-house
and a scene from the Roi de Lahore."

The two managers, or rather ex-managers, at once rose and stared
strangely at the speaker. They were more excited than they need have
been, that is to say, more excited than any one need be by the
announcement of the suicide of a chief scene-shifter. They looked at
each other. They, had both turned whiter than the table-cloth. At
last, Debienne made a sign to Mm. Richard and Moncharmin; Poligny
muttered a few words of excuse to the guests; and all four went into
the managers' office. I leave M. Moncharmin to complete the story. In
his Memoirs, he says:

"Mm. Debienne and Poligny seemed to grow more and more excited, and
they appeared to have something very difficult to tell us. First, they
asked us if we knew the man, sitting at the end of the table, who had
told them of the death of Joseph Buquet; and, when we answered in the
negative, they looked still more concerned. They took the master-keys
from our hands, stared at them for a moment and advised us to have new
locks made, with the greatest secrecy, for the rooms, closets and
presses that we might wish to have hermetically closed. They said this
so funnily that we began to laugh and to ask if there were thieves at
the Opera. They replied that there was something worse, which was the
GHOST. We began to laugh again, feeling sure that they were indulging
in some joke that was intended to crown our little entertainment.
Then, at their request, we became 'serious,' resolving to humor them
and to enter into the spirit of the game. They told us that they never
would have spoken to us of the ghost, if they had not received formal
orders from the ghost himself to ask us to be pleasant to him and to
grant any request that he might make. However, in their relief at
leaving a domain where that tyrannical shade held sway, they had
hesitated until the last moment to tell us this curious story, which
our skeptical minds were certainly not prepared to entertain. But the
announcement of the death of Joseph Buquet had served them as a brutal
reminder that, whenever they had disregarded the ghost's wishes, some
fantastic or disastrous event had brought them to a sense of their
dependence.

"During these unexpected utterances made in a tone of the most secret
and important confidence, I looked at Richard. Richard, in his student
days, had acquired a great reputation for practical joking, and he
seemed to relish the dish whi