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.

****

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