<SPAN name="startofbook"></SPAN>
<h1> The Phantom of the Opera </h1>
<h3> by </h3>
<h2> Gaston Leroux </h2>
<hr/>
<SPAN name="chap00"></SPAN>
<h1> The Phantom of the Opera </h1>
<br/>
<h3> Prologue </h3>
<p>IN WHICH THE AUTHOR OF THIS SINGULAR WORK INFORMS THE READER HOW HE
ACQUIRED THE CERTAINTY THAT THE OPERA GHOST REALLY EXISTED</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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."</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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!</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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——:</p>
<P CLASS="noindent">
SIR:</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Believe me, etc.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<P CLASS="noindent">
GASTON LEROUX.</p>
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