________________________________________________
_ That tragic evening was bad for everybody. Carlotta fell ill.
As for Christine Daae, she disappeared after the performance.
A fortnight elapsed during which she was seen neither at the Opera
nor outside.
Raoul, of course, was the first to be astonished at the prima
donna's absence. He wrote to her at Mme. Valerius' flat and received
no reply. His grief increased and he ended by being seriously alarmed
at never seeing her name on the program. FAUST was played without her.
One afternoon he went to the managers' office to ask the reason
of Christine's disappearance. He found them both looking
extremely worried. Their own friends did not recognize them:
they had lost all their gaiety and spirits. They were seen crossing
the stage with hanging heads, care-worn brows, pale cheeks, as though
pursued by some abominable thought or a prey to some persistent sport
of fate.
The fall of the chandelier had involved them in no little responsibility;
but it was difficult to make them speak about it. The inquest had
ended in a verdict of accidental death, caused by the wear and tear
of the chains by which the chandelier was hung from the ceiling;
but it was the duty of both the old and the new managers to have
discovered this wear and tear and to have remedied it in time.
And I feel bound to say that MM. Richard and Moncharmin at this
time appeared so changed, so absent-minded, so mysterious,
so incomprehensible that many of the subscribers thought that some
event even more horrible than the fall of the chandelier must
have affected their state of mind.
In their daily intercourse, they showed themselves very impatient,
except with Mme. Giry, who had been reinstated in her functions.
And their reception of the Vicomte de Chagny, when he came to ask
about Christine, was anything but cordial. They merely told him
that she was taking a holiday. He asked how long the holiday was for,
and they replied curtly that it was for an unlimited period,
as Mlle. Daae had requested leave of absence for reasons of health.
"Then she is ill!" he cried. "What is the matter with her?"
"We don't know."
"Didn't you send the doctor of the Opera to see her?"
"No, she did not ask for him; and, as we trust her, we took her word."
Raoul left the building a prey to the gloomiest thoughts. He resolved,
come what might, to go and inquire of Mamma Valerius. He remembered
the strong phrases in Christine's letter, forbidding him to make
any attempt to see her. But what he had seen at Perros, what he had
heard behind the dressing-room door, his conversation with Christine
at the edge of the moor made him suspect some machination which,
devilish though it might be, was none the less human. The girl's
highly strung imagination, her affectionate and credulous mind,
the primitive education which had surrounded her childhood with a
circle of legends, the constant brooding over her dead father and,
above all, the state of sublime ecstasy into which music threw her
from the moment that this art was made manifest to her in certain
exceptional conditions, as in the churchyard at Perros; all this
seemed to him to constitute a moral ground only too favorable for
the malevolent designs of some mysterious and unscrupulous person.
Of whom was Christine Daae the victim? This was the very reasonable
question which Raoul put to himself as he hurried off to Mamma Valerius.
He trembled as he rang at a little flat in the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Victoires.
The door was opened by the maid whom he had seen coming out of Christine's
dressing-room one evening. He asked if he could speak to Mme. Valerius.
He was told that she was ill in bed and was not receiving visitors.
"Take in my card, please," he said.
The maid soon returned and showed him into a small and scantily
furnished drawing-room, in which portraits of Professor Valerius
and old Daae hung on opposite walls.
"Madame begs Monsieur le Vicomte to excuse her," said the servant.
"She can only see him in her bedroom, because she can no longer stand
on her poor legs."
Five minutes later, Raoul was ushered into an ill-lit room where he
at once recognized the good, kind face of Christine's benefactress
in the semi-darkness of an alcove. Mamma Valerius' hair was now
quite white, but her eyes had grown no older; never, on the contrary,
had their expression been so bright, so pure, so child-like.
"M. de Chagny!" she cried gaily, putting out both her hands to her visitor.
"Ah, it's Heaven that sends you here!...We can talk of HER."
This last sentence sounded very gloomily in the young man's ears.
He at once asked:
"Madame...where is Christine?"
And the old lady replied calmly:
"She is with her good genius!"
"What good genius?" exclaimed poor Raoul.
"Why, the Angel of Music!"
The viscount dropped into a chair. Really? Christine was with
the Angel of Music? And there lay Mamma Valerius in bed, smiling to
him and putting her finger to her lips, to warn him to be silent!
And she added:
"You must not tell anybody!"
"You can rely on me," said Raoul.
He hardly knew what he was saying, for his ideas about Christine,
already greatly confused, were becoming more and more entangled;
and it seemed as if everything was beginning to turn around him,
around the room, around that extraordinary good lady with the white hair
and forget-me-not eyes.
"I know! I know I can!" she said, with a happy laugh. "But why don't
you come near me, as you used to do when you were a little boy?
Give me your hands, as when you brought me the story of little Lotte,
which Daddy Daae had told you. I am very fond of you, M. Raoul,
you know. And so is Christine too!"
"She is fond of me!" sighed the young man. He found a difficulty
in collecting his thoughts and bringing them to bear on Mamma Valerius'
"good genius," on the Angel of Music of whom Christine had spoken
to him so strangely, on the death's head which he had seen in a sort
of nightmare on the high altar at Perros and also on the Opera ghost,
whose fame had come to his ears one evening when he was standing
behind the scenes, within hearing of a group of scene-shifters
who were repeating the ghastly description which the hanged man,
Joseph Buquet, had given of the ghost before his mysterious death.
He asked in a low voice: "What makes you think that Christine
is fond of me, madame?"
"She used to speak of you every day."
"Really?...And what did she tell you?"
"She told me that you had made her a proposal!"
And the good old lady began laughing wholeheartedly. Raoul sprang
from his chair, flushing to the temples, suffering agonies.
"What's this? Where are you going? Sit down again at once,
will you?...Do you think I will let you go like that?...If
you're angry with me for laughing, I beg your pardon. .. After all,
what has happened isn't your fault. .. Didn't you know?...Did
you think that Christine was free?..."
"Is Christine engaged to be married?" the wretched Raoul asked,
in a choking voice.
"Why no! Why no!...You know as well as I do that Christine
couldn't marry, even if she wanted to!"
"But I don't know anything about it!...And why can't Christine marry?"
"Because of the Angel of Music, of course!..."
"I don't follow..."
"Yes, he forbids her to!..."
"He forbids her!...The Angel of Music forbids her to marry!"
"Oh, he forbids her...without forbidding her. It's like this:
he tells her that, if she got married, she would never hear
him again. That's all!...And that he would go away for ever!
.. So, you understand, she can't let the Angel of Music go.
It's quite natural."
"Yes, yes," echoed Raoul submissively, "it's quite natural."
"Besides, I thought Christine had told you all that, when she met
you at Perros, where she went with her good genius."
"Oh, she went to Perros with her good genius, did she?"
"That is to say, he arranged to meet her down there,
in Perros churchyard, at Daae's grave. He promised
to play her The Resurrection of Lazarus on her father's violin!"
Raoul de Chagny rose and, with a very authoritative air,
pronounced these peremptory words:
"Madame, you will have the goodness to tell me where that genius lives."
The old lady did not seem surprised at this indiscreet command.
She raised her eyes and said:
"In Heaven!"
Such simplicity baffled him. He did not know what to say in
the presence of this candid and perfect faith in a genius who came
down nightly from Heaven to haunt the dressing-rooms at the Opera.
He now realized the possible state of mind of a girl brought up
between a superstitious fiddler and a visionary old lady and he
shuddered when he thought of the consequences of it all.
"Is Christine still a good girl?" he asked suddenly, in spite
of himself.
"I swear it, as I hope to be saved!" exclaimed the
old woman, who, this time, seemed to be incensed.
"And, if you doubt it, sir, I don't know what you are here for!"
Raoul tore at his gloves.
"How long has she known this `genius?'"
"About three months....Yes, it's quite three months since he
began to give her lessons."
The viscount threw up his arms with a gesture of despair.
"The genius gives her lessons!...And where, pray?"
"Now that she has gone away with him, I can't say; but, up to a fortnight
ago, it was in Christine's dressing-room. It would be impossible in this
little flat. The whole house would hear them. Whereas, at the Opera,
at eight o'clock in the morning, there is no one about, do you see!"
"Yes, I see! I see!" cried the viscount.
And he hurriedly took leave of Mme. Valerius, who asked herself
if the young nobleman was not a little off his head.
He walked home to his brother's house in a pitiful state.
He could have struck himself, banged his head against the walls!
To think that he had believed in her innocence, in her purity!
The Angel of Music! He knew him now! He saw him! It was beyond
a doubt some unspeakable tenor, a good-looking jackanapes, who mouthed
and simpered as he sang! He thought himself as absurd and as wretched
as could be. Oh, what a miserable, little, insignificant, silly young
man was M. le Vicomte de Chagny! thought Raoul, furiously. And she,
what a bold and damnable sly creature!
His brother was waiting for him and Raoul fell into his arms,
like a child. The count consoled him, without asking for explanations;
and Raoul would certainly have long hesitated before telling him
the story of the Angel of Music. His brother suggested taking him
out to dinner. Overcome as he was with despair, Raoul would probably
have refused any invitation that evening, if the count had not,
as an inducement, told him that the lady of his thoughts had been seen,
the night before, in company of the other sex in the Bois.
At first, the viscount refused to believe; but he received such exact
details that he ceased protesting. She had been seen, it appeared,
driving in a brougham, with the window down. She seemed to be slowly
taking in the icy night air. There was a glorious moon shining.
She was recognized beyond a doubt. As for her companion, only his
shadowy outline was distinguished leaning back in the dark.
The carriage was going at a walking pace in a lonely drive behind
the grand stand at Longchamp.
Raoul dressed in frantic haste, prepared to forget his distress
by flinging himself, as people say, into "the vortex of pleasure."
Alas, he was a very sorry guest and, leaving his brother early,
found himself, by ten o'clock in the evening, in a cab,
behind the Longchamp race-course.
It was bitterly cold. The road seemed deserted and very bright
under the moonlight. He told the driver to wait for him patiently at
the corner of a near turning and, hiding himself as well as he could,
stood stamping his feet to keep warm. He had been indulging
in this healthy exercise for half an hour or so, when a carriage
turned the corner of the road and came quietly in his direction,
at a walking pace.
As it approached, he saw that a woman was leaning her head from
the window. And, suddenly, the moon shed a pale gleam over her features.
"Christine!"
The sacred name of his love had sprung from his heart and his lips.
He could not keep it back. .. He would have given anything
to withdraw it, for that name, proclaimed in the stillness of
the night, had acted as though it were the preconcerted signal
for a furious rush on the part of the whole turn-out, which dashed
past him before he could put into execution his plan of leaping
at the horses' heads. The carriage window had been closed and
the girl's face had disappeared. And the brougham, behind which
he was now running, was no more than a black spot on the white road.
He called out again: "Christine!"
No reply. And he stopped in the midst of the silence.
With a lack-luster eye, he stared down that cold, desolate road
and into the pale, dead night. Nothing was colder than his heart,
nothing half so dead: he had loved an angel and now he despised
a woman!
Raoul, how that little fairy of the North has trifled with you!
Was it really, was it really necessary to have so fresh and young
a face, a forehead so shy and always ready to cover itself with
the pink blush of modesty in order to pass in the lonely night,
in a carriage and pair, accompanied by a mysterious lover?
Surely there should be some limit to hypocrisy and lying!...
She had passed without answering his cry....And he was thinking
of dying; and he was twenty years old!...
His valet found him in the morning sitting on his bed. He had not
undressed and the servant feared, at the sight of his face, that some
disaster had occurred. Raoul snatched his letters from the man's hands.
He had recognized Christine's paper and hand-writing. She said:
DEAR:
Go to the masked ball at the Opera on the night after to-morrow.
At twelve o'clock, be in the little room behind the chimney-place
of the big crush-room. Stand near the door that leads to the Rotunda.
Don't mention this appointment to any one on earth. Wear a white
domino and be carefully masked. As you love me, do not let yourself
be recognized. CHRISTINE. _
Read next: CHAPTER IX - AT THE MASKED BALL
Read previous: CHAPTER VII - FAUST AND WHAT FOLLOWED
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