In times when people in Paris went to a fountain to fetch water—when, in almost every district, there were corners that looked like villages—on a quiet, shady street near the church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, where musketeers once lived, there was one woman. She had no idea that great upheavals were coming that would reshape the capital of the world, and that the workers’ props sent by a zealous prefect would smash old Paris. Just as residents of quiet Moscow lanes didn’t know that someone’s decisive hand had already drawn a straight line that split old Arbat in two. But what do you do when you’re doomed to live in an age of change?..