This content is available to subscribers and issue purchasers.
After Henri dies in their Versailles cottage—alive and joking on Christmas morning, flown to heaven before noon—Claudine needs a new purpose. She moves back to Paris, pays the movers to hoist her belongings up through the window of a cozy attic in the Latin Quarter, and begins teaching mortal tourists how to make tarte Tatin. After all, she’s more than a thousand years old, give or take, with no heirs to dote on. Her condition makes childbirth impossible, and Henri sired no children elsewhere. Everything is in order—jewels and gold caches hidden throughout the city, overseas bank accounts in multiple