supposition, as the reader knows. M. Richard and M. Moncharmin were thinking of nothing but their ghost.
“Vain! In vain do I call, through my vigil weary, On creation and its Lord! Never reply will break the silence dreary! No sign! No single word!”
The famous baritone, Carolus Fonta, had hardly finished Doctor Faust’s first appeal to the powers of darkness, when M. Firmin Richard, who was sitting in the ghost’s own chair, the front chair on the right, leaned over to his partner and asked him chaffingly:
“Well, has the ghost whispered a word in your ear yet?”
“Wait, don’t be in such a hurry,” replied M. Armand Moncharmin, in the same gay tone. “The performance has only begun and you know that the ghost does not usually come until the middle of the first act.”
The first act passed without incident, which did not surprise Carlotta’s friends, because Margarita does not sing in this act. As for the managers, they looked at each other, when the curtain fell.
“That’s one!” said Moncharmin.
“Yes, the ghost is late,” said Firmin Richard.
“It’s not a bad house,” said Moncharmin, “for ‘a house with a curse on it.’ ”
M. Richard smiled and pointed to a fat, rather vulgar woman, dressed in black, sitting in a stall in the middle of the auditorium with a man in a broadcloth frock-coat on either side of her.
“Who on earth are ‘those?’ ” asked Moncharmin.