Chapter VI A Visit to Box Five
We left M. Firmin Richard and M. Armand Moncharmin at the moment whenthey were deciding "to look into that little matter of Box Five."
Leaving behind them the broad staircase which leads from the lobbyoutside the managers' offices to the stage and its dependencies, theycrossed the stage, went out by the subscribers' door and entered thehouse through the first little passage on the left. Then they madetheir way through the front rows of stalls and looked at Box Five onthe grand tier, They could not see it well, because it was half indarkness and because great covers were flung over the red velvet of theledges of all the boxes.
They were almost alone in the huge, gloomy house; and a great silencesurrounded them. It was the time when most of the stage-hands go outfor a drink. The staff had left the boards for the moment, leaving ascene half set. A few rays of light, a wan, sinister light, thatseemed to have been stolen from an expiring luminary, fell through someopening or other upon an old tower that raised its pasteboardbattlements on the stage; everything, in this deceptive light, adopteda fantastic shape. In the orchestra stalls, the drugget covering themlooked like an angry sea, whose glaucous waves had been suddenlyrendered stationary by a secret order from the storm phantom, who, aseverybody knows, is called Adamastor. MM. Moncharmin and Richard werethe shipwrecked mariners amid this motionless turmoil of a calico sea.They made for the left boxes, plowing their way like sailors who leavetheir ship and try to struggle to the shore. The eight great polishedcolumns stood up in the dusk like so many huge piles supporting thethreatening, crumbling, big-bellied cliffs whose layers wererepresented by the circular, parallel, waving lines of the balconies ofthe grand, first and second tiers of boxes. At the top, right on topof the cliff, lost in M. Lenepveu's copper ceiling, figures grinned andgrimaced, laughed and jeered at MM. Richard and Moncharmin's distress.And yet these figures were usually very serious. Their names wereIsis, Amphitrite, Hebe, Pandora, Psyche, Thetis, Pomona, Daphne,Clytie, Galatea and Arethusa. Yes, Arethusa herself and Pandora, whomwe all know by her box, looked down upon the two new managers of theOpera, who ended by clutching at some piece of wreckage and from therestared silently at Box Five on the grand tier.
I have said that they were distressed. At least, I presume so. M.Moncharmin, in any case, admits that he was impressed. To quote hisown words, in his Memoirs:
"This moonshine about the Opera ghost in which, since we first tookover the duties of MM. Poligny and Debienne, we had been so nicelysteeped"--Moncharmin's style is not always irreproachable--"had nodoubt ended by blinding my imaginative and also my visual faculties.It may be that the exceptional surroundings in which we foundourselves, in the midst of an incredible silence, impressed us to anunusual extent. It may be that we were the sport of a kind ofhallucination brought about by the semi-darkness of the theater and thepartial gloom that filled Box Five. At any rate, I saw and Richardalso saw a shape in the box. Richard said nothing, nor I either. Butwe spontaneously seized each other's hand. We stood like that for someminutes, without moving, with our eyes fixed on the same point; but thefigure had disappeared. Then we went out and, in the lobby,communicated our impressions to each other and talked about 'theshape.' The misfortune was that my shape was not in the least likeRichard's. I had seen a thing like a death's head resting on the ledgeof the box, whereas Richard saw the shape of an old woman who lookedlike Mme. Giry. We soon discovered that we had really been the victimsof an illusion, whereupon, without further delay and laughing likemadmen, we ran to Box Five on the grand tier, went inside and found noshape of any kind."
Box Five is just like all the other grand tier boxes. There is nothingto distinguish it from any of the others. M. Moncharmin and M.Richard, ostensibly highly amused and laughing at each other, moved thefurniture of the box, lifted the cloths and the chairs and particularlyexamined the arm-chair in which "the man's voice" used to sit. Butthey saw that it was a respectable arm-chair, with no magic about it.Altogether, the box was the most ordinary box in the world, with itsred hangings, its chairs, its carpet and its ledge covered in redvelvet. After, feeling the carpet in the most serious manner possible,and discovering nothing more here or anywhere else, they went down tothe corresponding box on the pit tier below. In Box Five on the pittier, which is just inside the first exit from the stalls on the left,they found nothing worth mentioning either.
"Those people are all making fools of us!" Firmin Richard ended byexclaiming. "It will be FAUST on Saturday: let us both see theperformance from Box Five on the grand tier!"