The Phantom of the Opera. Gaston Leroux
Читать онлайн.| Название | The Phantom of the Opera |
|---|---|
| Автор произведения | Gaston Leroux |
| Жанр | Ужасы и Мистика |
| Серия | |
| Издательство | Ужасы и Мистика |
| Год выпуска | 0 |
| isbn | 9780007477432 |
THE
PHANTOM
OF THE
OPERA
Gaston Leroux
CONTENTS
Chapter 3: The Mysterious Reason
Chapter 5: The Enchanted Violin
Chapter 6: A Visit to Box Five
Chapter 7: Faust and What Followed
Chapter 8: The Mysterious Brougham
Chapter 10: Forget the Name of the Man’s Voice
Chapter 11: Above the Trap-Doors
Chapter 13: A Master-Stroke of the Trap-Door Lover
Chapter 14: The Singular Attitude of a Safety-Pin
Chapter 15: Christine! Christine!
Chapter 16: Mme. Giry’s Astounding Revelations as to Her Personal Relations with the Opera Ghost
Chapter 17: The Safety-Pin Again
Chapter 18: The Commissary, the Viscount and the Persian
Chapter 19: The Viscount and the Persian
Chapter 20: In the Cellars of the Opera
Chapter 21: Interesting and Instructive Vicissitudes of a Persian in the Cellars of the Opera
Chapter 22: In the Torture-Chamber
Chapter 23: The Tortures Begin
Chapter 24: “Barrels! … Barrels! … Any Barrels to Sell?”
Chapter 25: The Scorpion or the Grasshopper: Which?
Chapter 26: The End of the Ghost’s Love-Story
Classic Literature: Words and Phrases Adapted from the Collins English Dictionary
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 Daaé, 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-sceptical Moncharmin, who, during his term at the Opera, understood nothing of the mysterious behaviour 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