Christine Daae, owing to intrigues to which I will return later, did not immediately continue her triumph at the Opera.After the famous gala night, she sang once at the Duchess de Zurich's;but this was the last occasion on which she was heard in private.
She refused, without plausible excuse, to appear at a charity concert to which she had promised her assistance.She acted throughout as though she were no longer the mistress of her own destiny and as though she feared a fresh triumph.
She knew that the Comte de Chagny, to please his brother, had done his best on her behalf with M.Richard; and she wrote to thank him and also to ask him to cease speaking in her favor.Her reason for this curious attitude was never known.Some pretended that it was due to overweening pride; others spoke of her heavenly modesty.
But people on the stage are not so modest as all that; and I think that I shall not be far from the truth if I ascribe her action simply to fear.Yes, I believe that Christine Daae was frightened by what had happened to her.I have a letter of Christine's (it forms part of the Persian's collection), relating to this period, which suggests a feeling of absolute dismay:
"I don't know myself when I sing," writes the poor child.
She showed herself nowhere; and the Vicomte de Chagny tried in vain to meet her.He wrote to her, asking to call upon her, but despaired of receiving a reply when, one morning, she sent him the following note:
MONSIEUR:
I have not forgotten the little boy who went into the sea to rescue my scarf.I feel that I must write to you to-day, when I am going to Perros, in fulfilment of a sacred duty.
To-morrow is the anniversary of the death of my poor father, whom you knew and who was very fond of you.He is buried there, with his violin, in the graveyard of the little church, at the bottom of the slope where we used to play as children, beside the road where, when we were a little bigger, we said good-by for the last time.
The Vicomte de Chagny hurriedly consulted a railway guide, dressed as quickly as he could, wrote a few lines for his valet to take to his brother and jumped into a cab which brought him to the Gare Montparnasse just in time to miss the morning train.
He spent a dismal day in town and did not recover his spirits until the evening, when he was seated in his compartment in the Brittany express.He read Christine's note over and over again, smelling its perfume, recalling the sweet pictures of his childhood, and spent the rest of that tedious night journey in feverish dreams that began and ended with Christine Daae.Day was breaking when he alighted at Lannion.He hurried to the diligence for Perros-Guirec.
He was the only passenger.He questioned the driver and learned that, on the evening of the previous day, a young lady who looked like a Parisian had gone to Perros and put up at the inn known as the Setting Sun.
The nearer he drew to her, the more fondly he remembered the story of the little Swedish singer.Most of the details are still unknown to the public.
There was once, in a little market-town not far from Upsala, a peasant who lived there with his family, digging the earth during the week and singing in the choir on Sundays.This peasant had a little daughter to whom he taught the musical alphabet before she knew how to read.
Daae's father was a great musician, perhaps without knowing it.
Not a fiddler throughout the length and breadth of Scandinavia played as he did.His reputation was widespread and he was always invited to set the couples dancing at weddings and other festivals.
His wife died when Christine was entering upon her sixth year.
Then the father, who cared only for his daughter and his music, sold his patch of ground and went to Upsala in search of fame and fortune.
He found nothing but poverty.
He returned to the country, wandering from fair to fair, strumming his Scandinavian melodies, while his child, who never left his side, listened to him in esctasy or sang to his playing.
One day, at Ljimby Fair, Professor Valerius heard them and took them to Gothenburg.He maintained that the father was the first violinist in the world and that the daughter had the making of a great artist.Her education and instruction were provided for.
She made rapid progress and charmed everybody with her prettiness, her grace of manner and her genuine eagerness to please.
When Valerius and his wife went to settle in France, they took Daae and Christine with them."Mamma" Valerius treated Christine as her daughter.As for Daae, he began to pine away with homesickness.
He never went out of doors in Paris, but lived in a sort of dream which he kept up with his violin.For hours at a time, he remained locked up in his bedroom with his daughter, fiddling and singing, very, very softly.Sometimes Mamma Valerius would come and listen behind the door, wipe away a tear and go down-stairs again on tiptoe, sighing for her Scandinavian skies.
Daae seemed not to recover his strength until the summer, when the whole family went to stay at Perros-Guirec, in a far-away corner of Brittany, where the sea was of the same color as in his own country.Often he would play his saddest tunes on the beach and pretend that the sea stopped its roaring to listen to them.
And then he induced Mamma Valerius to indulge a queer whim of his.
At the time of the "pardons," or Breton pilgrimages, the village festival and dances, he went off with his fiddle, as in the old days, and was allowed to take his daughter with him for a week.
They gave the smallest hamlets music to last them for a year and slept at night in a barn, refusing a bed at the inn, lying close together on the straw, as when they were so poor in Sweden.
At the same time, they were very neatly dressed, made no collection, refused the halfpence offered them; and the people around could not understand the conduct of this rustic fiddler, who tramped the roads with that pretty child who sang like an angel from Heaven.
They followed them from village to village.
