he said, "he shall be ON HIS ROAD!" and crossing
the whole of the dressing-room he felt the great mirror.

"No, it is not yielding yet," he muttered.

"Oh, are we going out by the mirror?" asked Raoul. "Like Christine
Daae."

"So you knew that Christine Daae went out by that mirror?"

"She did so before my eyes, sir! I was hidden behind the curtain of the
inner room and I saw her vanish not by the glass, but in the glass!"

"And what did you do?"

"I thought it was an aberration of my senses, a mad dream.

"Or some new fancy of the ghost's!" chuckled the Persian. "Ah, M. de
Chagny," he continued, still with his hand on the mirror, "would that we had
to do with a ghost! We could then leave our pistols in their case ... Put down
your hat, please ... there ... and now cover your shirt-front as much as you
can with your coat ... as I am doing ... Bring the lapels forward ... turn up
the collar ... We must make ourselves as invisible as possible."

Bearing against the mirror, after a short silence, he said:

"It takes some time to release the counterbalance, when you press on the
spring from the inside of the room. It is different when you are behind the
wall and can act directly on the counterbalance. Then the mirror turns at
once and is moved with incredible rapidity."

"What counterbalance?" asked Raoul.

"Why, the counterbalance that lifts the whole of this wall on to its pivot.
You surely don't expect it to move of itself, by enchantment! If you watch,
you will see the mirror first rise an inch or two and then shift an inch or two
from left to right. It will then be on a pivot and will swing round."

"It's not turning!" said Raoul impatiently.

"Oh, wait! You have time enough to be impatient, sir! The mechanism
has obviously become rusty, or else the spring isn't working... Unless it is
something else," added the Persian, anxiously.

"What?"

"He may simply have cut the cord of the counterbalance and blocked the
whole apparatus."

"Why should he? He does not know that we are coming this way!"

"I dare say he suspects it, for he knows that I understand the system."

"It's not turning! ... And Christine, sir, Christine?"

The Persian said coldly:

"We shall do all that it is humanly possible to do! ... But he may stop us
at the first step! ... He commands the walls, the doors and the trapdoors. In
my country, he was known by a name which means the 'trap-door lover.'"

"But why do these walls obey him alone? He did not build them!"

"Yes, sir, that is just what he did!"

Raoul looked at him in amazement; but the Persian made a sign to him
to be silent and pointed to the glass ... There was a sort of shivering
reflection. Their image was troubled as in a rippling sheet of water and then
all became stationary again.

"You see, sir, that it is not turning! Let us take another road!"

"To-night, there is no other!" declared the Persian, in a singularly
mournful voice. "And now, look out! And be ready to fire."

He himself raised his pistol opposite the glass. Raoul imitated his
movement. With his free arm, the Persian drew the young man to his chest
and, suddenly, the mirror turned, in a blinding daze of cross-lights: it turned
like one of those revolving doors which have lately been fixed to the
entrances of most restaurants, it turned, carrying Raoul and the Persian with
it and suddenly hurling them from the full light into the deepest darkness.

Chapter XX In the Cellars of the Opera

"Your hand high, ready to fire!" repeated Raoul's companion quickly.

The wall, behind them, having completed the circle which it described
upon itself, closed again; and the two men stood motionless for a moment,
holding their breath.

At last, the Persian decided to make a movement; and Raoul heard him
slip on his knees and feel for something in the dark with his groping hands.
Suddenly, the darkness was made visible by a small dark lantern and Raoul
instinctively stepped backward as though to escape the scrutiny of a secret
enemy. But he soon perceived that the light belonged to the Persian, whose
movements he was closely observing. The little red disk was turned in
every direction and Raoul saw that the floor, the walls and the ceiling were
all formed of planking. It must have been the ordinary road taken by Erik to
reach Christine's dressing-room and impose upon her innocence. And
Raoul, remembering the Persian's remark, thought that it had been
mysteriously constructed by the ghost himself. Later, he learned that Erik
had found, all prepared for him, a secret passage, long known to himself
alone and contrived at the time of the Paris Commune to allow the jailers to
convey their prisoners straight to the dungeons that had been constructed
for them in the cellars; for the Federates had occupied the opera-house
immediately after the eighteenth of March and had made a starting-place
right at the top for their Mongolfier balloons, which carried their incendiary
proclamations to the departments, and a state prison right at the bottom.

The Persian went on his knees and put his lantern on the ground. He
seemed to be working at the floor; and suddenly he turned off his light.
Then Raoul heard a faint click and saw a very pale luminous square in the
floor of the passage. It was as though a window had opened on the Opera
cellars, which were still lit. Raoul no longer saw the Persian, but he
suddenly felt him by his side and heard him whisper:

"Follow me and do all that I do."

Raoul turned to the luminous aperture. Then he saw the Persian, who
was still on his knees, hang by his hands from the rim of the opening, with
his pistol between his teeth, and slide into the cellar below.

Curiously enough, the viscount had absolute confidence in the Persian,
though he knew nothing about him. His emotion when speaking of the
"monster" struck him as sincere; and, if the Persian had cherished any
sinister designs against him, he would not have armed him with his own
hands. Besides, Raoul must reach Christine at all costs. He therefore went
on his knees also and hung from the trap with both hands.

"Let go!" said a voice.

And he dropped into the arms of the Persian, who told him to lie down
flat, closed the trap-door above him and crouched down beside him. Raoul
tried to ask a question, but the Persian's hand was on his mouth and he
heard a voice which he recognized as that of the commissary of police.

Raoul and the Persian were completely hidden behind a wooden
partition. Near them, a small staircase led to a little room in which the
commissary appeared to be walking up and down, asking questions. The
faint light was just enough to enable Raoul to distinguish the shape of
things around him. And he could not restrain a dull cry: there were three
corpses there.

The first lay on the narrow landing of the little staircase; the two others
had rolled to the bottom of the staircase. Raoul could have touched one of
the two poor wretches by passing his fingers through the partition.

"Silence!" whispered the Persian.

He too had seen the bodies and he gave one word in explanation:

"HE!"

The commissary's voice was now heard more distinctly. He was asking
for information about the system of lighting, which the stage-manager
supplied. The commissary therefore must be in the "organ" or its immediate
neighborhood.

Contrary to what one might think, especially in connection with an
opera-house, the "organ" is not a musical instrument. At that time,
electricity was employed only for a very few scenic effects and for the bells.
The immense building and the stage itself were still lit by gas; hydrogen
was used to regulate and modify the lighting of a scene; and this was done
by means of a special apparatus which, because of the multiplicity of its
pipes, was known as the "organ." A box beside the prompter's box was
reserved for the chief gas-man, who from there gave his orders to his

assistants and saw that they were executed. Mauclair stayed in this box
during all the performances.

But now Mauclair was not in his box and his assistants not in their
places.

"Mauclair! Mauclair!"

The stage-manager's voice echoed through the cellars. But Mauclair did
not reply.

I have said that a door opened on a little staircase that led to the second
cellar. The commissary pushed it, but it resisted.

"I say," he said to the stage-manager, "I can't open this door: is it always
so difficult?"

The stage-manager forced it open with his shoulder. He saw that, at the
same time, he was pushing a human body and he could not keep back an
exclamation, for he recognized the body at once:

"Mauclair! Poor devil! He is dead!"

But Mr. Commissary Mifroid, whom nothing surprised, was stooping
over that big body.

"No," he said, "he is dead-drunk, which is not quite the same thing."

"It's the first time, if so," said the stage-manager

"Then some one has given him a narcotic. That is quite possible."

Mifroid went down a few steps and said:

"Look!"

By the light of a little red lantern, at the foot of the stairs, they saw two
other bodies. The stage-manager recognized Mauclair's assistants. Mifroid
went down and listened to their breathing.

"They are sound asleep," he said. "Very curious business! Some person
unknown must have interfered with the gas-man and his staff ... and that
person unknown was obviously working on behalf of the kidnapper ... But
what a funny idea to kidnap a performer on the stage! ... Send for the doctor
of the theater, please." And Mifroid repeated, "Curious, decidedly curious
business!"

Then he turned to the little room, addressing the people whom Raoul and
the Persian were unable to see from where they lay.

"What do you say to all this, gentlemen? You are the only ones who have
not given your views. And yet you must have an opinion of some sort."

Thereupon, Raoul and the Persian saw the startled faces of the joint
managers appear above the landing—and they heard Moncharmin's excited
voice:

"There are things happening here, Mr. Commissary, which we are unable
to explain."

And the two faces disappeared.

"Thank you for the information, gentlemen," said Mifroid, with a jeer.

But the stage-manager, holding his chin in the hollow of his right hand,
which is the attitude of profound thought, said:

"It is not the first time that Mauclair has fallen asleep in the theater. I
remember finding him, one evening, snoring in his little recess, with his
snuff-box beside him."

"Is that long ago?" asked M. Mifroid, carefully wiping his eye-glasses.

"No, not so very long ago ... Wait a bit! ... It was the night ... of course,
yes ... It was the night when Carlotta—you know, Mr. Commissary—gave
her famous 'co-ack'!"

"Really? The night when Carlotta gave her famous 'co-ack'?"

And M. Mifroid, replacing his gleaming glasses on his nose, fixed the
stage-manager with a contemplative stare.

"So Mauclair takes snuff, does he?" he asked carelessly.

"'Yes, Mr. Commissary ... Look, there is his snuff-box on that little shelf
... Oh! he's a great snuff-taker!"

"So am I," said Mifroid and put the snuff-box in his pocket.

Raoul and the Persian, themselves unobserved, watched the removal of
the three bodies by a number of scene-shifters, who were followed by the
commissary and all the people with him. Their steps were heard for a few
minutes on the stage above. When they were alone the Persian made a sign
to Raoul to stand up. Raoul did so; but, as he did not lift his hand in front of
his eyes, ready to fire, the Persian told him to resume that attitude and to
continue it, whatever happened.

"But it tires the hand unnecessarily," whispered Raoul. "If I do fire, I
shan't be sure of my aim."

"Then shift your pistol to the other hand," said the Persian.

"I can't shoot with my left hand."

Thereupon, the Persian made this queer reply, which was certainly not
calculated to throw light into the young man's flurried brain:

"It's not a question of shooting with the right hand or the left; it's a
question of holding one of your hands as though you were going to pull the
trigger of a pistol with your arm bent. As for the pistol itself, when all is
said, you can put that in your pocket!" And he added, "Let this be clearly
understood, or I will answer for nothing. It is a matter of life and death. And
now, silence and follow me!"

The cellars of the Opera are enormous and they are five in number.
Raoul followed the Persian and wondered what he would have done without

his companion in that extraordinary labyrinth. They went down to the third
cellar; and their progress was still lit by some distant lamp.

The lower they went, the more precautions the Persian seemed to take.
He kept on turning to Raoul to see if he was holding his arm properly,
showing him how he himself carried his hand as if always ready to fire,
though the pistol was in his pocket.

Suddenly, a loud voice made them stop. Some one above them shouted:

"All the door-shutters on the stage! The commissary of police wants
them!"

Steps were heard and shadows glided through the darkness. The Persian
drew Raoul behind a set piece. They saw passing before and above them old
men bent by age and the past burden of opera-scenery. Some could hardly
drag themselves along; others, from habit, with stooping bodies and
outstretched hands, looked for doors to shut.

They were the door-shutters, the old, worn-out scene-shifters, on whom
a charitable management had taken pity, giving them the job of shutting
doors above and below the stage. They went about incessantly, from top to
bottom of the building, shutting the doors; and they were also called "The
draft-expellers," at least at that time, for I have little doubt that by now they
are all dead. Drafts are very bad for the voice, wherever they may come
from.[1]

The two men might have stumbled over them, waking them up and
provoking a request for explanations. For the moment, M. Mifroid's inquiry
saved them from any such unpleasant encounters.

The Persian and Raoul welcomed this incident, which relieved them of
inconvenient witnesses, for some of those door-shutters, having nothing
else to do or nowhere to lay their heads, stayed at the Opera, from idleness
or necessity, and spent the night there.

But they were not left to enjoy their solitude for long. Other shades now
came down by the same way by which the door-shutters had gone up. Each

of these shades carried a little lantern and moved it about, above, below and
all around, as though looking for something or somebody.

"Hang it!" muttered the Persian. "I don't know what they are looking for,
but they might easily find us ... Let us get away, quick! ... Your hand up, sir,
ready to fire! ... Bend your arm ... more ... that's it! ... Hand at the level of
your eye, as though you were fighting a duel and waiting for the word to
fire! Oh, leave your pistol in your pocket. Quick, come along, down-stairs.
Level of your eye! Question of life or death! ... Here, this way, these stairs!"
They reached the fifth cellar. "Oh, what a duel, sir, what a duel!"

Once in the fifth cellar, the Persian drew breath. He seemed to enjoy a
rather greater sense of security than he had displayed when they both
stopped in the third; but he never altered the attitude of his hand. And
Raoul, remembering the Persian's observation—"I know these pistols can
be relied upon"—was more and more astonished, wondering why any one
should be so gratified at being able to rely upon a pistol which he did not
intend to use!

But the Persian left him no time for reflection. Telling Raoul to stay
where he was, he ran up a few steps of the staircase which they had just left
and then returned.

"How stupid of us!" he whispered. "We shall soon have seen the end of
those men with their lanterns. It is the firemen going their rounds."[2]

The two men waited five minutes longer. Then the Persian took Raoul up
the stairs again; but suddenly he stopped him with a gesture. Something
moved in the darkness before them.

"Flat on your stomach!" whispered the Persian.

The two men lay flat on the floor.

They were only just in time. A shade, this time carrying no light, just a
shade in the shade, passed. It passed close to them, near enough to touch
them.

They felt the warmth of its cloak upon them. For they could distinguish
the shade sufficiently to see that it wore a cloak which shrouded it from
head to foot. On its head it had a soft felt hat ...

It moved away, drawing its feet against the walls and sometimes giving a
kick into a corner.

"Whew!" said the Persian. "We've had a narrow escape; that shade
knows me and has twice taken me to the managers' office."

"Is it some one belonging to the theater police?" asked Raoul.

"It's some one much worse than that!" replied the Persian, without giving
any further explanation.[3]

"It's not ... he?"

"He? ... If he does not come behind us, we shall always see his yellow
eyes! That is more or less our safeguard to-night. But he may come from
behind, stealing up; and we are dead men if we do not keep our hands as
though about to fire, at the level of our eyes, in front!"

The Persian had hardly finished speaking, when a fantastic face came in
sight ... a whole fiery face, not only two yellow eyes!

Yes, a head of fire came toward them, at a man's height, but with no
body attached to it. The face shed fire, looked in the darkness like a flame
shaped as a man's face.

"Oh," said the Persian, between his teeth. "I have never seen this before!
... Pampin was not mad, after all: he had seen it! ... What can that flame be?
It is not HE, but he may have sent it! ... Take care! ... Take care! Your hand
at the level of your eyes, in Heaven's name, at the level of your eyes! ...
know most of his tricks ... but not this one ... Come, let us run ... it is safer.
Hand at the level of your eyes!"

And they fled down the long passage that opened before them.

After a few seconds, that seemed to them like long minutes, they
stopped.

"He doesn't often come this way," said the Persian. "This side has
nothing to do with him. This side does not lead to the lake nor to the house
on the lake ... But perhaps he knows that we are at his heels ... although I
promised him to leave him alone and never to meddle in his business
again!"

So saying, he turned his head and Raoul also turned his head; and they
again saw the head of fire behind their two heads. It had followed them.
And it must have run also, and perhaps faster than they, for it seemed to be
nearer to them.

At the same time, they began to perceive a certain noise of which they
could not guess the nature. They simply noticed that the sound seemed to
move and to approach with the fiery face. It was a noise as though
thousands of nails had been scraped against a blackboard, the perfectly
unendurable noise that is sometimes made by a little stone inside the chalk
that grates on the blackboard.

They continued to retreat, but the fiery face came on, came on, gaining
on them. They could see its features clearly now. The eyes were round and
staring, the nose a little crooked and the mouth large, with a hanging lower
lip, very like the eyes, nose and lip of the moon, when the moon is quite
red, bright red.

How did that red moon manage to glide through the darkness, at a man's
height, with nothing to support it, at least apparently? And how did it go so
fast, so straight ahead, with such staring, staring eyes? And what was that
scratching, scraping, grating sound which it brought with it?

The Persian and Raoul could retreat no farther and flattened themselves
against the wall, not knowing what was going to happen because of that
incomprehensible head of fire, and especially now, because of the more
intense, swarming, living, "numerous" sound, for the sound was certainly
made up of hundreds of little sounds that moved in the darkness, under the
fiery face.

And the fiery face came on ... with its noise ... came level with them! ...

And the two companions, flat against their wall, felt their hair stand on
end with horror, for they now knew what the thousand noises meant. They
came in a troop, hustled along in the shadow by innumerable little hurried
waves, swifter than the waves that rush over the sands at high tide, little
night-waves foaming under the moon, under the fiery head that was like a
moon. And the little waves passed between their legs, climbing up their
legs, irresistibly, and Raoul and the Persian could no longer restrain their
cries of horror, dismay and pain. Nor could they continue to hold their
hands at the level of their eyes: their hands went down to their legs to push
back the waves, which were full of little legs and nails and claws and teeth.

Yes, Raoul and the Persian were ready to faint, like Pampin the fireman.
But the head of fire turned round in answer to their cries, and spoke to
them:

"Don't move! Don't move! ... Whatever you do, don't come after me! ... I
am the rat-catcher! ... Let me pass, with my rats! ..."

And the head of fire disappeared, vanished in the darkness, while the
passage in front of it lit up, as the result of the change which the rat-catcher
had made in his dark lantern. Before, so as not to scare the rats in front of
him, he had turned his dark lantern on himself, lighting up his own head;
now, to hasten their flight, he lit the dark space in front of him. And he
jumped along, dragging with him the waves of scratching rats, all the
thousand sounds.

Raoul and the Persian breathed again, though still trembling.

"I ought to have remembered that Erik talked to me about the rat-
catcher," said the Persian. "But he never told me that he looked like that ...
and it's funny that I should never have met him before ... Of course, Erik
never comes to this part!"

[Illustration: two page color illustration]

"Are we very far from the lake, sir?" asked Raoul. "When shall we get
there? ... Take me to the lake, oh, take me to the lake! ... When we are at the
lake, we will call out! ... Christine will hear us! ... And HE will hear us, too!
... And, as you know him, we shall talk to him!" "Baby!" said the Persian.
"We shall never enter the house on the lake by the lake! ... I myself have
never landed on the other bank ... the bank on which the house stands. ...
You have to cross the lake first ... and it is well guarded! ... I fear that more
than one of those men—old scene-shifters, old door-shutters—who have
never been seen again were simply tempted to cross the lake ... It is terrible
... I myself would have been nearly killed there ... if the monster had not
recognized me in time! ... One piece of advice, sir; never go near the lake...
And, above all, shut your ears if you hear the voice singing under the water,
the siren's voice!"

"But then, what are we here for?" asked Raoul, in a transport of fever,
impatience and rage. "If you can do nothing for Christine, at least let me die
for her!" The Persian tried to calm the young man.

"We have only one means of saving Christine Daae, believe me, which is
to enter the house unperceived by the monster."

"And is there any hope of that, sir?"

"Ah, if I had not that hope, I would not have come to fetch you!"

"And how can one enter the house on the lake without crossing the
lake?"

"From the third cellar, from which we were so unluckily driven away.
We will go back there now ... I will tell you," said the Persian, with a
sudden change in his voice, "I will tell you the exact place, sir: it is between
a set piece and a discarded scene from ROI DE LAHORE, exactly at the
spot where Joseph Buquet died... Come, sir, take courage and follow me!
And hold your hand at the level of your eyes! ... But where are we?"

The Persian lit his lamp again and flung its rays down two enormous
corridors that crossed each other at right angles.

"We must be," he said, "in the part used more particularly for the
waterworks. I see no fire coming from the furnaces."

He went in front of Raoul, seeking his road, stopping abruptly when he
was afraid of meeting some waterman. Then they had to protect themselves
against the glow of a sort of underground forge, which the men were
extinguishing, and at which Raoul recognized the demons whom Christine
had seen at the time of her first captivity.

In this way, they gradually arrived beneath the huge cellars below the
stage. They must at this time have been at the very bottom of the "tub" and
at an extremely great depth, when we remember that the earth was dug out
at fifty feet below the water that lay under the whole of that part of Paris.[4]

The Persian touched a partition-wall and said:

"If I am not mistaken, this is a wall that might easily belong to the house
on the lake."

He was striking a partition-wall of the "tub," and perhaps it would be as
well for the reader to know how the bottom and the partition-walls of the
tub were built. In order to prevent the water surrounding the building-
operations from remaining in immediate contact with the walls supporting
the whole of the theatrical machinery, the architect was obliged to build a
double case in every direction. The work of constructing this double case
took a whole year. It was the wall of the first inner case that the Persian
struck when speaking to Raoul of the house on the lake. To any one
understanding the architecture of the edifice, the Persian's action would
seem to indicate that Erik's mysterious house had been built in the double
case, formed of a thick wall constructed as an embankment or dam, then of
a brick wall, a tremendous layer of cement and another wall several yards in
thickness.

At the Persian's words, Raoul flung himself against the wall and listened
eagerly. But he heard nothing ... nothing ... except distant steps sounding on
the floor of the upper portions of the theater.

The Persian darkened his lantern again.

"Look out!" he said. "Keep your hand up! And silence! For we shall try
another way of getting in."

And he led him to the little staircase by which they had come down
lately.

They went up, stopping at each step, peering into the darkness and the
silence, till they came to the third cellar. Here the Persian motioned to
Raoul to go on his knees; and, in this way, crawling on both knees and one
hand—for the other hand was held in the position indicated—they reached
the end wall.

Against this wall stood a large discarded scene from the ROI DE
LAHORE. Close to this scene was a set piece. Between the scene and the
set piece there was just room for a body ... for a body which one day was
found hanging there. The body of Joseph Buquet.

The Persian, still kneeling, stopped and listened. For a moment, he
seemed to hesitate and looked at Raoul; then he turned his eyes upward,
toward the second cellar, which sent down the faint glimmer of a lantern,
through a cranny between two boards. This glimmer seemed to trouble the
Persian.

At last, he tossed his head and made up his mind to act. He slipped
between the set piece and the scene from the ROI DE LAHORE, with
Raoul close upon his heels. With his free hand, the Persian felt the wall.
Raoul saw him bear heavily upon the wall, just as he had pressed against
the wall in Christine's dressing-room. Then a stone gave way, leaving a hole
in the wall.

This time, the Persian took his pistol from his pocket and made a sign to
Raoul to do as he did. He cocked the pistol.

And, resolutely, still on his knees, he wiggled through the hole in the
wall. Raoul, who had wished to pass first, had to be content to follow him.

The hole was very narrow. The Persian stopped almost at once. Raoul
heard him feeling the stones around him. Then the Persian took out his dark

lantern again, stooped forward, examined something beneath him and
immediately extinguished his lantern. Raoul heard him say, in a whisper:

"We shall have to drop a few yards, without making a noise; take off
your boots."

The Persian handed his own shoes to Raoul.

"Put them outside the wall," he said. "We shall find them there when we
leave."[5]

He crawled a little farther on his knees, then turned right round and said:

"I am going to hang by my hands from the edge of the stone and let
myself drop INTO HIS HOUSE. You must do exactly the same. Do not be
afraid. I will catch you in my arms."

Raoul soon heard a dull sound, evidently produced by the fall of the
Persian, and then dropped down.

He felt himself clasped in the Persian's arms.

"Hush!" said the Persian.

And they stood motionless, listening.

The darkness was thick around them, the silence heavy and terrible.

Then the Persian began to make play with the dark lantern again, turning
the rays over their heads, looking for the hole through which they had
come, and failing to find it:

"Oh!" he said. "The stone has closed of itself!"

And the light of the lantern swept down the wall and over the floor.

The Persian stooped and picked up something, a sort of cord, which he
examined for a second and flung away with horror.

"The Punjab lasso!" he muttered.

"What is it?" asked Raoul.

The Persian shivered. "It might very well be the rope by which the man
was hanged, and which was looked for so long."

And, suddenly seized with fresh anxiety, he moved the little red disk of
his lantern over the walls. In this way, he lit up a curious thing: the trunk of
a tree, which seemed still quite alive, with its leaves; and the branches of
that tree ran right up the walls and disappeared in the ceiling.

Because of the smallness of the luminous disk, it was difficult at first to
make out the appearance of things: they saw a corner of a branch ... and a
leaf ... and another leaf ... and, next to it, nothing at all, nothing but the ray
of light that seemed to reflect itself ... Raoul passed his hand over that
nothing, over that reflection.

"Hullo!" he said. "The wall is a looking-glass!"

"Yes, a looking-glass!" said the Persian, in a tone of deep emotion. And,
passing the hand that held the pistol over his moist forehead, he added, "We
have dropped into the torture-chamber!"

What the Persian knew of this torture-chamber and what there befell him
and his companion shall be told in his own words, as set down in a
manuscript which he left behind him, and which I copy VERBATIM.

[1] M. Pedro Gailhard has himself told me that he created a few additional posts as door-shutters for
old stage-carpenters whom he was unwilling to dismiss from the service of the Opera.

[2] In those days, it was still part of the firemen's duty to watch over the safety of the Opera house
outside the performances; but this service has since been suppressed. I asked M. Pedro Gailhard the
reason, and he replied:

"It was because the management was afraid that, in their utter inexperience of the cellars of the
Opera, the firemen might set fire to the building!"

[3] Like the Persian, I can give no further explanation touching the apparition of this shade. Whereas,
in this historic narrative, everything else will be normally explained, however abnormal the course of
events may seem, I can not give the reader expressly to understand what the Persian meant by the
words, "It is some one much worse than that!" The reader must try to guess for himself, for I
promised M. Pedro Gailhard, the former manager of the Opera, to keep his secret regarding the
extremely interesting and useful personality of the wandering, cloaked shade which, while
condemning itself to live in the cellars of the Opera, rendered such immense services to those who,
on gala evenings, for instance, venture to stray away from the stage. I am speaking of state services;
and, upon my word of honor, I can say no more.

[4] All the water had to be exhausted, in the building of the Opera. To give an idea of the amount of
water that was pumped up, I can tell the reader that it represented the area of the courtyard of the
Louvre and a height half as deep again as the towers of Notre Dame. And nevertheless the engineers
had to leave a lake.

[5] These two pairs of boots, which were placed, according to the Persian's papers, just between the
set piece and the scene from the ROI DE LAHORE, on the spot where Joseph Buquet was found
hanging, were never discovered. They must have been taken by some stage-carpenter or "door-
shutter."

Chapter XXI Interesting and Instructive Vicissitudes
of a Persian in the Cellars of the Opera

THE PERSIAN'S NARRATIVE

It was the first time that I entered the house on the lake. I had often
begged the "trap-door lover," as we used to call Erik in my country, to open
its mysterious doors to me. He always refused. I made very many attempts,
but in vain, to obtain admittance. Watch him as I might, after I first learned
that he had taken up his permanent abode at the Opera, the darkness was
always too thick to enable me to see how he worked the door in the wall on
the lake. One day, when I thought myself alone, I stepped into the boat and
rowed toward that part of the wall through which I had seen Erik disappear.
It was then that I came into contact with the siren who guarded the
approach and whose charm was very nearly fatal to me.

I had no sooner put off from the bank than the silence amid which I
floated on the water was disturbed by a sort of whispered singing that

hovered all around me. It was half breath, half music; it rose softly from the
waters of the lake; and I was surrounded by it through I knew not what
artifice. It followed me, moved with me and was so soft that it did not alarm
me. On the contrary, in my longing to approach the source of that sweet and
enticing harmony, I leaned out of my little boat over the water, for there was
no doubt in my mind that the singing came from the water itself. By this
time, I was alone in the boat in the middle of the lake; the voice—for it was
now distinctly a voice—was beside me, on the water. I leaned over, leaned
still farther. The lake was perfectly calm, and a moonbeam that passed
through the air hole in the Rue Scribe showed me absolutely nothing on its
surface, which was smooth and black as ink. I shook my ears to get rid of a
possible humming; but I soon had to accept the fact that there was no
humming in the ears so harmonious as the singing whisper that followed
and now attracted me.

Had I been inclined to superstition, I should have certainly thought that I
had to do with some siren whose business it was to confound the traveler
who should venture on the waters of the house on the lake. Fortunately, I
come from a country where we are too fond of fantastic things not to know
them through and through; and I had no doubt but that I was face to face
with some new invention of Erik's. But this invention was so perfect that, as
I leaned out of the boat, I was impelled less by a desire to discover its trick
than to enjoy its charm; and I leaned out, leaned out until I almost
overturned the boat.

Suddenly, two monstrous arms issued from the bosom of the waters and
seized me by the neck, dragging me down to the depths with irresistible
force. I should certainly have been lost, if I had not had time to give a cry
by which Erik knew me. For it was he; and, instead of drowning me, as was
certainly his first intention, he swam with me and laid me gently on the
bank:

"How imprudent you are!" he said, as he stood before me, dripping with
water. "Why try to enter my house? I never invited you! I don't want you
there, nor anybody! Did you save my life only to make it unbearable to me?
However great the service you rendered him, Erik may end by forgetting it;
and you know that nothing can restrain Erik, not even Erik himself."

He spoke, but I had now no other wish than to know what I already
called the trick of the siren. He satisfied my curiosity, for Erik, who is a real
monster—I have seen him at work in Persia, alas—is also, in certain
respects, a regular child, vain and self-conceited, and there is nothing he
loves so much, after astonishing people, as to prove all the really
miraculous ingenuity of his mind.

He laughed and showed me a long reed.

"It's the silliest trick you ever saw," he said, "but it's very useful for
breathing and singing in the water. I learned it from the Tonkin pirates, who
are able to remain hidden for hours in the beds of the rivers."[1]

I spoke to him severely.

"It's a trick that nearly killed me!" I said. "And it may have been fatal to
others! You know what you promised me, Erik? No more murders!"

"Have I really committed murders?" he asked, putting on his most
amiable air.

"Wretched man!" I cried. "Have you forgotten the rosy hours of
Mazenderan?"

"Yes," he replied, in a sadder tone, "I prefer to forget them. I used to
make the little sultana laugh, though!"

"All that belongs to the past," I declared; "but there is the present ... and
you are responsible to me for the present, because, if I had wished, there
would have been none at all for you. Remember that, Erik: I saved your
life!"

And I took advantage of the turn of conversation to speak to him of
something that had long been on my mind:

"Erik," I asked, "Erik, swear that ..."

"What?" he retorted. "You know I never keep my oaths. Oaths are made
to catch gulls with."

"Tell me ... you can tell me, at any rate..."

"Well?"

"Well, the chandelier ... the chandelier, Erik? ..."

"What about the chandelier?"

"You know what I mean."

"Oh," he sniggered, "I don't mind telling you about the chandelier! ... IT
WASN'T I! ... The chandelier was very old and worn."

When Erik laughed, he was more terrible than ever. He jumped into the
boat, chuckling so horribly that I could not help trembling.

"Very old and worn, my dear daroga![2] Very old and worn, the
chandelier! ... It fell of itself! ... It came down with a smash! ... And now,
daroga, take my advice and go and dry yourself, or you'll catch a cold in the
head! ... And never get into my boat again ... And, whatever you do, don't
try to enter my house: I'm not always there ... daroga! And I should be sorry
to have to dedicate my Requiem Mass to you!"

So saying, swinging to and fro, like a monkey, and still chuckling, he
pushed off and soon disappeared in the darkness of the lake.

From that day, I gave up all thought of penetrating into his house by the
lake. That entrance was obviously too well guarded, especially since he had
learned that I knew about it. But I felt that there must be another entrance,
for I had often seen Erik disappear in the third cellar, when I was watching
him, though I could not imagine how.

Ever since I had discovered Erik installed in the Opera, I lived in a
perpetual terror of his horrible fancies, not in so far as I was concerned, but
I dreaded everything for others.[3]

And whenever some accident, some fatal event happened, I always
thought to myself, "I should not be surprised if that were Erik," even as
others used to say, "It's the ghost!" How often have I not heard people utter

that phrase with a smile! Poor devils! If they had known that the ghost
existed in the flesh, I swear they would not have laughed!

Although Erik announced to me very solemnly that he had changed and
that he had become the most virtuous of men SINCE HE WAS LOVED
FOR HIMSELF—a sentence that, at first, perplexed me most terribly—I
could not help shuddering when I thought of the monster. His horrible,
unparalleled and repulsive ugliness put him without the pale of humanity;
and it often seemed to me that, for this reason, he no longer believed that he
had any duty toward the human race. The way in which he spoke of his love
affairs only increased my alarm, for I foresaw the cause of fresh and more
hideous tragedies in this event to which he alluded so boastfully.

On the other hand, I soon discovered the curious moral traffic
established between the monster and Christine Daae. Hiding in the lumber-
room next to the young prima donna's dressing-room, I listened to
wonderful musical displays that evidently flung Christine into marvelous
ecstasy; but, all the same, I would never have thought that Erik's voice—
which was loud as thunder or soft as angels' voices, at will—could have
made her forget his ugliness. I understood all when I learned that Christine
had not yet seen him! I had occasion to go to the dressing-room and,
remembering the lessons he had once given me, I had no difficulty in
discovering the trick that made the wall with the mirror swing round and I
ascertained the means of hollow bricks and so on—by which he made his
voice carry to Christine as though she heard it close beside her. In this way
also I discovered the road that led to the well and the dungeon—the
Communists' dungeon—and also the trap-door that enabled Erik to go
straight to the cellars below the stage.

A few days later, what was not my amazement to learn by my own eyes
and ears that Erik and Christine Daae saw each other and to catch the
monster stooping over the little well, in the Communists' road and
sprinkling the forehead of Christine Daae, who had fainted. A white horse,
the horse out of the PROFETA, which had disappeared from the stables
under the Opera, was standing quietly beside them. I showed myself. It was
terrible. I saw sparks fly from those yellow eyes and, before I had time to
say a word, I received a blow on the head that stunned me.

When I came to myself, Erik, Christine and the white horse had
disappeared. I felt sure that the poor girl was a prisoner in the house on the
lake. Without hesitation, I resolved to return to the bank, notwithstanding
the attendant danger. For twenty-four hours, I lay in wait for the monster to
appear; for I felt that he must go out, driven by the need of obtaining
provisions. And, in this connection, I may say, that, when he went out in the
streets or ventured to show himself in public, he wore a pasteboard nose,
with a mustache attached to it, instead of his own horrible hole of a nose.
This did not quite take away his corpse-like air, but it made him almost, I
say almost, endurable to look at.

I therefore watched on the bank of the lake and, weary of long waiting,
was beginning to think that he had gone through the other door, the door in
the third cellar, when I heard a slight splashing in the dark, I saw the two
yellow eyes shining like candles and soon the boat touched shore. Erik
jumped out and walked up to me:

"You've been here for twenty-four hours," he said, "and you're annoying
me. I tell you, all this will end very badly. And you will have brought it
upon yourself; for I have been extraordinarily patient with you. You think
you are following me, you great booby, whereas it's I who am following
you; and I know all that you know about me, here. I spared you yesterday,
in MY COMMUNISTS' ROAD; but I warn you, seriously, don't let me
catch you there again! Upon my word, you don't seem able to take a hint!"

He was so furious that I did not think, for the moment, of interrupting
him. After puffing and blowing like a walrus, he put his horrible thought
into words:

"Yes, you must learn, once and for all—once and for all, I say—to take a
hint! I tell you that, with your recklessness—for you have already been
twice arrested by the shade in the felt hat, who did not know what you were
doing in the cellars and took you to the managers, who looked upon you as
an eccentric Persian interested in stage mechanism and life behind the
scenes: I know all about it, I was there, in the office; you know I am
everywhere—well, I tell you that, with your recklessness, they will end by
wondering what you are after here ... and they will end by knowing that you
are after Erik ... and then they will be after Erik themselves and they will