Lorenz de Seguins

My splendid Great Aunt had already lived a rich and varied life before I ever appeared. This earned her the privilege of sitting quietly, enveloped in a serenity all her own, when we visited her in central Paris. She would speak in perfect English or à la parisienne, and she was old — very old. Her adventures had been in the early 1940s, and she never spoke of them, and we could never ask. Les Grandes Vacances were spent at her villa looking down over the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, and we would reliably traipse down on request, such was life. She died suddenly in 1975, and all those memories vanished in that second. All those untold stories, forever remaining that way. I have taken this opportunity to borrow her surname, as I was greatly enamoured by it in my youth — and I hope I do it some justice. That is all I need say on the subject.