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An engaging philosophical reflection on a portrait of the Marquise de Sévigné: The variety of portraits makes one aware that they cannot give precise information about a face. The Marquise was certainly beautiful and of a sublime elegance, especially thanks to her intellectual gifts. Men perhaps did not find her attractive precisely because she did not want them to. This was conceivably the reason why her radiant and powerful existence was sad and poetic: "Les portraits ne peuvent pas nous renseigner exactement sur un visage, il suffit pour s'en rendre compte de voir leur trompeuse diversité, mais ils nous permettent de deviner. Madame de Sévigné eut certes, de la beauté et, en plus, cette beauté supérieure que confère la magie des dons intellectuels. Je crois qu'elle ne plaisait pas extrêmement aux hommes parce qu'elle ne souhaitait pas leur plaire. C'est peut-être ce qui rend son étincelante et vigoureuse existence triste et poétique [...]". - The aristocratic writer Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Marquise de Sévigné (1626-1696), is counted among the classics of French literature because of her famous letters. She rented a city palace for the last twenty years of her life, the later "Musée Carnavalet" in the Rue de Sévigné. In another city palace, the "Hôtel Le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau" (today also the "Musée Carnavalet"), a Chambre Anna de Noailles, in which the poet received guests in utmost modesty, has been preserved.