Back in the quarries, Red led me through the narrow opening of the ossuary, across rocks and bones and broken bottles. She told me how the cholera epidemic of the early 1800s killed close to 20,000 people. The authorities had nowhere to put the dead, so they dug a big hole in Montparnasse Cemetery and buried them with quicklime to disintegrate the flesh. The ossuary was located at the bottom of that hole.
