III. OÙ, POUR LA PREMIÈRE FOIS, MM. DEBIENNE ET POLIGNY DONNENT, EN SECRET,

Chapter 3: III. WHERE, FOR THE FIRST TIME, MESSRS. DEBIENNE AND POLIGNY SECRETLY GIVE THE NEW DIRECTORS OF THE OPERA, MESSRS. ARMAND MONCHARMIN AND FIRMIN RICHARD, THE TRUE AND MYSTERIOUS REASON FOR THEIR DEPARTURE FROM THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF MUSIC

III

WHERE, FOR THE FIRST TIME, MESSRS. DEBIENNE AND POLIGNY SECRETLY GIVE THE NEW DIRECTORS OF THE OPERA, MESSRS. ARMAND MONCHARMIN AND FIRMIN RICHARD, THE TRUE AND MYSTERIOUS REASON FOR THEIR DEPARTURE FROM THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF MUSIC

Meanwhile, the farewell ceremony was taking place.

I have said that this magnificent party had been given, on the occasion of their departure from the Opera, by Messrs. Debienne and Poligny, who had wished to die, as we say today: in style.

They had been aided in the realization of this ideal and funereal program by all that then counted in Parisian society and the arts.

All those people had given themselves a rendezvous in the dancers' foyer, where Sorelli awaited, a coupe of champagne in hand and a little prepared speech on the tip of her tongue, the resigning directors. Behind her, her young and old comrades of the corps de ballet pressed close, some conversing in low voices of the day's events, others discreetly making signs of understanding to their friends, whose chattering crowd already surrounded the buffet, which had been set up on the sloping floor, between the war dance and the pastoral dance of M. Boulenger.

A few dancers had already donned their street clothes; most still wore their light gauze skirts; but all had thought it proper to assume faces suited to the occasion. Only little Jammes, whose fifteen springs seemed already to have forgotten in their carefree—happy age—the ghost and the death of Joseph Buquet, did not cease chattering, babbling, hopping about, playing tricks, so well that, as Messrs. Debienne and Poligny appeared on the steps of the dancers' foyer, she was severely called to order by Sorelli, who was impatient.

Everyone noticed that the resigning directors looked cheerful, which, in the provinces, would have seemed natural to no one, but which, in Paris, was found to be in very good taste. He will never be a Parisian who has not learned to put a mask of joy upon his sorrows and the domino of sadness, boredom, or indifference upon his intimate gladness. You know that a friend of yours is in trouble; do not try to console him; he will tell you he already is. But if some happy event has befallen him, beware of congratulating him; he finds his good fortune so natural that he will be astonished anyone speaks of it. In Paris, one is always at the masked ball, and it was not in the dancers' foyer that personages as 'wise' as Messrs. Debienne and Poligny would have committed the fault of showing their sorrow, which was real. And they were already smiling too much at Sorelli, who began to deliver her compliment, when a protest from that little madcap Jammes came to shatter the directors' smiles in so brutal a fashion that the face of desolation and fright which lay beneath appeared to all eyes:

—The phantom of the Opera!

Jammes had thrown out this phrase in a tone of unspeakable terror, and her finger pointed, in the crowd of black coats, to a face so pale, so lugubrious and so ugly, with the black holes of the brow arches so deep, that this death's head thus designated immediately met with wild success.

—The phantom of the Opera! The phantom of the Opera!

And they laughed, and they jostled one another, and they wanted to offer the phantom of the Opera a drink; but he had disappeared! He had slipped into the crowd and was searched for in vain, while two old gentlemen tried to calm little Jammes and little Giry uttered peacock cries.

Sorelli was furious; she had not been able to finish her speech; Messrs. Debienne and Poligny had embraced her, thanked her, and fled as swiftly as the phantom himself. No one was astonished, for it was known that they must undergo the same ceremony on the upper floor, in the singers' foyer, and that finally their intimate friends would be received one last time by them in the great vestibule of the director's office, where a true supper awaited them.

And it is there that we shall find them again with the new directors, Messrs. Armand Moncharmin and Firmin Richard. The former scarcely knew the latter, but they poured out great protestations of friendship and these replied with a thousand compliments; so that those guests who had dreaded a somewhat gloomy evening immediately showed merry faces. The supper was almost gay, and the occasion having presented itself for several toasts, the government commissioner was so particularly skillful, mingling the glory of the past with the successes of the future, that the greatest cordiality soon reigned among the diners. The transfer of directing powers had taken place the day before, as simply as possible, and the questions that remained to be settled between the old and new management had been resolved under the presidency of the government commissioner in so great a desire for agreement on both sides, that in truth one could not be astonished, in this memorable evening, to find four directors' faces so smiling.

Messrs. Debienne and Poligny had already handed over to Messrs. Armand Moncharmin and Firmin Richard the two tiny keys, the master keys that opened all the doors of the National Academy of Music—several thousand. And nimbly these little keys, object of general curiosity, passed from hand to hand, when the attention of some was diverted by the discovery they had just made, at the end of the table, of that strange, pale, and fantastic figure with hollow eyes which had already appeared in the dancers' foyer and had been hailed by little Jammes with this apostrophe: 'The phantom of the Opera!'

He was there, like the most natural of guests, except that he neither ate nor drank.

Those who had begun to look at him smiling had ended by turning away their heads, so immediately did that vision carry the mind to the most funereal thoughts. No one renewed the foyer jest, no one cried: 'There is the phantom of the Opera!'

He had not uttered a word, and his neighbors themselves could not have said at what precise moment he had come to sit there, but each thought that if the dead sometimes came back to sit at the table of the living, they could show no more macabre face. The friends of Messrs. Firmin Richard and Armand Moncharmin believed that this gaunt guest was an intimate of Messrs. Debienne and Poligny, while the friends of Messrs. Debienne and Poligny thought that this corpse belonged to the clientele of Messrs. Richard and Moncharmin. So that no request for explanation, no unpleasant remark, no tasteless jest risked offending this guest from beyond the tomb. A few guests who were aware of the legend of the phantom and who knew the description given by the chief stagehand—they were ignorant of the death of Joseph Buquet—found in petto that the man at the end of the table could very well have passed for the living realization of the character created, according to them, by the invincible superstition of the Opera personnel; and yet, according to the legend, the phantom had no nose and this personage had one, but M. Moncharmin affirms in his 'memoirs' that the guest's nose was transparent.—His nose, he says, was long, thin, and transparent—and I shall add that it could have been a false nose. M. Moncharmin may have taken for transparency what was merely shiny. Everyone knows that science makes admirable false noses for those deprived of them by nature or by some operation. In reality, did the phantom come to sit, that night, at the directors' banquet without having been invited? And can we be sure that this face was that of the phantom of the Opera himself? Who would dare say so? If I speak of this incident here, it is not that I wish a second time to make the reader believe or attempt to make him believe that the phantom was capable of so superb an audacity, but because on the whole the thing is very possible.

And here is, it seems, a sufficient reason. M. Armand Moncharmin, again in his 'memoirs,' says textually:—Chapter XI.—'When I think of that first evening, I cannot separate the confidence which was given us, in their office, by Messrs. Debienne and Poligny from the presence at our supper of that phantomatic personage known to none of us.'

Here is exactly what took place:

Messrs. Debienne and Poligny, placed in the middle of the table, had not yet caught sight of the death's-head man, when he suddenly began to speak.

—The rats are right, he said. The death of that poor Buquet is perhaps not so natural as is believed.

Debienne and Poligny started.

—Buquet is dead? they cried.

—Yes, replied tranquilly the man or shadow of a man... He was found hanged, this evening, in the third cellar, between a flat and a set of The King of Lahore.

The two directors, or rather ex-directors, rose at once, fixing their interlocutor strangely. They were agitated more than was reasonable, that is to say, more than one has reason to be by the announcement of the hanging of a chief stagehand. They looked at each other. They had become paler than the tablecloth. Finally, Debienne made a sign to Messrs. Richard and Moncharmin: Poligny pronounced a few words of excuse to the guests, and all four passed into the director's office. I leave the word to M. Moncharmin.

'Messrs. Debienne and Poligny seemed more and more agitated,' he relates in his memoirs, 'and it appeared to us that they had something to tell us which embarrassed them greatly. First, they asked us if we knew the individual, seated at the end of the table, who had told them of the death of Joseph Buquet, and, upon our negative reply, they showed themselves even more troubled. They took the master keys from our hands, considered them an instant, shook their heads, then gave us the advice to have new locks made, in the greatest secrecy, for the apartments, offices, and objects of which we might desire the hermetic closing. They were so funny in saying this, that we began to laugh, asking them if there were thieves at the Opera? They answered us that there was something worse, which was the phantom. We began to laugh again, persuaded that they were indulging in some jest which was to be as the crowning of this little intimate party. And then, at their request, we resumed our

“Stories of the world, in your language.”