brooding over her dead father and, above all, the state of sublime ecstasy into which music threw her from the moment that this art was made manifest to her in certain exceptional conditions, as in the churchyard at Perros; all this seemed to him to constitute a moral ground only too favorable for the malevolent designs of some mysterious and unscrupulous person. Of whom was Christine Daaé the victim? This was the very reasonable question which Raoul put to himself as he hurried off to Mamma Valérius.
He trembled as he rang at a little flat in the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Victoires. The door was opened by the maid whom he had seen coming out of Christine’s dressing-room one evening. He asked if he could speak to Mme. Valérius. He was told that she was ill in bed and was not receiving visitors.
“Take in my card, please,” he said.
The maid soon returned and showed him into a small and scantily furnished drawing-room, in which portraits of Professor Valérius and old Daaé hung on opposite walls.
“Madame begs monsieur le vicomte to excuse her,” said the servant. “She can only see him in her bedroom, because she can no longer stand on her poor legs.”
Five minutes later, Raoul was ushered into an ill-lit room where he at once recognized the good, kind face of Christine’s benefactress in the semidarkness of an alcove. Mamma Valérius’ hair was now quite white, but her eyes had grown no older; never, on the contrary, had their expression been so bright, so pure, so childlike.
“ M. de Chagny!” she cried gaily, putting out both her hands to her visitor. “Ah, it’s Heaven that sends you here! … We can talk of her .”