Early in the day, a breeze made the purple blossoms of wisteria, dangling from a steel gray vine draped over a stone wall, dance. The busy aural embroidery of bird song that had awakened us an hour earlier had yet to fade. As we approached a man with a pungent pipe walking his dog on the main street in Giverny, an hour west of Paris by car, he nodded at us knowingly. “Vous serez les premiers,” he said with a chuckle. “Bonne visite!”
