The Phantom of the Opera
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