Napoleon's great bronze column rises like a frozen thunderbolt above the Place Vendôme, its spiral bas-reliefs of Austerlitz campaign armor gleaming in flat Edwardian light — horse-drawn carriages dot the plaza below, awnings stripe the rue de la Paix in the middle distance, and a street vendor's cart anchors the lower-right corner of this bird's-eye view that perfectly captures Paris at the pivot between the Belle Époque and the motor age. Mailed in 1909 by a French traveler (writing in a dense, looping script that spills into every margin) to a young woman named Harti in the Styrian highlands of Austria, the card is a minor marvel of transnational correspondence: a French Semeuse stamp, a Paris postmark, and a destination address in Ober-Steiermark — Europe stitched together by postcards. The writer fills every white space with affectionate, slightly breathless prose about Paris social life and the beauties of the city.