In the Communists' dungeon, I noticed numbers of
initials traced on the walls by the unfortunate people confined in it;
and among these were an "R" and a "C." R. C.: Raoul de Chagny.
The letters are there to this day.
----
[12] Even so, I am convinced that it would be easy to reach it
by draining the lake, as I have repeatedly requested the Ministry
of Fine Arts to do. I was speaking about it to M. Dujardin-Beaumetz,
the under-secretary for fine arts, only forty-eight hours before
the publication of this book. Who knows but that the score of DON
JUAN TRIUMPHANT might yet be discovered in the house on the lake?
If the reader will visit the Opera one morning and ask leave to stroll
where he pleases, without being accompanied by a stupid guide,
let him go to Box Five and knock with his fist or stick on
the enormous column that separates this from the stage-box. He
will find that the column sounds hollow. After that, do not be
astonished by the suggestion that it was occupied by the voice
of the ghost: there is room inside the column for two men.
If you are surprised that, when the various incidents occurred,
no one turned round to look at the column, you must remember
that it presented the appearance of solid marble, and that
the voice contained in it seemed rather to come from the opposite
side, for, as we have seen, the ghost was an expert ventriloquist.
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