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Is it easier actually to be good when we are perceived to be good? How much of true character is portrayed in a young face?
The ghost is the best and the worst in all of us, he is all of us who have ever walked alone, and hated themselves, and longed for redemption.
“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.”
He knew that he loved. He wanted to know whom he hated.
lover though he was, he did not even think of stealing a ribbon that would have given him the perfume of the woman he loved.
None will ever be a true Parisian who has not learned to wear a mask of gaiety over his sorrows and one of sadness, boredom or indifference over his inward joy.
I have not forgotten the little boy who went into the sea to rescue my scarf.
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 Daaé.
“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.”
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.
“You will hear him one day, my child! When I am in Heaven, I will send him to you!”
“Did your father tell you that I love you, Christine, and that I can not live without you?”
“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.
How can you have thought that, if you did not think I loved you?”
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.
‘Your soul is a beautiful thing, child, and I thank you. No emperor ever received so fair a gift. The angels wept to-night.’
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!
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
OH!
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.
He’s CLOCKING
“She used to speak of you every day.”
“He forbids her! . . . The Angel of Music forbids her to marry! . . .”
Oh my god he’s EVIL😭
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.
Nice
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.
… relax
“You will beg my pardon, one day, for all those ugly words, Raoul, and when you do I shall forgive you!”
SHE IS A SAINT
“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!”
Whatever… dick
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!”
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.
When you went to your dressing-room, did you not say, ‘Poor Erik’? Well, Christine, there was a poor Raoul who overheard you.”
Eye roll
“Soon we shall go farther and faster than the clouds, to the end of the world, and then you will leave me, Raoul. But, if, when the moment comes for you to take me away, I refuse to go with you— well you must carry me off by force!”
“No, no, you shall never again hear him tell you that he loves you! You shall not see his tears! Let us fly, Christine, let us fly at once!”
‘You are in no danger, so long as you do not touch the mask.’
‘It is true, Christine! . . . I am not an Angel, nor a genius, nor a ghost . . . I am Erik!’ ”
“Does he love you so much?” “He would commit murder for me.”
… nice
Why, you love him! Your fear, your terror, all of that is just love and love of the most exquisite kind, the kind which people do not admit even to themselves,” said Raoul bitterly. “The kind that gives you a thrill, when you think of it. . . . Picture it: a man who lives in a palace underground!”
He fills me with horror and I do not hate him. How can I hate him, Raoul? Think of Erik at my feet, in the house on the lake, underground. He accuses himself, he curses himself, he implores my forgiveness! . . . He confesses his cheat. He loves me! He lays at my feet an immense and tragic love. . . . He has carried me off for love! . . . He has imprisoned me with him, underground, for love! . . . But he respects me: he crawls, he moans, he weeps! . . . And, when I stood up, Raoul, and told him that I could only despise him if he did not, then and there, give me liberty . . . he offered it . .
...more
I felt as if I were entering the room of a dead person.
but do you love me? If Erik were good-looking, would you love me, Christine?”
God…. Maybe…
Are people so unhappy when they love?” “Yes, Christine, when they love and are not sure of being loved.”
“No, he is not a ghost; he is a man of Heaven and earth, that is all.”
A ghost who bleeds is less dangerous!”
a ghost who bleeds can always be found.”
In the last act when she began the invocation to the angels, she made all the members of the audience feel as though they too had wings.
Raoul rushed on the stage, in a mad fit of love and despair. “Christine! Christine!” he moaned, calling to her as he felt that she must be calling to him from the depths of that dark pit to which the monster had carried her. “Christine! Christine!”
He bent forward, he listened, . . . he wandered over the stage like a madman. Ah, to descend, to descend into that pit of darkness every entrance to which was closed to him, . . . for the stairs that led below the stage were forbidden to one and all that night! “Christine! Christine! . . .”
But you love Christine Daaé, do you not?” “I worship the ground she stands on!
“If you can do nothing for Christine, at least let me die for her!”
Fortunately, I come from a country where we are too fond of fantastic things not to know them through and through;
Ever since I had discovered Erik installed in the Opera, I lived in a perpetual terror of his horrible fancies, not in so far as I was concerned, but I dreaded everything for others.10 And whenever some accident, some fatal event happened, I always thought to myself, “I should not be surprised if that were Erik,”
Jesus
he had become the most virtuous of men since he was loved for himself—
