Pure

AUTHOR’S NOTE

This is a work of the imagination, a work that combines the actual with the invented, though the church and cemetery of les Innocents certainly existed, much as they are described in the story. Today, of course, there is nothing to be seen of the cemetery except for a small square surrounded by restaurants and fast-food outlets near the underground shopping complex of les Halles. The old fountain, the Italian fountain, was moved in the nineteenth century to the middle of the square, where it serves as a meeting place, a place for weary shoppers to sit and rest. The bones from les Innocents may be viewed in the Catacombs of Paris, where later they were joined by the bones from other cemeteries: countless human remains arranged along thousands of metres of dripping walkways deep below the city traffic. Victims of the Terror that followed the destruction of les Innocents by a few years are also said to be hidden in the old workings of the quarry. Above the entrance to the catacombs, a carved inscription reads, ‘Arrête! C’est ici l’Empire de la Mort.’

The market established on the site of the cemetery, the Marché des Innocents, was closed for the last time in 1858.