THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA

By

Gaston Leroux

CONTENTS:

Prologue. 3

Chapter I Is it the Ghost?. 7

Chapter II The New Margarita. 15

Chapter III The Mysterious Reason. 22

Chapter IV Box Five. 28

Chapter V The Enchanted Violin. 38

Chapter VI A Visit to Box Five. 50

Chapter VII Faust and What Followed. 52

Chapter VIII The Mysterious Brougham.. 64

Chapter IX At the Masked Ball 71

Chapter X Forget the Name of the Man's Voice. 78

Chapter XI Above the Trap-Doors. 83

Chapter XII Apollo's Lyre. 90

Chapter XIII A Master-Stroke of the Trap-Door Lover 103

Chapter XIV The Singular Attitude of a Safety-Pin. 113

Chapter XV Christine! Christine! 119

Chapter XVI Mme. Giry's Astounding Revelations as to Her Personal Relations with the Opera Ghost 123

Chapter XVII The Safety-Pin Again. 133

Chapter XVIII The Commissary, The Viscount and the Persian. 139

Chapter XIX The Viscount and the Persian. 144

Chapter XX In the Cellars of the Opera. 150

Chapter XXI Interesting and Instructive Vicissitudes of a Persian in the Cellars of the Opera 163

Chapter XXII In the Torture Chamber 172

Chapter XXIII The Tortures Begin. 178

Chapter XXIV "Barrels!...Barrels!...Any Barrels to Sell?" 183

Chapter XXV The Scorpion or the Grasshopper: Which?. 191

Chapter XXVI The End of the Ghost's Love Story. 197

Epilogue. 203

Prologue

IN WHICH THE AUTHOR OF THIS SINGULAR WORK INFORMS THE READER HOW HE ACQUIRED THE CERTAINTY THAT THE OPERA GHOST REALLY EXISTED

The Opera ghost really existed. He was not, as was long believed, a creature of the imagination of the artists, the superstition of the managers, or a product of the absurd and impressionable brains of the young ladies of the ballet, their mothers, the box-keepers, the cloak-room attendants or the concierge. Yes, he existed in flesh and blood, although he assumed the complete appearance of a real phantom; that is to say, of a spectral shade.

When I began to ransack the archives of the National Academy of Music I was at once struck by the surprising coincidences between the phenomena ascribed to the "ghost" and the most extraordinary and fantastic tragedy that ever excited the Paris upper classes; and I soon conceived the idea that this tragedy might reasonably be explained by the phenomena in question. The events do not date more than thirty years back; and it would not be difficult to find at the present day, in the foyer of the ballet, old men of the highest respectability, men upon whose word one could absolutely rely, who would remember as though they happened yesterday the m