Sorelli was very pale.

`I shall never be able to recite my speech,' she said.

Ma Jammes gave her opinion, while she emptied a glass of liqueur that happened to be standing on a table; the ghost must have something to do with it.

The truth is that no one ever knew how Joseph Buquet met his death. The verdict at the inquest was `natural suicide.' In his Memoirs of Manager, M. Moncharmin, one of the joint managers who succeeded MM. Debienne and Poligny, describes the incident as follows:

`A grievous accident spoiled the little party which MM. Debienne and Poligny gave to celebrate their retirement. I was in the manager's office, when Mercier, the acting-manager, suddenly came darting in. He seemed half mad and told me that the body of a scene-shifter had been found hanging in the third cellar under the stage, between a farm-house and a scene from the Roi de Lahore. I shouted:

`"Come and cut him down!'

`By the time I had rushed down the staircase and the Jacob's ladder, the man was no longer hanging from his rope!'

`It was just after the ballet; and leaders and dancing-girls lost no time in taking their precautions against the evil eye.'

The horrid news soon spread all over the Opera, where Joseph Buquet was very popular. The dressing- rooms emptied and the ballet-girls, crowding around Sorelli like timid sheep around their shepherdess, made for the foyer through the ill-lit passages and staircases, trotting as fast as their little pink legs could carry them.