After she let herself into the staff entrance with her student keys, Iris found herself keeping to the walls like a rodent anxious not to be seen. As with many of the museums, the Louvre was closed to the public to conserve coal during the siege. It lacked more than it held due to the most valuable objects having been taken out of Paris or hidden underground in case of Prussian shelling. Now boxes of arms and ammunition lined the walls where cases had once held displays of precious artifacts.
The lack of either people or the ticks and clanks of the steam heating system made for a thick layer of silence, like dust in a room that hadn’t been opened for years. She stopped, took a breath and straightened her shoulders. Monsieur Firmin, who ran the Ecole d’Archaeologie and who was also head of
