Paris Is Always a Good Idea Read Online Free PDF

the view that it might well be high time to give up her childish birthday ritual and grow up. If nothing happened this year, she wouldn’t climb up the Eiffel Tower again.
    The air was mild and spring was gradually taking hold. And spring sometimes fulfills the promise that winter has failed to.
    At least, that was what Rosalie was writing on one of her cards when there was an energetic knock at the door below.

 
    Three
    Le Vésinet was an enchanting little town lying about twenty kilometers west of Paris in a loop of the Seine. Even today you could sense that this little place in the Île-de-France region had previously been a forest where the king had enjoyed hunting. The impressionists had also visited it and conjured up the untouched natural beauty of the dreamy green banks of the Seine: many of the paths still look today as they did in the paintings of Manet or Monet.
    Old upper-class villas were protected behind hedges and stone walls; green meadows, parks, and calm lakes delighted the eye; and when you drove along the old allées and the light fell through the lofty trees, many of which were over a hundred years old, you were automatically embraced by a sense of great peace. In other words, Le Vésinet was the perfect place if you wanted a quiet life.
    Unless, thought Max Marchais grimly, you had a publisher on your back who wouldn’t leave you in peace.
    The famous children’s book author was sitting at his desk looking out at the spring morning, at his idyllic garden with the broad lawn, the old chestnut tree and the blooming cherry tree, the little, dark-green garden pavilion, and the hydrangea bushes when the phone rang yet again.
    It had been going on like that all morning, and Max Marchais knew exactly why. Whenever that guy Montsignac set his mind on something, he was like a terrier with his teeth fastened in his victim’s ankle—almost impossible to shake off. For the last week he had been bombarding his author with letters, e-mails, and calls.
    Max Marchais grinned. His case had obviously become a matter for the boss to deal with. He had to admit that he found this quite flattering.
    He had first been contacted by a Mademoiselle Mirabeau, evidently editor in chief at Opale Jeunesse—the children’s literature imprint of Éditions Opale—who looked after the reprints of his children’s books, which were still very successful.
    Mademoiselle Mirabeau, with her delicate birdlike voice, had been polite but very determined. She had returned to the attack again and again, attempting to convince him to think up one more concept for a children’s book.
    Finally, Max had cut her off with a definite no. What was so difficult to understand about the word “no”?
    No, he had no desire to write another book. No, he had no more fantastic new ideas. No, it wasn’t a matter of the advance. And no, he fortunately no longer needed to earn money. He hadn’t written a children’s book in a long time, and since his wife had died four years previously, Max Marchais had withdrawn once and for all from Paris and social life.
    Marguerite’s death had been as tragic as it was pointless. And it had come without warning.
    She had been cycling along the street to the market without a care in the world when the door of a parked car flew open and Marguerite took such an unfortunate fall that her neck was broken. The arbitrary nature of Fate left Max a shattered and embittered man. Then life simply went on. But it was emptier.
    Max took his daily walk through the friendly streets and parks of Le Vésinet; when the weather was fine he sat out in his wicker chair in the shade of the chestnut tree, looking out at the garden his wife had so lovingly created. Now a gardener took care of it.
    The rest of the time Max’s favorite activity was sitting at his desk writing short contributions to learned journals or commemorative volumes. Or he made himself comfortable