se seemed
to be confirmed when I saw a shadow suddenly glide along the sacristy
wall. I ran up. The shadow had already pushed open the door and
entered the church. But I was quicker than the shadow and caught hold
of a corner of its cloak. At that moment, we were just in front of the
high altar; and the moonbeams fell straight upon us through the
stained-glass windows of the apse. As I did not let go of the cloak,
the shadow turned round; and I saw a terrible death's head, which
darted a look at me from a pair of scorching eyes. I felt as if I were
face to face with Satan; and, in the presence of this unearthly
apparition, my heart gave way, my courage failed me ... and I remember
nothing more until I recovered consciousness at the Setting Sun."

Chapter VI A Visit to Box Five

We left M. Firmin Richard and M. Armand Moncharmin at the moment when
they were deciding "to look into that little matter of Box Five."

Leaving behind them the broad staircase which leads from the lobby
outside the managers' offices to the stage and its dependencies, they
crossed the stage, went out by the subscribers' door and entered the
house through the first little passage on the left. Then they made
their way through the front rows of stalls and looked at Box Five on
the grand tier, They could not see it well, because it was half in
darkness and because great covers were flung over the red velvet of the
ledges of all the boxes.

They were almost alone in the huge, gloomy house; and a great silence
surrounded them. It was the time when most of the stage-hands go out
for a drink. The staff had left the boards for the moment, leaving a
scene half set. A few rays of light, a wan, sinister light, that
seemed to have been stolen from an expiring luminary, fell through some
opening or other upon an old tower that raised its pasteboard
battlements on the stage; everything, in this deceptive light, adopted
a fantastic shape. In the orchestra stalls, the drugget covering them
looked like an angry sea, whose glaucous waves had been suddenly
rendered stationary by a secret order from the storm phantom, who, as
everybody knows, is called Adamastor. MM. Moncharmin and Richard were
the shipwrecked mariners amid this motionless turmoil of a calico sea.
They made for the left boxes, plowing their way like sailors who leave
their ship and try to struggle to the shore. The eight great polished
columns stood up in the dusk like so many