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?"

"Wait, don't be in such a hurry," replied M. Armand Moncharmin, in the
same gay tone. "The performance has only begun and you know that the
ghost does not usually come until the middle of the first act."

The first act passed without inciden