The Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux (bill gates best books .TXT) 📗

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 semidarkness 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 Mame 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 armchair in which “the man’s voice” used to sit. But they saw that it was a respectable armchair, 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. After feeling the carpet in the most serious manner possible, and discovering nothing more here or anywhere else, they went down to the corresponding box on the pit tier below. In Box Five on the pit tier, which is just inside the first exit from the stalls on the left, they found nothing worth mentioning either.

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

VII Faust and What Followed

On the Saturday morning, on reaching their office, the joint 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:

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

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

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

Let me know by a letter handed to Mme. Giry, who will see that it reaches me, 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.

Take my advice and be warned in time.

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; horses ‘used to the boards.’ It is the grooms’ business to teach them. M. Lachenel is very clever at it. He used to manage Franconi’s stables.”

“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, with which he struck his right