e thing happened.

Faust had knelt on one knee:

"Let me gaze on the form below me,
While from yonder ether blue
Look how the star of eve, bright and tender,
lingers o'er me,
To love thy beauty too!"

And Margarita replied:

"Oh, how strange!
Like a spell does the evening bind me!
And a deep languid charm
I feel without alarm
With its melody enwind me
And all my heart subdue."

At that moment, at that identical moment, the terrible thing
happened... Carlotta croaked like a toad:

"Co-ack!"

There was consternation on Carlotta's face and consternation on the
faces of all the audience. The two managers in their box could not
suppress an exclamation of horror. Every one felt that the thing was
not natural, that there was witchcraft behind it. That toad smelt of
brimstone. Poor, wretched, despairing, crushed Carlotta!

The uproar in the house was indescribable. If the thing had happened
to any one but Carlotta, she would have been hooted. But everybody
knew how perfect an instrument her voice was; and there was no display
of anger, but only of horror and dismay, the sort of dismay which men
would have felt if they had witnessed the catastrophe that broke the
arms of the Venus de Milo... And even then they would have seen ...
and understood ...

But here that toad was incomprehensible! So much so that, after some
seconds spent in asking herself if she had really heard that note, that
sound, that infernal noise issue from her throat, she tried to persuade
herself that it was not so, that she was the victim of an illusion, an
illusion of the ear, and not of an act of treachery on the part of her
voice....

Meanwhile, in Box Five, Moncharmin and Richard had turned very pale.
This extraordinary and inexplicable incident filled them with a dread
which was the more mysterious inasmuch as for some little while, they
had fallen within the direct influence of the ghost. They had felt his
breath. Moncharmin's hair stood on end. Richard wiped the
perspiration from his forehead. Yes, the ghost was there, around them,
behind them, beside them; they felt his presence without seeing him,
they heard his breath, close, close, close to them! ... They were sure
that there were three people in the box ... They trembled ... They
thought of running away ... They dared not ... They dared not mak