Since Saturday, we have stayed in an unusual place on the edge of the Marais, across the street from the Pompidou, a top-floor apartment where the elevator deposits you directly into the living room.

The living area is a very fine space, with couches and a dining table for six. The kitchen is well-appointed and well-equipped, and the one bedroom is expansive and away from the street.

An oddity is an upstairs tub/shower jammed against the wall in a narrow laundry/washing area … a space so cramped a person cannot stand up for a shower and really shouldn’t stand up at all, while in the room, because of the beams angling across at low levels.

The oddest bit, however, is the art that dominates the living room.

Two angels, carved from wood and nearly life size, hanging on the wall. And they give their name to the apartment: “Angels”, as the owner calls the place.

Apparently, there is a story behind them.

Not that we will ever hear that story.

First, the angels, pictured in the photo, above.

They have wings. They appear to be female — although one of our French friends declared angels do not have gender. (And although biblical angels generally are perceived to be male.)

We are fairly sure, nearing “positive”, that these angels never saw the inside of a church. The one on the left is showing way too much leg, and the one on the right has bare shoulders, and even in 2014 the Vatican insists on covered shoulders before women or men can enter St. Peter’s Basilica.

Still, they are meant to represent angels, the supernatural creatures many religions believe carry messages from God or can intervene in the affairs of mortals. They appear numerous times in the Bible (and in the other Abrahamic religions), with Gabriel and Michael being the most prominent.

If you want to immerse yourself in the long and fairly inconsistent and even confusing history of angels, feel free to peruse this site.

Basically, the origin, nature and powers of angels remain under debate. Pope John Paul II in 1986 said: “Angels have no ‘body’, even if, in particular circumstances, they reveal themselves under visible forms because of their mission for the good of people.”

The link (above) offers some interesting statistics. A Gallup poll done in 1994 indicated 72 percent of Americans believe in angels. In 2004, Gallup found the number of angel-believers had increased to 78 percent, with the percentage of Americans that did not believe in angels dropping from 15 percent to 10 percent from a decade before. The concept of “guardian angels” seems particularly pervasive.

When first observing the two hovering angels here in the apartment, I thought each was perhaps carved from a single piece of wood. Which would be fairly clever — but require enormous hunks of wood. And then I took a closer look, and can see nails or perhaps dowels that would seem to be holding together constituent parts.

The angel on the left has “her” hands over her chest, as if she has just seen something surprising or objectionable. “Oh, I never …!” The one of the right appears to be praying.

Both have big, empty eyes. The eyes perhaps were at some point painted blue, but time and wear and tear has made that debatable.

The two are stylistically similar — about the same size, each with blonde-ish hair, crudely rendered feet and, most telling, their garments are painted in the same colors. Red with green on the left, green with red on the right.

Ultimately, we decided to email the owner of the apartment and ask him if he could give us some background on the angels.

His response was very curious.

He would be happy to tell us all about the angels, hinting that the story was long and colorful, and he could drop by the apartment at 5:30 over one of the next two days and regale us with their history. Oh, and by the way, doing so over a glass or two of Champagne would be the best approach. And he gave us the name of his favorite Champagne, and where it could be bought — for about $100.

It was a strange and presumptious request. And we turned it down. We don’t know you, we are not going to write a book about the angels and we are not going to spend $100 on your favorite bottle of Champagne.

We wrote back, offering our regrets that we would not be available, and asked if he could give us even a few sentences about the angels, thanking him for his time.

His reply? If we come back, perhaps we can meet and he would tell us then. Presumably over Champagne.

It was just strange.

He gave us one tidbit of information: the angels date from the 18th century. The 1700s, that is. That was it.

I did an image search for “18th century France wooden angels” and that produced this gallery, which is mostly more refined pieces, but not dissimilar in style.

As for “me and those angels” … they creep me out. Granted, I have a low “creep-out” threshold, but the crudeness of the art makes them seem not quite human, and those empty eyes seem to follow a person around the room. And (of course) the bird-like wings, which we rarely find attached to humans.

And perhaps they are fallen angels, which is a whole ‘nother, way creepier thing.

None of these will be going into my house any time soon. And I like this apartment despite them, not because of them.