When Carlotta had finished thinking over the threat contained in the

strange letter, she got up.

"We shall see," she said, adding a few oaths in her native Spanish with

a very determined air.

The first thing she saw, when looking out of her window, was a hearse.

She was very superstitious; and the hearse and the letter convinced her

that she was running the most serious dangers that evening. She

collected all her supporters, told them that she was threatened at that

evening's performance with a plot organized by Christine Daae and

declared that they must play a trick upon that chit by filling the

house with her, Carlotta's, admirers. She had no lack of them, had

she? She relied upon them to hold themselves prepared for any

eventuality and to silence the adversaries, if, as she feared, they

created a disturbance.

M. Richard's private secretary called to ask after the diva's health

and returned with the assurance that she was perfectly well and that,

"were she dying," she would sing the part of Margarita that evening.

The secretary urged her, in his chief's name, to commit no imprudence,

to stay at home all day and to be careful of drafts; and Carlotta could

not help, after he had gone, comparing this unusual and unexpected

advice with the threats contained in the letter.

It was five o'clock when the post brought a second anonymous letter in

the same hand as the first. It was short and said simply: You have a bad cold. If you are wise, you will see that it is madness

to try to sing to-night.

Carlotta sneered, shrugged her handsome shoulders and sang two or three

notes to reassure herself.

Her friends were faithful to their promise. They were all at the Opera

that night, but looked round in vain for the fierce conspirators whom

they were instructed to suppress. The only unusual thing was the

presence of M. Richard and M. Moncharmin in Box Five. Carlotta's

friends thought that, perhaps, the managers had wind, on their side, of

the proposed disturbance and that they had determined to be in the

house, so as to stop it then and there; but this was unjustifiable

supposition, as the reader knows. M. Richard and M. Moncharmin were

thinking of nothing but their ghost.

"Vain! In vain do I call, through my vigil weary, On creation and its

Lord! Never reply will break the silence dreary! No sign! No single

word!"

The famous baritone, Carolus Fonta, had hardly finished Doctor Faust's

first appeal to the powers of darkness, when M. Firmin Richard, who was

sitting in the ghost's own chair, the front chair on the right, leaned

over to his partner and asked him chaffingly: "Well, has the ghost whispered a word in your ear yet?"




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