And so he founded the Séminaire Denty, on the Ile de Denty, where it grew and flourished for a hundred years.

But then came the fires of 1789 and the whirlwind of 18 Brumaire, and the Séminaire Denty found itself closed, looted, and all but forgotten. It was manned as a coastal fort during the wars that followed, only to gradually fall into ruin thereafter. Dark rumors circulated of priests or the illegitimate descendants of priests stalking the wooded ruins, but nothing substantial ever came of them, save the disappearance of a German patrol to the area in 1944 which was blamed on partisans of the Resistance.

So when Dr. Pierre Coutard arrived at the site, he found only two hundred years of decay. Nothing to indicate the site’s former importance.

And nothing to indicate its fate only six weeks hence.