La Maison de Vieilles

"Yet despite the rumors that abounded, the tales spun, the whispers that blew over the cobbled rues of Paris, the secrets of the Médecin and Madame Rivière were hidden as deeply as the bodies of the catacombs that wound below the city. Who they were, where they came from, how they acquired their seemingly potent riches and why they chose a crumbling stone maison as their abode – they were questions no one could answer, and neither grisette nor gamin nor common man dared try. There was, however, a night in which a very uncommon young man with a very uncommon name happened to pass quite by mistake, on one of his common nightly ramblings through a silent, sleeping Paris, the Maison de Vieilles Chansons upon the Rue de Boîtes, and glimpse a secret that no citizen of Paris had ever reckoned upon."