Will take a happier course;
The most smiling verdure
Will enchant all eyes;
A scattered and dusky grove
Planted by her beautiful hands,
Will cover with its shade
Candor and beauty.
THIS song, which was set to the tune, Que ne suis-je la fougère, was written by Louis Joseph de Bourbon-Condé. The "adored mistress" was Marie Catherine de Brignole, Princess of Monaco. The "charming château" was that of Betz, celebrated at that period because of the beauty of its gardens laid out in the English fashion.
The château has disappeared; but the design of the park is not effaced; not all of the structures with which it was adorned by the caprice of the Princess of Monaco have perished. After a long period of neglect, the domain is today in safe hands: the remnants of the gardens of Betz are now safeguarded. Groves, ruins and temples here still evoke a memory of the imagination at once silly, incoherent and delightful, which satisfied men and especially women on the eve of the French Revolution.
Marie Christine de Brignole had married at eighteen a roué of forty, the former lover of her mother. The Parliament of Paris had divorced her from this brutal and jealous husband, and she had become the unconcealed mistress of Condé. Their relations were public. The Princess lived at Paris in a hotel in the Rue Saint Dominique, beside the Palais Bourbon. She reigned at Chantilly.