The book "The Seven Wives of Bluebeard" by Nobel laureate Anatole France was published in 1909. All the novels are based on a fabulous or legendary plot. But the most amazing miracles do not stand up to contact with reality: the finished villain Bluebeard turns out to be a simpleton; petty intrigues reign at the court of the Sleeping Beauty, the handsome prince who awakened her is only a "prince with a pretty mustache"; the boys resurrected by St. Nicholas turn into a robber, a usurer and a heretic; and nothing in the world is able to convince a sober Epicurean Boulengren's belief in the existence of fairies. But the eternal questions that concern every person are solved unexpectedly and gracefully in the novels. Isn't there happiness in self-forgetfulness? Can vice become a virtue? Is a rich person always happy? And how to be loved?