We are in 1724. A century has elapsed since the day when the proscribed poet found asylum in a little house built at the extremity of the pool, and now there remains hardly a remnant of the Chantilly of the Montmorencies. Le Nôtre and Mansart have been here. Immense regular gardens, traversed by canals, decorated with statues and fountains, have replaced the modest garden plots of the Renaissance. The swelling woods which neighbored the château are transformed to a majestically clipped park. Of the ancient buildings, the great Condé has allowed only the little château to remain, and he has arranged the apartments of even this in a new fashion. For the old manor house which the architects of the sixteenth century had transformed into a luxurious, elegant and picturesque residence, he has substituted a veritable palace, with grand though monotonous façades, flanked with sufficiently disgraceful pepper boxes. He has built the orangery and the theater, and created a mass of cascades, basins and fountains which rival Versailles. Henri Jules has continued the work of his father, built a house for his gentlemen in place of the farm of Bucan, established a magnificent menagerie at Vineuil, designed the labyrinth of Sylvie's grove and dispersed throughout the park a multitude of marbles copied from the antique. Now the master of Chantilly is the Duc de Bourbon, Monsieur le Duc, Prime Minister of the King; he also is a great lover of gardens and the buildings; he transforms the chapel, he demolishes and reconstructs the three faces of the interior court of the chateau, and he confides to Jean Aubert the task of finishing the construction of the Great Stables, commenced by Mansart. [29] [Illustration: 0369] Chantilly is then, after Versailles and Marly, the most beautiful of the residences of France. It is also the theater of the most sumptuous festivals. M. le Duc there spends royally an immense fortune, which is still growing from operations in the funds. His mistress, Agnes de Pléneuf, Marquise de Prie, holds a veritable court there. [Illustration: 0373] The King comes to pass two months at Chantilly and, every day, he is offered "the diversion of stag hunting or wild boar hunting." The evenings are reserved for the opera, for the comedy and for the dance. The gazettes of Paris describe with a thousand details the hecatombs of wild boars, the lansquenet parties and the suppers at which shine the three sisters of M. le Duc, Mlles, de Charolais, de Clermont and de Sens. The peddlers offer in the streets the list of expert beauties whom chance, added by Madame de Prie, has put in the path of the young King, and for whom the young King has not lusted.