The Phantom of the Opera

e occasion of the retirement of M. Debienne and M. Poligny, who had determined to "die game," as we say nowadays. They had been as

agne in her hand and a little prepared speech at the tip of her tongue. Behind her, the members of the Corps de Ballet, young and old, discussed the events

the occasion: all, that is, except little Jammes, whose fifteen summers-happy age!-seemed already to have forgotten the ghost and the death of Joseph Buquet. She never ceased to laug

s already comforted; but, should he have met with good fortune, be careful how you congratulate him: he thinks it so natural that he is surprised that you should speak of it. In Paris, our lives are one masked ball; and the foyer of the ballet is the last place in which two men so "knowing" as M. Debienne and M. Poligny would have made the mista

pera g

d of dandies, to a face so pallid, so lugubrious and so ugly, with two such deep black cavities u

ra ghost a drink, but he was gone. He had slipped through the crowd; and the others vainly hunted for him

was surprised at this, for it was known that they were to go through the same ceremony on the floor above, in the foyer of the singers, and that finally they

flattering compliments in reply, so that those of the guests who had feared that they had a rather tedious evening in store for them at once put on brighter faces. The supper was almost

le keys, the object of general curiosity, were being passed from hand to hand, when the attention of some of the guests was diverted by their discovery, at the end of the

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gan by looking at him with a smile ended by turning away their heads, for the sight of him at o

the Ope

e and sit at the table of the living, they could not cut a more ghastly figure. The friends of Firmin Richard and Armand Moncharmin thought that this lean and skinny guest was an

death-thought, in their own minds, that the man at the end of the table might easily have passed for him; and yet, according to the story, the ghost had no nose and the person in question had. But M. Moncharmin declares, in his Memoirs, that the guest's nose was transparent: "long, thin and transparent" are h

ghost himself? Who would venture to assert as much? I mention the incident, not because I wish for a second to make the reader believe-or eve

, in chapter eleven

confided to us by MM. Debienne and Poligny in their office from the

tting at the center of the table, had not seen the m

. "The death of that poor Buquet is p

d Poligny g

t dead?"

"He was found, this evening, hanging in the third cellar,

be by the announcement of the suicide of a chief scene-shifter. They looked at each other. They, had both turned whiter than the table-cloth. At last, Debienne made a sign to Mm. Richar

closed. They said this so funnily that we began to laugh and to ask if there were thieves at the Opera. They replied that there was something worse, which was the GHOST. We began to laugh again, feeling sure that they were indulging in some joke that was intended to crown our little entertainment. Then, at their request, we became 'serious,' resolving to humor them and to enter into the spirit of the game. They told us that they never would have spoken to us of the ghost, if they had not received formal orders from the ghost h

oning was a little gruesome because of the death of Buquet. He nodded his head sadly, while the others spoke, and his features assumed the air of a man who bitterly regretted having taken over the Opera, now that he knew that there was a ghost mixed up in the business. I could think of nothing better than to give him a servil

dious; and Richard asked hal

what does this gho

pera shall give to the performance of the National Academy of Music the splendor that becomes the first lyric stage in France' and ends with Clause 98, which says that

paragraph in red ink and in a queer, labored handwriting, as though it had been produced by dipping the heads of matches into the ink, the writ

nt of the allowance which he shall make to the Opera ghost, an allowance of twe

ting finger to this last clause,

t anything else?' asked Richar

oes,' repli

ys on which certain private boxes were to be reserved for the free use of the president of the rep

be placed at the disposal of the

thinking of this charming little joke, which proved that the old French sense of humor was never likely to become extinct. Richard added that he now unders

muscle of his face. 'And have you considered what the loss over Box Five meant to us? We did not sell it once; and not on

ienne, 'we prefer to

me that you were much too kind to the ghost. If I had such a trou

y cried, in chorus. 'W

he comes

VER SEEN HIM

n sel

host's box! Well,

office. Richard and I had 'never