Ceres of Mazelin

The first French postal stamp was of the Ceres type, a female allegory seen in profile, wearing a bunch of grapes and a crown of branches in her hair. It marked the adoption of the system invented in the United Kingdom of having the postage paid by the sender, and no longer the recipient (even if in the early days, the tax to be paid by the recipient was low).
The Cérès type was then used several times during French postal history.