Chapter: Chapter V The Enchanted Violin


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

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

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

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

MONSIEUR:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Daae seemed not to recover his strength until the summer, when the
whole family went to stay at Perros-Guirec, in a far-away corner of
Brittany, where the sea was of the same color as in his own country.
Often he would play his saddest tunes on the beach and pretend that the
sea stopped its roaring to listen to them.  And then he induced Mamma
Valerius to indulge a queer whim of his.  At the time of the "pardons,"
or Breton pilgrimages, the village festival and dances, he went off
with his fiddle, as in the old days, and was allowed to take his
daughter with him for a week.  They gave the smallest hamlets music to
last them for a year and slept at night in a barn, refusing a bed at
the inn, lying close together on the straw, as when they were so poor
in Sweden.  At the same time, they were very neatly dressed, made no
collection, refused the halfpence offered them; and the people around
could not understand the conduct of this rustic fiddler, who tramped
the roads with that pretty child who sang like an angel from Heaven.
They followed them from village to village.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There was one story that began:

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

And another:

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

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

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

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

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

Daddy was beginning to cough at that time.

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

"Mademoiselle, I shall never forget you!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There was a silence; and then Raoul asked:

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

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

"Me?  You are dreaming, my friend!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She was incapable of lying.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Then you were listening behind the door?"

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

"You heard what?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Christine!"

"Raoul!"

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

While Christine remained locked in her room, Raoul was at his wit's end
what to do.  He refused to breakfast.  He was terribly concerned and
bitterly grieved to see the hours, which he had hoped to find so sweet,
slip past without the presence of the young Swedish girl.  Why did she
not come to roam with him through the country where they had so many
memories in common?  He heard that she had had a mass said, that
morning, for the repose of her father's soul and spent a long time
praying in the little church and on the fiddler's tomb.  Then, as she
seemed to have nothing more to do at Perros and, in fact, was doing
nothing there, why did she not go back to Paris at once?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Who else heard him, Christine?"

"You, my friend."

"I?  I heard the Angel of Music?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"So you see! ... Well?"

The viscount summoned up all his courage.

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

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

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

The hours passed slowly.  It was about half-past eleven when he
distinctly heard some one moving, with a light, stealthy step, in the
room next to his.  Then Christine had not gone to bed!  Without
troubling for a reason, Raoul dressed, taking care not to make a sound,
and waited.  Waited for what?  How could he tell?  But his heart
thumped in his chest when he heard Christine's door turn slowly on its
hinges.  Where could she be going, at this hour, when every one was
fast asleep at Perros?  Softly opening the door, he saw Christine's
white form, in the moonlight, slipping along the passage.  She went
down the stairs and he leaned over the baluster above her.  Suddenly he
heard two voices in rapid conversation.  He caught one sentence: "Don't
lose the key."

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

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

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

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

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

R. "No, monsieur, no, although, when walking behind her, I took no
pains to deaden the sound of my footsteps.  In fact, I was anxious that
she should turn round and see me.  I realized that I had no excuse for
following her and that this way of spying on her was unworthy of me.
But she seemed not to hear me and acted exactly as though I were not
there.  She quietly left the quay and then suddenly walked quickly up
the road.  The church-clock had struck a quarter to twelve and I
thought that this must have made her hurry, for she began almost to run
and continued hastening until she came to the church."

Q. "Was the gate open?"

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

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

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

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

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

Q. "Are you at all superstitious?"

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

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

R. "Very healthy and peaceful, I assure you.  Mlle. Daae's curious
action in going out at that hour had worried me at first; but, as soon
as I saw her go to the churchyard, I thought that she meant to fulfil
some pious duty on her father's grave and I considered this so natural
that I recovered all my calmness.  I was only surprised that she had
not heard me walking behind her, for my footsteps were quite audible on
the hard snow.  But she must have been taken up with her intentions and
I resolved not to disturb her.  She knelt down by her father's grave,
made the sign of the cross and began to pray.  At that moment, it
struck midnight.  At the last stroke, I saw Mlle. Daae life{sic} her
eyes to the sky and stretch out her arms as though in ecstasy.  I was
wondering what the reason could be, when I myself raised my head and
everything within me seemed drawn toward the invisible, WHICH WAS
PLAYING THE MOST PERFECT MUSIC!  Christine and I knew that music; we
had heard it as children.  But it had never been executed with such
divine art, even by M. Daae.  I remembered all that Christine had told
me of the Angel of Music.  The air was The Resurrection of Lazarus,
which old M. Daae used to play to us in his hours of melancholy and of
faith.  If Christine's Angel had existed, he could not have played
better, that night, on the late musician's violin.  When the music
stopped, I seemed to hear a noise from the skulls in the heap of bones;
it was as though they were chuckling and I could not help shuddering."

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

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

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

R. "First a skull rolled to my feet ... then another ... then another
... It was as if I were the mark of that ghastly game of bowls.  And I
had an idea that false step must have destroyed the balance of the
structure behind which our musician was concealed.  This surmise seemed
to be confirmed when I saw a shadow suddenly glide along the sacristy
wall.  I ran up.  The shadow had already pushed open the door and
entered the church.  But I was quicker than the shadow and caught hold
of a corner of its cloak.  At that moment, we were just in front of the
high altar; and the moonbeams fell straight upon us through the
stained-glass windows of the apse.  As I did not let go of the cloak,
the shadow turned round; and I saw a terrible death's head, which
darted a look at me from a pair of scorching eyes.  I felt as if I were
face to face with Satan; and, in the presence of this unearthly
apparition, my heart gave way, my courage failed me ... and I remember
nothing more until I recovered consciousness at the Setting Sun."




Chapter VI  A Visit to Box Five


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

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

They were almost alone in the huge, gloomy house; and a great silence
surrounded them.  It was the time when most of the stage-hands go out
for a drink.  The staff had left the boards for the moment, leaving a
scene half set.  A few rays of light, a wan, sinister light, that
seemed to have been stolen from an expiring luminary, fell through some
opening or other upon an old tower that raised its pasteboard
battlements on the stage; everything, in this deceptive light, adopted
a fantastic shape.  In the orchestra stalls, the drugget covering them
looked like an angry sea, whose glaucous waves had been suddenly
rendered stationary by a secret order from the storm phantom, who, as
everybody knows, is called Adamastor.  MM. Moncharmin and Richard were
the shipwrecked mariners amid this motionless turmoil of a calico sea.
They made for the left boxes, plowing their way like sailors who leave
their ship and try to struggle to the shore.  The eight great polished
columns stood up in the dusk like so many huge piles supporting the
threatening, crumbling, big-bellied cliffs whose layers were
represented by the circular, parallel, waving lines of the balconies of
the grand, first and second tiers of boxes.  At the top, right on top
of the cliff, lost in M. Lenepveu's copper ceiling, figures grinned and
grimaced, laughed and jeered at MM. Richard and Moncharmin's distress.
And yet these figures were usually very serious.  Their names were
Isis, Amphitrite, Hebe, Pandora, Psyche, Thetis, Pomona, Daphne,
Clytie, Galatea and Arethusa.  Yes, Arethusa herself and Pandora, whom
we all know by her box, looked down upon the two new managers of the
Opera, who ended by clutching at some piece of wreckage and from there
stared silently at Box Five on the grand tier.

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

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

Box Five is just like all the other grand tier boxes.  There is nothing
to distinguish it from any of the others.  M. Moncharmin and M.
Richard, ostensibly highly amused and laughing at each other, moved the
furniture of the box, lifted the cloths and the chairs and particularly
examined the arm-chair in which "the man's voice" used to sit.  But
they saw that it was a respectable arm-chair, with no magic about it.
Altogether, the box was the most ordinary box in the world, with its
red hangings, its chairs, its carpet and its ledge covered in red
velvet.  After, feeling the carpet in the most serious manner possible,
and discovering nothing more here or anywhere else, they went down to
the corresponding box on the pit tier below.  In Box Five on the pit
tier, which is just inside the first exit from the stalls on the left,
they found nothing worth mentioning either.

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




Chapter VII  Faust and What Followed


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

MY DEAR MANAGERS:

So it is to be war between us?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Who's Lachenel?" asked Richard.

"He's your stud-groom."

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

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

"And what does this groom do?"

"He has the chief management of the stable."

"What stable?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"He can come in."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Twelve," repeated Richard.

"Eleven," repeated Lachenel.

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

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

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

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

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

"How?"

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

"What do your stablemen say?"

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

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

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

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

Richard gave a jump.

"What, you too!  You too!"

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

"What did you see?"

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

"And did you run after them?"

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

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

"And sack my stable?"

"Oh, of course!  Good morning."

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

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

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

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

"All right, say no more about it."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The truth is that, if there was a cabal, it was led by Carlotta herself
against poor Christine, who had no suspicion of it.  Carlotta had never
forgiven Christine for the triumph which she had achieved when taking
her place at a moment's notice.  When Carlotta heard of the astounding
reception bestowed upon her understudy, she was at once cured of an
incipient attack of bronchitis and a bad fit of sulking against the
management and lost the slightest inclination to shirk her duties.
From that time, she worked with all her might to "smother" her rival,
enlisting the services of influential friends to persuade the managers
not to give Christine an opportunity for a fresh triumph.  Certain
newspapers which had begun to extol the talent of Christine now
interested themselves only in the fame of Carlotta.  Lastly, in the
theater itself, the celebrated, but heartless and soulless diva made
the most scandalous remarks about Christine and tried to cause her
endless minor unpleasantnesses.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"That's one!" said Moncharmin.

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

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

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

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

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

"Did you give them their tickets?"

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

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

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

"With whom?  The ghost?"

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

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

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

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

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

"Then Daae has friends?" he asked.

"Yes, she has."

"Whom?"

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

"The Comte de Chagny?"

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

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

"That's his brother, the viscount."

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

The stage rang with gay song:

            "Red or white liquor,
            Coarse or fine!
            What can it matter,
            So we have wine?"

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

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

         "No, my lord, not a lady am I, nor yet a beauty,
         And do not need an arm to help me on my way,"

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

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

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

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

The scene represented Margarita's garden:

            "Gentle flow'rs in the dew,
                Be message from me ..."

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

"What a queer girl she is!" said one of Carlotta's friends in the
stalls, almost aloud.  "The other day she was divine; and to-night
she's simply bleating.  She has no experience, no training."

            "Gentle flow'rs, lie ye there
                And tell her from me ..."

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

            "Would she but deign to hear me
            And with one smile to cheer me ..."

"The little baggage!" growled the count.

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

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

MY DEAR LITTLE PLAYFELLOW:

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

Thunders of applause.  Carlotta made her entrance.

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

When Margarita had finished singing the ballad of the KING OF THULE,
she was loudly cheered and again when she came to the end of the jewel
song:

            "Ah, the joy of past compare
            These jewels bright to wear! ..."

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

Faust had knelt on one knee:

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

And Margarita replied:

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

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

"Co-ack!"

There was consternation on Carlotta's face and consternation on the
faces of all the audience.  The two managers in their box could not
suppress an exclamation of horror.  Every one felt that the thing was
not natural, that there was witchcraft behind it.  That toad smelt of
brimstone.  Poor, wretched, despairing, crushed Carlotta!

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

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

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

This happened.

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

"Well, go on!"

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

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

"I feel without alarm ..."

The audience also felt, but not without alarm. ..

        "I feel without alarm ...
        I feel without alarm--co-ack!
        With its melody enwind me--co-ack!
        And all my heart sub--co-ack!"

The toad also had started afresh!

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

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

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

The papers of the day state that there were numbers wounded and one
killed.  The chandelier had crashed down upon the head of the wretched
woman who had come to the Opera for the first time in her life, the one
whom M. Richard had appointed to succeed Mme. Giry, the ghost's
box-keeper, in her functions!  She died on the spot and, the next
morning, a newspaper appeared with this heading:

TWO HUNDRED KILOS ON THE HEAD OF A CONCIERGE

That was her sole epitaph!




Chapter VIII  The Mysterious Brougham


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

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

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

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

In their daily intercourse, they showed themselves very impatient,
except with Mme. Giry, who had been reinstated in her functions.  And
their reception of the Vicomte de Chagny, when he came to ask about
Christine, was anything but cordial.  They merely told him that she was
taking a holiday.  He asked how long the holiday was for, and they
replied curtly that it was for an unlimited period, as Mlle. Daae had
requested leave of absence for reasons of health.

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

"We don't know."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Madame ... where is Christine?"

And the old lady replied calmly:

"She is with her good genius!"

"What good genius?" exclaimed poor Raoul.

"Why, the Angel of Music!"

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

"You must not tell anybody!"

"You can rely on me," said Raoul.

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

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

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

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

"She used to speak of you every day."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I don't follow ..."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"In Heaven!"

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

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

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

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

Raoul tore at his gloves.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Christine!"

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

He called out again:  "Christine!"

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

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

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

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

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

DEAR:

Go to the masked ball at the Opera on the night after to-morrow.  At
twelve o'clock, be in the little room behind the chimney-place of the
big crush-room. Stand near the door that leads to the Rotunda.  Don't
mention this appointment to any one on earth.  Wear a white domino and
be carefully masked.  As you love me, do not let yourself be
recognized.  CHRISTINE.




Chapter IX  At the Masked Ball


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

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

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

The Angel of Music! ... For three months the Angel of Music had been
giving Christine lessons ...  Ah, he was a punctual singing-master! ...
And now he was taking her for drives in the Bois! ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Raoul tried to overcome the girl's resistance by force, but she
repelled him with a strength which he would not have suspected in her.
He understood, or thought he understood, and at once lost his temper.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Raoul! ... How can you?"

"I shall die of shame!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"But look here!" he cried.  "Can't you tell me what all this means!
...  You are free, there is no one to interfere with you...  You go
about Paris ...  You put on a domino to come to the ball...  Why do you
not go home? ... What have you been doing this past fortnight? ... What
is this tale about the Angel of Music, which you have been telling
Mamma Valerius?  Some one may have taken you in, played upon your
innocence.  I was a witness of it myself, at Perros ... but you know
what to believe now!  You seem to me quite sensible, Christine.  You
know what you are doing ...  And meanwhile Mamma Valerius lies waiting
for you at home and appealing to your 'good genius!' ... Explain
yourself, Christine, I beg of you!  Any one might have been deceived as
I was.  What is this farce?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What coolness!" he said to himself.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To me?  To whom?

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

"Who is this Erik?" he said.

 We return to M. Firmin Richard and M. Armand Moncharmin as they decide to look into the matter of Box Five. They make their way to that box, and are rather distressed. They enter the box and see a shape in it. Neither man says anything, but they spontaneously seize each other's hand. The figure disappears, and when they leave they feel as if they were victims of an illusion. Both are ostensibly very amused and laugh at each other; they move the furniture of the box, life the cloths and the chairs, and examine the arm-chair in which the ghost's voice used to sit. They find nothing, and think that someone is making a fool of them. They decide to watch the coming Saturday's Faust performance from Box Five. On that Saturday morning, the managers find a letter from the Opera Ghost, in which he declares that he takes the two to be at war with him. He demands that his private box be returned to him, that Christine sings the part of Margarita , that Mme. Giry be kept as the box-keeper, and that, if they accept to the above conditions, they should deliver their letter via Mme. Giry. If they refuse, there will be a curse upon Faust in the Opera House that night. Richard reacts in anger. Just then, Mercier, the acting-manager, enters and says that Lachenel, the stud-groom , wishes to see one of the managers. Lachenel asks them to get rid of the stablemen, as one of the horses, Cesar, has been stolen. They try to figure out who could have done it, and Lachenel thinks it is the ghost. Richard finds Lachenel's story about the ghost running away with the horse absurd, but nonetheless settles Lachenel down with some patience. Richard also invites his concierge, her husband, and her brother to the performance, having persuaded his concierge to take Mme. Giry's place as box-keeper. The performance runs smoothly, until Carlotta - who is playing Margarita - is singing a reply to Faust and suddenly croaks like a toad. The uproar in the house is indescribable, and everyone looks on in horror. Richard and Moncharmin turn pale, and this incident fills them with dread. They feel the ghost beside them, and they dare not to make a movement or say something that would tell the ghost that they knew that he was there. Richard calls out to Carlotta and tells her to go on. Carlotta's voice fills the house again, but she croaks again and again. The house breaks into a wild tumult, and the two managers collapse in their chairs, not even daring to turn around. They hear his voice in their right ears, saying that her voice is going to bring down the chandelier. They look up and see the chandelier coming down, smashing into the middle of the stalls. The newspaper states that many people were wounded, and one was killed. The chandelier crashed down upon the head of Richard's concierge, the one appointed to succeed Mme. Giry. That tragic evening turns out to be bad for everyone. Carlotta feels ill, and Christine disappears after the performance. Two weeks pass before she is seen by anyone. Raoul is the first to be astonished by her absence and writes to Mme. Valerius' flat, but receives no reply. Raoul goes to the managers to inquire of her absence, but managers are anything but calm and helpful. They are horrified by what happened that Saturday evening. They say that Christine had requested a leave of absence for health-related reasons. Raoul leaves the Opera House prey to the gloomiest of thoughts and hurries of Mamma Valerius. He sees Mamma Valerius, who tells him that Christine is with the Angel of Music. She also tells him that Christine fancies Raoul but cannot marry him, because the Angel of Music has forbidden her from marrying anyone at all. He says that if she gets married, then he will leave her forever. She also tells Raoul that she went to see the Angel of Music in Perros, where he promised to play her The Resurrection of Lazarus on her father's violin. She reveals that Angel lives in Heaven and has been training Christine for about three months. Raoul walks home to his brother's house in a pitiful state, and his brother consoles him. His brother offers to take him out to dinner that night and says that Christine had been seen the night before in the Bois. Raoul dresses in a frantic haste, leaves his brother at dinner early, and finds himself alone in a cab behind the Longchamp racecourse. It is bitterly cold, and a little while later he sees a woman leaning her head from the window. He recognizes Christine and calls out to her, but as the carriage passes by him, the window is closed. The girl's face disappears, and the carriage runs into the distance. Raoul is devastated, and the next morning he receives a letter from Christine, which states that he should go to masked ball at the Opera in two nights, and at midnight he should be in the little room behind the chimney-place of the big crush-room. She instructs him to wear a white domino, to be carefully masked, and to not tell anyone on earth about it. The letter was all Raoul needed to revive his hope. The ball turns out to be an exceptional affair, and at midnight Raoul goes to the rendezvous point. He does not wait long, and a black domino passes and gives a quick squeeze to the tips of his fingers. He understands that it is Christine, and he follows her. At the same time, he could not help but notice a man dressed all in scarlet who was causing a sensation. His cloak is embroidered in gold letters with that spell out" 'Don't touch me! I am Red Death stalking abroad!' Then one person tries to touch him, and a skeleton hand shoots out of a sleeve and violently seizes his wrist. The man - feeling the furious grasp of Death - utters a cry of pain and terror. Raoul recognizes the mysterious man as the death's head of Perros-Guirec. Christine and Raoul go up two floors; Christine opens the door to a private box and beckons Raoul to follow her. Christine tells Raoul to remain at the back of the box and to remain hidden. Christine listens for the mysterious man, and Raoul says that the Angel of Music will not escape him. He tries to leave, but Christine tells Raoul - in the name of their love - to stop. Raoul replies angrily saying that Christine never loved him, and that she has taken advantage of him. He bursts into tears, but Christine thinks only of keeping him from leaving the box. Raoul asks for her forgiveness, and Christine says she might forgive him one day. She bids him farewell with such authority that he dares not move a step. He goes to Christine's dressing room, and hides in the inner room . Raoul hears Christine exclaim "Poor Erik!" Raoul wonders who Erik is, and he hears a voice without a body sing. Raoul has never heard anything more absolutely and heroically sweet or irresistibly triumphant. He draws back the curtain that hid him and walks to where Christine is standing. Christine walks toward her image in the glass mirror, and the image comes toward her. Raoul sees many Christines spinning around him, and suddenly she disappears. He cries and wonders aloud who Erik is. The day after Christine vanished, Raoul calls to inquire about her at Mamma Valerius'. He sees Christine seated by the bedside of the old lady, and he no longer recognizes the tragic face of the day before: Christine's face and complexion have returned to normal. Raoul and Christine begin to argue: Raoul reveals to Mamma Valerius that the Angel of Music is victimizing Christine. Christine tells Raoul to mind his own business, and that she does not intend to marry anyone ever. Raoul asks Christine where she got the ring that is on her finger, and when she refuses to tell him Raoul accuses her of receiving it from Erik. Christine turns white and stammers, asking Raoul who told him. He reveals that he was in her dressing room and overheard her. Christine tells Raoul to forget the man's voice and his name. She tells them to never fathom the mystery of the man, because it is very terrible. Christine, in exchange, promises to send for Raoul the next evening.

