His Excellency, Dr. Franklin,We have heard that you have been once again elected President. Congratulations on your third win and presumably final year in the service to your state. I believe you indicated earlier that the constitution limited terms to 3 years.I write to you as the result of a delay by our esteemed friend, Madame Evie de Mailley Achemi, who was at last accepted to the Academie Royale des Sciences. As you know, her work is important for France to compete with the fine craftsmanship by the English instrument makers, who have far taken the lead in this area. Our poor directory of the Paris Observatory, Jean-Dominique, Comte de Cassini has tried in vain to find someone as capable as Madame de Mailley to produce optiks for his telescope. Alas, it is feared that the back roads in the Languedoc are in poor condition after yet another exceptionally harsh winter.This leads me to my concern that after speaking with Captians of ships that have sailed the world, that the earth continues to cool. It is as if we are experiencing a little Ice Age! Shipmasters have reported that glaciers at the foot of Franz Josef in the New Zealand Alps advanced into the rain forest in the last decade. Here in France, not only have the glaciers destroyed villages seemingly overnight, but we have experienced harsh weather that has destroyed crops, frozen our waterways as far south as the Languedoc and Provence, and consequently left many of our peasants dead.Last year was a good harvest year, but as you know, the government is severely in debt (needless to say that much of that was for your country's benefit). Our short-sited leaders encouraged exports of our grain reserves to other countries to help pay for the debt. Our farmers have yet to fully embrace the potato and enclosures as England has done, leaving us vulnerable should we experience yet another bad harvest year.It seems that our weather is dangerously unstable and could lead to mass food shortages, especially considering that our population has grown to an incredible 27 million! We can only hope that we do not experience another year as we did between 1693 and 1694 and again in 1709.Do you have any theories regarding this weather pattern? Are we to prepare ourselves for living in caves as many in Touraine have done?On a positive note, the day is crisp yet clear. The roads are drying, the fields are becoming green, and all signs of ice are now gone. We have seen many on a quest to find some broken shards of glass. Surely I am missing something, but my wife, the duchesse, has been sending them out and the people seem to be excited to swim underwater through caverns in near frigid temperatures, stand in mucky swamps, then track mud through the ballroom. Very odd behavior that can only be attributed to cabin fever.In any case, we are about to announce that we will resume the hefty RP$ prize for scientific achievements at the academy. Let us hope that Madame de Mailley finally makes it to the academy, since she is likely a leading contender, along with Dr. Adonis Adamski.Sincerely yours,Bedrich PanacekDuc de Coeur