This news is very moving, but responding to it is perplexing. Responding to it in a comment, in fact, for other people to read, including the author, is a novelty that our emotions and our behavior haven’t quite caught up with.

As petite says, she writes for herself. Nobody really writes for any other reason. Writing is an affliction, not an aspiration.

And petite is a good writer. You read her site because of that. And because you like the writing, you like the writer, “petite.” (I’m excepting petite’s fellow Parisians who have met her at blogmeets.) And because you like the writer, you hope that the writer will like you. That’s how we’re built. But when the response splits, when you like the writer but you don’t like what the writer is saying (just the way in which it’s said), you’re perplexed.

That split hasn’t quite happened here. I’m oddly unsurprised by the news; something that petite wrote a few weeks ago made me connect Mr Frog with Charles-Henri, the bad husband in “Le Divorce.” But I’m sorry to hear about it for Tadpole’s sake. My daughter is about petite’s age, and when she was a little younger than Tadpole, her mother decided that she no longer wished to be married (at all – and she meant it). I bawled like a baby for days, by the way, but it turned out to be for the best, as indeed I’ve spent twenty-five happy years with my dear Kathleen. But for my daugher it was not, it seems, so great. She has been filling me in, gently, on how rought it all was. I didn’t handle the part-time Dad thing nearly as well as I thought I had.

So, like Tadpole, I’m pushing for a reunion. Not really, of course – really, I’m perplexed.

I’ve been an avid fan of yours for over a year now and my day isn’t complete until I have read the latest from Paris. Usually I am in tears from laughing but not alas this week.

I hope it works out for you all. He’s probably in denial right now (I would be).

sp_999