paris

Okay, so we know that someone at your place of work hacked into this laptop. That's what we know, that's all we know; let's not jump to conclusions...yet." "Unless...it's backward...

Helen looked up at Paris, her face wet with tears and blotchy with grief, and nodded her consent. 'Together we are chained on rocks before the beast of Poseidon. Naked and bare and helpless.''But we are more fortunate.''How so?' Helen asked.'We have each other as comfort in our misery.

Paris is a woman but London is an independent man puffing his pipe in a pub.

I guess it goes to show that you just never know where life will take you. You search for answers. You wonder what it all means. You stumble, and you soar. And, if you__e lucky, you make it to Paris for a while.

I have heard queens' swans, moved a man to cry,heard Bach played in the Metro on guitars.I have made love in Paris. Let me die.

The Empire was on the point of turning Paris into the bawdy house of Europe. The gang of fortune-seekers who had succeeded in stealing a throne required a reign of adventures, shady transactions, sold consciences, bought women, and rampant drunkenness.

Paris was a universe whole and entire unto herself, hollowed and fashioned by history; so she seemed in this age of Napoleon III with her towering buildings, her massive cathedrals, her grand boulevards and ancient winding medieval streets--as vast and indestructible as nature itself. All was embraced by her, by her volatile and enchanted populace thronging the galleries, the theaters, the cafes, giving birth over and over to genius and sanctity, philosophy and war, frivolity and the finest art; so it seemed that if all the world outside her were to sink into darkness, what was fine, what was beautiful, what was essential might there still come to its finest flower. Even the majestic trees that graced and sheltered her streets were attuned to her--and the waters of the Seine, contained and beautiful as they wound through her heart; so that the earth on that spot, so shaped by blood and consciousness, had ceased to be the earth and had become Paris.

I am tired and drunk and still hungry. He is full of steak and Coca-Cola and, presumably, energy: enough energy to cross the road and walk up the steps inside the tower of the cathedral, which I have never entered.

Nell walks what feels like the length of Paris. She walks through the numbered arrondissements, meandering through a food market, gazing at the glossy produce, both familiar and not at the same time, accepting a plum at a stallholder's urging and then buying a small bag in lieu of breakfast and lunch. She sits on a bench by the Seine, watching the tourist boats go by, and eats three of the plums, thinking of how it felt to hold the tiller, to gaze onto the moonlit waters. She tucks the bag under her arm as if she does this all the time and takes the Metro to a brocante recommended in one of her guidebooks, allowing herself an hour to float among the stalls, picking up little objects that someone once loved, mentally calculating the English prices, and putting them down again. And as she walks, in a city of strangers, her nostrils filled with the scent of street food, her ears filled with an unfamiliar language, she feels something unexpected wash through her. She feels connected, alive.

The wrought-iron gate squeaked as Lucas opened it. He lowered the rented bike down the stone steps and onto the sidewalk. To his right was the most famous Globe Hotel in Paris, disguised under another name. In front of the entrance five Curukians sat on mopeds. Lu-cas and his eighteen-month-old friend then shot out across the street and through the invisible beam of an-other security camera.He rode diagonally across the place de la Concorde and headed toward the river. It seemed only natural. The motorcycles trailed him. He pedaled fast across the Alex-andre III bridge and zipped past Les Invalides hospital. He tried to turn left at the Rodin Museum, but Goper rode next to him, blocking his escape.

Life, oblivious to his grief, continued

And there, until 1884, it was possible to gaze on the remains of a generally neglected monument, so-called Dagobert__ Tower, which included a ninth-century staircase set into the masonry, of which the thirty-foot handrail was fashioned out of the trunk of a gigantic oak tree. Here, according to tradition, lived a barber and a pastry-cook, who in the year 1335 plied their trade next door to each other. The reputation of the pastry-cook, whose products were among the most delicious that could be found, grew day by day. Members of the high-ranking clergy in particular were very fond of the extraordinary meat pies that, on the grounds of keeping to himself the secret of how the meats were seasoned, our man made all on his own, with the sole assistance of an apprentice who was responsible for the pastry.His neighbor the barber had won favor with the public through his honesty, his skilled hairdressing and shaving, and the steam baths he offered. Now, thanks to a dog that insistently scratched at the ground in a certain place, the ghastly origins of the meat used by the pastry-cook became known, for the animal unearthed some human bones! It was established that every Saturday before shutting up shop the barber would offer to shave a foreign student for free. He would put the unsuspecting young man in a tip-back seat and then cut his throat. The victim was immediately rushed down to the cellar, where the pastry-cook took delivery of him, cut him up, and added the requisite seasoning. For which the pies were famed, __specially as human flesh is more delicate because of the diet,_ old Dubreuil comments facetiously.The two wretched fellows were burned with their pies, the house was ordered to be demolished, and in its place was built a kind of expiatory pyramid, with the figure of the dog on one of its faces. The pyramid was there until 1861.But this is where the story takes another turn and joins the very best of black comedy. For the considerable number of ecclesiastics who had unwittingly consumed human flesh were not only guilty before God of the very venial sin of greed; they were automatically excommunicated! A grand council was held under the aegis of several bishops and it was decided to send to Avignon, where Pope Clement VI resided, a delegation of prelates with a view to securing the rescindment if not of the Christian interdiction against cannibalism then at least of the torments of hell that faced the inadvertent cannibals. The delegation set off, with a tidy sum of money, bare-footed, bearing candles and singing psalms. But the roads of that time were not very safe and doubtless strewn with temptation. Anyway, the fact is that Clement VI never saw any sign of the penitents, and with good reason.

Even the pigeons are dancing, kissing,going in circles, mounting each other.Paris is the city of love,even for the birds.

Below Les Avants there was a chalet where the pension was wonderful and where we would be together and have our books and at night be warm in bed together with the windows open and the stars bright. That was where we could go. Traveling third class on the train was not expensive. The pension cost very little more than we spent in Paris.

I love the night passionately. I love it as I love my country, or my mistress, with an instinctive, deep, and unshakeable love. I love it with all my senses: I love to see it, I love to breathe it in, I love to open my ears to its silence, I love my whole body to be caressed by its blackness. Skylarks sing in the sunshine, the blue sky, the warm air, in the fresh morning light. The owl flies by night, a dark shadow passing through the darkness; he hoots his sinister, quivering hoot, as though he delights in the intoxicating black immensity of space.

We'll always have Paris.

Paris is the city in which one loves to live. Sometimes I think this is because it is the only city in the world where you can step out of a railway station__he Gare D'Orsay__nd see, simultaneously, the chief enchantments: the Seine with its bridges and bookstalls, the Louvre, Notre Dame, the Tuileries Gardens, the Place de la Concorde, the beginning of the Champs Elysees__early everything except the Luxembourg Gardens and the Palais Royal. But what other city offers as much as you leave a train?

He who contemplates the depths of Paris is seized with vertigo.Nothing is more fantastic. Nothing is more tragic.Nothing is more sublime.