Winter is giving way to crocuses. In the Southern states of America, this happens in February, and then the bright yellow and off-white of the jonquils follow only a couple of weeks behind. Forsythia in thick yellow tangles starts to brighten roadsides even though the trees remain bare, nothing more than buds swelling at the tips of their twiggy fingers.

I have come to love spring in the South. My accord with this softening of the climate (a softness constantly delayed in Paris and London, not showing itself for weeks yet), motivated me to search for some small project that would fill my time and hold me captive while spring became summer. This allows me to gently manipulate lives requiring my particular kind of expertise. I believe these women will be a marvelous enterprise.

This may seem odd, perhaps, this desire to aide these modern women with their friendships and loves. My life was spent attending to the pleasure and comfort of powerful men. Although not considered an acceptable occupation by the masses of my time with their conventional views (or of any time in recent history, I daresay), I still drew gawking crowds when I went out riding. The finest women in the city copied the perfect fit and cut of my habit as the latest style, and then looked down their patrician noses at me if we passed by each other. But these women, who would never invite a woman of my sort into their elegant parlors, were also loath to provide the services I so generously offered. Each of the men with whom I spent time (years, mind you, in an exclusive contract of constant availability) lavished on me a lifestyle only procured through the enormous appreciation of the most affluent persons.