next, his right foot imprinted its sole on the black taffeta of a skirt which certainly had never before undergone a similar outrage in a similar place.the thing happened so quickly that mme.giry, when in the passage, was still quite bewildered and seemed not to understand.but, suddenly, she understood; and the opera rang with her indignant yells, her violent protests and threats.
about the same time, carlotta, who had a small house of her own in the rue du faubourg st.honore, rang for her maid, who brought her letters to her bed.among them was an anonymous missive, written in red ink, in a hesitating, clumsy hand, which ran:
if you appear to-night, you must be prepared for a great misfortune at the moment when you open your mouth to sing...a misfortune worse than death.
the letter took away carlotta's appetite for breakfast.
she pushed back her chocolate, sat up in bed and thought hard.
it was not the first letter of the kind which she had received, but she never had one couched in such threatening terms.
she thought herself, at that time, the victim of a thousand jealous attempts and went about saying that she had a secret enemy who had sworn to ruin her.she pretended that a wicked plot was being hatched against her, a cabal which would come to a head one of those days;but she added that she was not the woman to be intimidated.
the truth is that, if there was a cabal, it was led by carlotta herself against poor christine, who had no suspicion of it.
carlotta had never forgiven christine for the triumph which she had achieved when taking her place at a moment's notice.when carlotta heard of the astounding reception bestowed upon her understudy, she was at once cured of an incipient attack of bronchitis and a bad fit of sulking against the management and lost the slightest inclination to shirk her duties.from that time, she worked with all her might to "smother" her rival, enlisting the services of influential friends to persuade the managers not to give christine an opportunity for a fresh triumph.certain newspapers which had begun to extol the talent of christine now interested themselves only in the fame of carlotta.lastly, in the theater itself, the celebrated, but heartless and soulless diva made the most scandalous remarks about christine and tried to cause her endless minor unpleasantnesses.