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Some could hardly drag themselves along; others, from habit, with stooping bodies and outstretched hands, looked for doors to shut. They were the door-shutters, the old, worn-out scene-shifters, on whom a charitable management had taken pity, giving them the job of shutting doors above and below the stage.
Some one above them shouted: "All the door-shutters on the stage! The commissary of police wants them!" Steps were heard and shadows glided through the darkness. The Persian drew Raoul behind a set piece. They saw passing before and above them old men bent by age and the past burden of opera-scenery.
M. Pedro Gailhard has himself told me that he created a few additional posts as door-shutters for old stage-carpenters whom he was unwilling to dismiss from the service of the Opera. In those days, it was still part of the firemen's duty to watch over the safety of the Opera house outside the performances; but this service has since been suppressed.
"We shall never enter the house on the lake by the lake! ... I myself have never landed on the other bank ... the bank on which the house stands. ... You have to cross the lake first ... and it is well guarded! ... I fear that more than one of those men old scene-shifters, old door-shutters who have never been seen again were simply tempted to cross the lake ... It is terrible ... I myself would have been nearly killed there ... if the monster had not recognized me in time! ... One piece of advice, sir; never go near the lake... And, above all, shut your ears if you hear the voice singing under the water, the siren's voice!"
After avoiding the commissary of police, a number of door-shutters and the firemen, after meeting the rat-catcher and passing the man in the felt hat unperceived, the viscount and I arrived without obstacle in the third cellar, between the set piece and the scene from the Roi de Lahore.
"No, no, it was the 'trap-door-shutters. They must do something, you know ... They open and shut the trap-doors without any particular reason ... It's like the 'door-shutters: they must spend their time somehow." "But suppose it were HE, Christine?" "No, no! He has shut himself up, he is working." "Oh, really! He's working, is he?"
But they were not left to enjoy their solitude for long. Other shades now came down by the same way by which the door-shutters had gone up. Each of these shades carried a little lantern and moved it about, above, below and all around, as though looking for something or somebody. "Hang it!" muttered the Persian.
For the moment, M. Mifroid's inquiry saved them from any such unpleasant encounters. The Persian and Raoul welcomed this incident, which relieved them of inconvenient witnesses, for some of those door-shutters, having nothing else to do or nowhere to lay their heads, stayed at the Opera, from idleness or necessity, and spent the night there.
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