Julia Franks' letters are a testament to the last high point of the Belle Époque. As a governess, she accompanies the fairy-tale life of the nobility in castles and fashionable seaside resorts. Her letters also reveal how a young woman finds her way in the tensions of this era. She escapes the confines of her bourgeois family home to Paris, without giving up her loving connections. She refuses an engagement in order to lead a free life in Paris, without excluding the possibility of future marriage. She allows herself to be seduced by life in Paris, without losing herself in it. 340 pages with 118 photos.