The Paris Review

Almost two years ago, I learned about a private apartment in Paris that might be available for a short stay, the way one hears rumours about cottages on secluded lakes or ski chalets on distant slopes. Usually they are booked for the next ten years or have just been devastated by a hurricane or raging wildfire, but in this case, I was in luck.

Forget April in Paris: I opted for May 2025, which would precede the annual tourism crush beginning in late June — or so I thought — but mostly because it coincided with a significant birthday for my husband. What better place to celebrate than the city where we’d spent our honeymoon more than five decades earlier? Besides, we would be staying within earshot of the bells of Notre-Dame, the twelfth-century Gothic cathedral dedicated to the Virgin Mary, Mother of God, which had finally reopened after a catastrophic fire in April 2019. In the wake of the conflagration, France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, had promised to...