Chapter VI

We left M. Firmin Richard and M. Armand Moncharmin at the moment when they were deciding to visit the Box Five.

They crossed the stage 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.

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.

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, 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 they saw that it was a respectable arm-chair, with no magic about it.

Altogether, the box was the most ordinary box in the world, with its red hangings, its chairs, its carpet and its ledge covered in red velvet. So they went down. They found nothing worth mentioning either.

“Those people are all making fools of us!” Firmin Richard exclaimed. “It will be Faust on Saturday: let us both see the performance from Box Five on the grand tier!”

Chapter VII

On the Saturday morning, on reaching their office, the managers found a letter from O. G. worded in these terms:

My dear Managers:

So it is to be war between us?

If you still care for peace, here is my ultimatum. It consists of the four following conditions:

1. You must give me back my private box; and I wish it to be at my free disposal from henceforward.

2. The part of Margarita shall be sung this evening by Christine Daae. Never mind about Carlotta; she will be ill.

3. I absolutely insist upon the good and loyal services of Mme. Giry, my box-keeper, whom you will reinstate in her functions forthwith.

4. Let me know by a letter handed to Mme. Giry that you accept, as your predecessors did, the conditions in my memorandum-book relating to my monthly allowance. I will inform you later how you are to pay it to me.

If you refuse, you will give Faust tonight in a house with a curse upon it.

O. G.

“Look here, I’m getting sick of him, sick of him!” shouted Richard, bringing his fists down on his office-table.

Just then, Mercier, the acting-manager, entered.

“Lachenel would like to see one of you gentlemen,” he said. “He says that his business is urgent and he seems quite upset.”

“Who’s Lachenel?” asked Richard.

“He’s your stud-groom.”

“What do you mean? My stud-groom?”

“Yes, sir,” explained Mercier, “there are several grooms at the Opera and M. Lachenel is at the head of them.”

“And what does this groom do?”

“He has the chief management of the stable.”

“What stable?”

“Why, yours, sir, the stable of the Opera.”

“Is there a stable at the Opera? Upon my word, I didn’t know. Where is it?”

“In the cellars, on the Rotunda side. It’s a very important department; we have twelve horses.”

“Twelve horses! And what for, in Heaven’s name?”

“Why, we want trained horses for the processions in the Juive, The Profeta and so on. It is the grooms’ business to teach them. M. Lachenel is very clever at it”.

“Very well… but what does he want?”

“I don’t know; I never saw him in such a state”.

“He can come in”.

M. Lachenel came in, carrying a riding-whip.

“Good morning, M. Lachenel,” said Richard. “To what do we owe the honor of your visit?”

“Mr. Manager, I have come to ask you to get rid of the whole stable.”

“What, you want to get rid of our horses?”

“I’m not talking of the horses, but of the stablemen.”

“How many stablemen have you, M. Lachenel?”

“Six stablemen! That’s at least two too many.”

“I think,” said Richard. “We don’t need more than four stablemen for twelve horses.”

“Eleven,” said the head riding-master, correcting him.

“Twelve,” repeated Richard.

“Eleven,” repeated Lachenel.

“Oh, the acting-manager told me that you had twelve horses!”

“I did have twelve, but I have only eleven since Cesar was stolen.”

“Has Cesar been stolen?” cried the acting-manager. “Cesar, the white horse in the Profeta? How?”

“I don’t know. Nobody knows. That’s why I have come to ask you to sack the whole stable.”

“What do your stablemen say?”

“All sorts of nonsense”.

“But, after all, M. Lachenel,” cried Richard, “you must have some idea.”

“Yes, I have,” M. Lachenel declared. “I have an idea and I’ll tell you what it is. There’s no doubt about it in my mind.” He walked up to the two managers and whispered. “It’s the ghost who did the trick!”

Richard gave a jump.

“What, you too! You too! What did you see?”

“I saw, as clearly as I now see you, a black shadow riding a white horse that was Cesar!”

“And did you run after them?”

“I did and I shouted, but they were too fast for me and disappeared in the darkness of the underground gallery.”

M. Richard rose. “That will do, M. Lachenel. You can go… We will lodge a complaint against the ghost.”

“And sack my stable?”

“Oh, of course! Good morning.”

M. Lachenel bowed and withdrew.

At that moment the door opened. Mme. Giry entered without ceremony, holding a letter in her hand, and said hurriedly:

“I beg your pardon, excuse me, gentlemen, but I had a letter this morning from the Opera ghost. He told me to come to you, that you had something to…”

She did not complete the sentence. She saw Firmin Richard’s face; and it was a terrible sight. He seemed ready to burst. He said nothing, he could not speak. He pushed Mme. Giry, and she found herself in the passage, with her indignant yells, her violent protests and threats.

About the same time, Carlotta rang for her maid, who brought her letters to her bed. Among them was an anonymous missive, written in red ink, which ran:

If you appear tonight, you must be prepared for a great misfortune at the moment when you open your mouth to sing… a misfortune worse than death.

The letter took away Carlotta’s appetite for breakfast. She sat up in bed and thought hard.

She thought herself, at that time, the victim of a thousand jealous attempts and went about saying that she had a secret enemy who had sworn to ruin her. The truth is that, if there was a cabal, it was led by Carlotta herself against poor Christine, who had no suspicion of it. Carlotta had never forgiven Christine for the triumph which she had achieved. From that time, she worked with all her might to “smother” her rival. In the theater, the celebrated, but heartless and soulless diva made the most scandalous remarks about Christine.

Carlotta got up.

“We shall see,” she said, adding a few oaths in her native Spanish.

The first thing she saw, when looking out of her window, was a hearse. She was very superstitious; and the hearse and the letter convinced her that she was running the most serious dangers that evening.

It was five o’clock when the post brought a second anonymous letter. 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 tonight.

Carlotta sneered, shrugged her handsome shoulders and sang two or three notes to reassure herself.

“We shall see,” she said again.

The first act passed without incident, which did not surprise Carlotta, because Margarita does not sing in this act. As for the managers, they looked at each other, when the curtain fell.

“The ghost is late,” said Firmin Richard.

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 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 I wanted her to have a good seat.”

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.

“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. The door of the box suddenly opened to admit the startled stage-manager.

“What’s the matter?” they both asked.

“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.

Carlotta was received with enthusiastic applause. 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 tonight she’s simply bleating. She has no experience, no training.”

The viscount put his head under his hands and wept. The count, behind him, viciously gnawed his mustache, shrugged his shoulders and frowned.

Raoul thought only of the letter which he received on his return to Paris:

My dear little playfellow:

You must have the courage not to see me again, not to talk to 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.

When Margarita had finished singing the ballad, she was loudly cheered.

Faust had knelt on one knee. At that moment, the terrible thing happened! Carlotta croaked like a toad:

“Co-ack!”

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. Poor, wretched, despairing, crushed Carlotta!

The uproar in the house was indescribable. Everybody knew how perfect an instrument her voice was. But here that toad was incomprehensible! That sound, that infernal noise issue from her throat!

Meanwhile, in Box Five, Moncharmin and Richard had turned very pale. This extraordinary and inexplicable incident filled them with a dread. 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. What was going to happen?

This happened.

“Co-ack!” Their joint exclamation of horror was heard all over the house. 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!

Richard’s stifled voice was heard calling to Carlotta:

“Well, go on!”

Carlotta went on. An awful silence succeeded the uproar. And the toad had started afresh!

The house broke into a wild tumult. The two managers 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 tonight 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 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.