The Phantom of the Opera

G >> Gaston Leroux >> The Phantom of the Opera

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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

I 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.

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