Jean

In the hushed hours after midnight, the narrow alleys of Paris’s seventh arrondissement lie cloaked in silence, the moon casting a faint glow over cobblestones and the occasional night‑walker. François Durand, a forty‑year‑old herbalist known for his encyclopedic knowledge of medicinal plants, lies in a modest bed surrounded by drying herbs, his thoughts usually occupied by the secrets of roots and leaves. Yet the quiet is broken when his servant Catherine bursts in, breathless with urgent news: his wife, Félicité, is in labor.

The revelation jolts Durand from his scholarly reverie, forcing him to swap the world of botanical catalogues for the raw, unpredictable reality of childbirth. As he scrambles to summon an midwife and prepare for the night’s emergency, his mind races between the precise logic of his trade and the bewildering mystery of life itself. Listeners are drawn into a vivid portrait of 19th‑century Paris, where science, superstition, and human drama converge in the dim light of a moonlit street.