Letters by famous women are auctioned

PARIS -- An unprecedented collection of 1,500 documents from some of history's greatest women is being auctioned in Paris, including everything from Catherine the Great's letter shunning her lover, to Brigitte Bardot's plea to cancel the release of a song that ended up being banned in several countries owing to its sexual content.

The documents, which range from the profound to the banal, include ones from Napoleon's wife Josephine and a note to a teacher from Grace Kelly. Here are highlights of the two-day sale, which started Tuesday.

Catherine of Aragon: Save my marriage

Catherine -- the queen of England from 1509 until 1533 and the first of King Henry VIII's six wives -- fell out of favor with the monarch after she failed to produce a son and heir. In the 1529 letter intended to reach the pope, she argues: "I am completely innocent" and being cast aside "without cause." She asks for Henry's annulment to be blocked. She also warns -- correctly, as it turns out -- that Henry will try to split from Rome. It's signed "Katherina." After their divorce, which was not recognized by the pope, Henry sets up a separate Church of England, with himself as its head.

It sold Tuesday for $86,000.

Princess Grace excuses

When a royal's daughter fails to do her homework, she doesn't tell the teacher a dog ate it. Grace Patricia Kelly -- the American actress who married Prince Rainier III to become the Princess of Monaco -- wrote to daughter Stephanie's French teacher after the girl came up short in class. "Please excuse Stephanie for not having done her French lesson. She left her book at school, Wednesday. Grace de Monaco."

Piaf's 'La vie en Rehab'

Dated Jan. 5, 1956, the letter from singer Edith Piaf is an ode to then-husband Jacques Pills from the clinic where she was undergoing detox after alcohol and morphine addictions. In it, the French cabaret singer of the famous song "La vie en Rose" reminds Pills there will be good days ahead when she gets released. "Lovely man, have confidence in me as you have always had and you will see it's the good side in me that will win, by the end of the detoxification ... you will see that things can start again!" Piaf died seven years later of liver cancer, age 47.

Catherine: Hands off

The amorous Catherine II of Russia, linked to the coup that killed her husband Peter III, is seen in this 1762 letter shunning lover Stanislas Auguste Poniatowski. He wanted to come to Russia and become her new husband, but he is warned to stay away. Why? Catherine had another lover and no intention of letting her old flame return to her life or take over her empire. "You read my letters with very little attention. I've told you and repeated that I risk being assaulted from all sides if you put one foot back in Russia," she says.

It sold Tuesday for $22,000.

Bardot's Sachs appeal

Blond bombshell Brigitte Bardot's letter is a request to a record company to scrap the suggestive, sexually provocative song "Je t'aime, Moi non Plus." ("I Love You ... Me Neither") she had recorded with Serge Gainsbourg. It was straining her marriage to Gunter Sachs. Written a day after the song was first broadcast in 1967 to Phillips record company, the letter speaks of the "serious and grave personal reasons to not release under any circumstances" the recording. The song was withdrawn and later recorded with Gainsbourg's wife Jane Birkin to become one of the iconic hits of the 1960s.

Josephine under Napoleon's thumb

Hardly anything remains of Empress Josephine's letter to a friend, crossed out with aggressive ink scribbles by her husband. The friend, Queen Charlotte of Wurtemberg, was apparently too politically crucial to receive heartfelt thoughts in writing. Napoleon left about 20 of the original words untouched, with Josephine's hand nearly erased. According to manuscript specialist Thierry Bodin, " ... It shows how women's roles became more submissive in the 18th and 19th centuries."

It sold Tuesday for $33,000.