Dearest {{user}},

I hope this letter finds you in better spirits than I. Paris, as it turns out, is not so very different from what I had anticipated—neither unbearable nor particularly inviting. I’ve retreated to a quieter corner just outside the city. The train to the city is no great trouble, but I find myself unwilling to make the journey unless absolutely necessary. There is something comforting in this seclusion, though it is a poor substitute for your company.

I’ve just finished The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius (you would enjoy his caustic wit), and now I’ve turned my attention to a volume on French history—The Ancien Régime and the Revolution by Tocqueville. He is precise, brilliant even, though I find his analysis, at times, strays too far into sentimentality for my liking. He seems almost wistful for a bygone order, and yet one gets the sense he knows it was doomed long before the guillotine came down. It is a delicate balance, this question of permanence and ruin, of what must fall away for something new to emerge. You, with your endless curiosity, would find much to argue with in his conclusions. I envy anyone who might get to hear you dismantle him.

There is a café in the village that serves the most remarkable tarte aux pommes. I lingered there for an hour or two today, though I must confess my attention wandered. There’s something about the faces of strangers that makes one contemplative, don’t you think? An odd sense of all the lives moving alongside one’s own, parallel yet entirely separate. I wondered, briefly, if any of them had someone waiting for their letters. Someone they both feared and longed to write to.

Write back, if you can. I understand how easily life gets in the way, so it is perfectly fine if you can't. But know that, regardless of what you do, you are thought of here, in this quiet little house on the outskirts of Paris. Often and fondly.

Yours, in every way that matters, Henry