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Musée de la Vie Romantique, designed to honor the scandalous bohemians of early-19th-century Paris, sits, fittingly enough, just outside Montmartre, home to the no-less scandalous bohemians of that century’s close. Walking along Boulevard de Clichy toward la Butte—the hill of Montmartre—I passed neon signs, sex shops and peep shows advertised in flashing lights, and the faded schoolhouse red of the Moulin Rouge. But in the hushed palatial entrance hall of the museum, everything was still. Inside, reverential portraits of the female novelist George Sand—infamous for dressing as a man, smoking cigars and seducing the…