If one were to look at a city, a city as great as Paris was, from above in the skies like a bird does as it lets its wings be carried by the wind, what would one see? With years passing, seasons changing, would this view change too? On a bright day, when the clouds are far and the sunlight is warm, the heavens clear and blue, what would the eyes behold? It would be countless rooftops to magnificent houses and palaces, the white stone shining pure back to the skies, wide avenues and parks, a cobweb of streets running through the city like veins through a body, a river flowing around the heart of its people. Voices loud and clear can be heard, sometimes melodic and sometimes harsh building up a cacophony of sounds along with the animals that roam those busy streets, near to a million lives drawn together in this place where history has its triumphs as well as victims, life and death, light and dark, sharing the same earth, the same air. Countless tales are told here each day, comedies and tragedies, romances and dramas alike, each person the leading actor in his own tale, the whole world the audience, head in the clouds and feet on the ground.

Yet, below this pulsing body, another creature lives, one separate from its sun-kissed brother though dependent on it nevertheless, sometimes even offering the golden child services that are better to shun the light of day, like a burrow of beasts of the wild, feeding off waste and blood. This parallel invisible world has long been part of this city, for nearly a thousand years, when most of the land was surrounded by marches, brave men had founded stone quarries south the river, a enterprise that fed and build this pulsing metropole for years to come. Slowly the city grew with the gifts from underground, spreading in all directions, north and south, bringing more and more people to its midst. And as life came so did death as well. Sickness or plague, unnatural causes or even in some cases old age took its share in those days, the masses of rotten flesh finding its resting place on the ground of the Holy Innocence, up till a thousand of them until earth was placed to cover the lost. The city grew and changed, a new time was pronounced, a time that wanted to cut all ties with the past, get rid of all the reminders of mortality, and so, under the guise of sanitary laws and supported by cover of the night, a many found his bones moved south the river or anywhere else where an abandoned quarry was found suitable, and with his bones he became the building stone of a new hidden world, a place where reverence was to be shown yet fear prevailed.

A hundred years ago it was that this came to be and the world has since then been made anew many times more. A marketplace and fountain now stand where flesh would rot, and a house is now open to the public where lived kings of opulence. Life continues its course, never-ending and meaningless as it may seem to some, but full of joy and happiness to others, embracing bliss as well as sadness, finding love and meeting tragedy. And still, deep below, a different world continues to exist, in the forgotten catacombs, the endless sewers and abandoned quarries, where murky waters flow and rats thrive, where beings of a different kind find a refuge from society in the wast labyrinths of darkness, where the Gate of Hell* is an entry worth its name, for no light will ever shine on those who live in this night.

The glow of candles is of a special kind, nothing more than a tiny dot in the dark, yet offering comfort and warmth with its flickering light. It is a fragile glow, a soft sight that the smallest of gusts may extinguish, bringing back a world of nothing where there had been something. A candle is a measure of time as well, for there will be only so much of it before there is nothing. Their light holds our hopes, their light illuminates our dreams. In their company one can celebrate life, or wallow in sadness. They are the joy of the poor, and friends of the rich.

A ball is to be held and its night is near. Floors are polished, dust removed from chandeliers, the windows cleaned, wine ordered. A bustle and rustle is to be found on all levels of this grand place, the scene may have been moved from the stage to the foaie but it is to be a performance nevertheless. Guests of the finest kind are expected and everyone is to fulfil his rolle the best there is, costumes are finished, paint applied to faces, hair done in elaborate styles, masks formed and created. Laughter and joy spreads among the busy actors and dancers, the orchestra perfecting their tune, the busy hands behind the scenes already looking forward to their own celebration away from those fine Madams and Monsieurs.

Yet, in the countless passages many floors below the ground, those sounds of excitement and glee are nothing but an eerie haunting echo that rings along the walls and over waters, that halls back from the rough stone like a daunting ghost, and fills a cave with dark foreboding laughter of a masked shadow that sees himself as master over destiny, master over life and death, whose passion is the only ones worthy of a stage.

*Graveyard of the Holy Innocence (French: Cimetière des Saints-Innocents or Cimetière des Innocents) is a defunct cemetery in Paris that was used from the Middle Ages until the late 18th century. It was the oldest and largest cemetery in Paris and had often been used for mass graves. It was closed because of overuse in 1780, and in 1786 the remaining corpses were exhumed and transported to the unused subterranean quarries near Montparnasse known as the Catacombs. The place Joachim-du-Bellay in the Les Halles district now covers the site of the cemetery.

*Barrière d'Enfer (Gate of Hell) one of the entrances into the Paris Catacombs