Pyramid Head

One of the big things I was doing in the revision was make the Treasure Hunt actually work; make it feel to the reader like we really are doing the Dan Brown thing, finding hidden secrets across Paris.

Putting Sacre-Coeur in really opens up the problem of religion in France, but that was too much for those opening scenes. Had to shift that later. The next actual step on the puzzle is a clue discovered at Musée d'Orsay, but to get there I needed a filler scene first. So added a trip to the Louvre (which turns out to be closed).

Okay, so the Abbesses Station is right in the part of Montmartre Penny is staying in (in fact, she's staying at the same hotel I was staying in). It is the deepest station in Paris, with a long winding staircase. So, sure, I could do a little scene there, include a neighborhood stroll, and I could bring up the idea of the underground world, catacombs and sewers and crypts. And I could move the bit about the Martyrdom of St. Denis being used by Loyola to basically found the Jesuits to this scene, instead.

Because at this point I've shown the treasure hunt the way it would be in one of those films, and now I can afford to have Penny pull aside the curtain and admit she's putting it on for her YouTube show. And I had her straight-up saying killer albinos was going too far.

Turns out that spiral stair at Abbesses Station (which also has one of the original Hector Guimard entrances) is decorated with photographs of Sacre-Coeur. So that works great!

A look at the metro map and the new station for the Louvre dumps out in an underground mall, the Carousel du Louvre. And I had to look for a while before I figured out that there are actually two I.M. Pei pyramids there. The one pointing up, in the courtyard, and an upside-down one used as a skylight over the center of that underground shopping center (and the second Louvre entrance).

The clue that led her to the Louvre was something about Ozymandias, so setting it at a pyramid is perfect, and I planted the new scene at the Inverted Pyramid and I started looking up a few more details...and what do I discover?

Such is writing.

I'm working on the d'Orsay scene now, and they have a lot of Berthe Morisot there. Both as a model (Renoit and Manet) and as a painter (none of her sculpture has survived). But I'd already been convinced that I was going to have to get into the lives of the women at some point; the models/girlfriends/financial supporters who played such an important part in the lives of the artists of the belle epoque.