II. LA MARGUERITE NOUVELLE

II

THE NEW MARGUERITE

On the first landing, Sorelli bumped into Count de Chagny, who was coming up. The Count, usually so calm, showed great agitation.

"I was just coming to see you," said the Count, bowing to the young woman in a most gallant manner. "Ah! Sorelli, what a beautiful evening! And Christine Daaé: what a triumph!"

"Impossible!" protested Meg Giry. "Six months ago, she sang like a rusty nail! But let us pass, *my dear Count*," said the little girl with a roguish curtsy, "we are going to hear news of a poor man who was found hanged."

At that moment the manager hurried by, busy, and stopped abruptly on hearing the remark.

"What! You already know about that, young ladies?" he said in rather a harsh tone... "Well! Say nothing about it... and above all let Messieurs Debienne and Poligny not be informed! It would grieve them too much on their last day."

Everyone went off toward the dancers' foyer, which was already crowded.

The Count de Chagny was right; never was a gala like that one; the privileged few who attended it still speak of it to their children and grandchildren with moved remembrance. Think that Gounod, Reyer, Saint-Saëns, Massenet, Guiraud, Delibes, mounted in turn the conductor's podium and directed themselves the performance of their works. Among other interpreters, they had Faure and Krauss, and it is that evening that there was revealed to a stupefied and intoxicated Tout-Paris this Christine Daaé whose mysterious destiny I wish, in this work, to make known.

Gounod had had performed *The Funeral March of a Marionette*; Reyer, his beautiful overture to *Sigurd*; Saint-Saëns, *The Danse Macabre* and an *Oriental Reverie*; Massenet, an unpublished *Hungarian March*; Guiraud, his *Carnival*; Delibes, *The Slow Waltz of Sylvia* and the *pizzicati* of *Coppélia*. Mlles Krauss and Denise Bloch had sung: the first, the bolero from *The Sicilian Vespers*; the second, the brindisi from *Lucrezia Borgia*.

But all the triumph had been for Christine Daaé, who had first been heard in some passages from *Romeo and Juliet*. It was the first time the young artist sang this work of Gounod, which, moreover, had not yet been brought to the Opera and which the Opéra-Comique had just taken up long after it had been created at the old Théâtre-Lyrique by Mme Carvalho. Ah! pity those who never heard Christine Daaé in this role of Juliet, who never knew her naive grace, who never thrilled at the accents of her seraphic voice, who never felt their soul fly away with her soul above the tombs of the lovers of Verona: "*Lord! Lord! Lord! forgive us!*"

Well, all that was still nothing beside the superhuman accents she made heard in the prison act and the final trio of Faust, which she sang in place of Carlotta, who was indisposed. Never had that been heard, never seen!

That was "the new Marguerite" revealed by Daaé, a Marguerite of a splendor, of a radiance still unsuspected.

The whole house had saluted with the thousand clamors of its unutterable emotion Christine, who sobbed and fainted in the arms of her comrades. She had to be carried to her dressing room. She seemed to have given up the ghost. The great critic P. de St-V. fixed the unforgettable memory of that marvelous minute in a review which he rightly entitled *The New Marguerite*. Like the great artist he was, he simply discovered that this beautiful and gentle child had brought that evening, upon the boards of the Opera, a little more than her art, that is to say her heart. None of the friends of the Opera were ignorant that Christine's heart had remained pure as at fifteen, and P. de St-V. declared "that to understand what had just happened to Daaé, *he was in the necessity of imagining that she had just loved for the first time!*" I am perhaps indiscreet, he added, but love alone is capable of accomplishing such a miracle, such a thunderbolt transformation. We heard, two years ago, Christine Daaé in her Conservatoire competition, and she had given us a charming hope. *Whence comes the sublime of today? If it does not descend from heaven on the wings of love, I shall have to think that it rises from hell and that Christine, like the master singer Ofterdingen, has made a pact with the Devil!* Whoever has not heard Christine sing the final trio of *Faust* does not know *Faust*: the exaltation of the voice and the sacred intoxication of a pure soul could not go further!"

However, some subscribers protested. How had they been able to hide from them so long such a treasure? Christine Daaé had hitherto been a passable Siebel beside that Marguerite a little too splendidly material who was Carlotta. And it had taken the incomprehensible and inexcusable absence of Carlotta, at that gala evening, for the little Daaé, at a moment's notice, to give her full measure in a part of the program reserved for the Spanish diva! Finally, how, deprived of Carlotta, had Messieurs Debienne and Poligny addressed themselves to Daaé? Did they then know her hidden genius? And if they knew it, why hide it? And she, why hide it? Strange thing, she was known to have no current teacher. She had declared on several occasions that henceforth she would work entirely alone. All that was quite inexplicable.

Count de Chagny had attended, standing in his box, this delirium and had joined in it with his loud bravos.

Count de Chagny (Philippe-Georges-Marie) was then exactly forty-one years old. He was a great nobleman and a handsome man. Of above average height, of a pleasant face, despite a hard forehead and rather cold eyes, he was of a refined politeness with women and a little haughty with men, who did not always forgive him his successes in society. He had an excellent heart and an honest conscience. By the death of old Count Philibert, he had become the head of one of the most illustrious and most ancient families of France, whose noble quarters dated back to Louis le Hutin. The fortune of the Chagnys was considerable, and when the old Count, who was a widower, died, it was no small task for Philippe to accept the management of so heavy a patrimony. His two sisters and his brother Raoul would not hear of a division, and they remained in joint ownership, entrusting everything to Philippe, as if the right of primogeniture had not ceased to exist. When the two sisters married—on the same day—they took their shares from their brother's hands, not as something belonging to them, but as a dowry for which they expressed their gratitude to him.

The Countess de Chagny—born de Moerogis de la Martynière—had died giving birth to Raoul, born twenty years after his elder brother. When the old Count died, Raoul was twelve years old. Philippe actively occupied himself with the child's education. He was admirably seconded in this task by his sisters first and then by an old aunt, widow of a sailor, who lived in Brest, and who gave young Raoul the taste for things of the sea. The young man entered the *Borda*, came out among the first, and quietly accomplished his tour of the world. Thanks to powerful support, he had just been designated to form part of the official expedition of the *Requin*, which had the mission of searching in the ice of the pole for the survivors of the expedition of the *d'Artois*, of whom no news had been had for three years. Meanwhile, he enjoyed a long leave which was not to end for six months, and the dowagers of the noble faubourg, seeing this pretty child, who seemed so fragile, already pitied him for the rough labors that awaited him.

The timidity of this sailor—I should almost be tempted to say, his innocence—was remarkable. He seemed to have come yesterday from the hands of women. In fact, pampered by his two sisters and his old aunt, he had kept from this purely feminine education almost candid manners, imprinted with a charm that nothing, until then, had been able to tarnish. At that time, he was a little over twenty-one years old and looked eighteen. He had a little blond mustache, beautiful blue eyes and a girl's complexion.

Philippe spoiled Raoul greatly. First, he was very proud of him and foresaw with joy a glorious career for his younger brother in that navy where one of their ancestors, the famous Chagny de La Roche, had held rank of admiral. He took advantage of the young man's leave to show him Paris, which the latter ignored almost entirely in what it can offer of luxurious joy and artistic pleasure.

The Count esteemed that at Raoul's age too much wisdom is no longer quite wise. It was a very well-balanced character, that of Philippe, measured in his work as in his pleasures, always of a perfect bearing, incapable of showing his brother a bad example. He took him everywhere with him. He even made him know the dancers' foyer. I know well that it was said the Count was on "the best of terms" with Sorelli. But what! could one make a crime of this gentleman, still a bachelor, and who, consequently, had much leisure before him, especially since his sisters were settled, of coming to spend an hour or two, after his dinner, in the company of a dancer who, evidently, was not very, very witty, but who had the prettiest eyes in the world? And then, there are places where a true Parisian, when he holds the rank of Count de Chagny, must show himself, and, at that time, the dancers' foyer of the Opera was one of those places.

Finally, perhaps Philippe would not have led his brother into the wings of the National Academy of Music, if the latter had not been the first, on several occasions, to ask him with a gentle obstinacy of which the Count was to be mindful later.

Philippe, after having applauded Daaé that evening, had turned toward Raoul, and had seen him so pale that he had been frightened.

"Do you not see," Raoul had said, "that this woman is unwell?"

Indeed, on the stage, they had to support Christine Daaé.

"It is you who are going to faint...," said the Count, leaning toward Raoul. "What is the matter with you?"

But Raoul was already standing.

"Come," he said, his voice trembling.

"Where do you want to go, Raoul?" asked the Count, astonished at the emotion in which he found his younger brother.

"But let us go see! It is the first time she has sung like that!"

The Count looked curiously at his brother and a slight smile came to inscribe itself at the corner of his amused lip.

"Bah!..." And he added at once: "Come! Come!"

He looked enchanted.

They were soon at the entrance of the wings, which was much crowded. While waiting to be able to penetrate onto the stage, Raoul tore his gloves with an unconscious gesture. Philippe, who was good, did not mock his impatience. But he was informed. He now knew why Raoul was distracted when he spoke to him and also why he seemed to take such keen pleasure in bringing all subjects of conversation back to the Opera.

They entered onto the stage.

A crowd of black coats pressed toward the dancers' foyer or directed themselves toward the artists' dressing rooms. To the cries of the stagehands were mingled the vehement addresses of the department heads. The supers of the last tableau who go off, the "walk-ons" who jostle you, a flat that passes, a backdrop that descends from the flies, a practical set piece that is secured with great blows of the hammer, the eternal "clear the stage" that rings in your ears like the threat of some new catastrophe for your silk hat or of a solid dent for your back, such is the habitual event of the intermissions which never fails to trouble a novice like the young man with the little blond mustache, the blue eyes and the girl's complexion who crossed, as quickly as the congestion permitted him, that stage upon which Christine Daaé had just triumphed and beneath which Joseph Buquet had just died.

That evening, the confusion had never been more complete, but Raoul had never been less timid. He pushed aside with a solid shoulder all that obstructed him, not concerning himself with what was said around him, not trying to understand the bewildered remarks of the stagehands. He was uniquely preoccupied with the desire to see her whose magic voice had torn his heart from him. Yes, he felt well that his poor brand-new heart no longer belonged to him. He had indeed tried to defend it since the day Christine, whom he had known as a tiny child, had reappeared to him. He had felt before her a very sweet emotion which he had wished to chase away, on reflection, for he had sworn to himself, so much did he have respect for himself and his faith, to love only her who would be his wife, and he could not, naturally, for a second, think of marrying a singer; but behold that to the very sweet emotion had succeeded an atrocious sensation. Sensation? Feeling? There was in that something physical and something moral. His chest hurt him, as if it had been opened to take his heart. He felt there an awful hollow, a real void that could never again be filled except by the other's heart! These are events of a particular psychology which, it seems, can be understood only by those who have been struck, by love, with that strange blow called, in common language, "thunderbolt".

Count Philippe had difficulty following him. He continued to smile.

At the back of the stage, past the double door which opens onto the steps leading to the foyer and onto those which lead to the left dressing rooms on the ground floor, Raoul had to stop before the little troop of rats who, descended that instant from their attic, encumbered the passage into which he wanted to go. More than one joking word was flung at him by little painted lips to which he did not reply; at last, he could pass and plunged into the shadow of a corridor all noisy with the exclamations uttered by enthusiastic admirers. One name covered all the murmurs: Daaé! Daaé! The Count, behind Raoul, said to himself: "The rogue knows the way," and he wondered how he had learned it. Never had he himself conducted Raoul to Christine. It must be believed that the latter had gone there alone while the Count remained ordinarily to chat at the foyer with Sorelli, who often begged him to stay near her until the moment she went on stage, and who sometimes had that tyrannical mania of giving him to keep the little gaiters with which she descended from her box and with which she protected the shine of her satin shoes and the cleanliness of her flesh-colored tights. Sorelli had an excuse: she had lost her mother.

The Count, putting off for a few minutes the visit he owed Sorelli, thus followed the gallery which led to Daaé's, and noted that this corridor had never been so frequented as that evening, where the whole theater seemed overturned by the success of the artist and also by her fainting. For the beautiful child had not yet recovered consciousness, and they had gone to fetch the theater doctor, who arrived in the meantime, jostling the groups and followed closely by Raoul, who walked on his heels.

Thus, the doctor and the lover found themselves at the same moment at Christine's side, who received the first cares of the one and opened her eyes in the arms of the other. The Count had remained, with many others, on the threshold of the door before which one was stifling.

"Do you not find, doctor, that these gentlemen should 'clear out' the dressing room a bit?" asked Raoul with incredible boldness. "One can no longer breathe here."

"But you are perfectly right," agreed the doctor, and he put everyone out the door, with the exception of Raoul and the maid.

The latter looked at Raoul with eyes widened by the most sincere bewilderment. She had never seen him.

She did not dare, however, to question him.

And the doctor imagined that if the young man acted thus, it was evidently because he had the right. So that the viscount remained in that dressing room contemplating Daaé returning to life, while the two directors, MM. Debienne and Poligny themselves, who had come to express their admiration to their pensioner, were pushed back into the corridor, with the black coats. Count de Chagny, rejected like the others into the corridor, laughed aloud.

"Ah! the rogue! Ah! the rogue!"

And he added, *in petto*: Trust indeed those young fellows who put on little-girl airs!

He was radiant. He concluded: "He is a Chagny!" and he directed himself toward Sorelli's box; but she was descending to the foyer with her little trembling flock, and the Count met her on the way, as has been said.

In the dressing room, Christine Daaé had uttered a deep sigh to which had answered a moan. She turned her head and saw Raoul and started. She looked at the doctor to whom she smiled, then her maid, then again Raoul.

"Monsieur!" she asked the latter, in a voice which was still but a breath... "who are you?"

"Mademoiselle," replied the young man who put a knee to the ground and deposited an ardent kiss on the hand of the diva, "mademoiselle, *I am the little child who went to pick up your scarf in the sea.*"

Christine looked again at the doctor and the maid and all three began to laugh. Raoul rose very red.

"Mademoiselle, since it pleases you not to recognize me, I should like to tell you something in private, something very important."

"When I am better, monsieur, will you?..."—and her voice trembled.—"You are very kind..."

"But you must go away...," added the doctor with his most amiable smile. "Leave me to care for mademoiselle."

"I am not ill," suddenly said Christine with an energy as strange as unexpected.

And she rose, passing a hand rapidly over her eyelids.

"I thank you, doctor!... I need to remain alone... Go away all of you! I beg you... leave me... I am very nervous this evening..."

The physician wished to make heard some protests, but before the agitation of the young woman, he esteemed that the best remedy for such a state consisted in not contradicting her. And he went away with Raoul, who found himself in the corridor, very forlorn. The doctor said to him:

"I no longer recognize her this evening... she, ordinarily so sweet..."

And he left him.

Raoul remained alone. All that part of the theater was deserted now. They were to proceed to the ceremony of farewells, in the dancers' foyer. Raoul thought that Daaé might go there and he waited in solitude and silence. He even hid himself in the favorable shadow of a door corner. He still had that awful pain in the place of the heart. And it was of that he wished to speak to Daaé, without delay. Suddenly the dressing room opened and he saw the soubrette who was leaving alone, carrying packages. He stopped her in passing and asked for news of her mistress. She answered him laughing that the latter was quite well, but that one must not disturb her because she wished to remain alone. And she ran off. An idea crossed Raoul's inflamed brain: Evidently Daaé wished to remain alone *for him!*... Had he not told her that he desired to speak with her in particular and was not that the reason why she had made a void around her? Breathing hardly, he drew near her dressing room and his ear bent toward the door to hear what would be answered him, and he prepared to knock. But his hand fell. He had just perceived, in the dressing room, *a man's voice*, which said on a singularly authoritative intonation:

"Christine, you must love me!"

And the voice of Christine, sorrowful, which one guessed accompanied by tears, a trembling voice, answered:

"How can you say that to me? *I who sing only for you!*"

Raoul leaned against the panel, so much did he suffer. His heart, which he thought gone forever, had come back into his chest and was giving him resounding blows. The whole corridor rang with it and Raoul's ears were as if deafened by it. Surely, if his heart continued to make so much noise, it would be heard, the door would be opened and the young man would be shamefully chased away. What a position for a Chagny! To listen behind a door! He took his heart in both hands to silence it. But a heart is not the muzzle of a dog, and even when one holds the muzzle of a dog in both hands—a dog that barks insufferably—one still hears it growl.

The man's voice resumed:

"You must be very tired?"

"Oh! this evening, I gave you my soul and I died."

"Your soul is very beautiful, my child," resumed the grave man's voice and I thank you. There is no emperor who has received such a gift! *The angels wept this evening.*"

After these words: *the angels wept this evening*, the viscount heard nothing more.

However, he did not go away, but, as he feared to be surprised, he threw himself back into his corner of shadow, decided to wait there until the man left the dressing room. At the same hour he had just learned love and hatred. He knew that he loved. He wished to know whom he hated. To his great stupefaction the door opened, and Christine Daaé, wrapped in furs and her face hidden under lace, went out alone. She closed the door again, but Raoul observed that she did not lock it. She passed. He did not even follow her with his eyes, for his eyes were on the door which did not reopen. Then, the corridor being again deserted, he crossed it. He opened the door of the dressing room and closed it at once behind him. He found himself in the most opaque darkness. They had extinguished the gas.

"There is someone here!" said Raoul in a vibrant voice. "Why does he hide?"

And saying this, he still leaned his back against the closed door.

Night and silence. Raoul heard only the sound of his own breathing. He certainly did not realize that the indiscretion of his conduct surpassed all that one could imagine.

"You will not leave here except when I permit it!" cried the young man. "If you do not answer me, you are a coward! But I shall well know how to unmask you!"

And he struck his match. The flame lit the dressing room. There was no one in the dressing room! Raoul, after having taken care to lock the door, lit the globes, the lamps. He penetrated into the dressing closet, opened the wardrobes, searched, felt with his moist hands the walls. Nothing!

"Ah! here," he said aloud, "am I going mad?"

He remained thus ten minutes, listening to the hissing of the gas in the peace of that abandoned dressing room; in love, he did not even think to steal a ribbon, which would have brought him the perfume of her he loved. He went out, no longer knowing what he did nor where he went. At a moment of his incoherent wandering, a glacial air came to strike his face. He found himself at the bottom of a narrow staircase which descended, behind him, a procession of workmen bent over a kind of stretcher covered with a white cloth.

"The exit, if you please?" he said to one of these men.

"You see well! facing you," was the answer. "The door is open. But let us pass."

He stepped aside before the procession, bowed and went out.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”