Spring in Geneva - Snip 1

Trying a new experiment here. I'm going to serialise a fair portion of "Spring in Geneva," the Frankenstein riff novella coming from Aqueduct in e-and print format in October. I actually posted the opening paragraphs a while back, so I'm going to repost those here, and add another section.  Then next week, I will add a further snip, und so, und so... At least until the end of August.
So, here we go: "Spring in Geneva," beginning at the real beginning, and going on from there - for a short way, at least.

Mme Desiré Rosch,
House of Clerval and Rosch
Geneva
Ma chére Didi,
Most irritating yet most sapient one, you were precisely correct. Grand-père’s youth did indeed include more than he ever told us. I was engaged in the melancholy task of turning out those books he left me, when I shook this document from between the pages of Chapter Five in his copy of the English novel Frankenstein.
Your nonetheless fond brother,
Pierre
House of Clerval and Rosch
Calais
June 30th 1868



M. Pierre Rosch,
House of Clerval and Rosch,
Calais.

My dear Pierre,
Your letter has come at last; and after such aid as yours, in such an enterprise as this has proved, how can I not fulfill my promise? I write then to inform you, fully  and frankly, “what it was all about.”
Anticipating your command, I begin at my own beginning: that first glimpse of the Promethean, one bitter cold morning in the Parc des Bastions, attempting, as I thought, to eat the hyacinths.
“Sir, I truly thank you.” The voice was indeed masculine, very deep, the French bearing a slight accent, although the speech of an educated man. “I did not wish to eat these — flowers, do you say? Only to examine them.” He returned his eyes earthward. “I have never seen such — flowers — before.”
He spoke with such wonder, indeed such delight, that I was astonished twice over: first, at such an emotion from such a source, and then, upon reflection, in wonder of my own. How could a person of such apparent maturity never have seen hyacinths bloom?