The Phantom of the Opera .................................................................................................................................1

Gaston Leroux ..........................................................................................................................................1

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 boxkeepers, the cloakroom 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

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 RueScribe side. But

none of those witnesses had until that day thought that there was any reason for connecting the more or less

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 tooskeptical 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 actingmanager of our National Academy, who

stood chatting on a landing with a lively and wellgroomed little old man, to whom he introduced me gaily.

The actingmanager 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

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

wellknown 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 childlike candor, all that he knew about the ghost and

had handed me the proofs of the ghost's existenceincluding the strange correspondence of Christine

Daaeto 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,

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:

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 SaintGermain 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 possibleas, after hearing you, I believeto explain the tragedy

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

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 actingmanager 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

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 unheardof chance described

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

actingmanager, M. Gabriel, the late chorusmaster, and more particularly Mme. la Baronne de

CastelotBarbezac, 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

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 actingmanager, 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.

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 dressingroom of La Sorelli, one of the principal dancers,

was invaded by halfadozen 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

Jammesthe girl with the tiptilted nose, the forgetmenot eyes, the rosered cheeks and the lilywhite

Sorelli's dressingroom was fitted up with official, commonplace elegance. A pierglass, a sofa, a

dressingtable 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 dressingrooms where they spent their time singing, quarreling, smacking the dressers and

hairdressers and buying one another glasses of cassis, beer, or even rhum, until the callboy'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

"As plainly as I see you now!" said little Jammes, whose legs were giving way beneath her, and she dropped

Thereupon little Girythe girl with eyes black as sloes, hair black as ink, a swarthy complexion and a poor

And they all began to talk together. The ghost had appeared to them in the shape of a gentleman in

dressclothes, who had suddenly stood before them in the passage, without their knowing where he came

"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

dressclothes 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

After all, who had seen him? You meet so many men in dressclothes at the Opera who are not ghosts. But

this dresssuit had a peculiarity of its own. It covered a skeleton. At least, so the balletgirls said. And, of

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 sceneshifter, 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

"He is extraordinarily thin and his dresscoat 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 sideface; 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 sceneshifter 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

dressclothes 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

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

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

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 frontrow and backrow girls alike

had plenty of excuses for the fright that made them quicken their pace when passing some dark corner or

illlighted corridor. Sorelli herself, on the day after the adventure of the fireman, placed a horseshoe on the

table in front of the stagedoorkeeper'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 horseshoe was not invented

by meany more than any other part of this story, alas!and may still be seen on the table in the passage

outside the stagedoorkeeper's box, when you enter the Opera through the court known as the Cour de

An agonizing silence now reigned in the dressingroom. 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

Everybody seemed to hear a rustling outside the door. There was no sound of footsteps. It was like light silk

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

But nobody answered. Then feeling all eyes upon her, watching her last movement, she made an effort to

"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

Sorelli looked into the passage bravely. It was empty; a gasflame, in its glass prison, cast a red and

suspicious light into the surrounding darkness, without succeeding in dispelling it. And the dancer slammed

"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

And the child reverently touched the little coral fingerring which she wore as a charm against bad luck,

while Sorelli, stealthily, with the tip of her pink right thumbnail, made a St. Andrew's cross on the wooden

ring which adorned the fourth finger of her left hand. She said to the little balletgirls:

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

"Yes, yes, we saw himwe saw him just now!" cried the girls. "He had his death's head and his dresscoat,

"And Gabriel saw him too!" said Jammes. "Only yesterday! Yesterday afternoonin broad daylight"

"Certainly! Gabriel told me so himself. That's what he knew him by. Gabriel was in the stagemanager's

office. Suddenly the door opened and the Persian entered. You know the Persian has the evil eye"

"Oh, yes!" answered the little balletgirls in chorus, warding off illluck 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

"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 hatpeg 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

"That's mother's opinion," replied Meg, lowering her voice and looking all about her as though fearing lest

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

But they left her no peace and promised to keep the secret, until Meg, burning to say all she knew, began,

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

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

"Well, that's the ghost's box. No one has had it for over a month, except the ghost, and orders have been given

The little balletgirls exchanged glances. If the ghost came to the box, he must be seen, because he wore a

dresscoat 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 dresscoat 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."

"I ought to have held my tongueif mother ever came to know! But I was quite right, Joseph Buquet had no

business to talk of things that don't concern himit will bring him bad luck mother was saying so last

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

She opened the door. A respectable lady, built on the lines of a Pomeranian grenadier, burst into the

dressingroom and dropped groaning into a vacant armchair. Her eyes rolled madly in her brickdust

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

"It's the ghost!" little Giry blurted, as though in spite of herself; but she at once corrected herself, with her

Ma Jammes gave her opinion, while she emptied a glass of liqueur that happened to be standing on a table;

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.

"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 actingmanager, suddenly came darting in. He

seemed half mad and told me that the body of a sceneshifter had been found hanging in the third cellar

under the stage, between a farmhouse and a scene from the Roi de Lahore. I shouted:

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

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 dancinggirls lost no time in taking their precautions against the

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

The horrid news soon spread all over the Opera, where Joseph Buquet was very popular. The dressingrooms

emptied and the balletgirls, crowding around Sorelli like timid sheep around their shepherdess, made for the

foyer through the illlit passages and staircases, trotting as fast as their little pink legs could carry them.

On the first landing, Sorelli ran against the Comte de Chagny, who was coming upstairs. The count, who

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

"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

Just then the actingmanager 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 tonightand

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.

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

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 fellowsingers and had to be carried to her dressingroom. 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

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 fortyone years of age. He was a great

aristocrat and a goodlooking 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

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 trainingship, 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 SaintGermain

were pitying the handsome and apparently delicate stripling for the hard work in store for him.

The shyness of the sailorladI was almost saying his innocence was remarkable. He seemed to have but

just left the women's apronstrings. 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 mnnners that were almost candid and stamped with a

charm that nothing had yet been able to sully. He was a little over twentyone 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 wellbalanced 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

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

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

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 absentminded when spoken to and why he

They reached the stage and pushed through the crowd of gentlemen, sceneshifters, supers and chorusgirls,

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 balletgirls who blocked the passage which he was trying to enter.

More than one chaffing phrase darted from little madeup lips, to which he did not reply; and at last he was

able to pass, and dived into the semidarkness 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 dressingroom to preserve the spotlessness of her satin

dancingshoes and her fleshcolored 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 dressingroom 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

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

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,

"Oh, the rogue, the rogue!" And he added, under his breath: "Those youngsters with their schoolgirl airs! So

He turned to go to Sorelli's dressingroom, but met her on the way, with her little troop of trembling

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

"Mademoiselle," replied the young man, kneeling on one knee and pressing a fervent kiss on the diva's hand,

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

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

"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.

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

The doctor tried to make a short protest, but, perceiving the girl's evident agitation, he thought the best

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 dressingroom 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 dressingroom 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 dressingroom, saying, in a curiously

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

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

"Your soul is a beautiful thing, child," replied the grave man's voice, "and I thank you. No emperor ever

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

When the passage was once more deserted, he crossed it, opened the door of the dressingroom, 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

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

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

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 gasjets. He went into the dressingcloset, opened the cupboards, hunted about, felt the

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.

"`That' is Joseph Buquet, who was found in the third cellar, hanging between a farmhouse and a scene from

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 suppertables arranged along the slanting

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 summershappy 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

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:

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

"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

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,

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 retiring managers had already handed over to their successors the two tiny masterkeys which opened all

the doorsthousands 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:

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

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 sceneshifter they did not know of Joseph Buquet's

deaththought, 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 transparcncy 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' suppertable 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 believeor 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.

"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

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

"Yes," replied the man, or the shadow of a man, quietly. "He was found, this evening, hanging in the third

The two managers, or rather exmanagers, 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 sceneshifter. They looked at each other. They, had both turned whiter than the

tablecloth. 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. Mencharmin to complete the

"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 masterkeys 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

"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

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

"M. Poligny went to his desk and returned with a copy of the memorandumbook. The memorandumbook

begins with the wellknown 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 memorandumbook. 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 downstrokes and has not learned to join its letters. This paragraph ran, word for word, as

"`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

"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.

"And he turned over the pages of the memorandumbook 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

"`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

"`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

"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.'

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

Armand Moncharmin wrote such voluminous Memoirs during the fairly long period of his comanagement

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

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

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 jokeif joke it werewas 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 rememberd that it was the red handwriting in which the

memorandumbook had been so curiously completed. He recognized the clumsy childish hand. He opened

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

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 coachbuilders; 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

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 today 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 boxoffice, 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 MemorandumBook and, consequently, that you are treating me

with outrageous contempt. IF YOU WISH TO LIVE IN PEACE, YOU MUST NOT BEGIN BY TAKING

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

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

O. G.There is no excuse for R. and M. We told them and left your memorandumbook in their hands.

M. Firmin Richard had hardly finished reading this letter when M. Armand Moncharmin entered, carrying

"What does it all mean?" asked M. Moncharmin. "Do they imagine that, because they have been managers of

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

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

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

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

"Why, my dear fellow, these two are mad with jealousy! To think that they went to the expense of, an

"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?

Thereupon he ordered the artists to be shown in, who, for the last two hours, had been walking up and down

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

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;

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 exmanagers 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 memorandumbook with you for the last time. See Clause 98, final paragraph.

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

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 boxkeeper 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

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

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

"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 boxkeeper, 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,

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

"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

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

And the inspector grinned. But he soon found that he had made a mistake in grinning, for the words had no

"Send for the boxkeeper!" he shouted. "Send for her! This minute! This minute! And bring her in to me

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.

But the inspector was by this time incapable of speaking a word. He managed to convey, by a despairing

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

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

"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

Having said this, M. Richard paid no attention to the inspector and discussed various matters of business with

his actingmanager, who had entered the room meanwhile. The inspector thought he could go and was

gentlyoh, so gently!sidling toward the door, when M. Richard nailed the man to the floor with a

M. Remy had sent for the boxkeeper to the Rue de Provence, close to the Opera, where she was engaged as

"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 boxkeeper

"Never heard of her!" the manager declared. "But that's no reason, Mme. Giry, why I shouldn't ask you what

"I was just wanting to see you, sir, and talk to you about it, so that you mightn't have the same unpleasantness

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

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,

"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 throatit sounded as though she were

"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

"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 pardonkiss.' 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

"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

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

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

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

"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?"

"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 alloverish 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

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

"Well, I brought the footstool. Of course, it wasn't for himself he wanted it, but for his lady! But I never heard

"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 boxkeeper, 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

"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

"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

"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."

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 actingmanager 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

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

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

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:

I have not forgotten the little boy who went into the sea to rescue my scarf. I feel that I must write to you

today, when I am going to Perros, in fulfilment of a sacred duty. Tomorrow 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

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 PerrosGuirec. 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

The nearer he drew to her, the more fondly he remembered the story of the little Swedish singer. Most of the

There was once, in a little markettown 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

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 esctasy 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

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 downstairs again on

Daae seemed not to recover his strength until the summer, when the whole family went to stay at

PerrosGuirec, in a faraway 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

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

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 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

"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

"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,

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

Little Christine asked her father if he had heard the Angel of Music. But Daddy Daae shook his head sadly;

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

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 teatray. 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

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

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,

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 lightningflash of the gala

performance: the heavens torn asunder and an angel's voice heard upon earth for the delight of mankind and

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

Why did she laugh when he reminded her of the incident of the scarf? Why did she not recognize him? And

Perros was reached at last. Raoul walked into the smoky sittingroom of the Setting Sun and at once saw

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

"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:

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

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

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

"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

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

"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

"If any one was in my way, my friend," Christine broke in coldly, "if any one was in my way, that evening, it

"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!...tonight 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

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

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

Christine carried her hand to her heart, a prey to indescribable emotion. Her eyes stared before her like a

madwoman's. Raoul was terrorstricken. But suddenly Christine's eyes moistened and two great tears

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

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,

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:

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

"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

"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.

"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

"Yes," she said solemnly, "IN MY DRESSINGROOM. That is where he comes to give me my lessons

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

"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

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.

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

"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 dressingroom with men's voices. If you had opened the door, you would have

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

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

Raoul returned to the inn feeling very weary, very lowspirited 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

The hours passed slowly. It was about halfpast 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

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

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 churchclock had struck a quarter to twelve and I thought that this must have made her hurry, for

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

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

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

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

Q. "Then what happened that you were found in the morning lying halfdead 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 stainedglass 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

We left M. Firmin Richard and M. Armand Moncharmin at the moment when they were deciding "to look

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

They were almost alone in the huge, gloomy house; and a great silence surrounded them. It was the time

when most of the stagehands 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,

bigbellied 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

I have said that they were distressed. At least, I presume so. M. Moncharmin, in any case, admits that he was

"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 semidarkness 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 armchair in which "the man's

voice" used to sit. But they saw that it was a respectable armchair, 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

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

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

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

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

I absolutely insist upon the good and loyal services of Mme. Giry, my boxkeeper, whom you will

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 memorandumbook relating to my monthly allowance. I

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

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

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

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

"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. Lachcnel is very clever at it. He used to manage

M. Lachenel came in, carrying a ridingwhip, 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

"These are `places,'" Mercier interposed, "created and forced upon us by the undersecretary for fine arts.

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

"Has Cesar been stolen?" cried the actingmanager. "Cesar, the white horse in the Profeta?"

"There are not two Cesars," said the studgroom dryly. "I was ten years at Franconi's and I have seen plenty

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

"All sorts of nonsense. Some of them accuse the supers. Others pretend that it's the actingmanager's

"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!"

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

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

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

"And he takes his vermouth at Tortoni's with Lagrene, Scholl and Pertuiset, the lionhunter," added

Moncharmin. "We shall have the whole press against us! He'll tell the story of the ghost; and everybody will

At that moment the door opened. It must have been deserted by its usual Cerberus, for Mme. Giry entered

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

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

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,

If you appear tonight, you must be prepared for a great misfortune at the moment when you open your

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Vain! In vain do I call, through my vigil weary, On creation and its Lord! Never reply will break the silence

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,

"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.

M. Richard smiled and pointed to a fat, rather vulgar woman, dressed in black, sitting in a stall in the middle

"I did. .. My concierge had never been to the Operathis is, the first timeand, 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."

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

"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."

But the curtain rose on the kermess scene and Richard made a sign to the stagemanager to go away. When

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

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

Students, citizens, soldiers, girls and matrons whirled lightheartedly 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

On the other hand, when Margarita crossed the stage and sang the only two lines allotted her in this second

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

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 stagemanager 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 boxkeepers, 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

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 crystalclear

"What a queer girl she is!" said one of Carlotta's friends in the stalls, almost aloud. "The other day she was

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

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

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.

When Margarita had finished singing the ballad of the KING OF THULE, she was loudly cheered and again

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Coack!" 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

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

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

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:

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

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 boxkeeper, in her

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

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

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, careworn brows, pale cheeks, as though

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 absentminded, so mysterious, so incomprehensible

that many of the subscribers thought that some event even more horrible than the fall of the chandelier must

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

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 dressingroom 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 NotreDamedesVictoires. The door was opened by the

maid whom he had seen coming out of Christine's dressingroom 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.

The maid soon returned and showed him into a small and scantily furnished drawingroom, in which

"Madame begs Monsieur le Vicomte to excuse her," said the servant. "She can only see him in her bedroom,

Five minutes later, Raoul was ushered into an illlit room where he at once recognized the good, kind face of

Christine's benefactress in the semidarkness 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

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

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

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:

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,

"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 sceneshifters who were repeating the ghastly description which the

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

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

"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.

"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!

"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

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

"That is to say, he arranged to meet her down there, in Perros churchyard, at Daae's grave. He promised to

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

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

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 dressingrooms at the Opera.

He now realized the possible state of mind of a girl brought up between a superstitious fiddler and a visionary

"I swear it, as I hope to be saved!" exclaimed the old woman, who, this time, seemed to be incensed. "And, if

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

"Now that she has gone away with him, I can't say; but, up to a fortnight ago, it was in Christine's

dressingroom. It would be impossible in this little flat. The whole house would hear them. Whereas, at the

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

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 goodlooking 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.

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

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

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

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 turnout, 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

With a lackluster 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

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

Go to the masked ball at the Opera on the night after tomorrow. At twelve o'clock, be in the little room

behind the chimneyplace of the big crushroom. 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

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 passerby would

pick up the note and deliver it, which was what happened. The note had been picked up on the pavement of

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

singingmachine. And, suddenly, she awoke as though through the intervention of a god. The Angel of

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

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 operasinger make a fool of a

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 fancydress! It was absurd. One thought, however, consoled the viscount: he would certainly

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 crushroom 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

Raoul leaned against a doorpost 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:

The black domino turned round promptly and raised her finger to her lips, no doubt to warn him not to

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

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 crushroom, 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 redvelvet 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,

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

It was at this moment that Raoul passed in front of the funereal masquerader, who had just happened to turn

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 crushroom, far

The black domino kept on turning back and, apparently, on two occasions saw something that startled her, for

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,

"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

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

"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

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.

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

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

"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

"No, dear, live!" said Christine's grave and changed voice. "And...goodby. Goodby, Raoul..."

"Really?" he replied, still more satirically. "So he is taking you off the stage: I congratulate you!...But we

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

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

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

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

"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

He tried to disobey her; but she turned round and repeated her gesture of farewell with such authority that he

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 dancingfloor, 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

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 gasjet was burning, turned down low. He saw some writingpaper 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

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:

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

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

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:

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

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 Weddingnight 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

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

Christine walked toward her image in the glass and the image came toward her. The two Christinesthe 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

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

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

Then, worn out, beaten, emptybrained, 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,

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

"Well, M. de Chagny," exclaimed Mamma Valerius, "don't you know our Christine? Her good genius has

"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!"

"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?"

"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

"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?"

"There is a terrible mystery around us, madame, around you, around Christine, a mystery much more to be

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

"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

"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

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.

"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

"What I chose," said Christine, driven to exasperation. "Don't you think, monsieur, that this

"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 seenand I have seen more than you suspect, Christineor what I thought I saw, for, to tell you the

"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 today

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!"

Thereupon, seeing the hostility with which her ward had addressed the viscount, Mamma Valerius suddenly

"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

"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. .."

"Raoul, why do you condemn a man whom you have never seen, whom no one knows and about whom you

"Yes, Christine....Yes....I at least know the name that you thought to keep from me for ever....The name of

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

"By pitying him the other night, the night of the masked ball. When you went to your dressingroom, did you

not say, `Poor Erik?' Well, Christine, there was a poor Raoul who overheard you."

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

"Oh, unhappy man!" moaned the girl, showing every sign of unspeakable terror. "Unhappy man! Do you

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

"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 dressingroom, unless I send for you."

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

"How can you speak so lightly of such serious things?" he asked. "Perhaps we shall never see each other

She no longer smiled or jested. She seemed to be thinking of some new thing that had entered her mind for

"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

"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

"Why, you have both of them already, my dear betrothed!... Oh, Raoul, how happy we shall be!...We must

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

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

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

This happened in the afternoon, in the singer's dressingroom, 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

Raoul was distracted. He hated Mamma Valerius for giving him such news as that with such stupefying

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 "coack" 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 tonight; 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

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

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

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

He returned the next day. But those two days of absence had broken the charm of their delightful

makebelieve. They looked at each other, in the dressingroom, with their sad eyes, without exchanging a

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

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

And then they returned to terra firma, that is to say, to some passage that led them to the little girls'

dancingschool, 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 propertyrooms, took him all over her empire, which was artificial, but

immense, covering seventeen stories from the groundfloor 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

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 wormeaten "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

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 icecold 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

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

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

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

"I never said so....Who told you a thing like that? Come away! I sometimes wonder if you are quite sane,

And she literally dragged him away, for he was obstinate and wanted to remain by the trapdoor; that hole

Suddenly, the trapdoor was closed and so quickly that they did not even see the hand that worked it; and

"No, no, it was the `trapdoorshutters.' They must do something, you know....They open and shut the

trapdoors without any particular reason....It's like the `doorshutters:' they must spend their time somehow."

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

"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 trapdoors." She shivered again. She was still holding him in her arms. Then she

For all that, on the next day and the following days, Christine was careful to avoid the trapdoors. 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

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

She allowed herself this doubt, which was an encouragernent, while dragging the young man up to the

"I shall hide you in some unknown corner of the world, where HE can not come to look for you. You will be

Christine seized Raoul's hands and squeezed them with incredible rapture. But, suddenly becoming alarmed

He had a difficulty in following her. They were soon under the very roof, in the maze of timberwork. They

slipped through the buttresses, the rafters, the joists; they ran from beam to beam as they might have run from

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 wellconducted shadow should. As for Raoul, he saw nothing either; for,

when he had Christine in front of him, nothing interested him that happened behind.

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

It was a gorgeous spring evening. Clouds, which had just received their gossamer robe of gold and purple

"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 APOLLO' for you to take me away, I refuse to go with you well

"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!"

"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 eyesockets of the death's head! I can not

"No, no, you shall never again hear him tell you that he loves you! You shall not see his tears! Let us fly,

"No, no," she said, shaking her head sadly. "Not now!...It would be too cruel...let him hear me sing

tomorrow evening...and then we will go away. You must come and fetch me in my dressingroom at

midnight exactly. He will then be waiting for me in the diningroom 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,

And she gave a sigh to which it seemed to her that another sigh, behind her, replied.

"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 nightbirds 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

"Why?" asked Raoul, really frightened at the aspect which this strange confidence was taking.

"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

They stood up and looked around them. They were quite alone on the immense lead roof. They sat down

"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

dressingroom 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 dressingroom. You have no idea, though you have heard the voice, of what those

"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 dressingroom, I sang with my ordinary,

everyday 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 dressingroom. 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!'

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

"The next day," Christine continued, with a sigh, "I went back to my dressingroom 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

"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 tomorrow, 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

"But, after all," cried Raoul, "you soon came to know the truth! Why did you not at once rid yourself of that

"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

dressingroom 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

thingmy dressingroom, 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

"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 dressingroom. 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 stonecold, 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

"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

surefooted. 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

"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

drawingroom 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

dressingroom 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

"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

drawingroom 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

Christine's narrative was again interrupted. An echo behind them seemed to repeat the word after her.

What echo?...They both turned round and saw that night had fallen. Raoul made a movement as though to

"We have nothing to fear except the trapdoors, dear, and here we are miles away from the trapdoors...and I

am not allowed to see you outside the theater. This is not the time to annoy him. We must not arouse his

"Christine! Christine! Something tells me that we are wrong to wait till tomorrow evening and that we ought

"I tell you that, if he does not hear me sing tomorrow, it will cause him infinite pain."

"You are right in that, Raoul, for certainly he will die of my flight." And she added in a dull voice, "But then

"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,

"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, 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

"Then you want me to go back there?" said the young girl cruelly. "Take care, Raoul; I have told you: I

There was an appalling silence between the three of them: the two who spoke and the shadow that listened,

"Before answering that," said Raoul, at last, speaking very slowly, "I should like to know with what feeling

"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

"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 LouisPhilippe chest of drawers. I

soon discovered that I was a prisoner and that the only outlet from my room led to a very comfortable

bathroom. 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 diningroom, where a nice

"I was very angry, slammed the door in his face and went to the bathroom....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

"Then I saw the keyboard of an organ which filled one whole side of the walls. On the desk was a

musicbook 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 drawingroom. 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

"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

Christine stopped, at the thought of the vision that had scared her, while the echoes of the night, which had

Raoul and Christine, clasping each other closely, raised their eyes to the stars that shone in a clear and

"Strange, Christine, that this calm, soft night should be so full of plaintive sounds. One would think that it

"When you know the secret, Raoul, your ears, like mine, will be full of lamentations."

"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,

"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 goodlooking 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,

"Enough! Enough!" cried Raoul. "I will kill him. In Heaven's name, Christine, tell me where the diningroom

"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!"

"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

"What more can I tell you, dear? You now know the tragedy. It went on for a fortnighta 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!'"

"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 goodby 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

"Yes; and do you remember those hours which I passed with you, Raoul...to the great danger of both of us?"

"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

"You are frightened...but do you love me? If Erik were goodlooking, 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

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 nightbird that stared at them with its blazing eyes and seemed to cling to the string of Apollo's

Raoul and Christine ran, eager to escape from the roof and the blazing eyes that showed only in the dark; and

There was no performance at the Opera that night and the passages were empty. Suddenly, a queerlooking

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 frockcoat and a pointed cap, said:

"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

"My dear Raoul, you would first have had to climb up to Apollo's lyre: that is no easy matter."

"Oh, you are getting like me now, seeing him everywhere! What I took for blazing eyes was probably a

"As you have quite made up your mind to go, Christine, I assure you it would be better to go at once. Why

"No, no, he is working, I tell you, at his Don Juan Triumphant and not thinking of us."

"Never, till we go away for good! It would bring us bad luck, if I did not keep my word. I promised him to

"It's a good thing for me that he allowed you even that. Do you know," said Raoul bitterly, "that it was very

"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?"

"Why do you think that you are safer in this room than on the stage?" asked Raoul. "You heard him through

"No. He gave me his word not to be behind the walls of my dressingroom 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

"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."

"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

"A man of Heaven and earth...that is all!...A nice way to speak of him! ...And are you still resolved to run

"Then, Raoul, you must run away with me in spite of myself; is that understood?"

"I shall be here at twelve tomorrow night; I shall keep my promise, whatever happens. You say that, after

listening to the performance, he is to wait for you in the diningroom on the lake?"

"I understand, Christine. It leads straight to the lake. Give it to me, Christine, will you?"

But the singer's attitude became more and more inexplicable. She wrung her fingers, repeating, with a

"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!

She hesitated. He thought that she was going to say yes. ... Then her bright pupils became dimmed and she

And she left him hurriedly, still wringing and rubbing her fingers, as though she hoped to bring the ring back

"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

He put out his lamp and felt a need to insult Erik in the dark. Thrice over, he shouted:

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

"She told me that HIS eyes only showed in the dark. His eyes have disappeared in the light, but HE may be

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:

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

The eyes were still there, at the foot of the bed. Were they between the bed and the windowpane 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

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.

"I think I have been dreaming," replied the young man. "I fired at two stars that kept me from sleeping."

He got out of bed, put on a dressinggown and slippers, took a light from the hands of a servant and, opening

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!

"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

"What, still? You would do better to help me find Erik...for, after all, a ghost who bleeds can always be

The other manservant brought a lamp, by the light of which they examined the balcony carefully. The marks

of blood followed the rail till they reached a gutterspout; then they went up the gutterspout.

"The misfortune is," said Raoul, with a grin, "that it's quite possible. With Erik, you never know. Is it Erik? Is

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

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:

This phrase was afterward repeated to M. Faure, the examiningmagistrate. 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

At breakfastthe early morning breakfast, which the count took in his studyPhilippe sent for his brother.

Raoul arrived silent and gloomy. The scene was a very short one. Philippe handed his brother a copy of the

"The latest news in the Faubourg is that there is a promise of marriage between Mlle. Christine Daae, the

operasinger, 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 allpowerful,

at the Opera as and even more thanelsewhere, 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

"You see, Raoul," said the count, "you are making us ridiculous! That little girl has turned your head with her

The viscount had evidently repeated Christine's narrative to his brother, during the night. All that he now said

This scene was described to the examiningmagistrate 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;

At nine o'clock, a sort of travelingbarouche with the curtains of its windows closedown, 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 travelingcarriage 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

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

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 lovestory,

exchanged significant smiles at certain passages in Margarita's part; and they made a show of turning and

The count sat with his chin on his hand and seemed to pay no attention to these manifestations. He kept his

Christine lost her selfassurance 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 "coack" 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

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

In the center of the amphitheater a man stood up and remained standing, facing the singer. It was Raoul.

And Christine, her arms outstretched, her throat filled with music, the glory of her hair falling over her bare

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

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

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

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

At last, the curtain rose slowly and Carolus Fonta stepped to the conductor's desk and, in a sad and serious

"Ladies and gentlemen, an unprecedented event has taken place and thrown us into a state of the greatest

alarm. Our sisterartist, Christine Daae, has disappeared before our eyes and nobody can tell us how!"

Behind the curtain, there was an indescribable crowd. Artists, sceneshifters, dancers, supers, choristers,

"No, it was the ghost!" And a few laughed, especially as a careful examination of the trapdoors and boards

Amid this noisy throng, three men stood talking in a low voice and with despairing gestures. They were

Gabriel, the chorusmaster; Mercier, the actingmanager; 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

"I knocked at the door," said Remy. "They did not answer. Perhaps they are not in the office. In any case, it's

"They" were obviously the managers, who had given orders, during the last entr'acte, that they were not to be

"All the same," exclaimed Gabriel, "a singer isn't run away with, from the middle of the stage, every day!"

"Well, M. Mercier, are you coming? What are you two doing here? You're wanted, Mr. ActingManager."

"I refuse to know or to do anything before the commissary arrives," declared Mercier. "I have sent for

"You're right!" said the stagemanager, 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

Mauclair was the gasman, 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

stagemanager, "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

The stagemanager 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.

"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 safetypin?' `No!' `Well,

then, clearout!' I tried to tell him that an unheardof thing had happened on the stage, but he roared, `A

safetypin! Give me a safetypin at once!' A boy heard him he was bellowing like a bullran up with a

safetypin and gave it to him; whereupon Moncharmin slammed the door in my face, and there you are!"

"I should like to have seen you in my place. He was foaming at the mouth. He thought of nothing but his

safetypin. 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

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;

"Be careful what you're doing, Mercier! If they're staying in their office, it's probably because they have to!

"That's their lookout! I'm going! If people had listened to me, the police would have known everything long

"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

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."

"This evening, Richard and Moncharmin were behaving like lunatics, here, between the acts."

"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

"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.

Gabriel raised his arms and dropped them to his sides again, which gesture was meant to convey that the

"What is the sense of this new mania of theirs? WHY WON'T THEY HAVE ANY ONE COME NEAR,

"Really? Have you noticed THAT THEY WON'T LET ANY ONE TOUCH THEM? That is certainly odd!"

"BACKWARD! You have seen our managers WALK BACKWARD? Why, I thought that only crabs walked

"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

"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'?"

"What was he doing? Why, you saw him! He turned about, BOWED IN FRONT OF HIM, THOUGH

"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

"Don't be so sly, Gabriel. There are things going on for which you and Mercier are partly responsible."

"There's no nonsense about it. Perhaps you can tell me why, when Mother Giry came down to the foyer just

"You did see it, Gabriel, for you went with Mercier and Mother Giry to Mercier's office. Since then, you and

"No, but you've locked her up in the office; and any one passing the office can hear her yelling, `Oh, the

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?

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 sorrowstricken that they were at once seized with

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

"Christine! Christine!" he moaned, calling to her as he felt that she must be calling to him from the depths of

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

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

puresouled child to the awful haunt, with the LouisPhilippe room, opening out on the lake?

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 gutterspout like a cat or a convict whoeverybody knew that alsowould scale

the very skies, with the help of a gutterspout....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 dressingroom.

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 dcmon's soul, her divine song:

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

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 airhole?...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

"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

"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

"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 upstairs, four

stairs at a time, downstairs, rushed through the whole of the business side of the operahouse, found himself

He stopped, with his heart thumping in his chest: suppose Christine Daae had been found? He saw a group of

At the same moment the stage buzzed with a new sound and, amid a crowd of men in eveningdress, all

talking and gesticulating together, appeared a man who seemed very calm and displayed a pleasant face, all

pink and chubbycheeked, crowned with curly hair and lit up by a pair of wonderfully serene blue eyes.

Mercier, the actingmanager, 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

"Ah, M. le Vicomte de Chagny! Delighted to meet you, monsieur," said the commissary. "Would you mind

Mercier did not answer, and Remy, the secretary, volunteered the information that the managers were locked

And M. Mifroid, followed by an everincreasing crowd, turned toward the business side of the building.

"This is all going very badly," he whispered. "You had better let Mother Giry out."

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

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

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 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

The time has come to carry out the clause in the memorandumbook. 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

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 boxkeeper 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

[2] Flash notes drawn on the "Bank of St. Farce" in France correspond with those drawn on the "Bank of

The managers' rage and fright were unmistakable. Moncharmin wanted to send for the commissary of police,

"Don't let us make ourselves ridiculous! All Paris would laugh at us. O. G. has won the first game: we will

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

"If she is a confederate," he said, "the notes are gone long ago. But, in my opinion, she is merely an idiot."

"Well, who could have thought it?" moaned Richard. "But don't be afraid...next time, I shall have taken my

The next time fell on the same day that beheld the disappearance of Christine Daae. In the morning, a note

Do just as you did last time. It went very well. Put the twenty thousand in the envelope and hand it to our

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 thousandfranc notes in front of him and put the notes

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

"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?"

"Ah, we are delighted....Look here, Mme. Giry," said Richard, in the tone of making an important confidence.

"Why, sir," exclaimed the boxkeeper, stopping the pleasant nodding of the black feathers in her dingy

"We are quite agreed and we shall soon understand one another. The story of the ghost is all humbug, isn't

Mme. Giry looked at the managers as though they were talking Chinese. She walked up to Richard's table and

"Oh, you, understand quite well. In any case, you've got to understand. ... And, first of all, tell us his name."

"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

"That's true enough....And I can tell you the reason, sir. There's no disgrace about it. .. on the contrary."

"Well, it's like this...only the ghost doesn't like me to talk about his business."

"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,

1847. Lola Montes, a dancer, became the morganatic wife of King Louis of Bavaria and was created

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

"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

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."

"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."

"No, not any more than I did; but he heard him. The ghost said a word in his ear, you know, on the evening

"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."

"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?"

Mine. Giry looked into the envelope with a lackluster eye, which soon recovered its brilliancy.

"Don't swear, Mme. Giry!...And now I will tell you the second reason why I sent for you. Mme. Giry, I am

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

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

And Mme. Giry caught Mr. Manager Richard a mighty box on the ear, before Mr. Manager Mencharmin 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 two managers gave a shout, and the same thought made them both go on their knees, feverishly, picking

Above their heads, Mme. Giry's three teeth were clashing in a noisy contest, full of hideous interjections. But

"In any case," she yelped, "you, M. Richard, ought to know better than I where the twenty thousand francs

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

As for Richard, who felt himself turning red under Moncharmin's eyes, he took Mme. Giry by the wrist and

"Why should I know better than you where the twentythousand 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

Richard would have rushed upon Mme. Giry, if Moncharmin had not stayed his avenging hand and hastened

"How can you suspect my partner, M. Richard, of putting twentythousand francs in his pocket?"

"I never said that," declared Mme. Giry, "seeing that it was myself who put the twentythousand 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 twentythousand 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 twentythousand francs in my pocket and I knew nothing either! I am very glad to hear it,

"Yes," the terrible dame agreed, "yes, it's true. We neither of us knew anything. But you, you must have

Richard would certainly have swallowed Mme. Giry alive, if Moncharmin had not been there! But

"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 twentythousand

"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,

So saying, Mme. Giry took from her sleeve an envelope ready prepared and similarly addressed to that

containing the twentythousand 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.

"How simple!" repeated Moncharmin. And he continued with his eyes fixed upon Mme. Giry, as though

"So it was the ghost who gave you this envelope and told you to substitute it for the one which we gave you?

"Then would you mind giving us a specimen of your little talents? Here is the envelope. Act as though we

Mme. Giry took the envelope with the twenty notes inside it and made for the door. She was on the point of

"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 selfexcuse, "you told me to act as though you knew

"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 MonMME. GIRY'

"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 balletfoyer, 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 tailpocket of your dresscoat....There's no witchcraft about that!"

"No witchcraft!" growled Richard, rolling his eyes like Jupiter Tonans. "No witchcraft! Why, I've just caught

"Because I spent that evening watching Box Five and the sham envelope which you put there. I did not go to

"No, sir, and I did not give you the envelope that evening, but at the next performance...on the evening when

"Yes, that's true, I remember now! The undersecretary went behind the scenes. He asked for me. I went

down to the balletfoyer for a moment. I was on the foyer steps....The undersecretary and his chief clerk

were in the foyer itself. I suddenly turned around...you had passed behind me, Mme. Giry... You seemed to

"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.

"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

twentythousand 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

"Oh, wonderful, no doubt!" Moncharmin agreed. "Only, you forget, Richard, that I provided tenthousand

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 twentythousand francs; and, second, that Moncharmin should not for an instant

lose sight of Richard's coattail pocket, into which Mme. Giry was to slip the twentythousand francs.

M. Richard went and placed himself at the identical spot where he had stood when he bowed to the

undersecretary 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 twentythousand francs in the manager's

coattail 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 actingmanager'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 undersecretary for fine arts, before him. Only, though these marks of

politeness would have created no astonishment if the undersecretary 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

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

Moncharmin, who had his own ideas, did not want Richard to come to him presently, when the

"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

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 twentythousand francs.

"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

"But, in that case," exclaimed Richard, "they will never steal our twentythousand francs!"

"We are doing exactly what we did last time....Last time, I joined you as you were leaving the stage and

"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

"We remained locked up like this, last time," he said, "until you left the Opera to go home."

"Then," said Richard, who was trying to collect his memory, "then I must certainly have been robbed on my

"No," said Moncharmin in a drier tone than ever, "no, that's impossible. For I dropped you in my cab. The

twentythousand 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

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.

"That's what I think," declared Mohcharmin, unfolding a newspaper and ostentatiously studying its contents.

Richard snatched the paper from Moncharmint'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

"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 twentythousand francs was no longer in my pocket,

"Yes, to fasten you to the twentythousand 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

And that was the moment when Moncharmin opened the door on the passage and shouted:

And we also know how, at the same moment, Remy, who had no safetypin, was received by Moncharmin,

while a boy procured the pin so eagerly longed for. And what happened was this: Moncharmin first locked

Moncharmin took the envelope from Richard's pocket and drew out the banknotes 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 tailpocket and pinned them with great care. Then he sat down behind Richard's coattails and kept his

"A little patience, Richard," said Moncharmin. "We have only a few minutes to wait....The clock will soon

"I shall end by believing in the omnipotence of the ghost," he said. "Just now, don't you find something

"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

"But, of course, Moncharmin, YOU MUST!...Well?" he asked, as Moncharmin was feeling at the pocket.

Richard tore off his coat. The two managers turned the pocket inside out. THE POCKET WAS EMPTY. And

Richard and Moncharmin turned pale. There was no longer any doubt about the witchcraft.

"No one but you has touched my pocket! Give me back my twentythousand francs!...Give me back my

"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 businessmanager, exchanged a few words with him, without knowing what he was saying and,

with an unconscious movement, put the safetypin, for which he had no further use, into the hands of his

The first words of the commissary of police, on entering the managers' office, were to ask after the missing

Richard repeated, for the commissary and the compact crowd which had followed him into the office

"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

And he pulled a few hairs out of his mustache without even knowing what he was doing.

"Yes, she was carried off in the Prison Act, at the moment when she was invoking the aid of the angels; but I

Everybody looked round. A young man, pale and trembling with excitement, repeated:

"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

"Yes, monsieur, by an angel of the Opera; and I will tell you where he lives...when we are alone."

And the commissary of police, inviting Raoul to take a chair, cleared the room of all the rest, excepting the

"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.

"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."

"I beg your pardon, monsieur but is it your intention to make fun of the law? And, if not, what is all this about

"No, M. Commissary, no, we do not know him, but we wish that we did, for this very evening he has robbed

As for Mifroid, he looked at the managers and at Raoul by turns and wondered whether he had strayed into a

"A ghost," he said, "who, on the same evening, carries off an operasinger and steals twentythousand 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 twentythousand 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

"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 PerrosGuirec, 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

The door opened and a man entered, curiously dressed in an enormous frockcoat 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.

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

"The carriage that brought you was to take you both away. ... There were fresh horses in readiness at every

"And nevertheless your carriage is still outside the Rotunda awaiting your orders, is it not?"

"Did you know that there were three other carriages there, in addition to yours?"

"They were the carriages of Mlle. Sorelli, which could not find room in the Cour de l'Administration; of

"What is certain is that, though your carriage and Sorelli's and Carlotta's are still there, by the Rotunda

"I beg your pardon. Was not M. le Comte opposed to your marriage with Mlle. Daae?"

"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

"Immediately after the artist's disappearance, which was procured by means which we have still to ascertain,

"Across Paris?" asked poor Raoul, in a hoarse voice. "What do you mean by across Paris?"

"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

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

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

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.

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 oldfashioned flat in the Rue de Rivoli.

The man with the ebony skin, the eyes of jade and the astrakhan cap bent over Raoul.

"And why should I hesitate to betray that monster, sir?" Raoul rejoined haughtily, trying to shake off the

"I hope that you said, nothing about Erik, sir, because Erik's secret is also Christine Daae's and to talk about

"Oh, sir," said Raoul, becoming more and more impatient, "you seem to know about many things that interest

"I was at the performance and no one in the world but Erik could contrive an abduction like that!...Oh," he

"Sir," said Raoul, "I do not know what your intentions are, but can you do anything to help me? I mean, to

"If you can do me that service, sir, my life is yours!...One word more: the commissary of police tells me that

"I don't know if it is possible or not; but there are ways and ways of carrying people off; and M. le Comte

"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

"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."

"It is quite possible, Sir, if he is not, at this moment, with his victim, IN THE HOUSE ON THE LAKE."

"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.

They were now in the center of a real deserted square, an immense apartment illlit by a small lamp. The

"I said that Christine Daae's abductor was the Angel of Music, ALIAS the Opera ghost, and that the real

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 masterkey. The

Persian and Raoul were both, of course, in dressclothes; 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

"Sir," said the Persian, "your tall hat will be in your way: you would do well to leave it in the

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

And he pushed the young man into Christine's dressingroom, which was as Raoul had left it a few minutes

Closing the door, the Persian went to a very thin partition that separated the dressingroom from a big

There was a sound of some one stirring in the lumberroom; and, a few seconds later, a finger tapped at the

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 dressingtable, bowed once again and went to the door.

"When Christine Daae was carried off, sir, I sent word to my servant to bring me these pistols. I have had

"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

"I worship the ground she stands on! But you, sir, who do not love her, tell me why I find you ready to risk

"No, sir," said the Persian sadly, "I do not hate him. If I hated him, he would long ago have ceased doing

"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 wallspace opposite. Then he climbed on the stool and, with his nose to the wallpaper, seemed

"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 dressingroom he

"She did so before my eyes, sir! I was hidden behind the curtain of the inner room and I saw her vanish not

"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 shirtfront 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."

"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

"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

"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.

"He may simply have cut the cord of the counterbalance and blocked the whole apparatus."

"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 `trapdoor

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

"Tonight, there is no other!" declared the Persian, in a singularly mournful voice. "And now, look out! And

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 crosslights: 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

The wall, behind them, having completed the circle which it described upon itself, closed again; and the two

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 dressingroom 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 operahouse immediately after the eighteenth of March and had made a startingplace right at

the top for their Mongolfier balloons, which carried their incendiary proclamations to the departments, and a

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:

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.

And he dropped into the arms of the Persian, who told him to lie down flat, closed the trapdoor above him

and crouched down beside him. Raoul tried to ask a question, but the Persian's hand was on his mouth and he

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

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.

The commissary's voice was now heard more distinctly. He was asking for information about the system of

lighting, which the stagemanager supplied. The commissary therefore must be in the "organ" or its

Contrary to what one might think, especially in connection with an operahouse, 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 gasman,

who from there gave his orders to his assistants and saw that they were executed. Mauclair stayed in this box

The stagemanager'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

"I say," he said to the stagemanager, "I can't open this door: is it always so difficult?"

The stagemanager 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:

But Mr. Commissary Mifroid, whom nothing surprised, was stooping over that big body.

By the light of a little red lantern, at the foot of the stairs, they saw two other bodies. The stagemanager

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 gasman 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

Then he turned to the little room, addressing the people whom Raoul and the Persian were unable to see from

"What do you say to all this, gentlemen? You are the only ones who have not given your views. And yet you

Thereupon, Raoul and the Persian saw the startled faces of the joint managers appear above the landingand

"There are things happening here, Mr. Commissary, which we are unable to explain."

But the stagemanager, holding his chin in the hollow of his right hand, which is the attitude of profound

"It is not the first time that Mauclair has fallen asleep in the theater. I remember finding him, one evening,

"No, not so very long ago....Wait a bit!...It was the night ... of course, yes...It was the night when

And M. Mifroid, replacing his gleaming glasses on his nose, fixed the stagemanager with a contemplative

"`Yes, Mr. Commissary....Look, there is his snuffbox on that little shelf....Oh! he's a great snufftaker!"

Raoul and the Persian, themselves unobserved, watched the removal of the three bodies by a number of

sceneshifters, 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

"But it tires the hand unnecessarily," whispered Raoul. "If I do fire, I shan't be sure of my aim."

Thereupon, the Persian made this queer reply, which was certainly not calculated to throw light into the

"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

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

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,

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 operascenery. Some could

hardly drag themselves along; others, from habit, with stooping bodies and outstretched hands, looked for

They were the doorshutters, the old, wornout sceneshifters, 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 draftexpellers," 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

[3] M. Pedro Gailhard has himself told me that he created a few additional posts as doorshutters for old

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 doorshutters, having nothing else to do or nowhere to lay their heads, stayed at the Opera, from

But they were not left to enjoy their solitude for long. Other shades now came down by the same way by

which the doorshutters had gone up. Each of these shades carried a little lantern and moved it about, above,

"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, downstairs. Level of your eye! Question of life or death!... Here, this way, these

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

But the Persian left him no time for reflection. Telling Raoul to stay where he was, he ran up a few steps of

"How stupid of us!" he whispered. "We shall soon have seen the end of those men with their lanterns. It is the

[4] 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

"It was because the management was afraid that, in their utter inexperience of the cellars of the Opera, the

The two men waited five minutes longer. Then the Persian took Raoul up the stairs again; but suddenly he

They were only just in time. A shade, this time carrying no light, just a shade in the shade, passed. It passed

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

"It's some one much worse than that!" replied the Persian, without giving any further explanation.[5]

[5] 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

"He?...If he does not come behind us, we shall always see his yellow eyes! That is more or less our safeguard

tonight. But he may come from behind, stealing up; and we are dead men if we do not keep our hands as

The Persian had hardly finished speaking, when a fantastic face came in sight...a whole fiery face, not only

Yes, a head of fire came toward them, at a man's height, but with no body attached to it. The face shed fire,

"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

"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

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

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

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

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

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 nightwaves 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

"Don't move! Don't move!...Whatever you do, don't come after me! ... I am the ratcatcher!...Let me pass,

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 ratcatcher 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

"I ought to have remembered that Erik talked to me about the ratcatcher," 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

"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 menold

sceneshifters, old doorshutterswho 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

"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

"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

"We must be," he said, "in the part used more particularly for the waterworks. I see no fire coming from the

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

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.[6]

[6] 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.

"If I am not mistaken, this is a wall that might easily belong to the house on the lake."

He was striking a partitionwall of the "tub," and perhaps it would be as well for the reader to know how the

bottom and the partitionwalls of the tub were built. In order to prevent the water surrounding the

buildingoperations 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

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.

"Look out!" he said. "Keep your hand up! And silence! For we shall try another way of getting in."

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 handfor the other hand was held in the position indicatedthey 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

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 dressingroom.

This time, the Persian took his pistol from his pocket and made a sign to Raoul to do as he did. He cocked the

And, resolutely, still on his knees, he wiggled through the hole in the wall. Raoul, who had wished to pass

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

"We shall have to drop a few yards, without making a noise; take off your boots."

"Put them outside the wall," he said. "We shall find them there when we leave."[7]

[7] 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

"I am going to hang by my hands from the edge of the stone and let myself drop INTO HIS HOUSE. You

Raoul soon heard a dull sound, evidently produced by the fall of the Persian, and then dropped down.

Then the Persian began to make play with the dark lantern again, turning the rays over their heads, looking

The Persian stooped and picked up something, a sort of cord, which he examined for a second and flung away

The Persian shivered. "It might very well be the rope by which the man was hanged, and which was looked

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

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.

"Yes, a lookingglass!" said the Persian, in a tone of deep emotion. And, passing the hand that held the pistol

What the Persian knew of this torturechamber 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.

Chapter XXI Interesting and Instructive Vicissitudes of a Persian in the Cellars of the Opera

It was the first time that I entered the house on the lake. I had often begged the "trapdoor 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

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 voicewas 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

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

"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

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 monsterI have seen him at work in Persia, alasis also, in certain

respects, a regular child, vain and selfconceited, and there is nothing he loves so much, after astonishing

"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."[8]

[8] An official report from Tonkin, received in Paris at the end of July, 1909, relates how the famous pirate

chief De Tham was tracked, together with his men, by our soldiers; and how all of them succeeded in

"It's a trick that nearly killed me!" I said. "And it may have been fatal to others! You know what you

"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

And I took advantage of the turn of conversation to speak to him of something that had long been on my

"What?" he retorted. "You know I never keep my oaths. Oaths are made to catch gulls with."

"Oh," he sniggered, "I don't mind telling you about the chandelier! ...IT WASN'T I!...The chandelier was very

When Erik laughed, he was more terrible than ever. He jumped into the boat, chuckling so horribly that I

"Very old and worn, my dear daroga![9] 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

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

Ever since I had discovered Erik installed in the Opera, I lived in a perpetual terror of his horrible fancies, not

[10] The Persian might easily have admitted that Erik's fate also interested himself, for he was well aware

that, if the government of Teheran had learned that Erik was still alive, it would have been all up with the

modest pension of the erstwhile daroga. It is only fair, however, to add that the Persian had a noble and

generous heart; and I do not doubt for a moment that the catastrophes which he feared for others greatly

occupied his mind. His conduct, throughout this business, proves it and is above all praise.

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

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 HIMSELFa 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

On the other hand, I soon discovered the curious moral traffic established between the monster and Christine

Daae. Hiding in the lumberroom next to the young prima donna's dressingroom, 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 voicewhich was loud as thunder or soft as angels' voices, at willcould 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 dressingroom 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

onby 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' dungeonand also the

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

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 twentyfour 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 corpselike air, but it made him

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 twentyfour 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

"Yes, you must learn, once and for allonce and for all, I say to take a hint! I tell you that, with your

recklessnessfor 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 everywherewell, 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 discover the house on the lake....If they do, it will be a bad lookout for you, old

"I won't answer for anything!...If Erik's secrets cease to be Erik's secrets, IT WILL BE A BAD LOOKOUT

FOR A GOODLY NUMBER OF THE HUMAN RACE! That's all I have to tell you, and unless you are a

great booby, it ought to be enough for you...except that you don't know how to take a hint."

He had sat down on the stern of his boat and was kicking his heels against the planks, waiting to hear what I

He retorted: "I have every right to see her in my own house. I am loved for my own sake."

"That's not true," I said. "You have carried her off and are keeping her locked up."

"Listen," he said. "Will you promise never to meddle with my affairs again, if I prove to you that I am loved

"Yes, I promise you," I replied, without hesitation, for I felt convinced that for such a monster the proof was

"Well, then, it's quite simple....Christine Daae shall leave this as she pleases and come back again!...Yes,

come back again, because she wishes...come back of herself, because she loves me for myself!..."

"Oh, I doubt if she will come back!...But it is your duty to let her go." "My duty, you great booby!...It is my

wish... my wish to let her go; and she will come back again...for she loves me!...All this will end in a

marriage...a marriage at the Madeleine, you great booby! Do you believe me now? When I tell you that my

"KYRIE!...KYRIE!...KYRIE ELEISON!...Wait till you hear, wait till you hear that mass."

"Look here," I said. "I shall believe you if I see Christine Daae come out of the house on the lake and go back

"Very well, you shall see that tonight. Come to the masked ball. Christine and I will go and have a look

round. Then you can hide in the lumberroom and you shall see Christine, who will have gone to her

dressingroom, delighted to come back by the Communists' road. ...And, now, be off, for I must go and do

To my intense astonishment, things happened as he had announced. Christine Daae left the house on the lake

and returned to it several times, without, apparently, being forced to do so. It was very difficult for me to

clear my mind of Erik. However, I resolved to be extremely prudent, and did not make the mistake of

returning to the shore of the lake, or of going by the Communists' road. But the idea of the secret entrance in

the third cellar haunted me, and I repeatedly went and waited for hours behind a scene from the Roi de

Lahore, which had been left there for some reason or other. At last my patience was rewarded. One day, I saw

the monster come toward me, on his knees. I was certain that he could not see me. He passed between the

scene behind which I stood and a set piece, went to the wall and pressed on a spring that moved a stone and

afforded him an ingress. He passed through this, and the stone closed behind him.

I waited for at least thirty minutes and then pressed the spring in my turn. Everything happened as with Erik.

But I was careful not to go through the hole myself, for I knew that Erik was inside. On the other hand, the

idea that I might be caught by Erik suddenly made me think of the death of Joseph Buquet. I did not wish to

jeopardize the advantages of so great a discovery which might be useful to many people, "to a goodly number

of the human race," in Erik's words; and I left the cellars of the Opera after carefully replacing the stone.

I continued to be greatly interested in the relations between Erik and Christine Daae, not from any morbid

curiosity, but because of the terrible thought which obsessed my mind that Erik was capable of anything, if he

once discovered that he was not loved for his own sake, as he imagined. I continued to wander, very

cautiously, about the Opera and soon learned the truth about the monster's dreary loveaffair.

He filled Christine's mind, through the terror with which he inspired her, but the dear child's heart belonged

wholly to the Vicomte Raoul de Chagny. While they played about, like an innocent engaged couple, on the

upper floors of the Opera, to avoid the monster, they little suspected that some one was watching over them. I

was prepared to do anything: to kill the monster, if necessary, and explain to the police afterward. But Erik

I must explain my whole plan. I thought that the monster, being driven from his house by jealousy, would

thus enable me to enter it, without danger, through the passage in the third cellar. It was important, for

everybody's sake, that I should know exactly what was inside. One day, tired of waiting for an opportunity, I

moved the stone and at once heard an astounding music: the monster was working at his Don Juan

Triumphant, with every door in his house wide open. I knew that this was the work of his life. I was careful

He stopped playing, for a moment, and began walking about his place, like a madman. And he said aloud, at

This speech was not calculated to reassure me and, when the music recommenced, I closed the stone very

On the day of the abduction of Christine Daae, I did not come to the theater until rather late in the evening,

trembling lest I should hear bad news. I had spent a horrible day, for, after reading in a morning paper the

announcement of a forthcoming marriage between Christine and the Vicomte de Chagny, I wondered

whether, after all, I should not do better to denounce the monster. But reason returned to me, and I was

When, my cab set me down before the Opera, I was really almost astonished to see it still standing! But I am

something of a fatalist, like all good Orientals, and I entered ready, for anything.

Christine Daae's abduction in the Prison Act, which naturally surprised everybody, found me prepared. I was

quite certain that she had been juggled away by Erik, that prince of conjurers. And I thought positively that

this was the end of Christine and perhaps of everybody, so much so that I thought of advising all these people

who were staying on at the theater to make good their escape. I felt, however, that they would be sure to look

On the other hand, I resolved to act without further delay, as far as I was concerned. The chances were in my

favor that Erik, at that moment, was thinking only of his captive. This was the moment to enter his house

through the third cellar; and I resolved to take with me that poor little desperate viscount, who, at the first

suggestion, accepted, with an amount of confidence in myself that touched me profoundly. I had sent my

servant for my pistols. I gave one to the viscount and advised him to hold himself ready to fire, for, after all,

Erik might be waiting for us behind the wall. We were to go by the Communists' road and through the

Seeing my pistols, the little viscount asked me if we were going to fight a duel. I said:

"Yes; and what a duel!" But, of course, I had no time to explain anything to him. The little viscount is a brave

fellow, but he knew hardly anything about his adversary; and it was so much the better. My great fear was

that he was already somewhere near us, preparing the Punjab lasso. No one knows better than he how to

throw the Punjab lasso, for he is the king of stranglers even as he is the prince of conjurors. When he had

finished making the little sultana laugh, at the time of the "rosy hours of Mazenderan," she herself used to ask

him to amuse her by giving her a thrill. It was then that he introduced the sport of the Punjab lasso.

He had lived in India and acquired an incredible skill in the art of strangulation. He would make them lock

him into a courtyard to which they brought a warriorusually, a man condemned to death armed with a

long pike and broadsword. Erik had only his lasso; and it was always just when the warrior thought that he

was going to fell Erik with a tremendous blow that we heard the lasso whistle through the air. With a turn of

the wrist, Erik tightened the noose round his adversary's neck and, in this fashion, dragged him before the

little sultana and her women, who sat looking from a window and applauding. The little sultana herself

learned to wield the Punjab lasso and killed several of her women and even of the friends who visited her.

But I prefer to drop this terrible subject of the rosy hours of Mazenderan. I have mentioned it only to explain

why, on arriving with the Vicomte de Chagny in the cellars of the Opera, I was bound to protect my

companion against the everthreatening danger of death by strangling. My pistols could serve no purpose, for

Erik was not likely to show himself; but Erik could always strangle us. I had no time to explain all this to the

viscount; besides, there was nothing to be gained by complicating the position. I simply told M. de Chagny to

keep his hand at the level of his eyes, with the arm bent, as though waiting for the command to fire. With his

victim in this attitude, it is impossible even for the most expert strangler to throw the lasso with advantage. It

catches you not only round the neck, but also round the arm or hand. This enables you easily to unloose the

After avoiding the commissary of police, a number of doorshutters and the firemen, after meeting the

ratcatcher and passing the man in the felt hat unperceived, the viscount and I arrived without obstacle in the

third cellar, between the set piece and the scene from the Roi de Lahore. I worked the stone, and we jumped

into the house which Erik had built himself in the double case of the foundationwalls of the Opera. And this

was the easiest thing in the world for him to do, because Erik was one of the chief contractors under Philippe

Garnier, the architect of the Opera, and continued to work by himself when the works were officially

I knew my Erik too well to feel at all comfortable on jumping into his house. I knew what he had made of a

certain palace at Mazenderan. From being the most honest building conceivable, he soon turned it into a

house of the very devil, where you could not utter a word but it was overheard or repeated by an echo. With

his trapdoors the monster was responsible for endless tragedies of all kinds. He hit upon astonishing

inventions. Of these, the most curious, horrible and dangerous was the socalled torturechamber. Except in

special cases, when the little sultana amused herself by inflicting suffering upon some unoffending citizen, no

one was let into it but wretches condemned to death. And, even then, when these had "had enough," they

were always at liberty to put an end to themselves with a Punjab lasso or bowstring, left for their use at the

My alarm, therefore, was great when I saw that the room into which M. le Vicomte de Chagny and I had

dropped was an exact copy of the torturechamber of the rosy hours of Mazenderan. At our feet, I found the

Punjab lasso which I had been dreading all the evening. I was convinced that this rope had already done duty

for Joseph Buquet, who, like myself, must have caught Erik one evening working the stone in the third cellar.

He probably tried it in his turn, fell into the torturechamber and only left it hanged. I can well imagine Erik

dragging the body, in order to get rid of it, to the scene from the Roi de Lahore, and hanging it there as an

example, or to increase the superstitious terror that was to help him in guarding the approaches to his lair!

Then, upon reflection, Erik went back to fetch the Punjab lasso, which is very curiously made out of catgut,

and which might have set an examining magistrate thinking. This explains the disappearance of the rope.

And now I discovered the lasso, at our feet, in the torturechamber! ... I am no coward, but a cold sweat

covered my forehead as I moved the little red disk of my lantern over the walls.

We were in the middle of a little sixcornered room, the sides of which were covered with mirrors from top

to bottom. In the corners, we could clearly see the "joins" in the glasses, the segments intended to turn on

their gear; yes, I recognized them and I recognized the iron tree in the corner, at the bottom of one of those

I seized my companion's arm: the Vicomte de Chagny was all aquiver, eager to shout to his betrothed that

he was bringing her help. I feared that he would not be able to contain himself.

Suddenly, we heard a noise on our left. It sounded at first like a door opening and shutting in the next room;

and then there was a dull moan. I clutched M. de Chagny's arm more firmly still; and then we distinctly heard

"You must make your choice! The wedding mass or the requiem mass!" I recognized the voice of the

I was persuaded by now that the monster was unaware of our presence in his house, for otherwise he would

certainly have managed not to let us hear him. He would only have had to close the little invisible window

through which the torturelovers look down into the torturechamber. Besides, I was certain that, if he had

The important thing was not to let him know; and I dreaded nothing so much as the impulsiveness of the

Vicomte de Chagny, who wanted to rush through the walls to Christine Daae, whose moans we continued to

"The requiem mass is not at all gay," Erik's voice resumed, "whereas the wedding massyou can take my

word for itis magnificent! You must take a resolution and know your own mind! I can't go on living like

this, like a mole in a burrow! Don Juan Triumphant is finished; and now I want to live like everybody else. I

want to have a wife like everybody else and to take her out on Sundays. I have invented a mask that makes

me look like anybody. People will not even turn round in the streets. You will be the happiest of women. And

we will sing, all by ourselves, till we swoon away with delight. You are crying! You are afraid of me! And

yet I am not really wicked. Love me and you shall see! All I wanted was to be loved for myself. If you loved

me I should be as gentle as a lamb; and you could do anything with me that you pleased."

Soon the moans that accompanied this sort of love's litany increased and increased. I have never heard

anything more despairing; and M. de Chagny and I recognized that this terrible lamentation came from Erik

himself. Christine seemed to be standing dumb with horror, without the strength to cry out, while the monster

And we thought only of the possibility of warning Christine Daae of our presence, unknown to the monster.

We were unable to leave the torturechamber now, unless Christine opened the door to us; and it was only on

this condition that we could hope to help her, for we did not even know where the door might be.

Suddenly, the silence in the next room was disturbed by the ringing of an electric bell. There was a bound on

"Who has come bothering now? Wait for me here....I AM GOING TO TELL THE SIREN TO OPEN THE

Steps moved away, a door closed. I had no time to think of the fresh horror that was preparing; I forgot that

the monster was only going out perhaps to perpetrate a fresh crime; I understood but one thing: Christine was

As we could hear what was said in the next room, there was no reason why my companion should not be

heard in his turn. Nevertheless, the viscount had to repeat his cry time after time.

"Yes! Yes! It is I! It is not a dream!...Christine, trust me!...We are here to save you...but be prudent! When

Then Christine gave way to fear. She trembled lest Erik should discover where Raoul was hidden; she told us

in a few hurried words that Erik had gone quite mad with love and that he had decided TO KILL

EVERYBODY AND HIMSELF WITH EVERYBODY if she did not consent to become his wife. He had

given her till eleven o'clock the next evening for reflection. It was the last respite. She must choose, as he

But I understood the sentence perfectly, for it corresponded in a terrible manner with my own dreadful

When we heard this, M. de Chagny and I gave a yell of fury. Our safety, the safety of all three of us,

"But where are you?" asked Christine. "There are only two doors in my room, the LouisPhilippe room of

which I told you, Raoul; a door through which Erik comes and goes, and another which he has never opened

before me and which he has forbidden me ever to go through, because he says it is the most dangerous of the

"Oh, if I could only drag myself so far! I would knock at the door and that would tell you where it is."

"Mademoiselle," I said, "it is absolutely necessary, that you should open that door to us!"

"I know where the key is," she said, in a voice that seemed exhausted by the effort she had made. "But I am

"Where is the key?" I asked, signing to M. de Chagny not to speak and to leave the business to me, for we

"In the next room, near the organ, with another little bronze key, which he also forbade me to touch. They are

both in a little leather bag which he calls the bag of life and death. ... Raoul! Raoul! Fly! Everything is

mysterious and terrible here, and Erik will soon have gone quite mad, and you are in the

torturechamber!...Go back by the way you came. There must be a reason why the room is called by that

"Christine," said the young man. "we will go from here together or die together!"

"We must keep cool," I whispered. "Why has he fastened you, mademoiselle? You can't escape from his

"I tried to commit suicide! The monster went out last night, after carrying me here fainting and half

chloroformed. He was going TO HIS BANKER, so he said!...When he returned he found me with my face

covered with blood....I had tried to kill myself by striking my forehead against the walls."

"Then he bound me....I am not allowed to die until eleven o'clock tomorrow evening."

"Mademoiselle," I declared, "the monster bound you...and he shall unbind you. You have only to play the

"Remember it and smile to him...entreat him...tell him that your bonds hurt you."

"Hush!...I hear something in the wall on the lake!...It is he!...Go away! Go away! Go away!"

"We could not go away, even if we wanted to," I said, as impressively as I could. "We can not leave this! And

Heavy steps sounded slowly behind the wall, then stopped and made the floor creak once more. Next came a

tremendous sigh, followed by a cry of horror from Christine, and we heard Erik's voice:

"I beg your pardon for letting you see a face like this! What a state I am in, am I not? It's THE OTHER

ONE'S FAULT! Why did he ring? Do I ask people who pass to tell me the time? He will never ask anybody

Another sigh, deeper, more tremendous still, came from the abysmal depths of a soul.

"After all, as we are to die together...and I am just as eager as you...yes, I have had enough of this life, you

know. ...Wait, don't move, I will release you....You have only one word to say: `NO!' And it will at once be

over WITH EVERYBODY! ...You are right, you are right; why wait till eleven o'clock tomorrow evening?

True, it would have been grander, finer....But that is childish nonsense....We should only think of ourselves in

this life, of our own death...the rest doesn't matter. ...YOU'RE LOOKING AT ME BECAUSE I AM ALL

WET?... Oh, my dear, it's raining cats and dogs outside!...Apart from that, Christine, I think I am subject to

hallucinations....You know, the man who rang at the siren's door just nowgo and look if he's ringing at the

bottom of the lakewell, he was rather like. ...There, turn round...are you glad? You're free now. ...Oh, my

poor Christine, look at your wrists: tell me, have I hurt them?...That alone deserves death....Talking of death,

Hearing these terrible remarks, I received an awful presentiment ...I too had once rung at the monster's

And I remembered the two arms that had emerged from the inky waters. ...What poor wretch had strayed to

that shore this time? Who was `the other one,' the one whose requiem we now heard sung?

Erik sang like the god of thunder, sang a DIES IRAE that enveloped us as in a storm. The elements seemed to

rage around us. Suddenly, the organ and the voice ceased so suddenly that M. de Chagny sprang back, on the

other side of the wall, with emotion. And the voice, changed and transformed, distinctly grated out these

The voice repeated angrily: "What have you done with my bag? So it was to take my bag that you asked me

We heard hurried steps, Christine running back to the LouisPhilippe room, as though to seek shelter on the

"What are you running away for?" asked the furious voice, which had followed her. "Give me back my bag,

"Listen to me, Erik," sighed the girl. "As it is settled that we are to live together...what difference can it make

"You know there are only two keys in it," said the monster. "What do you want to do?"

"I want to look at this room which I have never seen and which you have always kept from me....It's woman's

"I don't like curious women," he retorted, "and you had better remember the story of BLUEBEARD and be

careful....Come, give me back my bag!...Give me back my bag!...Leave the key alone, will you, you

And he chuckled, while Christine gave a cry of pain. Erik had evidently recovered the bag from her.

At that moment, the viscount could not help uttering an exclamation of impotent rage.

"A cry! Are you going mad, Erik? Whom do you expect to give a cry, in this house?...I cried out, because you

"I don't like the way you said that!...You're trembling. ... You're quite excited....You're lying!...That was a

cry, there was a cry!...There is some one in the torturechamber!... Ah, I understand now!"

Another nasty chuckle. "Well, it won't take long to find out. Christine, my love, we need not open the door to

see what is happening in the torturechamber. Would you like to see? Would you like to see? Look here! If

there is some one, if there is really some one there, you will see the invisible window light up at the top, near

the ceiling. We need only draw the black curtain and put out the light in here. There, that's it....Let's put out

the light! You're not afraid of the dark, when you're with your little husband!"

"No!...I'm frightened!...I tell you, I'm afraid of the dark!... I don't care about that room now....You're always

frightening me, like a child, with your torturechamber!...And so I became inquisitive. ...But I don't care

And that which I feared above all things began, AUTOMATICALLY. We were suddenly flooded with light!

Yes, on our side of the wall, everything seemed aglow. The Vicomte de Chagny was so much taken aback

"I told you there was some one! Do you see the window now? The lighted window, right up there? The man

behind the wall can't see it! But you shall go up the folding steps: that is what they are there for!...You have

often asked me to tell you; and now you know!...They are there to give a peep into the torturechamber ...you

"What tortures?...Who is being tortured?...Erik, Erik, say you are only trying to frighten me!...Say it, if you

I do not know if the viscount heard the girl's swooning voice, for he was too much occupied by the

astounding spectacle that now appeared before his distracted gaze. As for me, I had seen that sight too often,

through the little window, at the time of the rosy hours of Mazenderan; and I cared only for what was being

"Oh, my darling, my darling!...How sweet of you!...How nice of you to save me the exertion at my age!...Tell

"Well, that's all right!...What's the matter, Christine? You're not going to faint, are you...as there is no one

there?... Here...come down...there!...Pull yourself together...as there is no one there!...BUT HOW DO YOU

"There, that's better!...You're better now, are you not?... That's all right, you're better!...No excitement!...And

"Yes, it's like the Musee Grevin....But, say, Erik...there are no tortures in there!...What a fright you gave me!"

"Well, what did you see? Think! You saw branches And what are the branches?" asked the terrible voice.

"THERE'S A GIBBET! That is why I call my wood the torturechamber!...You see, it's all a joke. I never

express myself like other people. But I am very tired of it!...I'm sick and tired of having a forest and a

torturechamber in my house and of living like a mountebank, in a house with a false bottom!...I'm tired of it!

I want to have a nice, quiet flat, with ordinary doors and windows and a wife inside it, like anybody else! A

wife whom I could love and take out on Sundays and keep amused on weekdays...Here, shall I show you

some cardtricks? That will help us to pass a few minutes, while waiting for eleven o'clock tomorrow

evening....My dear little Christine!...Are you listening to me?...Tell me you love me!... No, you don't love

me...but no matter, you will!...Once, you could not look at my mask because you knew what was behind.

...And now you don't mind looking at it and you forget what is behind!...One can get used to everything...if

one wishes. ...Plenty of young people who did not care for each other before marriage have adored each other

since! Oh, I don't know what I am talking about! But you would have lots of fun with me. For instance, I am

the greatest ventriloquist that ever lived, I am the first ventriloquist in the world!...You're laughing.... Perhaps

The wretch, who really was the first ventriloquist in the world, was only trying to divert the child's attention

from the torturechamber; but it was a stupid scheme, for Christine thought of nothing but us! She repeatedly

"Put out the light in the little window!...Erik, do put out the light in the little window!"

For she saw that this light, which appeared so suddenly and of which the monster had spoken in so

threatening a voice, must mean something terrible. One thing must have pacified her for a moment; and that

was seeing the two of us, behind the wall, in the midst of that resplendent light, alive and well. But she would

"Here, I raise my mask a little....Oh, only a little!... You see my lips, such lips as I have? They're not

moving!...My mouth is closedsuch mouth as I haveand yet you hear my voice. ...Where will you have

it? In your left ear? In your right ear? In the table? In those little ebony boxes on the mantelpiece?... Listen,

dear, it's in the little box on the right of the mantelpiece: what does it say? `SHALL I TURN THE

SCORPION?'...And now, crack! What does it say in the little box on the left? `SHALL I TURN THE

GRASSHOPPER?'...And now, crack! Here it is in the little leather bag....What does it say? `I AM THE

LITTLE BAG OF LIFE AND DEATH!'...And now, crack! It is in Carlotta's throat, in Carlotta's golden

throat, in Carlotta's crystal throat, as I live! What does it say? It says, `It's I, Mr. Toad, it's I singing! I FEEL

It is on a chair in the ghost's box and it says, `MADAME CARLOTTA IS SINGING TONIGHT TO

BRING THE CHANDELIER DOWN!' ...And now, crack! Aha! Where is Erik's voice now? Listen,

Christine, darling! Listen! It is behind the door of the torturechamber! Listen! It's myself in the

torturechamber! And what do I say? I say, `Woe to them that have a nose, a real nose, and come to look

Oh, the ventriloquist's terrible voice! It was everywhere, everywhere. It passed through the little invisible

window, through the walls. It ran around us, between us. Erik was there, speaking to us! We made a

movement as though to fling ourselves upon him. But, already, swifter, more fleeting than the voice of the

"Erik! Erik!" said Christine's voice. "You tire me with your voice. Don't go on, Erik! Isn't it very hot here?"

"But what does this mean?...The wall is really getting quite hot!...The wall is burning!"

And the monster laughed so loudly and hideously that we could no longer distinguish Christine's supplicating

cries! The Vicomte de Chagny shouted and banged against the walls like a madman. I could not restrain him.

But we heard nothing except the monster's laughter, and the monster himself can have heard nothing else.

And then there was the sound of a body falling on the floor and being dragged along and a door slammed and

then nothing, nothing more around us save the scorching silence of the south in the heart of a tropical forest!

I have said that the room in which M. le Vicomte de Chagny and I were imprisoned was a regular hexagon,

lined entirely with mirrors. Plenty of these rooms have been seen since, mainly at exhibitions: they are called

"palaces of illusion," or some such name. But the invention belongs entirely to Erik, who built the first room

of this kind under my eyes, at the time of the rosy hours of Mazenderan. A decorative object, such as a

column, for instance, was placed in one of the corners and immediately produced a hall of a thousand

columns; for, thanks to the mirrors, the real room was multiplied by six hexagonal rooms, each of which, in

its turn, was multiplied indefinitely. But the little sultana soon tired of this infantile illusion, whereupon Erik

altered his invention into a "torturechamber." For the architectural motive placed in one corner, he

substituted an iron tree. This tree, with its painted leaves, was absolutely true to life and was made of iron so

as to resist all the attacks of the "patient" who was locked into the torturechamber. We shall see how the

scene thus obtained was twice altered instantaneously into two successive other scenes, by means of the

automatic rotation of the drums or rollers in the corners. These were divided into three sections, fitting into

the angles of the mirrors and each supporting a decorative scheme that came into sight as the roller revolved

The walls of this strange room gave the patient nothing to lay hold of, because, apart from the solid

decorative object, they were simply furnished with mirrors, thick enough to withstand any onslaught of the

There was no furniture. The ceiling was capable of being lit up. An ingenious system of electric heating,

which has since been imitated, allowed the temperature of the walls and room to be increased at will.

I am giving all these details of a perfectly natural invention, producing, with a few painted branches, the

supernatural illusion of an equatorial forest blazing under the tropical sun, so that no one may doubt the

present balance of my brain or feel entitled to say that I am mad or lying or that I take him for a fool.[11]

[11] It is very natural that, at the time when the Persian was writing, he should take so many precautions

against any spirit of incredulity on the part of those who were likely to read his narrative. Nowadays, when

I now return to the facts where I left them. When the ceiling lit up and the forest became visible around us,

the viscount's stupefaction was immense. That impenetrable forest, with its innumerable trunks and branches,

threw him into a terrible state of consternation. He passed his hands over his forehead, as though to drive

I have already said that the sight of the forest did not surprise me at all; and therefore I listened for the two of

us to what was happening next door. Lastly, my attention was especially attracted, not so much to the scene,

as to the mirrors that produced it. These mirrors were broken in parts. Yes, they were marked and scratched;

they had been "starred," in spite of their solidity; and this proved to me that the torturechamber in which we

Yes, some wretch, whose feet were not bare like those of the victims of the rosy hours of Mazenderan, had

certainly fallen into this "mortal illusion" and, mad with rage, had kicked against those mirrors which,

nevertheless, continued to reflect his agony. And the branch of the tree on which he had put an end to his own

sufferings was arranged in such a way that, before dying, he had seen, for his last consolation, a thousand

Yes, Joseph Buquet had undoubtedly been through all this! Were we to die as he had done? I did not think so,

for I knew that we had a few hours before us and that I could employ them to better purpose than Joseph

Buquet was able to do. After all, I was thoroughly acquainted with most of Erik's "tricks;" and now or never

To begin with, I gave up every idea of returning to the passage that had brought us to that accursed chamber.

I did not trouble about the possibility of working the inside stone that closed the passage; and this for the

simple reason that to do so was out of the question. We had dropped from too great a height into the

torturechamber; there was no furniture to help us reach that passage; not even the branch of the iron tree, not

There was only one possible outlet, that opening into the LouisPhilippe room in which Erik and Christine

Daae were. But, though this outlet looked like an ordinary door on Christine's side, it was absolutely invisible

When I was quite sure that there was no hope for us from Christine Daae's side, when I had heard the monster

dragging the poor girl from the LouisPhilippe room LEST SHE SHOULD INTERFERE WITH OUR

But I had first to calm M. de Chagny, who was already walking about like a madman, uttering incoherent

cries. The snatches of conversation which he had caught between Christine and the monster had contributed

not a little to drive him beside himself: add to that the shock of the magic forest and the scorching heat which

was beginning to make the prespiration{sic} stream down his temples and you will have no difficulty in

understanding his state of mind. He shouted Christine's name, brandished his pistol, knocked his forehead

against the glass in his endeavors to run down the glades of the illusive forest. In short, the torture was

I did my best to induce the poor viscount to listen to reason. I made him touch the mirrors and the iron tree

and the branches and explained to him, by optical laws, all the luminous imagery by which we were

surrounded and of which we need not allow ourselves to be the victims, like ordinary, ignorant people.

"We are in a room, a little room; that is what you must keep saying to yourself. And we shall leave the room

And I promised him that, if he let me act, without disturbing me by shouting and walking up and down, I

Then he lay flat on the floor, as one does in a wood, and declared that he would wait until I found the door of

the forest, as there was nothing better to do! And he added that, from where he was, "the view was splendid!"

Myself, forgetting the forest, I tackled a glass panel and began to finger it in every direction, hunting for the

weak point on which to press in order to turn the door in accordance with Erik's system of pivots. This weak

point might be a mere speck on the glass, no larger than a pea, under which the spring lay hidden. I hunted

and hunted. I felt as high as my hands could reach. Erik was about the same height as myself and I thought

While groping over the successive panels with the greatest care, I endeavored not to lose a minute, for I was

feeling more and more overcome with the heat and we were literally roasting in that blazing forest.

I had been working like this for half an hour and had finished three panels, when, as illluck would have it, I

"I am stifling," he said. "All those mirrors are sending out an infernal heat! Do you think you will find that

I was not sorry to hear him talk like this. He had not said a word of the forest and I hoped that my

companion's reason would hold out some time longer against the torture. But he added:

"What consoles me is that the monster has given Christine until eleven tomorrow evening. If we can't get

out of here and go to her assistance, at least we shall be dead before her! Then Erik's mass can serve for all of

As I had not the same desperate reasons as M. le Vicomte for accepting death, I returned, after giving him a

word of encouragement, to my panel, but I had made the mistake of taking a few steps while speaking and, in

the tangle of the illusive forest, I was no longer able to find my panel for certain! I had to begin all over

Now the fever laid hold of me in my turn...for I found nothing, absolutely nothing. In the next room, all was

silence. We were quite lost in the forest, without an outlet, a compass, a guide or anything. Oh, I knew what

awaited us if nobody came to our aid... or if I did not find the spring! But, look as I might, I found nothing

but branches, beautiful branches that stood straight up before me, or spread gracefully over my head. But they

gave no shade. And this was natural enough, as we were in an equatorial forest, with the sun right above our

M. de Chagny and I had repeatedly taken off our coats and put them on again, finding at one time that they

made us feel still hotter and at another that they protected us against the heat. I was still making a moral

resistance, but M. de Chagny seemed to me quite "gone." He pretended that he had been walking in that

forest for three days and nights, without stopping, looking for Christine Daae! From time to time, he thought

he saw her behind the trunk of a tree, or gliding between the branches; and he called to her with words of

I too was thirsty. My throat was on fire. And, yet, squatting on the floor, I went on hunting, hunting, hunting

for the spring of the invisible door...especially as it was dangerous to remain in the forest as evening drew

nigh. Already the shades of night were beginning to surround us. It had happened very quickly: night falls

Now night, in the forests of the equator, is always dangerous, particularly when, like ourselves, one has not

the materials for a fire to keep off the beasts of prey. I did indeed try for a moment to break off the branches,

which I would have lit with my dark lantern, but I knocked myself also against the mirrors and remembered,

The heat did not go with the daylight; on the contrary, it was now still hotter under the blue rays of the moon.

I urged the viscount to hold our weapons ready to fire and not to stray from camp, while I went on looking for

"Oh," whispered the viscount, "he is quite close!...Don't you see him?...There...through the trees...in that

And the roaring began again, louder than before. And the viscount fired, but I do not think that he hit the lion;

only, he smashed a mirror, as I perceived the next morning, at daybreak. We must have covered a good

distance during the night, for we suddenly found ourselves on the edge of the desert, an immense desert of

sand, stones and rocks. It was really not worth while leaving the forest to come upon the desert. Tired out, I

flung myself down beside the viscount, for I had had enough of looking for springs which I could not find.

I was quite surprisedand I said so to the viscountthat we had encountered no other dangerous animals

during the night. Usually, after the lion came the leopard and sometimes the buzz of the tsetse fly. These were

easily obtained effects; and I explained to M. de Chagny that Erik imitated the roar of a lion on a long tabour

or timbrel, with an ass's skin at one end. Over this skin he tied a string of catgut, which was fastened at the

middle to another similar string passing through the whole length of the tabour. Erik had only to rub this

string with a glove smeared with resin and, according to the manner in which he rubbed it, he imitated to

perfection the voice of the lion or the leopard, or even the buzzing of the tsetse fly.

The idea that Erik was probably in the room beside us, working his trick, made me suddenly resolve to enter

into a parley with him, for we must obviously give up all thought of taking him by surprise. And by this time

he must be quite aware who were the occupants of his torturechamber. I called him: "Erik! Erik!"

I shouted as loudly as I could across the desert, but there was no answer to my voice. All around us lay the

silence and the bare immensity of that stony desert. What was to become of us in the midst of that awful

We were beginning literally to die of heat, hunger and thirst... of thirst especially. At last, I saw M. de

Chagny raise himself on his elbow and point to a spot on the horizon. He had discovered an oasis!

Yes, far in the distance was an oasis...an oasis with limpid water, which reflected the iron trees!...Tush, it was

the scene of the mirage....I recognized it at once...the worst of the three!...No one had been able to fight

against it...no one. ...I did my utmost to keep my head AND NOT TO HOPE FOR WATER, because I knew

that, if a man hoped for water, the water that reflected the iron tree, and if, after hoping for water, he struck

against the mirror, then there was only one thing for him to do: to hang himself on the iron tree!

"It's the mirage!...It's the mirage!...Don't believe in the water!...It's another trick of the mirrors!..."

Then he flatly told me to shut up, with my tricks of the mirrors, my springs, my revolving doors and my

palaces of illusions! He angrily declared that I must be either blind or mad to imagine that all that water

flowing over there, among those splendid, numberless trees, was not real water!...And the desert was real!

...And so was the forest!...And it was no use trying to take him in...he was an old, experienced traveler...he

For we not only saw the water, but WE HEARD IT!...We heard it flow, we heard it ripple!...Do you

understand that word "ripple?"...IT IS A SOUND WHICH YOU HEAR WITH YOUR TONGUE! ...You put

Lastlyand this was the most pitiless torture of allwe heard the rain and it was not raining! This was an

infernal invention. ...Oh, I knew well enough how Erik obtained it! He filled with little stones a very long and

narrow box, broken up inside with wooden and metal projections. The stones, in falling, struck against these

projections and rebounded from one to another; and the result was a series of pattering sounds that exactly

Ah, you should have seen us putting out our tongues and dragging ourselves toward the rippling riverbank!

Our eyes and ears were full of water, but our tongues were hard and dry as horn!

When we reached the mirror, M.de Chagny licked it...and I also licked the glass.

Then we rolled on the floor with a hoarse cry of despair. M. de Chagny put the one pistol that was still loaded

to his temple; and I stared at the Punjab lasso at the foot of the iron tree. I knew why the iron tree had

returned, in this third change of scene!... The iron tree was waiting for me!...

But, as I stared at the Punjab lasso, I saw a thing that made me start so violently that M. de Chagny delayed

his attempt at suicide. I took his arm. And then I caught the pistol from him...and then I dragged myself on

I had discovered, near the Punjab lasso, in a groove in the floor, a blackheaded nail of which I knew the use.

At last I had discovered the spring! I felt the nail....I lifted a radiant face to M. de Chagny....The

And then we saw not a door opened in the wall, but a cellarflap released in the floor. Cool air came up to us

from the black hole below. We stooped over that square of darkness as though over a limpid well. With our

chins in the cool shade, we drank it in. And we bent lower and lower over the trapdoor. What could there be

I thrust my arm into the darkness and came upon a stone and another stone...a staircase...a dark staircase

leading into the cellar. The viscount wanted to fling himself down the hole; but I, fearing a new trick of the

The staircase was a winding one and led down into pitchy darkness. But oh, how deliciously cool were the

We soon reached the bottom. Our eyes were beginning to accustom themselves to the dark, to distinguish

shapes around us... circular shapes...on which I turned the light of my lantern.

We were in Erik's cellar: it was here that he must keep his wine and perhaps his drinkingwater. I knew that

Indeed, there was quite a number of them, symmetrically arranged in two rows, one on either side of us. They

were small barrels and I thought that Erik must have selected them of that size to facilitate their carriage to

We examined them successively, to see if one of them had not a funnel, showing that it had been tapped at

Then, after half lifting one to make sure it was full, we went on our knees and, with the blade of a small knife

At that moment, I seemed to hear, coming from very far, a sort of monotonous chant which I knew well, from

But we heard nothing there and were driven to accuse the bad condition of our senses. And we returned to the

bunghole. M. de Chagny put his two hands together underneath it and, with a last effort, I burst the bung.

The viscount put his two full hands close to my lantern....I stooped to look...and at once threw away the

lantern with such violence that it broke and went out, leaving us in utter darkness.

The discovery flung us into a state of alarm that made us forget all our past and present sufferings. We now

The monster had given her until eleven o'clock in the evening. He had chosen his time well. There would be

many people, many "members of the human race," up there, in the resplendent theater. What finer retinue

could be expected for his funeral? He would go down to the tomb escorted by the whitest shoulders in the

We were all to be blown up in the middle of the performance... if Christine Daae said no!

And what else could Christine say but no? Would she not prefer to espouse death itself rather than that living

corpse? She did not know that on her acceptance or refusal depended the awful fate of many members of the

And we dragged ourselves through the darkness, feeling our way to the stone steps, for the light in the

trapdoor overhead that led to the room of mirrors was now extinguished; and we repeated to ourselves:

At last, I found the staircase. But, suddenly I drew myself up on the first step, for a terrible thought had come

Ah, what was the time?...For, after all, eleven o'clock tomorrow evening might be now, might be this very

moment! Who could tell us the time? We seemed to have been imprisoned in that hell for days and days...for

years...since the beginning of the world. Perhaps we should be blown up then and there! Ah, a sound! A

crack! "Did you hear that?...There, in the corner...good heavens!... Like a sound of machinery!...Again!...Oh,

for a light!... Perhaps it's the machinery that is to blow everything up!... I tell you, a cracking sound: are you

M. de Chagny and I began to yell like madmen. Fear spurred us on. We rushed up the treads of the staircase,

stumbling as we went, anything to escape the dark, to return to the mortal light of the room of mirrors!

We found the trapdoor still open, but it was now as dark in the room of mirrors as in the cellar which we

had left. We dragged ourselves along the floor of the torturechamber, the floor that separated us from the

powdermagazine. What was the time? We shouted, we called: M. de Chagny to Christine, I to Erik. I

reminded him that I had saved his life. But no answer, save that of our despair, of our madness: what was the

time? We argued, we tried to calculate the time which we had spent there, but we were incapable of

reasoning. If only we could see the face of a watch!... Mine had stopped, but M. de Chagny's was still going...

He told me that he had wound it up before dressing for the Opera.... We had not a match upon us....And yet

we must know.... M. de Chagny broke the glass of his watch and felt the two hands. ...He questioned the

hands of the watch with his fingertips, going by the position of the ring of the watch....Judging by the space

But perhaps it was not the eleven o'clock of which we stood in dread. Perhaps we had still twelve hours

I seemed to hear footsteps in the next room. Some one tapped against the wall. Christine Daae's voice said:

"Raoul! Raoul!" We were now all talking at once, on either side of the wall. Christine sobbed; she was not

sure that she would find M. de Chagny alive. The monster had been terrible, it seemed, had done nothing but

rave, waiting for her to give him the "yes" which she refused. And yet she had promised him that "yes," if he

would take her to the torturechamber. But he had obstinately declined, and had uttered hideous threats

against all the members of the human race! At last, after hours and hours of that hell, he had that moment

"The eleven o'clock that is to decide life or death!...He told me so just before he went....He is terrible....He is

quite mad: he tore off his mask and his yellow eyes shot flames!...He did nothing but laugh!...He said, `I give

you five minutes to spare your blushes! Here,' he said, taking a key from the little bag of life and death, `here

is the little bronze key that opens the two ebony caskets on the mantelpiece in the LouisPhilippe room. ...In

one of the caskets, you will find a scorpion, in the other, a grasshopper, both very cleverly imitated in

Japanese bronze: they will say yes or no for you. If you turn the scorpion round, that will mean to me, when I

return, that you have said yes. The grasshopper will mean no.' And he laughed like a drunken demon. I did

nothing but beg and entreat him to give me the key of the torturechamber, promising to be his wife if he

granted me that request....But he told me that there was no future need for that key and that he was going to

throw it into the lake!... And he again laughed like a drunken demon and left me. Oh, his last words were,

`The grasshopper! Be careful of the grasshopper! A grasshopper does not only turn: it hops! It hops! And it

The five minutes had nearly elapsed and the scorpion and the grasshopper were scratching at my brain.

Nevertheless, I had sufficient lucidity left to understand that, if the grasshopper were turned, it would

hop...and with it many members of the human race! There was no doubt but that the grasshopper controlled

M. de Chagny, who seemed to have recovered all his moral force from hearing Christine's voice, explained to

her, in a few hurried words, the situation in which we and all the Opera were. He told her to turn the scorpion

The idea had come to mefor I knew my Erikthat the monster had perhaps deceived the girl once more.

Perhaps it was the scorpion that would blow everything up. After all, why wasn't he there? The five minutes

were long past...and he was not back. ...Perhaps he had taken shelter and was waiting for the explosion!

...Why had he not returned?...He could not really expect Christine ever to consent to become his voluntary

We heard his steps approaching the LouisPhilippe room. He came up to Christine, but did not speak. Then I

"Not a word, daroga, or I shall blow everything up." And he added, "The honor rests with

mademoiselle....Mademoiselle has not touched the scorpion"how deliberately he spoke!"mademoiselle

has not touched the grasshopper"with that composure!"but it is not too late to do the right thing. There, I

open the caskets without a key, for I am a trapdoor lover and I open and shut what I please and as I please. I

open the little ebony caskets: mademoiselle, look at the little dears inside. Aren't they pretty? If you turn the

grasshopper, mademoiselle, we shall all be blown up. There is enough gunpowder under our feet to blow up

a whole quarter of Paris. If you turn the scorpion, mademoiselle, all that powder will be soaked and drowned.

Mademoiselle, to celebrate our wedding, you shall make a very handsome present to a few hundred Parisians

who are at this moment applauding a poor masterpiece of Meyerbeer's ...you shall make them a present of

their lives....For, with your own fair hands, you shall turn the scorpion.... And merrily, merrily, we will be

"If, in two minutes, mademoiselle, you have not turned the scorpion, I shall turn the grasshopper...and the

The terrible silence began anew. The Vicomte de Chagny, realizing that there was nothing left to do but pray,

went down on his knees and prayed. As for me, my blood beat so fiercely that I had to take my heart in both

"The two minutes are past....Goodby, mademoiselle. ...Hop, grasshopper! "Erik," cried Christine, "do you

"At our wedding, ingenuous child!...The scorpion opens the ball. ...But that will do!...You won't have the

I was crying out in concert with Christine. M. de Chagny was still on his knees, praying.

Feeling something crack beneath our feet, hearing an appalling hiss through the open trapdoor, a hiss like

It came softly, at first, then louder, then very loud. But it was not the hiss of fire. It was more like the hiss of

We rushed to the trapdoor. All our thirst, which vanished when the terror came, now returned with the

The water rose in the cellar, above the barrels, the powderbarrels"Barrels! ...Barrels! Any barrels to

sell?"and we went down to it with parched throats. It rose to our chins, to our mouths. And we drank. We

stood on the floor of the cellar and drank. And we went up the stairs again in the dark, step by step, went up

The water came out of the cellar with us and spread over the floor of the room. If, this went on, the whole

house on the lake would be swamped. The, floor of the torturechamber had itself become a regular little

lake, in which our feet splashed. Surely there was water enough now! Erik must turn off the tap!

"Erik! Erik! That is water enough for the gunpowder! Turn off the tap! Turn off the scorpion!"

But Erik did not reply. We heard nothing but the water rising: it was halfway to our waists!

No one, no one in the next room, no one to turn the tap, no one to turn the scorpion!

We were all alone, in the dark, with the dark water that seized us and clasped us and froze us!

By this time, we had lost our foothold and were spinning round in the water, carried away by an irresistible

whirl, for the water turned with us and dashed us against the dark mirror, which thrust us back again; and our

Were we to die here, drowned in the torturechamber? I had never seen that. Erik, at the time of the rosy

hours of Mazenderan, had never shown me that, through the little invisible window.

"Erik! Erik!" I cried. "I saved your life! Remember!...You were sentenced to death! But for me, you would be

We whirled around in the water like so much wreckage. But, suddenly, my straying hands seized the trunk of

the iron tree! I called M. de Chagny, and we both hung to the branch of the iron tree.

"Oh! Oh! Can you remember? How much space is there between the branch of the tree and the domeshaped

ceiling? Do try to remember!... After all, the water may stop, it must find its level!...There, I think it is

Our arms became entangled in the effort of swimming; we choked; we fought in the dark water; already we

could hardly breathe the dark air above the dark water, the air which escaped, which we could hear escaping

"Oh, let us turn and turn and turn until we find the air hole and then glue our mouths to it!"

But I lost my strength; I tried to lay hold of the walls! Oh, how those glass walls slipped from under my

groping fingers!...We whirled round again!...We began to sink! ...One last effort!...A last cry:

"Guggle, guggle, guggle!" in our ears. "Guggle! Guggle!" At the bottom of the dark water, our ears went,

And, before losing consciousness entirely, I seemed to hear, between two guggles:

The previous chapter marks the conclusion of the written narrative which the Persian left behind him.

Notwithstanding the horrors of a situation which seemed definitely to abandon them to their deaths, M. de

Chagny and his companion were saved by the sublime devotion of Christine Daae. And I had the rest of the

When I went to see him, he was still living in his little flat in the Rue de Rivoli, opposite the Tuileries. He

was very ill, and it required all my ardor as an historian pledged to the truth to persuade him to live the

incredible tragedy over again for my benefit. His faithful old servant Darius showed me in to him. The daroga

received me at a window overlooking the garden of the Tuileries. He still had his magnificent eyes, but his

poor face looked very worn. He had shaved the whole of his head, which was usually covered with an

astrakhan cap; he was dressed in a long, plain coat and amused himself by unconsciously twisting his thumbs

inside the sleeves; but his mind was quite clear, and he told me his story with perfect lucidity.

It seems that, when he opened his eyes, the daroga found himself lying on a bed. M. de Chagny was on a

After the deceptions and illusions of the torturechamber, the precision of the details of that quiet little

middleclass room seemed to have been invented for the express purpose of puzzling the mind of the mortal

rash enough to stray into that abode of living nightmare. The wooden bedstead, the waxed mahogany chairs,

the chest of drawers, those brasses, the little square antimacassars carefully placed on the backs of the chairs,

the clock on the mantelpiece and the harmlesslooking ebony caskets at either end, lastly, the whatnot filled

with shells, with red pincushions, with motherofpearl boats and an enormous ostrichegg, the whole

discreetly lighted by a shaded lamp standing on a small round table: this collection of ugly, peaceable,

reasonable furniture, AT THE BOTTOM OF THE OPERA CELLARS, bewildered the imagination more

And the figure of the masked man seemed all the more formidable in this oldfashioned, neat and trim little

"Are you better, daroga?...You are looking at my furniture?... It is all that I have left of my poor unhappy

Christine Daae did not say a word: she moved about noiselessly, like a sister of charity, who had taken a vow

of silence. She brought a cup of cordial, or of hot tea, he did not remember which. The man in the mask took

Erik poured a drop of rum into the daroga's cup and, pointing to the viscount, said:

"He came to himself long before we knew if you were still alive, daroga. He is quite well. He is asleep. We

Erik left the room for a moment, and the Persian raised himself on his elbow, looked around him and saw

Christine Daae sitting by the fireside. He spoke to her, called her, but he was still very weak and fell back on

his pillow. Christine came to him, laid her hand on his forehead and went away again. And the Persian

remembered that, as she went, she did not give a glance at M. de Chagny, who, it is true, was sleeping

peacefully; and she sat down again in her chair by the chimneycorner, silent as a sister of charity who had

Erik returned with some little bottles which he placed on the mantelpiece. And, again in a whisper, so as not

to wake M. de Chagny, he said to the Persian, after sitting down and feeling his pulse:

"You are now saved, both of you. And soon I shall take you up to the surface of the earth, TO PLEASE MY

The Persian now looked at Christine's quiet profile under the lamp. She was reading a tiny book, with gilt

edges, like a religious book. There are editions of THE IMITATION that look like that. The Persian still had

in his ears the natural tone in which the other had said, "to please my wife." Very gently, he called her again;

Erik returned, mixed the daroga a draft and advised him not to speak to "his wife" again nor to any one,

Eventually, the Persian fell asleep, like M. de Chagny, and did not wake until he was in his own room, nursed

by his faithful Darius, who told him that, on the night before, he was found propped against the door of his

flat, where he had been brought by a stranger, who rang the bell before going away.

As soon as the daroga recovered his strength and his wits, he sent to Count Philippe's house to inquire after

the viscount's health. The answer was that the young man had not been seen and that Count Philippe was

dead. His body was found on the bank of the Opera lake, on the RueScribe side. The Persian remembered

the requiem mass which he had heard from behind the wall of the torturechamber, and had no doubt

concerning the crime and the criminal. Knowing Erik as he did, he easily reconstructed the tragedy. Thinking

that his brother had run away with Christine Daae, Philippe had dashed in pursuit of him along the Brussels

Road, where he knew that everything was prepared for the elopement. Failing to find the pair, he hurried back

to the Opera, remembered Raoul's strange confidence about his fantastic rival and learned that the viscount

had made every effort to enter the cellars of the theater and that he had disappeared, leaving his hat in the

prima donna's dressingroom beside an empty pistolcase. And the count, who no longer entertained any

doubt of his brother's madness, in his turn darted into that infernal underground maze. This was enough, in

the Persian's eyes, to explain the discovery of the Comte de Chagny's corpse on the shore of the lake, where

The Persian did not hesitate. He determined to inform the police. Now the case was in the hands of an

examiningmagistrate called Faure, an incredulous, commonplace, superficial sort of person, (I write as I

think), with a mind utterly unprepared to receive a confidence of this kind. M. Faure took down the daroga's

Despairing of ever obtaining a hearing, the Persian sat down to write. As the police did not want his evidence,

perhaps the press would be glad of it; and he had just written the last line of the narrative I have quoted in the

preceding chapters, when Darius announced the visit of a stranger who refused his name, who would not

show his face and declared simply that he did not intend to leave the place until he had spoken to the daroga.

The Persian at once felt who his singular visitor was and ordered him to be shown in. The daroga was right. It

He looked extremely weak and leaned against the wall, as though he were afraid of falling. Taking off his hat,

he revealed a forehead white as wax. The rest of the horrible face was hidden by the mask.

"Murderer of Count Philippe, what have you done with his brother and Christine Daae?"

Erik staggered under this direct attack, kept silent for a moment, dragged himself to a chair and heaved a deep

"Daroga, don't talk to me...about Count Philippe....He was dead... by the time...I left my house...he was

dead... when... the siren sang....It was an...accident...a sad...a very sad ...accident. He fell very awkwardly...

"I have not come here...to talk about Count Philippe... but to tell you that...I am going...to die. ..."

"Of love...daroga...I am dying...of love...That is how it is.... loved her so!...And I love her still...daroga...and I

am dying of love for her, I...I tell you!...If you knew how beautiful she was... when she let me kiss

her...alive...It was the first...time, daroga, the first...time I ever kissed a woman.... Yes, alive....I kissed her

"Why do you shake me like that?" asked Erik, making an effort to speak more connectedly. "I tell you that I

"I tell you I kissed her just like that, on her forehead... and she did not draw back her forehead from my

lips!...Oh, she is a good girl!...As to her being dead, I don't think so; but it has nothing to do with me....No,

no, she is not dead! And no one shall touch a hair of her head! She is a good, honest girl, and she saved your

life, daroga, at a moment when I would not have given twopence for your Persian skin. As a matter of fact,

nobody bothered about you. Why were you there with that little chap? You would have died as well as he!

My word, how she entreated me for her little chap! But I told her that, as she had turned the scorpion, she

had, through that very fact, and of her own free will, become engaged to me and that she did not need to have

"As for you, you did not exist, you had ceased to exist, I tell you, and you were going to die with the

other!...Only, mark me, daroga, when you were yelling like the devil, because of the water, Christine came to

me with her beautiful blue eyes wide open, and swore to me, as she hoped to be saved, that she consented to

be MY LIVING WIFE!...Until then, in the depths of her eyes, daroga, I had always seen my dead wife; it was

the first time I saw MY LIVING WIFE there. She was sincere, as she hoped to be saved. She would not kill

herself. It was a bargain....Half a minute later, all the water was back in the lake; and I had a hard job with

you, daroga, for, upon my honor, I thought you were done for!... However!...There you were!...It was

understood that I was to take you both up to the surface of the earth. When, at last, I cleared the

"What have you done with the Vicomte de Chagny?" asked the Persian, interrupting him.

"Ah, you see, daroga, I couldn't carry HIM up like that, at once. ...He was a hostage....But I could not keep

him in the house on the lake, either, because of Christine; so I locked him up comfortably, I chained him up

nicelya whiff of the Mazenderan scent had left him as limp as a ragin the Communists' dungeon, which

is in the most deserted and remote part of the Opera, below the fifth cellar, where no one ever comes, and

where no one ever hears you. Then I came back to Christine, she was waiting for me.

Erik here rose solemnly. Then he continued, but, as he spoke, he was overcome by all his former emotion and

"Yes, she was waiting for me...waiting for me erect and alive, a real, living bride...as she hoped to be

saved....And, when I...came forward, more timid than...a little child, she did not run away...no, no...she

stayed...she waited for me....I even believe...daroga...that she put out her forehead...a little...oh, not

much...just a little... like a living bride....And...and...I...kissed her!... I!...I!...I!...And she did not die!...Oh, how

good it is, daroga, to kiss somebody on the forehead!...You can't tell!... But I! I!...My mother, daroga, my

poor, unhappy mother would never ...let me kiss her....She used to run away...and throw me my mask! ...Nor

any other woman...ever, ever!...Ah, you can understand, my happiness was so great, I cried. And I fell at her

feet, crying ...and I kissed her feet...her little feet...crying. You're crying, too, daroga...and she cried also...the

angel cried!..." Erik sobbed aloud and the Persian himself could not retain his tears in the presence of that

masked man, who, with his shoulders shaking and his hands clutched at his chest, was moaning with pain and

"Yes, daroga...I felt her tears flow on my forehead...on mine, mine!...They were soft...they were

sweet!...They trickled under my mask...they mingled with my tears in my eyes...yes ...they flowed between

my lips....Listen, daroga, listen to what I did....I tore off my mask so as not to lose one of her tears...and she

did not run away!...And she did not die!... She remained alive, weeping over me, with me. We cried together!

"Ah, I am not going to die yet...presently I shall...but let me cry!...Listen, daroga...listen to this....While I was

at her feet...I heard her say, `Poor, unhappy Erik!' ... AND SHE TOOK MY HAND!...I had become no more,

you know, than a poor dog ready to die for her....I mean it, daroga!... I held in my hand a ring, a plain gold

ring which I had given her ...which she had lost...and which I had found again... a weddingring, you

know....I slipped it into her little hand and said, `There!...Take it!...Take it for you...and him! ...It shall be my

weddingpresent a present from your poor, unhappy Erik.....I know you love the boy...don't cry any more!

...She asked me, in a very soft voice, what I meant.... Then I made her understand that, where she was

concerned, I was only a poor dog, ready to die for her...but that she could marry the young man when she

Erik's emotion was so great that he had to tell the Persian not to look at him, for he was choking and must

take off his mask. The daroga went to the window and opened it. His heart was full of pity, but he took care

to keep his eyes fixed on the trees in the Tuileries gardens, lest he should see the monster's face.

"I went and released the young man," Erik continued, "and told him to come with me to Christine....They

kissed before me in the LouisPhilippe room....Christine had my ring.... I made Christine swear to come

back, one night, when I was dead, crossing the lake from the RueScribe side, and bury me in the greatest

secrecy with the gold ring, which she was to wear until that moment. ...I told her where she would find my

body and what to do with it. ...Then Christine kissed me, for the first time, herself, here, on the

foreheaddon't look, daroga!here, on the forehead...on my forehead, minedon't look, daroga!and

they went off together. ...Christine had stopped crying....I alone cried....Daroga, daroga, if Christine keeps her

The Persian asked him no questions. He was quite reassured as to the fate of Raoul Chagny and Christine

The monster resumed his mask and collected his strength to leave the daroga. He told him that, when he felt

his end to be very near at hand, he would send him, in gratitude for the kindness which the Persian had once

shown him, that which he held dearest in the world: all Christine Daae's papers, which she had written for

Raoul's benefit and left with Erik, together with a few objects belonging to her, such as a pair of gloves, a

shoebuckle and two pockethandkerchiefs. In reply to the Persian's questions, Erik told him that the two

young people, at soon as they found themselves free, had resolved to go and look for a priest in some lonely

spot where they could hide their happiness and that, with this object in view, they had started from "the

northern railway station of the world." Lastly, Erik relied on the Persian, as soon as he received the promised

relics and papers, to inform the young couple of his death and to advertise it in the EPOQUE.

That was all. The Persian saw Erik to the door of his flat, and Darius helped him down to the street. A cab

was waiting for him. Erik stepped in; and the Persian, who had gone back to the window, heard him say to

The Persian had seen the poor, unfortunate Erik for the last time. Three weeks later, the Epoque published

I have now told the singular, but veracious story of the Opera ghost. As I declared on the first page of this

work, it is no longer possible to deny that Erik really lived. There are today so many proofs of his existence

within the reach of everybody that we can follow Erik's actions logically through the whole tragedy of the

There is no need to repeat here how greatly the case excited the capital. The kidnapping of the artist, the

death of the Comte de Chagny under such exceptional conditions, the disappearance of his brother, the

drugging of the gasman at the Opera and of his two assistants: what tragedies, what passions, what crimes

had surrounded the idyll of Raoul and the sweet and charming Christine!...What had become of that

wonderful, mysterious artist of whom the world was never, never to hear again?...She was represented as the

victim of a rivalry between the two brothers; and nobody suspected what had really happened, nobody

understood that, as Raoul and Christine had both disappeared, both had withdrawn far from the world to

enjoy a happiness which they would not have cared to make public after the inexplicable death of Count

Philippe....They took the train one day from "the northern railway station of the world." ...Possibly, I too shall

take the train at that station, one day, and go and seek around thy lakes, O Norway, O silent Scandinavia, for

the perhaps still living traces of Raoul and Christine and also of Mamma Valerius, who disappeared at the

same time!...Possibly, some day, I shall hear the lonely echoes of the North repeat the singing of her who

Long after the case was pigeonholed by the unintelligent care of M. le Juge d'Instruction Faure, the

newspapers made efforts, at intervals, to fathom the mystery. One evening paper alone, which knew all the

The Persian alone knew the whole truth and held the main proofs, which came to him with the pious relics

promised by the ghost. It fell to my lot to complete those proofs with the aid of the daroga himself. Day by

day, I kept him informed of the progress of my inquiries; and he directed them. He had not been to the Opera

for years and years, but he had preserved the most accurate recollection of the building, and there was no

better guide than he possible to help me discover its most secret recesses. He also told me where to gather

further information, whom to ask; and he sent me to call on M. Poligny, at a moment when the poor man was

nearly drawing his last breath. I had no idea that he was so very ill, and I shall never forget the effect which

my questions about the ghost produced upon him. He looked at me as if I were the devil and answered only in

a few incoherent sentences, which showed, howeverand that was the main thing the extent of the

perturbation which O. G., in his time, had brought into that already very restless life (for M. Poligny was

When I came and told the Persian of the poor result of my visit to M. Poligny, the daroga gave a faint smile

"Poligny never knew how far that extraordinary blackguard of an Erik humbugged him."The Persian, by

the way, spoke of Erik sometimes as a demigod and sometimes as the lowest of the low"Poligny was

superstitious and Erik knew it. Erik knew most things about the public and private affairs of the Opera. When

M. Poligny heard a mysterious voice tell him, in Box Five, of the manner in which he used to spend his time

and abuse his partner's confidence, he did not wait to hear any more. Thinking at first that it was a voice from

Heaven, he believed himself damned; and then, when the voice began to ask for money, he saw that he was

being victimized by a shrewd blackmailer to whom Debienne himself had fallen a prey. Both of them, already

tired of management for various reasons, went away without trying to investigate further into the personality

of that curious O. G., who had forced such a singular memorandumbook upon them. They bequeathed the

whole mystery to their successors and heaved a sigh of relief when they were rid of a business that had

I then spoke of the two successors and expressed my surprise that, in his Memoirs of a Manager, M.

Moncharmin should describe the Opera ghost's behavior at such length in the first part of the book and hardly

mention it at all in the second. In reply to this, the Persian, who knew the MEMOIRS as thoroughly as if he

had written them himself, observed that I should find the explanation of the whole business if I would just

recollect the few lines which Moncharmin devotes to the ghost in the second part aforesaid. I quote these

lines, which are particularly interesting because they describe the very simple manner in which the famous

"As for O. G., some of whose curious tricks I have related in the first part of my Memoirs, I will only say that

he redeemed by one spontaneous fine action all the worry which he had caused my dear friend and partner

and, I am bound to say, myself. He felt, no doubt, that there are limits to a joke, especially when it is so

expensive and when the commissary of police has been informed, for, at the moment when we had made an

appointment in our office with M. Mifroid to tell him the whole story, a few days after the disappearance of

Christine Daae, we found, on Richard's table, a large envelope, inscribed, in red ink, "WITH O. G.'S

COMPLIMENTS." It contained the large sum of money which he had succeeded in playfully extracting, for

the time being, from the treasury. Richard was at once of the opinion that we must be content with that and

drop the business. I agreed with Richard. All's well that ends well. What do you say, O. G.?"

Of course, Moncharmin, especially after the money had been restored, continued to believe that he had, for a

short while, been the butt of Richard's sense of humor, whereas Richard, on his side, was convinced that

Moncharmin had amused himself by inventing the whole of the affair of the Opera ghost, in order to revenge

I asked the Persian to tell me by what trick the ghost had taken twentythousand francs from Richard's pocket

in spite of the safetypin. He replied that he had not gone into this little detail, but that, if I myself cared to

make an investigation on the spot, I should certainly find the solution to the riddle in the managers' office by

remembering that Erik had not been nicknamed the trapdoor lover for nothing. I promised the Persian to do

so as soon as I had time, and I may as well tell the reader at once that the results of my investigation were

perfectly satisfactory; and I hardly believed that I should ever discover so many undeniable proofs of the

The Persian's manuscript, Christine Daae's papers, the statements made to me by the people who used to

work under MM. Richard and Moncharmin, by little Meg herself (the worthy Madame Giry, I am sorry to

say, is no more) and by Sorelli, who is now living in retirement at Louveciennes: all the documents relating

to the existence of the ghost, which I propose to deposit in the archives of the Opera, have been checked and

confirmed by a number of important discoveries of which I am justly proud. I have not been able to find the

house on the lake, Erik having blocked up all the secret entrances.[12] On the other hand, I have discovered

the secret passage of the Communists, the planking of which is falling to pieces in parts, and also the

trapdoor through which Raoul and the Persian penetrated into the cellars of the operahouse. In the

Communists' dungeon, I noticed numbers of initials traced on the walls by the unfortunate people confined in

it; and among these were an "R" and a "C." R. C.: Raoul de Chagny. The letters are there to this day.

[12] Even so, I am convinced that it would be easy to reach it by draining the lake, as I have repeatedly

requested the Ministry of Fine Arts to do. I was speaking about it to M. DujardinBeaumetz, the

undersecretary for fine arts, only fortyeight hours before the publication of this book. Who knows but that

the score of DON JUAN TRIUMPHANT might yet be discovered in the house on the lake?

If the reader will visit the Opera one morning and ask leave to stroll where he pleases, without being

accompanied by a stupid guide, let him go to Box Five and knock with his fist or stick on the enormous

column that separates this from the stagebox. He will find that the column sounds hollow. After that, do not

be astonished by the suggestion that it was occupied by the voice of the ghost: there is room inside the

column for two men. If you are surprised that, when the various incidents occurred, no one turned round to

look at the column, you must remember that it presented the appearance of solid marble, and that the voice

contained in it seemed rather to come from the opposite side, for, as we have seen, the ghost was an expert

The column was elaborately carved and decorated with the sculptor's chisel; and I do not despair of one day

discovering the ornament that could be raised or lowered at will, so as to admit of the ghost's mysterious

However, all these discoveries are nothing, to my mind, compared with that which I was able to make, in the

presence of the actingmanager, in the managers' office, within a couple of inches from the deskchair, and

which consisted of a trapdoor, the width of a board in the flooring and the length of a man's forearm and

no longer; a trapdoor that falls back like the lid of a box; a trapdoor through which I can see a hand come

That is the way the fortythousand francs went!.... And that also is the way by which, through some trick or

"So we may take it, as the fortythousand francs were returned, that Erik was simply amusing himself with

"Don't you believe it!" he replied. "Erik wanted money. Thinking himself without the pale of humanity, he

was restrained by no scruples and he employed his extraordinary gifts of dexterity and imagination, which he

had received by way of compensation for his extraordinary uglinesss, to prey upon his fellowmen. His

reason for restoring the fortythousand francs, of his own accord, was that he no longer wanted it. He had

relinquished his marriage with Christine Daae. He had relinquished everything above the surface of the

According to the Persian's account, Erik was born in a small town not far from Rouen. He was the son of a

mastermason. He ran away at an early age from his father's house, where his ugliness was a subject of

horror and terror to his parents. For a time, he frequented the fairs, where a showman exhibited him as the

"living corpse." He seems to have crossed the whole of Europe, from fair to fair, and to have completed his

strange education as an artist and magician at the very fountainhead of art and magic, among the Gipsies. A

period of Erik's life remained quite obscure. He was seen at the fair of NijniNovgorod, where he displayed

himself in all his hideous glory. He already sang as nobody on this earth had ever sung before; he practised

ventriloquism and gave displays of legerdemain so extraordinary that the caravans returning to Asia talked

about it during the whole length of their journey. In this way, his reputation penetrated the walls of the palace

at Mazenderan, where the little sultana, the favorite of the ShahinShah, was boring herself to death. A

dealer in furs, returning to Samarkand from NijniNovgorod, told of the marvels which he had seen

performed in Erik's tent. The trader was summoned to the palace and the daroga of Mazenderan was told to

question him. Next the daroga was instructed to go and find Erik. He brought him to Persia, where for some

months Erik's will was law. He was guilty of not a few horrors, for he seemed not to know the difference

between good and evil. He took part calmly in a number of political assassinations; and he turned his

diabolical inventive powers against the Emir of Afghanistan, who was at war with the Persian empire. The

This was the time of the rosy hours of Mazenderan, of which the daroga's narrative has given us a glimpse.

Erik had very original ideas on the subject of architecture and thought out a palace much as a conjuror

contrives a trickcasket. The Shah ordered him to construct an edifice of this kind. Erik did so; and the

building appears to have been so ingenious that His Majesty was able to move about in it unseen and to

disappear without a possibility of the trick's being discovered. When the ShahinShah found himself the

possessor of this gem, he ordered Erik's yellow eyes to be put out. But he reflected that, even when blind,

Erik would still be able to build so remarkable a house for another sovereign; and also that, as long as Erik

was alive, some one would know the secret of the wonderful palace. Erik's death was decided upon, together

with that of all the laborers who had worked under his orders. The execution of this abominable decree

devolved upon the daroga of Mazenderan. Erik had shown him some slight services and procured him many a

hearty laugh. He saved Erik by providing him with the means of escape, but nearly paid with his head for his

Fortunately for the daroga, a corpse, halfeaten by the birds of prey, was found on the shore of the Caspian

Sea, and was taken for Erik's body, because the daroga's friends had dressed the remains in clothing that

belonged to Erik. The daroga was let off with the loss of the imperial favor, the confiscation of his property

and an order of perpetual banishment. As a member of the Royal House, however, he continued to receive a

monthly pension of a few hundred francs from the Persian treasury; and on this he came to live in Paris.

As for Erik, he went to Asia Minor and thence to Constantinople, where he entered the Sultan's employment.

In explanation of the services which he was able to render a monarch haunted by perpetual terrors, I need

only say that it was Erik who constructed all the famous trapdoors and secret chambers and mysterious

strongboxes which were found at YildizKiosk after the last Turkish revolution. He also invented those

automata, dressed like the Sultan and resembling the Sultan in all respects,[13] which made people believe

that the Commander of the Faithful was awake at one place, when, in reality, he was asleep elsewhere.

[13] See the interview of the special correspondent of the MATIN, with MohammedAli Bey, on the day

Of course, he had to leave the Sultan's service for the same reasons that made him fly from Persia: he knew

too much. Then, tired of his adventurous, formidable and monstrous life, he longed to be some one "like

everybody else." And he became a contractor, like any ordinary contractor, building ordinary houses with

ordinary bricks. He tendered for part of the foundations in the Opera. His estimate was accepted. When he

found himself in the cellars of the enormous playhouse, his artistic, fantastic, wizard nature resumed the

upper hand. Besides, was he not as ugly as ever? He dreamed of creating for his own use a dwelling unknown

The reader knows and guesses the rest. It is all in keeping with this incredible and yet veracious story. Poor,

unhappy Erik! Shall we pity him? Shall we curse him? He asked only to be "some one," like everybody else.

But he was too ugly! And he had to hide his genius OR USE IT TO PLAY TRICKS WITH, when, with an

ordinary face, he would have been one of the most distinguished of mankind! He had a heart that could have

held the empire of the world; and, in the end, he had to content himself with a cellar. Ah, yes, we must needs

I have prayed over his mortal remains, that God might show him mercy notwithstanding his crimes. Yes, I

am sure, quite sure that I prayed beside his body, the other day, when they took it from the spot where they

were burying the phonographic records. It was his skeleton. I did not recognize it by the ugliness of the head,

for all men are ugly when they have been dead as long as that, but by the plain gold ring which he wore and

which Christine Daae had certainly slipped on his finger, when she came to bury him in accordance with her

The skeleton was lying near the little well, in the place where the Angel of Music first held Christine Daae

fainting in his trembling arms, on the night when he carried her down to the cellars of the operahouse.

And, now, what do they mean to do with that skeleton? Surely they will not bury it in the common grave!...I

say that the place of the skeleton of the Opera ghost is in the archives of the National Academy of Music. It is

That Mr. Leroux has used, for the scene of his story, the Paris Opera House as it really is and has not created

a building out of his imagination, is shown by this interesting description of it taken from an article which

appeared in Scribner's Magazine in 1879, a short time after the building was completed:

"The new Opera House, commenced under the Empire and finished under the Republic, is the most complete

building of the kind in the world and in many respects the most beautiful. No European capital possesses an

opera house so comprehensive in plan and execution, and none can boast an edifice equally vast and splendid.

"The site of the Opera House was chosen in 1861. It was determined to lay the foundation exceptionally deep

and strong. It was well known that water would be met with, but it was impossible to foresee at what depth or

in what quantity it would be found. Exceptional depth also was necessary, as the stage arrangements were to

be such as to admit a scene fifty feet high to be lowered on its frame. It was therefore necessary to lay a

foundation in a soil soaked with water which should be sufficiently solid to sustain a weight of 22,000,000

pounds, and at the same time to be perfectly dry, as the cellars were intended for the storage of scenery and

properties. While the work was in progress, the excavation was kept free from water by means of eight

pumps, worked by steam power, and in operation, without interruption, day and night, from March second to

October thirteenth. The floor of the cellar was covered with a layer of concrete, then with two coats of

cement, another layer of concrete and a coat of bitumen. The wall includes an outer wall built as a

cofferdam, a brick wall, a coat of cement, and a wall proper, a little over a yard thick. After all this was

done the whole was filled with water, in order that the fluid, by penetrating into the most minute interstices,

might deposit a sediment which would close them more surely and perfectly than it would be possible to do

by hand. Twelve years elapsed before the completion of the building, and during that time it was

demonstrated that the precautions taken secured absolute impermeability and solidity.

"The events of 1870 interrupted work just as it was about to be prosecuted most vigorously, and the new

Opera House was put to new and unexpected uses. During the siege, it was converted into a vast military

storehouse and filled with a heterogeneous mass of goods. After the siege the building fell into the hands of

the Commune and the roof was turned into a balloon station. The damage done, however, was slight.

"The fine stone employed in the construction was brought from quarries in Sweden, Scotland, Italy, Algeria,

Finland, Spain, Belgium and France. While work on the exterior was in progress, the building was covered in

by a wooden shell, rendered transparent by thousands of small panes of glass. In 1867 a swarm of men,

supplied with hammers and axes, stripped the house of its habit, and showed in all its splendor the great

structure. No picture can do justice to the rich colors of the edifice or to the harmonious tone resulting from

the skilful use of many diverse materials. The effect of the frontage is completed by the cupola of the

auditorium, topped with a cap of bronze sparingly adorned with gilding. Farther on, on a level with the towers

of NotreDame, is the gable end of the roof of the stage, a `Pegasus', by M. Lequesne, rising at either end of

the roof, and a bronze group by M. Millet, representing `Apollo lifting his golden lyre', commanding the

apex. Apollo, it may here be mentioned, is useful as well as ornamental, for his lyre is tipped with a metal

point which does duty as a lightningrod, and conducts the fluid to the body and down the nether limbs of the

"The spectator, having climbed ten steps and left behind him a gateway, reaches a vestibule in which are

statues of Lully, Rameau, Gluck, and Handel. Ten steps of green Swedish marble lead to a second vestibule

for ticketsellers. Visitors who enter by the pavilion reserved for carriages pass through a hallway where

ticket offices are situated. The larger number of the audience, before entering the auditorium, traverse a large

circular vestibule located exactly beneath it. The ceiling of this portion of the building is upheld by sixteen

fluted columns of Jura stone, with white marble capitals, forming a portico. Here servants are to await their

masters, and spectators may remain until their carriages are summoned. The third entrance, which is quite

distinct from the others, is reserved for the Executive. The section of the building set aside for the use of the

Emperor Napoleon was to have included an antechamber for the bodyguards; a salon for the aidesdecamp;

a large salon and a smaller one for the Empress; hat and cloak rooms, etc. Moreover, there were to be in close

proximity to the entrance, stables for three coaches, for the outriders' horses, and for the twentyone

horsemen acting as an escort; a station for a squad of infantry of thirtyone men and ten centgardes, and a

stable for the horses of the latter; and, besides, a salon for fifteen or twenty domestics. Thus arrangements had

to be made to accommodate in this part of the building about one hundred persons, fifty horses, and

halfadozen carriages. The fall of the Empire suggested some changes, but ample provision still exists for

"Its novel conception, perfect fitness, and rare splendor of material, make the grand stairway unquestionably

one of the most remarkable features of the building. It presents to the spectator, who has just passed through

the subscribers' pavilion, a gorgeous picture. From this point he beholds the ceiling formed by the central

landing; this and the columns sustaining it, built of Echaillon stone, are honeycombed with arabesques and

heavy with ornaments; the steps are of white marble, and antique red marble balusters rest on green marble

sockets and support a balustrade of onyx. To the right and to the left of this landing are stairways to the floor,

on a plane with the first row of boxes. On this floor stand thirty monolith columns of Sarrancolin marble,

with white marble bases and capitals. Pilasters of peachblossom and violet stone are against the

corresponding walls. More than fifty blocks had to be extracted from the quarry to find thirty perfect

"The foyer de la danse has particular interest for the habitues of the Opera. It is a place of reunion to which

subscribers to three performances a week are admitted between the acts in accordance with a usage

established in 1870. Three immense lookingglasses cover the back wall of the FOYER, and a chandelier

with one hundred and seven burners supplies it with light. The paintings include twenty oval medallions, in

which are portrayed the twenty danseuses of most celebrity since the opera has existed in France, and four

panels by M. Boulanger, typifying `The War Dance', `The Rustic Dance', `The Dance of Love' and `The

Bacchic Dance.' While the ladies of the ballet receive their admirers in this foyer, they can practise their

steps. Velvetcushioned bars have to this end been secured at convenient points, and the floor has been given

the same slope as that of the stage, so that the labor expended may be thoroughly profitable to the

performance. The singers' foyer, on the same floor, is a much less lively resort than the foyer de la danse, as

vocalists rarely leave their dressingrooms before they are summoned to the stage. Thirty panels with

"Some estimate...may be arrived at by sitting before the concierge an hour or so before the representation

commences. First appear the stage carpenters, who are always seventy, and sometimes, when L'Africaine, for

example, with its ship scene, is the opera, one hundred and ten strong. Then come stage upholsterers, whose

sole duty is to lay carpets, hang curtains, etc.; gasmen, and a squad of firemen. Claqueurs, callboys,

propertymen, dressers, coiffeurs, supernumeraries, and artists, follow. The supernumeraries number about

one hundred; some are hired by the year, but the `masses' are generally recruited at the last minute and are

generally workingmen who seek to add to their meagre earnings. There are about a hundred choristers, and

"Next we behold equeries, whose horses are hoisted on the stage by means of an elevator; electricians who

manage the lightproducing batteries; hydrauliciens to take charge of the waterworks in ballets like La

Source; artificers who prepare the conflagration in Le Profeta; florists who make ready Margarita's garden,

and a host of minor employees. This personnel is provided for as follows: Eighty dressingrooms are

reserved for the artists, each including a small antechamber, the dressingroom proper, and a little closet.

Besides these apartments, the Opera has a dressingroom for sixty male, and another for fifty female

choristers; a third for thirtyfour male dancers; four dressingrooms for twenty female dancers of different

A few figures taken from the article will suggest the enormous capacity and the perfect convenience of the

house. "There are 2,531 doors and 7,593 keys; 14 furnaces and grates heat the house; the gaspipes if

connected would form a pipe almost 16 miles long; 9 reservoirs, and two tanks hold 22,222 gallons of water

and distribute their contents through 22,829 25 feet of piping; 538 persons have places assigned wherein to

change their attire. The musicians have a foyer with 100 closets for their instruments."

The author remarks of his visit to the Opera House that it "was almost as bewildering as it was agreeable.

Giant stairways and colossal halls, huge frescoes and enormous mirrors, gold and marble, satin and velvet,

In a recent letter Mr. Andre Castaigne, whose remarkable pictures illustrate the text, speaks of a river or lake

under the Opera House and mentions the fact that there are now also three metropolitan railway tunnels, one