Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the Prologue of The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux.

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Take a look in a book and let's see what we can find take a chapter by chapter, one by one at a time So many adventures and mountains we can climb Take it word for word, line by line we fight at a time.

Video welcome to Bite at a Time Books, where we read you your favorite classics one byte at a time.

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Wherever you listen to podcasts today, we'll be reading the first A Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Laru Prologue, in which the author of the singular work informs the reader how he acquired the certainty that the opera ghost really existed.

The opera ghost really existed.

He was not, as was long believed, a creature of the imagination of the artists, the superstition of the managers, or product of the absurd and impressionable brains of the young ladies of the ballet, their mothers, the boxkeepers, the cloakroom attendants or the concierge.

Yes, he existed in flesh and blood, although he assumed the complete appearance of a real phantom, that is to say, of a spectral shade.

When I began to ransack the archives of the National Academy of Music, I was at once struck by the surprising coincidences between the phenomena ascribed to the ghost and the most extraordinary and fantastic tragedy that ever excited the Paris Upper classes.

And I soon conceived the idea that this tragedy might reasonably be explained by the phenomena in question.

The events do not date more than 30 years back.

And it would not be difficult to find at the present day in the Fourier of the ballet.

Old men of the highest respectability.

Men upon whose word one could absolutely rely.

Who would remember as though they happened yesterday the mysterious and dramatic conditions that attended the kidnapping of Christine Daie.

The disappearance of the vikom today Xiang Ni.

And the death of his elder brother.

Count Philippe.

Whose body was found on the bank of the lake that exists in the lower cellars of the Opera on the Ruse scribe side.

But none of those witnesses had, until that day, thought that there was any reason for connecting the more or less legendary figure of the opera ghost.

With that terrible story, the truth was slow to enter my mind, puzzled by an inquiry that at every moment was complicated by events which at first sight might be looked upon as superhuman.

And more than once I was within an ace of abandoning a task in which I was exhausting myself in the hopeless pursuit of a vain image.

At last I received the proof that my presentiments had not deceived me and I was rewarded for all my efforts on the day when I acquired the certainty that the Opera ghost was more than a mere shade.

On that day I had spent long hours over the memoirs of a manager the light and frivolous work of the two skeptical mon Sharmin who.

During his term at the Opera understood nothing of the mysterious behavior of the ghost and who was making all the fun of it that he could at the very moment when he became the first victim of the curious financial operation that went on inside the magic envelope.

I had just left the library in despair when I met the delightful acting manager of our National Academy who stood chatting on a landing with a lively and wellgroomed little old man to whom he introduced me gaily.

The acting manager knew all about my investigations and how eagerly and unsuccessfully I'd been trying to discover the whereabouts of the examining magistrate in the famous Shegni case mfair.

Nobody knew what had become of him, alive or dead.

And here he was back from Canada where he had spent 15 years.

And the first thing he had done on his return to Paris was to come to the secretarial offices at the opera and ask for a free seat.

The little old man was Mpirre himself.

We spent a good part of the evening together and he told me the whole Shanghi case as he had understood it at the time.

He was bound to conclude in favor of the madness of the VI count and accidental death of the elder brother for lack of evidence to the contrary.

But he was nevertheless persuaded that a terrible tragedy had taken place between the two brothers in connection with Christine Daie.

He could not tell me what became of Christine or the VI count.

When I mentioned the ghost, he only laughed.

He too, had been told of the curious manifestations that seemed to point to the existence of an abnormal being residing in one of the most mysterious corners of the opera.

And he knew the story of the envelope but he had never seen anything in it worthy of his attention as magistrate in charge of the Shanghi case.

And it was as much as he had done to listen to the evidence of a witness who appeared of his own accord and declared that he had often met the ghost.

This witness was none other than the man whom all Paris called the Persian and who was well known to every subscriber to the opera.

The magistrate took him for a visionary.

I was immensely interested by the story of the Persian.

I wanted, if there was still time, to find this valuable and eccentric witness.

My luck began to improve and I discovered him in his little flat in the Rue de Rivoli, where he had lived ever since and where he died five months after my visit.

I was at first inclined to be suspicious, but when the Persian had told me with childlike candor all that he knew about the ghost and had handed me the proofs of the ghost's existence, including the strange correspondence of Christine Dale to do as I pleased with, I was no longer able to doubt.

No, the ghost was not a myth.

I had, I know, been told that this correspondence may have been forged from first to last by a man whose imagination had certainly been fed on the most seductive tales.

But fortunately I discovered some of Christine's writing outside the famous bundle of letters, and on a comparison between the two, all my doubts were removed.

I also went into the past history of the Persian and found that he was an upright man, incapable of inventing a story that might have defeated the ends of justice.

This, moreover, was the opinion of the more serious people who at one time or other were mixed up in the Shanghi case, who were friends of the Shanghi family, to whom I showed all my documents and set forth all my interferences.

In this connection I should like to print a few lines which I received from General d.

Sir, I cannot urge you too strongly to publish the result of your inquiry.

I remember perfectly that a few weeks before the disappearance of that great singer Christine Dale and the tragedy which threw the whole of the Furberg St.

Germain into mourning.

There was a great deal of talk in the foyer of the ballet on the subject of the ghost.

And I believe that it only ceased to be discussed in the consequence of the later affair that excited us so greatly.

But if it be possible, as after hearing you, I believe, to explain the tragedy through the ghost, then I beg you, sir, to talk to us about the ghost again.

Mysterious though the ghost may at first appear, he will always be more easily explained than the dismal story in which malevolent people have tried to picture two brothers killing each other, who had worshiped each other all their lives, believe me, etc.

Lastly, with my bundle of papers in hand, I once more went over the ghost's vast domain, the huge building which he had made his kingdom.

All that my eyes saw, all that my mind perceived, corroborated the Persians documents precisely.

And a wonderful discovery crowned my labors in a very definite fashion.

It will be remembered that later, when digging in the substructure of the opera.

Before burying the phonographic records of the artist's phone, the workman laid Bara corpse.

While I was at once able to prove that this corpse was out of the Opera ghost, I made the acting manager put this proof to the test with his own hand.

And it is now a matter of supreme indifference to me if the papers pretend that the body was that of a victim of the commune.

The wretches who were massacred under the commune in the cellars of the Opera were not buried on this side, I will tell where their skeletons can be found in a spot not very far from that immense crypt which was stalked during the siege with all sorts of provisions.

I came upon this track just when I was looking for the remains of the Opera ghost, which I should never have discovered but for the unheard of chance described above.

But we will return to the corpse and what ought to be done with it.

For the present.

I must conclude this very necessary introduction by thanking M.

MEIF Freud.

Who was the commissary of police.

Called in the first investigations after the disappearance of Christine Dale m.

Remy.

The late secretary.

M.

Mercier.

The late acting manager.

M.

Gabriel.

The late chorus master.

And more particularly.

Madame La.

Baron de Casillat Barbazak.

Who was once the little meg of the story and who was not ashamed of it.

Most charming star of our admirable corpse de ballet, the eldest daughter of the worthy Madame Gairi, now deceased, who in charge of the ghost's private box.

All these were of the greatest assistance to me, and thanks to them I shall be able to reproduce those hours of sheer love and terror and their smallest details before the reader's eyes.

And I should be grateful indeed if I omitted, while standing on the threshold of this dreadful and voracious story to thank the present management.

The opera which was so kindly assisted me in all my inquiries the M.

Messenger in particular, together with M.

Gabyon, the acting manager, and that most amiable of Men, the architect entrusted with the preservation of the building, who did not hesitate to lend me the works of Charles Garnet, although he was almost sure that I would never return them to him.

Lastly, I must pay a public tribute to the generosity of my friend and former collaborator, M.

J.

Lacrosse, who allowed me to dip into a splendid theatrical library and to borrow the rarest editions of books by which he set great store.

Gaston Laru.

Thank you for joining Byte at a Time Books today while we read a bite of one of your favorite classics.

Again, my name is Brie Carlyle and I hope you come back tomorrow for the next bite of The Phantom of the Opera.

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