Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. I was immensely interested by this story of the Persian. I wanted, if there were still time, to find this valuable and eccentric witness. My luck began to improve and I discovered him in his little flat in the Rue de Rivoli, where he had lived ever since and where he died five months after my Visit. I was at first inclined to be suspicious; but when the Persian had told me, with child-like candor, all that he knew about the ghost and had handed me the proofs of the ghost's existence-including the strange correspond ence of Christine Daae - to do as I pleased with, I was no longer able to doubt. No, the ghost was not a myth! I have, I know, been told that this correspondence may have been forged from first to last by a man whose imagination had certainly been fed on the most seductive tales; but fortunately I discovered some of Christine's writing outside the famous bundle of let ters and, on a comparison between the two, all my doubts were removed. I also went into the past history of the Persian and found that he was an up right man, incapable of inventing a story that might have defeated the ends of justice.
