“Well!…” replied the young man.
“It’s you, Raoul, who say that? What are you thinking of? I am an honest girl, M. le Vicomte de Chagny, and I 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?”
“Well, Christine, I think that somebody is making game of you.”
She gave a cry and ran away. He ran after her, but she called out:
“Leave me! Leave me!” And she disappeared.
Raoul returned to the inn feeling very weary 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.
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 [37]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.
“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[38], entered.
“Lachenel [39]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[40].”
“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 [41]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.