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 semidarkness of the theater and the partial gloom that filled Box Five. At any rate, I saw and Richard also saw a shape in the box. Richard said nothing, nor I either. But we spontaneously seized each other’s hand. We stood like that for some minutes, without moving, with our eyes fixed on the same point; but the figure had disappeared.