In the 2010s, Robert Darnton, a cultural historian who specializes in 18th-century Europe, and Helen Delavault, lyrical and cabaret singer, teamed up around a book project devoted to the Affair of the Fourteen (Paris, éditions Gallimard, 2014). Following a Parisian police investigation on the author of one ode damaging the honor of Louis XV and his mistress, Madame de Pompadour, Robert Darnton studies how the sphere of political communication works in the capital. He showed that the songs play a very important role in the communication process. Hélène Delavault found their melodies and performed some of them. Therefore, the book Poetry and the Police. Communication Networks in Eighteenth‑Century Paris (2012) refers to the electronic cabaret hosted on the site of Harvard University. In this interview, the historian and the singer talk about their collaboration and reflect on the place of song in oral communication in Paris in the mid-18th century.