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The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
Author of "The Mystery of the Yellow Room" and
"The Perfume of the Lady in Black"

The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux

Contents

Chapter
PROLOGUE
I IS IT A GHOST?
II THE NEW MARGARITA
III THE MYSTERIOUS REASON
IV BOX FIVE
V THE ENCHANTED VIOLIN
VI A VISIT TO BOX FIVE
VII FAUST AND WHAT FOLLOWED
VIII THE MYSTERIOUS BROUGHAM
IX AT THE MASKED BALL
X FORGET THE NAME OF THE MAN'S VOICE
XI ABOVE THE TRAP-DOORS
XII APOLLO'S LYRE
XIII A MASTER-STROKE OF THE TRAP-DOOR LOVER
XIV THE SINGULAR ATTITUDE OF A SAFETY-PIN
XV CHRISTINE! CHRISTINE!
XVI MME. GIRY'S REVELATIONS
XVII THE SAFETY-PIN AGAIN
XVIII THE COMMISSARY, THE VISCOUNT AND THE PERSIAN
XIX THE VISCOUNT AND THE PERSIAN
XX IN THE CELLARS OF THE OPERA
XXI INTERESTING VICISSITUDES
XXII IN THE TORTURE CHAMBER
XXIII THE TORTURES BEGIN
XXIV BARRELS! BARRELS!
XXV THE SCORPION OR THE GRASSHOPPER: WHICH
XXVI THE END OF THE GHOST'S LOVE STORY
EPILOGUE

{plus a "bonus chapter" called "THE PARIS OPERA HOUSE"}

The Phantom of the Opera

Prologue

IN WHICH THE AUTHOR OF THIS SINGULAR WORK INFORMS THE READER HOW
HE ACQUIRED THE CERTAINTY THAT THE OPERA GHOST REALLY EXISTED

The Opera ghost really existed. He was not, as was long believed,
a creature of the imagination of the artists, the superstition of
the managers, or a product of the absurd and impressionable brains
of the young ladies of the ballet, their mothers, the box-keepers,
the cloak-room attendants or the concierge. Yes, he existed
in flesh and blood, although he assumed the complete appearance
of a real phantom; that is to say, of a spectral shade.

When I began to ransack the archives of the National Academy of
Music I was at once struck by the surprising coincidences between
the phenomena ascribed to the "ghost" and the most extraordinary
and fantastic tragedy that ever excited the Paris upper classes;
and I soon conceived the idea that this tragedy might reasonably
be explained by the phenomena in question. The events do not
date more than thirty years back; and it would not be difficult
to find at the present day, in the foyer of the ballet, old men
of the highest respectability, men upon whose word one could
absolutely rely, who would remember as though they happened yesterday
the mysterious and dramatic conditions that attended the kidnapping
of Christine Daae, the disappearance of the Vicomte de Chagny
and the death of his elder brother, Count Philippe, whose body
was found on the bank of the lake that exists in the lower cellars
of the Opera on the Rue-Scribe side. But none of those witnesses
had until that day thought that there was any reason for connecting
the more or less legendary figure of the Opera ghost with that
terrible story.

The truth was slow to enter my mind, puzzled by an inquiry that
at every moment was complicated by events which, at first sight,
might be looked upon as superhuman; and more than once I was
within an ace of abandoning a task in which I was exhausting
myself in the hopeless pursuit of a vain image. At last,
I received the proof that my presentiments had not deceived me,
and I was rewarded for all my efforts on the day when I acquired
the certainty that the Opera ghost was more than a mere shade.

On that day, I had spent long hours over THE MEMOIRS OF A MANAGER,
the light and frivolous work of the too-skeptical Moncharmin, who,
during his term at the Opera, understood nothing of the mysterious
behavior of the ghost and who was making all the fun of it that he
could at the very moment when he became the first victim of the
curious financial operation that went on inside the "magic envelope."

I had just left the library in despair, when I met the delightful
acting-manager of our National Academy, who stood chatting on a landing
with a lively and well-groomed little old man, to whom he introduced
me gaily. The acting-manager knew all about my investigations
and how eagerly and unsuccessfully I had been trying to discover
the whereabouts of the examining magistrate in the famous Chagny case,
M. Faure. Nobody knew what had become of him, alive or dead;
and here he was back from Canada, where he had spent fifteen years,
and the first thing he had done, on his return to Paris, was to come
to the secretarial offices at the Opera and ask for a free seat.
The little old man was M. Faure himself.

We spent a good part of the evening together and he told me the whole
Chagny case as he had understood it at the time. He was bound to
conclude in favor of the madness of the viscount and the accidental
death of the elder brother, for lack of evidence to the contrary;
but he was nevertheless persuaded that a terrible tragedy had taken
place between the two brothers in connection with Christine Daae.
He could not tell me what became of Christine or the viscount.
When I mentioned the ghost, he only laughed. He, too, had been told
of the curious manifestations that seemed to point to the existence
of an abnormal being, residing in one of the most mysterious
corners of the Opera, and he knew the story of the envelope;
but he had never seen anything in it worthy of his attention
as magistrate in charge of the Chagny case, and it was as much
as he had done to listen to the evidence of a witness who appeared
of his own accord and declared that he had often met the ghost.
This witness was none other than the man whom all Paris called the
"Persian" and who was well-known to every subscriber to the Opera.
The magistrate took him for a visionary.

I was immensely interested by this story of the Persian. I wanted,
if there were still time, to find this valuable and eccentric witness.
My luck began to improve and I discovered him in his little flat
in the Rue de Rivoli, where he had lived ever since and where he died
five months after my visit. I was at first inclined to be suspicious;
but when the Persian had told me, with child-like candor,
all that he knew about the ghost and had handed me the proofs
of the ghost's existence--including the strange correspondence
of Christine Daae--to do as I pleased with, I was no longer able
to doubt. No, the ghost was not a myth!

I have, I know, been told that this correspondence may have been
forged from first to last by a man whose imagination had certainly
been fed on the most seductive tales; but fortunately I discovered
some of Christine's writing outside the famous bundle of letters and,
on a comparison between the two, all my doubts were removed.
I also went into the past history of the Persian and found that he
was an upright man, incapable of inventing a story that might have
defeated the ends of justice.

This, moreover, was the opinion of the more serious people who,
at one time or other, were mixed up in the Chagny case, who were
friends of the Chagny family, to whom I showed all my documents
and set forth all my inferences. In this connection, I should
like to print a few lines which I received from General D------:

SIR:

I can not urge you too strongly to publish the results of your inquiry.
I remember perfectly that, a few weeks before the disappearance
of that great singer, Christine Daae, and the tragedy which
threw the whole of the Faubourg Saint-Germain into mourning,
there was a great deal of talk, in the foyer of the ballet,
on the subject of the "ghost;" and I believe that it only ceased
to be discussed in consequence of the later affair that excited us
all so greatly. But, if it be possible--as, after hearing you,
I believe--to explain the tragedy through the ghost, then I
beg you sir, to talk to us about the ghost again.

Mysterious though the ghost may at first appear, he will always
be more easily explained than the dismal story in which malevolent
people have tried to picture two brothers killing each other
who had worshiped each other all their lives.

Believe me, etc.

Lastly, with my bundle of papers in hand, I once more went over
the ghost's vast domain, the huge building which he had made
his kingdom. All that my eyes saw, all that my mind perceived,
corroborated the Persian's documents precisely; and a wonderful
discovery crowned my labors in a very definite fashion. It will be
remembered that, later, when digging in the substructure of the Opera,
before burying the phonographic records of the artist's voice,
the workmen laid bare a corpse. Well, I was at once able
to prove that this corpse was that of the Opera ghost. I made
the acting-manager put this proof to the test with his own hand;
and it is now a matter of supreme indifference to me if the papers
pretend that the body was that of a victim of the Commune.

The wretches who were massacred, under the Commune, in the cellars
of the Opera, were not buried on this side; I will tell where their
skeletons can be found in a spot not very far from that immense crypt
which was stocked during the siege with all sorts of provisions.
I came upon this track just when I was looking for the remains
of the Opera ghost, which I should never have discovered but for
the unheard-of chance described above.

But we will return to the corpse and what ought to be done with it.
For the present, I must conclude this very necessary introduction
by thanking M. Mifroid (who was the commissary of police called in for
the first investigations after the disappearance of Christine Daae),
M. Remy, the late secretary, M. Mercier, the late acting-manager,
M. Gabriel, the late chorus-master, and more particularly Mme. la
Baronne de Castelot-Barbezac, who was once the "little Meg"
of the story (and who is not ashamed of it), the most charming star
of our admirable corps de ballet, the eldest daughter of the worthy
Mme. Giry, now deceased, who had charge of the ghost's private box.
All these were of the greatest assistance to me; and, thanks to them,
I shall be able to reproduce those hours of sheer love and terror,
in their smallest details, before the reader's eyes.

And I should be ungrateful indeed if I omitted, while standing
on the threshold of this dreadful and veracious story, to thank
the present management the Opera, which has so kindly assisted me
in all my inquiries, and M. Messager in particular, together with
M. Gabion, the acting-manager, and that most amiable of men,
the architect intrusted with the preservation of the building,
who did not hesitate to lend me the works of Charles Garnier,
although he was almost sure that I would never return them to him.
Lastly, I must pay a public tribute to the generosity of my friend
and former collaborator, M. J. Le Croze, who allowed me to dip
into his splendid theatrical library and to borrow the rarest
editions of books by which he set great store.

GASTON LEROUX.

Chapter I Is it the Ghost?

It was the evening on which MM. Debienne and Poligny, the managers of
the Opera, were giving a last gala performance to mark their retirement.
Suddenly the dressing-room of La Sorelli, one of the principal dancers,
was invaded by half-a-dozen young ladies of the ballet, who had come
up from the stage after "dancing" Polyeucte. They rushed in amid
great confusion, some giving vent to forced and unnatural laughter,
others to cries of terror. Sorelli, who wished to be alone for a moment
to "run through" the speech which she was to make to the resigning
managers, looked around angrily at the mad and tumultuous crowd.
It was little Jammes--the girl with the tip-tilted nose,
the forget-me-not eyes, the rose-red cheeks and the lily-white
neck and shoulders--who gave the explanation in a trembling voice:

"It's the ghost!" And she locked the door.

Sorelli's dressing-room was fitted up with official, commonplace elegance.
A pier-glass, a sofa, a dressing-table and a cupboard or two provided
the necessary furniture. On the walls hung a few engravings,
relics of the mother, who had known the glories of the old Opera in
the Rue le Peletier; portraits of Vestris, Gardel, Dupont, Bigottini.
But the room seemed a palace to the brats of the corps de ballet,
who were lodged in common dressing-rooms where they spent their
time singing, quarreling, smacking the dressers and hair-dressers
and buying one another glasses of cassis, beer, or even rhum,
until the call-boy's bell rang.

Sorelli was very superstitious. She shuddered when she heard
little Jammes speak of the ghost, called her a "silly little fool"
and then, as she was the first to believe in ghosts in general,
and the Opera ghost in particular, at once asked for details:

"Have you seen him?"

"As plainly as I see you now!" said little Jammes, whose legs were
giving way beneath her, and she dropped with a moan into a chair.

Thereupon little Giry--the girl with eyes black as sloes,
hair black as ink, a swarthy complexion and a poor little skin
stretched over poor little bones--little Giry added:

"If that's the ghost, he's very ugly!"

"Oh, yes!" cried the chorus of ballet-girls.

And they all began to talk together. The ghost had appeared to them
in the shape of a gentleman in dress-clothes, who had suddenly stood
before them in the passage, without their knowing where he came from.
He seemed to have come straight through the wall.

"Pooh!" said one of them, who had more or less kept her head.
"You see the ghost everywhere!"

And it was true. For several months, there had been nothing discussed
at the Opera but this ghost in dress-clothes who stalked about
the building, from top to bottom, like a shadow, who spoke to nobody,
to whom nobody dared speak and who vanished as soon as he was seen,
no one knowing how or where. As became a real ghost, he made no noise
in walking. People began by laughing and making fun of this specter
dressed like a man of fashion or an undertaker; but the ghost legend
soon swelled to enormous proportions among the corps de ballet.
All the girls pretended to have met this supernatural being more
or less often. And those who laughed the loudest were not the most
at ease. When he did not show himself, he betrayed his presence
or his passing by accident, comic or serious, for which the general
superstition held him responsible. Had any one met with a fall,
or suffered a practical joke at the hands of one of the other girls,
or lost a powderpuff, it was at once the fault of the ghost,
of the Opera ghost.

After all, who had seen him? You meet so many men in dress-clothes
at the Opera who are not ghosts. But this dress-suit had
a peculiarity of its own. It covered a skeleton. At least,
so the ballet-girls said. And, of course, it had a death's head.

Was all this serious? The truth is that the idea of the skeleton
came from the description of the ghost given by Joseph Buquet,
the chief scene-shifter, who had really seen the ghost. He had run
up against the ghost on the little staircase, by the footlights,
which leads to "the cellars." He had seen him for a second--
for the ghost had fled--and to any one who cared to listen to him
he said:

"He is extraordinarily thin and his dress-coat hangs on a skeleton frame.
His eyes are so deep that you can hardly see the fixed pupils.
You just see two big black holes, as in a dead man's skull.
His skin, which is stretched across his bones like a drumhead,
is not white, but a nasty yellow. His nose is so little worth
talking about that you can't see it side-face; and THE ABSENCE
of that nose is a horrible thing TO LOOK AT. All the hair he
has is three or four long dark locks on his forehead and behind
his ears."

This chief scene-shifter was a serious, sober, steady man,
very slow at imagining things. His words were received with interest
and amazement; and soon there were other people to say that they too
had met a man in dress-clothes with a death's head on his shoulders.
Sensible men who had wind of the story began by saying that Joseph
Buquet had been the victim of a joke played by one of his assistants.
And then, one after the other, there came a series of incidents
so curious and so inexplicable that the very shrewdest people began
to feel uneasy.

For instance, a fireman is a brave fellow! He fears nothing,
least of all fire! Well, the fireman in question, who had gone
to make a round of inspection in the cellars and who, it seems,
had ventured a little farther than usual, suddenly reappeared on
the stage, pale, scared, trembling, with his eyes starting out of
his head, and practically fainted in the arms of the proud mother
of little Jammes.[1] And why? Because he had seen coming toward him,
AT THE LEVEL OF HIS HEAD, BUT WITHOUT A BODY ATTACHED TO IT,
A HEAD OF FIRE! And, as I said, a fireman is not afraid of fire.

----

[1] I have the anecdote, which is quite authentic, from M. Pedro
Gailhard himself, the late manager of the Opera.

The fireman's name was Pampin.

The corps de ballet was flung into consternation. At first sight,
this fiery head in no way corresponded with Joseph Buquet's
description of the ghost. But the young ladies soon persuaded
themselves that the ghost had several heads, which he changed about
as he pleased. And, of course, they at once imagined that they
were in the greatest danger. Once a fireman did not hesitate
to faint, leaders and front-row and back-row girls alike had plenty
of excuses for the fright that made them quicken their pace when
passing some dark corner or ill-lighted corridor. Sorelli herself,
on the day after the adventure of the fireman, placed a horseshoe
on the table in front of the stage-door-keeper's box, which every
one who entered the Opera otherwise than as a spectator must
touch before setting foot on the first tread of the staircase.
This horse-shoe was not invented by me--any more than any other
part of this story, alas!--and may still be seen on the table
in the passage outside the stage-door-keeper's box, when you enter
the Opera through the court known as the Cour de l'Administration.

To return to the evening in question.

"It's the ghost!" little Jammes had cried.

An agonizing silence now reigned in the dressing-room. Nothing
was heard but the hard breathing of the girls. At last, Jammes,
flinging herself upon the farthest corner of the wall, with every
mark of real terror on her face, whispered:

"Listen!"

Everybody seemed to hear a rustling outside the door. There was no
sound of footsteps. It was like light silk sliding over the panel.
Then it stopped.

Sorelli tried to show more pluck than the others. She went up
to the door and, in a quavering voice, asked:

"Who's there?"

But nobody answered. Then feeling all eyes upon her, watching her
last movement, she made an effort to show courage, and said very loudly:

"Is there any one behind the door?"

"Oh, yes, yes! Of course there is!" cried that little dried plum
of a Meg Giry, heroically holding Sorelli back by her gauze skirt.
"Whatever you do, don't open the door! Oh, Lord, don't open
the door!"

But Sorelli, armed with a dagger that never left her, turned the key
and drew back the door, while the ballet-girls retreated to the inner
dressing-room and Meg Giry sighed:

"Mother! Mother!"

Sorelli looked into the passage bravely. It was empty;
a gas-flame, in its glass prison, cast a red and suspicious light
into the surrounding darkness, without succeeding in dispelling it.
And the dancer slammed the door again, with a deep sigh.

"No," she said, "there is no one there."

"Still, we saw him!" Jammes declared, returning with timid little steps
to her place beside Sorelli. "He must be somewhere prowling about.
I shan't go back to dress. We had better all go down to the foyer
together, at once, for the `speech,' and we will come up again together."

And the child reverently touched the little coral finger-ring which
she wore as a charm against bad luck, while Sorelli, stealthily,
with the tip of her pink right thumb-nail, made a St. Andrew's cross
on the wooden ring which adorned the fourth finger of her left hand.
She said to the little ballet-girls:

"Come, children, pull yourselves together! I dare say no one has
ever seen the ghost."

"Yes, yes, we saw him--we saw him just now!" cried the girls.
"He had his death's head and his dress-coat, just as when he appeared
to Joseph Buquet!"

"And Gabriel saw him too!" said Jammes. "Only yesterday!
Yesterday afternoon--in broad day-light----"

"Gabriel, the chorus-master?"

"Why, yes, didn't you know?"

"And he was wearing his dress-clothes, in broad daylight?"

"Who? Gabriel?"

"Why, no, the ghost!"

"Certainly! Gabriel told me so himself. That's what he knew him by.
Gabriel was in the stage-manager's office. Suddenly the door opened
and the Persian entered. You know the Persian has the evil eye----"

"Oh, yes!" answered the little ballet-girls in chorus, warding off
ill-luck by pointing their forefinger and little finger at the absent
Persian, while their second and third fingers were bent on the palm
and held down by the thumb.

"And you know how superstitious Gabriel is," continued Jammes.
"However, he is always polite. When he meets the Persian, he just
puts his hand in his pocket and touches his keys. Well, the moment
the Persian appeared in the doorway, Gabriel gave one jump from
his chair to the lock of the cupboard, so as to touch iron!
In doing so, he tore a whole skirt of his overcoat on a nail.
Hurrying to get out of the room, he banged his forehead against a
hat-peg and gave himself a huge bump; then, suddenly stepping back,
he skinned his arm on the screen, near the piano; he tried to lean
on the piano, but the lid fell on his hands and crushed his fingers;
he rushed out of the office like a madman, slipped on the staircase
and came down the whole of the first flight on his back.
I was just passing with mother. We picked him up. He was covered
with bruises and his face was all over blood. We were frightened out
of our lives, but, all at once, he began to thank Providence that he
had got off so cheaply. Then he told us what had frightened him.
He had seen the ghost behind the Persian, THE GHOST WITH THE DEATH'S
HEAD just like Joseph Buquet's description!"

Jammes had told her story ever so quickly, as though the ghost
were at her heels, and was quite out of breath at the finish.
A silence followed, while Sorelli polished her nails in great excitement.
It was broken by little Giry, who said:

"Joseph Buquet would do better to hold his tongue."

"Why should he hold his tongue?" asked somebody.

"That's mother's opinion," replied Meg, lowering her voice
and looking all about her as though fearing lest other ears
than those present might overhear.

"And why is it your mother's opinion?"

"Hush! Mother says the ghost doesn't like being talked about."

"And why does your mother say so?"

"Because--because--nothing--"

This reticence exasperated the curiosity of the young ladies,
who crowded round little Giry, begging her to explain herself.
They were there, side by side, leaning forward simultaneously
in one movement of entreaty and fear, communicating their terror
to one another, taking a keen pleasure in feeling their blood freeze
in their veins.

"I swore not to tell!" gasped Meg.

But they left her no peace and promised to keep the secret, until Meg,
burning to say all she knew, began, with her eyes fixed on the door:

"Well, it's because of the private box."

"What private box?"

"The ghost's box!"

"Has the ghost a box? Oh, do tell us, do tell us!"

"Not so loud!" said Meg. "It's Box Five, you know, the box
on the grand tier, next to the stage-box, on the left."

"Oh, nonsense!"

"I tell you it is. Mother has charge of it. But you swear you
won't say a word?"

"Of course, of course."

"Well, that's the ghost's box. No one has had it for over a month,
except the ghost, and orders have been given at the box-office
that it must never be sold."

"And does the ghost really come there?"

"Yes."

"Then somebody does come?"

"Why, no! The ghost comes, but there is nobody there."

The little ballet-girls exchanged glances. If the ghost came to the box,
he must be seen, because he wore a dress-coat and a death's head.
This was what they tried to make Meg understand, but she replied:

"That's just it! The ghost is not seen. And he has no dress-coat
and no head! All that talk about his death's head and his head of
fire is nonsense! There's nothing in it. You only hear him when he
is in the box. Mother has never seen him, but she has heard him.
Mother knows, because she gives him his program."

Sorelli interfered.

"Giry, child, you're getting at us!"

Thereupon little Giry began to cry.

"I ought to have held my tongue--if mother ever came to know!
But I was quite right, Joseph Buquet had no business to talk
of things that don't concern him--it will bring him bad luck--
mother was saying so last night----"

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