Denis
A headless saint keeps preaching.
Denis was a Roman missionary of the third century and the first to go so far west as Paris. He set up camp on an island in the Seine, but the river wasn’t enough to protect him from the pagan hordes. They dragged Denis to the top of Montmartre, then a druidic holy place, for a round of great torture.
They stretched him naked over a fire, but he kept on preaching. They unleashed starving wild beasts upon him, but he subdued them with the sign of the cross. They threw him in a furnace, they nailed him to a cross, then they cut off his head. His battered body stretched out its hands, picked up its head, and took off walking.
The long path Denis followed, preaching until at last he collapsed, is commemorated today by the Rue du Mont-Cenis, home to one of the city’s great record stores, run by an ex-pat named Larry.