"
"He is a friend of the government representative's!" Mercier ventured
to say.
"And he takes his vermouth at Tortoni's with Lagrene, Scholl and Pertuiset,
the lion-hunter," added Moncharmin. "We shall have the whole press
against us! He'll tell the story of the ghost; and everybody
will be laughing at our expense! We may as well be dead as ridiculous!"
"All right, say no more about it."
At that moment the door opened. It must have been deserted
by its usual Cerberus, for Mme. Giry entered without ceremony,
holding a letter in her hand, and said hurriedly:
"I beg your pardon, excuse me, gentlemen, but I had a letter this
morning from the Opera ghost. He told me to come to you, that you
had something to..."
She did not complete the sentence. She saw Firmin Richard's face;
and it was a terrible sight. He seemed ready to burst. He said nothing,
he could not speak. But suddenly he acted. First, his left arm
seized upon the quaint person of Mme. Giry and made her describe
so unexpected a semicircle that she uttered a despairing cry.
Next, his right foot imprinted its sole on the black taffeta of a
skirt which certainly had never before undergone a similar outrage
in a similar place.
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