We reach Trocadéro and climb up the stairs to its heights behind the Musée de l’Homme at one in the morning. We are leaning against the wall, looking out over the night-silent fountain at the great copper Eiffel at exactly 1:00 A.M., just when the lights that give it that dominant copper gleam at night go out. Simultaneously, the ten-minute-on-the-hour champagne sparkle bursts and fizzes up and down it. I have until then only seen the sparkle on hours before 1:00 A.M., always with the regular lights still on. This new view is strange and haunting, the Eiffel Tower stark and black against the skyline, a white fireworks display of joy dancing up and down it.

The light rain changes to a rain in earnest as we leave Trocadéro, too late to catch the last Métro. By the time we reach the Louvre again, we are soaked and laughing, vainly scraping water back off our faces. We take refuge for a few moments in the empty, vaulted Cardinal Richelieu corridor of the Louvre, gazing through its immense glass windows at the calm beauty of the Cour Marly and the Cour Puget, their marble statues close to us but aloof at the same time. Then we head on, past Châtelet and home. We glide side by side while the rain falls on the dark streets, and streetlamps and car headlights make them glisten.

There are many things that can make someone love Paris: the witch-house display windows of a salon de thé called Charlotte de l’Isle and the thick, almost Spanish hot chocolate there; the exotic island ambience of Maison de la Vanille and the frothy laits frappés they serve, drinks of whipped milk that are much more refreshing than milk shakes; the flower-shaped ice cream at Gelati d’Alberto on rue Mouffetard. I can even think of some things that aren’t food, like the river and the gardens, the theaters and the museums, the Canal St. Martin. But I think I began to love Paris exactly the way Sébastien thought I would, on those nights with him gliding through it.

Maybe the breaking and making points of a relationship are the same thing, and it just depends what you do with them. If you’re going to let go of that bush halfway down the cliff, maybe you just have to fall and not keep clutching at any root or branch to stop you on your way down. Maybe, when it comes to relationships, you’ve just got to risk it all with blind faith, even when it seems crazy and impossible and like you have too much to lose, including your familiar life. Everything, after all, is crazy and impossible, especially romance, which makes no logical sense whatsoever and seems to require an extraordinary belief in something intangible. It’s just a thought. I have them occasionally.