From the journal intime of Mademoiselle Christine Daae:
Juin 15, 1675
I sat, waited, and watched the pen scratch its way across the page. Scritch. Scritch. Scritch. What was taking so long? I cursed the pen, and by extension the man on the other end of it, with every polite curse I could think of. From now on I have to drop the more expressive ones that the street's taught me; he warned me about that. This was my contract—the damned man had to know how I felt, why was he drawing it out so much?
He looked up. Why do I think he had been watching me all along? "Oh, don't let a thought cross that pretty little head of yours, girlie," he laughed, but his voice was rough. The English have no subtlety of language. He pawed over the odious object in question, and I signed where he said me to. 2000 ecus, in advance…All for me. I can't help but be just a bit greedy. That's what happens when one is down on her luck, on the streets of Paris. But I shouldn't be here! Papa was a good violinist, and he supported me, but now he's gone. It seems sordid, detatched and…cold to say it that way, but that's how things have to be now, or that's what I try to say to myself. I don't like singing in the street, papa, I don't! You'd be proud of me now, I know, for getting this. I just know it—our fortune's changed, papa, it's really changed…
She was on a street corner. He had seen her there before, and always stopped to watch her from behind the gaggle of boys that tossed centimes into her hat—whether they were here for her face or for the pure heaven of sound that poured from her upturned lips, none could say, but he could make a very educated guess. Christine noticed him there, vaguely, because he never left money, but only between songs. When she sang, she appeared to be somewhere else, somewhere that no one else could understand, much less follow. Perhaps that's what these little bourgeoisie butcher's boys and literal sons-of-bitches wanted…
But she didn't care about that. On this day, she simply wanted to know why she was still here, on this same dirty corner, with the same stinking hat, with the same amount of money (nothing, after she paid her rent for the noisome little hole with a bed and desk, two loaves of bread, a sheaf of paper, and a bottle of wine), and why she wasn't somewhere else. A little, niggling voice told her that if her papa were alive, she wouldn't have to be here, but she didn't listen to that any more than she had to.
And then the voice. "Is there something…wrong, mon cher?" She almost answered before her mouth stopped working with what may have been shock, and her eyes closed tightly, as if before a divine. The voice wrapped itself around her, caressed her skin and slid over her with a silky, dangerous warmth that promised everything and nothing, and sent a little frisson of fear and pleasure down her neck, and—"you are not singing well today. As I said, is something the matter?"
"Non—non—je pense—non monsieur—" She couldn't will her eyes to open. The voice. Now she felt ashamed; she had displeased it.
"Ah, bon; We wouldn't want anything to happen to it. You must concentrate, mon ange—" here, previously caressing, it flicked sharp, whiplike, over all the nerves and senses it had brought into sudden, painful awareness—"and think of nothing else in the world, no? Good." She heard the whisper of fabric as he turned to leave, but kept her eyes down. When she finally opened them, in the hat was a single gold ecu.