That tragic evening was bad for everybody. Carlotta fell ill. As for

Christine Daae, she disappeared after the performance. A fortnight

elapsed during which she was seen neither at the Opera nor outside.

Raoul, of course, was the first to be astonished at the prima donna's

absence. He wrote to her at Mme. Valerius' flat and received no reply.

His grief increased and he ended by being seriously alarmed at never

seeing her name on the program. FAUST was played without her.

One afternoon he went to the managers' office to ask the reason of

Christine's disappearance. He found them both looking extremely

worried. Their own friends did not recognize them: they had lost all

their gaiety and spirits. They were seen crossing the stage with

hanging heads, care-worn brows, pale cheeks, as though pursued by some

abominable thought or a prey to some persistent sport of fate.

The fall of the chandelier had involved them in no little

responsibility; but it was difficult to make them speak about it. The

inquest had ended in a verdict of accidental death, caused by the wear

and tear of the chains by which the chandelier was hung from the

ceiling; but it was the duty of both the old and the new managers to

have discovered this wear and tear and to have remedied it in time.

And I feel bound to say that MM. Richard and Moncharmin at this time

appeared so changed, so absent-minded, so mysterious, so

incomprehensible that many of the subscribers thought that some event

even more horrible than the fall of the chandelier must have affected

their state of mind.

In their daily intercourse, they showed themselves very impatient,

except with Mme. Giry, who had been reinstated in her functions. And

their reception of the Vicomte de Chagny, when he came to ask about

Christine, was anything but cordial. They merely told him that she was

taking a holiday. He asked how long the holiday was for, and they

replied curtly that it was for an unlimited period, as Mlle. Daae had

requested leave of absence for reasons of health.

"Then she is ill!" he cried. "What is the matter with her?"

"We don't know."

"Didn't you send the doctor of the Opera to see her?"

"No, she did not ask for him; and, as we trust her, we took her word."

Raoul left the building a prey to the gloomiest thoughts. He resolved,

come what might, to go and inquire of Mamma Valerius. He remembered

the strong phrases in Christine's letter, forbidding him to make any

attempt to see her. But what he had seen at Perros, what he had heard

behind the dressing-room door, his conversation with Christine at the

edge of the moor made him suspect some machination which, devilish

though it might be, was none the less human. The girl's highly strung

imagination, her affectionate and credulous mind, the primitive

education which had surrounded her childhood with a circle of legends,

the constant brooding over her dead father and, above all, the state of

sublime ecstasy into which music threw her from the moment that this

art was made manifest to her in certain exceptional conditions, as in

the churchyard at Perros; all this seemed to him to constitute a moral

ground only too favorable for the malevolent designs of some mysterious

and unscrupulous person. Of whom was Christine Daae the victim? This

was the very reasonable question which Raoul put to himself as he

hurried off to Mamma Valerius.




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