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“He is extraordinarily thin and his dress-coat hangs on a skeleton frame. His eyes are so deep that you can hardly see the fixed pupils. You just see two big black holes, as in a dead man’s skull. His skin, which is stretched across his bones like a drumhead, is not white, but a nasty yellow. His nose is so little worth talking about that you can’t see it side-face; and the absence of that nose is a horrible thing to look at. All the hair he has is three or four long dark locks on his forehead and behind his ears.”
Those who heard her say that her voice, in these passages, was seraphic;
“Christine, you must love me!” And Christine’s voice, infinitely sad and trembling, as though accompanied by tears, replied: “How can you talk like that? When I sing only for you!”
“Your soul is a beautiful thing, child,” replied the grave man’s voice, “and I thank you. No emperor ever received so fair a gift. The angels wept tonight.”
If you wish to live in peace, you must not begin by taking away my private box.
Your Most Humble and Obedient Servant, Opera Ghost.
“By the way,” said Moncharmin, “they seem to be greatly interested in that little Christine Daaé!”
And that evening Box Five was sold.
M. Richard glared at his subordinate, who thenceforth made it his business to display a face of utter consternation.
Nobody could see the ghost in his box, but everybody could hear him.
M. Isidore Saack, who had had a leg broken by the ghost!
Only the inspector, warned by experience, was careful not to laugh, while Mme. Giry ventured to adopt an attitude that was positively threatening.
“you’d do better to do as M. Poligny did, who found out for himself.” “Found out about what?” asked Moncharmin, who had never been so much amused in his life. “About the ghost, of course!
“Still, that doesn’t let us know how the Opera ghost came to ask you for a footstool,” insisted M. Moncharmin. “Well, from that evening, no one tried to take the ghost’s private box from him. The manager gave orders that he was to have it at each performance. And, whenever he came, he asked me for a footstool.” “Tut, tut! A ghost asking for a footstool! Then this ghost of yours is a woman?”
The voice was sitting in the corner chair, on the right, in the front row.”
he always gives me two francs, sometimes five, sometimes even ten,
Only, since people have begun to annoy him again, he gives me nothing at all.”
dismal
Daaé’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
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.
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.
“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.
“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!’”
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.”
“Well, Christine, I think that somebody is making game of you.”
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.
“I did have twelve, but I have only eleven since Cesar was stolen.”
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.
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!”
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:
Their own friends did not recognize them: they had lost all their gaiety and spirits.
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.
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.
“I am mistress of my own actions, M. de Chagny: you have no right to control them, and I will beg you to desist henceforth. As to what I have done during the last fortnight, there is only one man in the world who has the right to demand an account of me: my husband! Well, I have no husband and I never mean to marry!”
“M. de Chagny,” the girl declared coldly, “you shall never know!”
“But . . . but,” she continued, holding out her two hands to Raoul, or rather giving them to him, as though she had suddenly resolved to make him a present of them, “but if we can not be married, we can . . . we can be engaged! Nobody
was the prettiest game in the world and they enjoyed it like the children that they were. Oh, the wonderful speeches they made to each other and the eternal vows they exchanged! They played at hearts as other children might play at ball; only, as it was really their two hearts that they flung to and fro, they had to be very, very handy to catch them, each time, without hurting them.
And she literally dragged him away, for he was obstinate and wanted to remain by the trap-door; that hole attracted him. Suddenly, the trap-door was closed and so quickly that they did not even see the hand that worked it; and they remained quite dazed.
“Suppose it were he! ” “Are you afraid of him?” “No, no, of course not,” she said.
“Hush! Hush, in Heaven’s name! Suppose he heard you, you unfortunate Raoul!” And Christine’s eyes stared wildly at everything around her. “I will remove you from his power, Christine, I swear it. And you shall not think of him any more.” “Is it possible?”
“If I do not go back to him, terrible misfortunes may happen! . . . But I can’t do it, I can’t do it! . . . I know one ought to be sorry for people who live underground. . . . But he is too horrible! And yet the time is at hand; I have only a day left; and, if I do not go, he will come and fetch me with his voice.
Oh, those tears, Raoul, those tears in the two black eye-sockets of the death’s head! I can not see those tears flow again!”
“I had heard him for three months without seeing him. The first time I heard it, I thought, as you did, that that adorable voice was singing in another room. I went out and looked everywhere; but, as you know, Raoul, my dressing-room is very much by itself; and I could not find the voice outside my room, whereas it went on steadily inside.
And that, dear, was why I refused to recognize or see you when I met you on the stage or in the passages. Meanwhile, the hours during which
the white horse out of the Profeta, which I had so often fed with sugar and sweets. I remembered that, one evening, there was a rumor in the theater that the horse had disappeared and that it had been stolen by the Opera ghost.
‘It is true, Christine! . . . I am not an Angel, nor a genius, nor a ghost. . . . I am Erik!’”
He said that he had no name and no country and that he had taken the name of Erik by accident.
noticed that there was no mirror in the whole apartment. I was going to remark upon this, but Erik had already sat down to the piano.
and not a ray of light from the sockets, for, as I learned later, you can not see his blazing eyes except in the dark.
terribly jealous of you and I had to tell him that you were soon going away. . . . Then, at last, after a fortnight of that horrible captivity, during which I was filled with pity, enthusiasm, despair and horror by turns, he believed me when I said, ‘I will come back!’”
