Gaston Leroux 
Fatalitas 

Il y a de certains moments où le mensonge devient une chose sacrée et dérobe à la vérité son éclat, son rayonnement, sa force irrésistible de persuasion. On ne voit point d’ombre alors sur la figure qui ment, ni de trouble dans le regard. Et cependant Françoise ne sait pas mentir.

Elle n’a jamais menti. Voilà pourquoi elle ment si bien quand elle ment pour la première fois, soutenue par cette idée terrible que si elle ment mal, elle va déterminer une catastrophe. Laquelle exactement ? Elle l’ignore !… Elle ne comprend rien à ce qui se passe, si ce n’est que la police poursuit son mari, que son mari se cache de la police, et d’elle, Françoise !… Et qu’il a partie liée avec cette espèce de monstre blessé dont il lui semble entendre le souffle au-dessous d’elle.

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Gaston Louis Alfred Leroux was a French journalist and author of detective fiction.

In the English-speaking world, he is best known for writing the novel The Phantom of the Opera (Le Fantôme de l’Opéra, 1910), which has been made into several film and stage productions of the same name, such as the 1925 film starring Lon Chaney, and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1986 musical. It was also the basis of the 1990 novel Phantom by Susan Kay.

Leroux went to school in Normandy and studied law in Paris, graduating in 1889. He inherited millions of francs and lived wildly until he nearly reached bankruptcy. Then in 1890, he began working as a court reporter and theater critic for L’Écho de Paris. His most important journalism came when he began working as an international correspondent for the Paris newspaper Le Matin. In 1905 he was present at and covered the Russian Revolution. Another case he was present at involved the investigation and deep coverage of an opera house in Paris, later to become a ballet house. The basement consisted of a cell that held prisoners in the Paris Commune, which were the rulers of Paris through much of the Franco-Prussian war.