The Princess of Monaco passed at Betz the happiest years of her life. She guided the labors of her architects, her sculptors and her gardeners. She played at farming. Her sons, from whom her husband had formerly separated her, came to make long visits with her. Condé, wiser with age, redoubled his tenderness. When he was obliged to travel, either to Dijon to preside over the States or to the camp of Saint Omer to direct the maneuvers of the royal army, he wrote to her at length, and the refrain of his letters was: "Would that I were at Betz!" As soon as his service at court or with the army permitted it, he hastened to the Princess: he brought rare books and pictures to enrich the château; he interested himself in the works undertaken for his friend. He advised the workmen and gave his opinion upon the plans.... [Illustration: 0318] Madame de Monaco renewed her youth in this "rural retreat," and the years passed without lessening the grace of her countenance, without thickening her slender waist, without slowing her light step. It is not an inhabitant of Betz who drew for us this portrait, it is Goethe, at Mayence, in 1792: "The Princess of Monaco, declared favorite of the Prince of Condé, and the ornament of Chantilly in its palmy days, appeared lively and charming. One could imagine nothing more gracious than this slender blondine, young, gay, and frivolous; not a man could have resisted her sallies. I observed her with entire freedom of mind and I was much surprised to meet the lively and joyous Philine, whom I had not expected to find there...." Philine was then fifty-three years old. ***** The great occupation of the Princess at Betz was to create a park in modern taste. She found in this her cares and her glory. The Due d'Har-court, former preceptor of the first son of Louis XVI, who had already distinguished himself by designing his park at La Colline near Caen, undertook to design the avenues, to form the vistas, to plan the buildings: in a certain sense he drew up the scenario of the garden. Hubert Robert made the plans of the temples and the ouins. The architect Le Gendre supervised the buildings. The site was adapted for the establishment of an English garden: on the two banks of the Grivette rose little wooded hills, and, thanks to the undulations of the landscape, sometimes gentle, sometimes brusque, it was there possible to mingle the "picturesque," the "poetic" and the "romantic." The thickets were pierced by sinuous paths; pines and perfumed exotics varied the verdure of the hornbeams and the beeches; the course of the river, which spread out into a marshy meadow, was confined within sodded banks. The forest was thinned to allow the eye to perceive the surrounding fields, and there were scattered in the valley and through the woods Temples and tombs and rocks and caverns, The lesson of history and that of romance.