Jacques Yonnet said this quote

He insisted on clearing the table, and again devoted himself to his game of patience: piecing together the map of Paris, the bits of which he’d stuffed into the pocket of his raincoat, folded up any old how.I helped him.Then he asked me, straight out, ‘What would you say was the true centre of Paris?’I was taken aback, wrong-footed. I thought this knowledge was part of a whole body of very rarefied and secret lore. Playing for time, I said, ‘The starting point of France’s roads . . . the brass plate on the parvis of Notre-Dame.’He gave me a withering look.‘Do you take for me a sap?’The centre of Paris, a spiral with four centres, each completely self-contained, independent of the other three. But you don’t reveal this to just anybody. I suppose - I hope - it was in complete good faith that Alexandre Arnoux mentioned the lamp behind the apse of St-Germain-l’Auxerrois. I wouldn’t have created that precedent. My turn now to let the children play with the lock.‘The centre, as you must be thinking of it, is the well of St-Julien-le-Pauvre. The “Well of Truth” as it’s been known since the eleventh century.’He was delighted. I’d delivered. He said, ‘You know, you and I could do great things together. It’s a pity I’m already “beyond redemption”, even at this very moment.’His unhibited display of brotherly affection was of childlike spontaneity. But he was still pursuing his line of thought: he dashed out to the nearby stationery shop and came back with a little basic pair of compasses made of tin.‘Look. The Vieux-Chene, the Well. The Well, the Arbre-a-Liege On either side of the Seine, adhering closely to the line he’d drawn, the age-old tavern signs were at pretty much the same distance from the magic well.‘Well, now, you see, it’s always been the case that whenever something bad happens at the Vieux-Chene, a month later — a lunar month, that is, just twenty-eight days — the same thing happens at old La Frite’s place, but less serious. A kind of repeat performance. An echoThen he listed, and pointed out on the map, the most notable of those key sites whose power he or his friends had experienced.In conclusion he said, ‘I’m the biggest swindler there is, I’m prepared to be swindled myself, that’s fair enough. But not just anywhere. There are places where, if you lie, or think ill, it’s Paris you disrespect. And that upsets me. That’s when I lose my cool: I hit back. It’s as if that’s what I was there for.

~ Jacques Yonnet

The ‘Oberge des Mailletz’ is by far the oldest tavern of which any record can found in the City archives. In 1292, Adam des Mailletz, inn-keeper, paid a tithe of 18 sous and 6 deniers.This we learn from the Tax Register of the period. At the time it was founded, the Trois-Mailletz was the meeting place of masons, who under the supervision of Jehan de Chelles, carved out of white stone the biblical characters destined to grace the north and south choirs of Notre-Dame. Underneath the building, there are two floors of superimposed cellars: the deeper ones date from the Gallo-Roman period. What remains of the instruments of torture found in the cellars of the Petit-Châtelet have been housed here, along with some other restored objects.A modest bar counter, a long-haired patron who bizarrely manages never to be freshly shaven or downright bearded. A stove in the middle of the shabby room; simple straightforward folk, less drunk than at Rue de Bièvre, and less dirty. Just what we needed.

~ Jacques Yonnet

An historian is a kind detective in search of the fact — remote or otherwise - that brings to a set of events apparently unconnected with each other, the link that unites them, their justification, their logic.You cannot imagine what great delights this profession affords. It’s as if, in every incunablum, consumed by worms and steeped in boredom, in every inarticulate scrawl, in every collection of forgotten chronicles, there presides a mischievous sprite, winking at you, who at the appropriate time confers on you your reward in the form of renewed wonder.

~ Jacques Yonnet

Men are so isolated, prisoners of their own wretched selves, that they can be unbelievably sociable.

~ Jacques Yonnet