The Phantom of the Opera | Page 2

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-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."
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.
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.
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!
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.
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------:
SIR:
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,