And yet these figures were usually very serious.
Their names were Isis, Amphitrite, Hebe, Pandora, Psyche, Thetis,
Pomona, Daphne, Clytie, Galatea and Arethusa. Yes, Arethusa herself
and Pandora, whom we all know by her box, looked down upon the two
new managers of the Opera, who ended by clutching at some piece
of wreckage and from there stared 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
his own words, in his Memoirs:
"This moonshine about the Opera ghost in which, since we first
took over the duties of MM. Poligny and Debienne, we had been
so nicely steeped"--Moncharmin's style is not always irreproachable--
"had no doubt ended by blinding my imaginative and also my
visual faculties. It may be that the exceptional surroundings
in which we found ourselves, in the midst of an incredible silence,
impressed us to an unusual extent. It may be that we were the sport
of a kind of hallucination brought about by the semi-darkness of
the theater and the partial gloom that filled Box Five.
Pages:
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107