The Phantom of the Opera Book: Familiar Tale from a Different Direction

I had come to the Opera Garnier only three days before, and I defy anyone to learn that labyrinth of rooms and passages so quickly. It didn't help being a girl from a small village, come to Paris with my mother just a week earlier. The city was bewil‐ dering, unimaginably bigger than my little village of Leclair. And the Opera was the heart and center of Paris, stranger and wilder and even more confusing. I was supposed to be on my way to ballet practice. I was a petit rat,...
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I had come to the Opera Garnier only three days before, and I defy anyone to learn that labyrinth of rooms and passages so quickly. It didn't help being a girl from a small village, come to Paris with my mother just a week earlier. The city was bewil‐ dering, unimaginably bigger than my little village of Leclair. And the Opera was the heart and center of Paris, stranger and wilder and even more confusing. I was supposed to be on my way to ballet practice. I was a petit rat, the lowest tier of society among the Opera's performers. Madame Thibault the ballet mistress presided over us.