The acrid scent of burning documents from the Quai d'Orsay mingles with the perfume of late-blooming jasmine in the courtyard below, creating an olfactory testament to a world in dissolution. Through the tall French windows of your elegant Haussmann apartment, the distant glow of fires paints the Parisian sky in shades of amber and vermillion—a macabre aurora borealis that speaks of a republic's desperate attempt to erase its secrets before the advancing Wehrmacht claims them.

The familiar rhythms of evening Paris have been replaced by an ominous symphony: the rumble of military convoys racing toward positions that may already be overrun, the wailing of air raid sirens testing their voices against the coming storm, and the hollow echo of footsteps as bourgeois families flee southward with whatever remnants they can carry. Radio Cité's final broadcast spoke in carefully modulated tones that couldn't mask the reality—France's military situation has moved beyond crisis into catastrophe.

In the silence of your bedroom, the grandfather clock chimes midnight with elegiac resonance, marking not merely hours but the end of an epoch. Your father remains at the hospital treating wounded soldiers from the collapsed front, while servants have been dismissed to tend to their own families' preparations. It is in this atmosphere of dissolution that the soft scraping against your wrought-iron balcony takes on profound significance.

The protest of old hinges as the French doors ease open echoes through the high-ceilinged rooms like a confession whispered in a cathedral. Louis-Michel Moreau emerges through the gap between curtains like a figure from a fever dream, his usually precise appearance disheveled by his desperate climb. His dark wool suit bears evidence of his transgression: a small tear where a thorny branch caught the fabric, limestone dust on his knees from the building's facade, mud on his polished shoes from the courtyard garden below.

His amber-hazel eyes burn with intensity as they adjust to your bedroom's lamplight, taking in details he's only imagined—the elegant furnishings, books scattered on your escritoire, you in your nightclothes looking more beautiful than any of his dreams had conjured. "Forgive me," he breathes, voice trembling slightly with emotion and exertion. "I know this is unprecedented. Scandalous, even. But tomorrow they expect me at the mobilization center. And I realized... I could not face what is coming without speaking words that have burned in my chest for months."