Le Narcisse Blanc

Cléo de Mérode knew what it was to have other people tell her story. In 1896, the sculptor Alexandre Falguière exhibited a nude dancer with her face. Cléo insisted she had posed only for the head. Half a century later, she sued Simone de Beauvoir after finding herself among the courtesans in The Second Sex. A Paris court ordered her name removed, but awarded her just one franc. She had won the right to correct the portrait, if not much compensation for the trouble.

In 2016, a small Paris hotel gave her another. Le Narcisse Blanc takes its name from Joli petit narcisse, a nickname bestowed on the dancer by the composer Reynaldo Hahn. It is a rather kinder interpretation of Cléo: pale panelling, powder-pink upholstery, gold details and flowers worked into everything from ceilings to bathroom fittings. Portraits of women hang on the walls. The thirty-seven rooms and suites are arranged around a distinctly flattering idea of the Belle Époque, one in which nobody ever seems to raise their voice.

The hotel sits near Les Invalides, on boulevard de La Tour-Maubourg, in a part of the 7th arrondissement that has more apartment buildings and ministries than cocktail crowds. The Seine and Pont Alexandre III are an easy walk away, yet returning here feels different from arriving at a hotel in the busy centre. Behind the Haussmann façade, the atmosphere is quiet and domestic, with a glass-roofed dining room and just enough gilding to remind you that this is not actually somebody's home. If you are looking for a glamorous party, you have probably chosen the wrong Cléo.

Upstairs, the rooms are pretty, though not all as generous as the photographs suggest. A Classic measures about eighteen square metres and faces the street. Superior Rooms offer twenty-two, while a Deluxe gives you twenty-seven and, in some cases, a balcony with greenery. For two people staying more than a night or two, the thirty-two-square-metre Executive is a more forgiving choice. The expensive rooms at the top offer a different Paris altogether. The Aurore Suite has a private terrace with a view that includes the Eiffel Tower; the Cléo Suite also looks towards the tower, but without a comparable terrace promised. Choose the room for its actual outlook, not for the flowers in the photographs.

The best surprise lies below ground. There is a thirteen-metre indoor pool, long enough to swim rather than merely dip, with a counter-current system for anyone feeling energetic. A whirlpool, sauna and hammam sit nearby. For a hotel of this size, it is an unusually satisfying place to spend an hour after walking across Paris. The gym, by contrast, is little more than a treadmill and exercise bike. That seems a fair trade: you are unlikely to choose Le Narcisse Blanc for a serious workout, but you might very well return for the pool.

Restaurant Cléo is small and softly lit, with tables beneath glass and beside a planted patio. Chef Alexandre Semperé cooks contemporary seasonal food with plenty of attention to vegetables and the sea. It gives the house somewhere pleasant to spend an evening without sending you into another arrondissement. Still, the main attraction is the hush. This is a hotel for people who like to come back from Paris, not bring the whole city home with them. The smaller rooms are costly for their size, and the elaborate sweetness of the decoration may eventually feel a little too careful.

There is one room where the hotel allows itself a rather wicked joke. The intimate bar is called Léopold, after Leopold II of Belgium, the king with whom Cléo was rumoured to have had an affair. She denied the story throughout her life. So the hotel that has given her such a beautifully behaved portrait has invited the old scandal downstairs for a drink. Cléo might have called her lawyer. On the evidence of her last case, she would have had to settle for a franc.