Falling In Louvre – Fiona Leitch (1)

In fact, Henri couldn’t remember his mother once raising her voice, not even when his papa rolled home drunk or the cow kicked her while she was milking it. Despite this, he’d imagined being able to share his home with Sylvie (or more specifically, her inheritance) relatively happily, without feeling the urge to wash her mouth out or scream in her face every time he looked at her. But he’d been wrong, and now they were both trapped. He looked at her now and sighed. He had to tread a fine line with her.

He couldn’t have her getting too independent; he didn’t want her getting any ideas about looking at the bank account, in case she spotted certain irregularities. But equally he didn’t want her to stop working; it meant he didn’t have to spend all his evenings looking at her simpering face, plus he’d been able to enjoy the charms of his mistress in the comfort of his own home a few times, rather than making some excuse to Sylvie about ‘going to his club’ and having to shell out on a hotel…

Although since he’d noticed her glancing around the apartment with a somewhat mercenary, calculating expression in her eyes, he hadn’t invited her again. And meanwhile Sylvie was still watching him with those big stupid cow eyes. ‘I’ll buy you another phone tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if you should, Henri,’ she said, her eyes downcast.

‘I’m so stupid I’ll only lose it again.’ He struggled to keep himself from swearing at her. But she looked so completely beaten down that he relented; it didn’t hurt to be magnanimous occasionally and the odd bit of affection seemed to keep her docile. He patted his lap and smiled at her.

‘Come here, Little Bird,’ he said. Sylvie did as she was told and sat on his lap, awkwardly. He took her by the chin and turned her face to his, his touch firm but not rough. ‘You see? This just proves it again. You’re too feeble minded to cope on your own. Lucky for you, you don’t have to. You look after my home and I’ll look after everything else.’

In May/June 2016, Paris was bracing itself for a flood of soccer fans from all across the continent, as they prepared to host the European Football Championships. But they were unexpectedly hit by a flood of a very different kind. Weeks of heavy rain caused the Seine to burst its banks. The floodwaters found their way into the underground city beneath Paris; a network of sewers, Metro tunnels, catacombs and the basements of some very famous buildings… The lake underneath the Palais Garnier (the opera house) is well known, being the inspiration for the Phantom of the Opera, but it’s not so well known that the Louvre, home to some of the most important artworks in the world, has a basement storage facility.

On the 2nd of June 2016 this storage facility flooded, forcing the museum to close for several days and move everything out of the basement and onto higher floors. The waters eventually receded, just in time for the opening night of Euro 2016. This is the story of what might have happened during those floods… OceanofPDF.com Prologue Paris, January 2016 Bertrand was King of the Pigeons. Unofficially. He did have the best perch in the city.

Oh, his peers might extol the virtues of certain other landmarks, but not for Bertrand the windswept and oft freezing tour Eiffel; his seat – the head of a particularly grotesque gargoyle atop Notre Dame – was conveniently close to the Louvre, with the rich pickings of many an abandoned packed lunch in the courtyard, and in the summer les jardins de Tuileries could be relied upon for the odd dropped ice cream.

Plus you got a better class of tourist among the cathedral’s many visitors, visitors who loved all of God’s creatures equally, even an old and tattered pigeon whose feathers could only be described as ‘manky’. Bertrand gazed up at the sky. The clouds were thinning. The steady drizzle which had slowly but surely soaked the city over the last few days had finally stopped, and the low winter sun had popped out for one final late afternoon hurrah before clocking off.

It shone down on the rain-lashed streets, bathing buildings in a glorious warm glow and making the puddles sparkle. It shone on the rather nice apartment block in the 6th arrondisement where Sylvie, tense as a bird in a gilded cage, prepared her husband’s dinner in a Prozac daydream. It shone on unlucky-in-love Philippe, hopeless romantic and night-time security guard, coasting his bike down the rue de Rochechouart.

And it shone on Bertrand himself, who shook his ragged feathers and roused himself from thoughts of subjugating his ungrateful pigeon subjects (or at the very least that fat cochon Gerard, who strutted around the Pompidou Centre like Bonaparte himself). One last chance for a scavenge before the sun disappeared and it was time to get his head down. Bertrand took off.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 21f6eb3f1910052f
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 1,556,107 bytes (1.484 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 196
• Language: English (en)

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• Estimated Reading Time: 342.38 minutes
• Total Words: 68,477
• Total Characters: 377,567
• Average Words per Page: 349.37
• Average Characters per Page: 1926.36

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