With one accord, they raised their eyes to the ceiling and uttered
a terrible cry. The chandelier, the immense mass of the chandelier was
slipping down, coming toward them, at the call of that fiendish voice.
Released from its hook, it plunged from the ceiling and came smashing
into the middle of the stalls, amid a thousand shouts of terror.
A wild rush for the doors followed.
The papers of the day state that there were numbers wounded
and one killed. The chandelier had crashed down upon the head
of the wretched woman who had come to the Opera for the first time
in her life, the one whom M. Richard had appointed to succeed
Mme. Giry, the ghost's box-keeper, in her
I functions! She died on the spot and, the next morning, a newspaper
appeared with this heading: