This is madame de noyere writing about watching her friend die. The hangman was so moved that he missed her head and had to repeat his job five times before he managed to behead her. Anne friedland notes that it was only for a brief moment in the letter that this woman looked at herself and wondered about her own emotions. As a spectator, she writes, one never saw anything as beautiful as her head. They left it for a time on the scaffold so the people could see it. And i assure you that i was dazzled by it. In the end, i was so touched by her death that it took me more than six months to recover from it