The Phantom of the Opera

by Gaston Leroux

And he sent every one away, except Raoul and the maid, who looked at Raoul with eyes of the most undisguised astonishment. She had never seen him before and yet dared not question him; and the doctor imagined that the young man was only acting as he did because he had the right to.

At one and the same time, he had learned what love meant, and hatred. He knew that he loved. He wanted to know whom he hated.

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.

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.

Venus de Milo.

he had loved an angel and now he despised a woman!

“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.

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

‘I sometimes work at it for fourteen days and nights together, during which I live on music only, and then I rest for years at a time.’

But the stage-manager, holding his chin in the hollow of his right hand, which is the attitude of profound thought, said:

One can get used to everything . . . if one wishes.