The half-timbered Norman grandeur of the Grand Hôtel de Cabourg — Marcel Proust's beloved "Balbec" — sprawls across a hand-tinted real-photo card, its balconied façade overlooking the manicured promenade gardens of this fashionable Channel resort where Proust spent many summers and found the inspiration for À la recherche du temps perdu. The card was sent from a German-speaking guest who on the reverse recounts in dense Gothic-script German a festive wedding gathering: some 58 people sat down to lunch cooked and served by just 3, songs were sung in a cellar after midnight, and everyone tumbled to bed at 1:27 a.m. — a vivid snapshot of bourgeois celebration in interwar Normandy, written by someone named or signing the card with the number "5" noted in blue ink on the front.