At least, so the ballet-girls said.
And, of course, it had a death's head.
Was all this serious?
The truth is that the idea of the skeleton came from the description of the ghost given by Joseph Buquet, the chief scene-shifter, who had really seen the ghost.

He had run up against the ghost on the little staircase, by the footlights, which leads to "the cellars." He had seen him for a second--for the ghost had fled--and to any one who cared to listen to him he said: "He is extraordinarily thin and his dress-coat hangs on a skeleton frame.

His eyes are so deep that you can hardly see the fixed pupils.
You just see two big black holes, as in a dead man's skull.

His skin, which is stretched across his bones like a drumhead, is not white, but a nasty yellow.

His nose is so little worth talking about that you can't see it side-face; and THE ABSENCE of that nose is a horrible thing TO LOOK AT.