In designing these plans the Countess kept steadily in view the destination of the pavilion as a place of education. Her first care was to secure the possibility of exercising her _surveillance_ over the little princesses by day, and by night. A glass door separated her room from their nursery, and it was so arranged that even from her bed she could see what was going on in their room. The decorations of the place had all an educational aim. The walls of the Princesses’ room were adorned with frescoes, representing the seven kings of Rome and the emperors and empresses up to the time of Constantine, each with the date and name beneath it. Above the doors were depicted scenes taken also from Roman history. “Two large screens bore representations of the Kings of France, the hand screens depicted incidents taken from mythology.” The staircase was hung with maps. A long gallery was devoted to Grecian history, and certain other rooms were frescoed with scenes taken from the history of France. Into this peaceable retreat Madame de Genlis was accompanied by her mother and her two daughters, Caroline and Pulchérie de Genlis, the completion of whose education she thus found an opportunity of directing, before their early marriages to the Marquis de La Woestine and the Viscount de Valence respectively. In 1782 one of the little twin princesses died of smallpox, and in the same year Madame de Genlis was appointed “Governor” to the young princes, their brothers—the first woman to hold such a post of honour and responsibility. From this moment Bellechasse became a regular academy. In addition to the three princes, the Duke de Valois (afterwards Louis Philippe, King of the French), the Duke de Montpensier, the small Duke de Beaujolais, and their sister Mlle. d’Orléans (afterwards known to history as Madame Adélaïde), the Countess had also, under her care her nephew, César de Crest, her niece, Henrietta de Sercey, and the two mysterious little girls, Pamela and Hermione. Of Hermione’s parentage nothing is known; but she was thought by some people to be a sister of Pamela. The education given by Madame de Genlis in this academy has been chronicled by her in considerable detail in her _Mèmoires_, and in her celebrated pedagogical novel, _Adèle et Théodore_, and its spirit very finely analysed by her latest biographer, Jean Harmand. M. Harmand traces the main body of her educational doctrines to the great educationists of the seventeenth century, Fénélon and Madame de Maintenon, but finds them profoundly modified by the influence of Rousseau. In order to have a free hand to carry them out Madame de Genlis got rid of the Princes’ tutor, M. de Bonnard, and substituted M. Lebrun, a former secretary of her husband. Their second master, M. l’Abbé Guyot, was allowed to remain, though he and the Countess were anything but kindred spirits.