It was time to leave for the ball, and no matter how she tried, Monaco's Princess Grace could not get into the royal Rolls-Royce without destroying her 2-ft-high headdress. What to do? His Highness Prince Rainier simply ordered a truck, the couple settled onto its carpeted floor, and they chugged off to a Diner de Tetes at the newly decorated Salon des Ameriques in the Monte Carlo Casino. Naturally, the Princess was the center of attention in the towering-12-lb. headdress, constructed of gold wire with gilded latticework decorated with tinkling bells. "I feel like Radio Monte Carlo with all those antennas sticking out of my head," said she. As for his very serene highness, he wore an Oriental cap and a La Mancha mustache. "How do you find me?" he asked his Princess at one point--to which Grace replied: "Slanted, my lord."

Not everybody bothers to examine the watermark on letters they receive. But Chelsea House's Dr. Fred Israel is the curious type, and this was a special letter--from U.S. Ambassador to South Viet Nam Ellsworth Bunker, who was writing on embassy stationery to order a copy of the 1897 Sears, Roebuck Catalogue. Israel held the paper up to the light and was startled to see a turreted fortress emblazoned with the word Conqueror. In a letter acknowledging the order, Dr. Israel added this P.S.: "I noticed the watermark on your stationery, and I am wondering if it is apt." Replied Bunker: "I had never noticed the watermark. If it has any appropriateness, I hope it means that our conquest will be in the realm of peace." (P.S. This time the stationery bore no watermark.)

As a model for "Manderley," the fantastic estate in Rebecca, Novelist Daphne du Maurier chose a place she had loved ever since she was a child. It was "Men-abilly"--a sprawling, gray stone mansion standing on some 400 acres on the coast of Cornwall. Miss du Maurier finally rented it in 1943, five years after writing Rebecca, and there she has lived among the rhododendrons and cherry trees. Unfortunately, the owner would never sell "Menabilly" to the lady who immortalized it, and now, she says, "his second cousin wants to move in." So after 26 years, the novelist, who is now 61, faces the sad task of pulling up stakes. Says she: "It is rather like death to leave a place that has been home for me and my family for a quarter of a century."

The question before the ladies and gentlemen of the U.S. Capitol Historical Society was: Who should write the introduction for a proposed booklet on the nation's Capitol? No problem, reported the Society's historian: Arthur Schlesinger Jr. had already been approached and had accepted. No problem, indeed, snorted Melvin Payne, president of the National Geographic Society. "I think you could have made a much better choice with very little effort. I don't like it." But, countered one of his colleagues, Schlesinger is a noted historian and Pulitzer prizewinner aside from having been a special assistant to the late President Kennedy. So he's popular. So what. "Some people even say he's made a lot of money," snapped Payne. "So did Dillinger!"

"I tell those rookies, 'Watch out for strange love,' " the man informed a reporter on the baseball field. "Those gals --it's a mighty powerful lure when you're away from home--almost as strong as doughballs is to a carp. And I tell pitchers, 'Just watch the man's knees,' like a bullfighter watches the knees of a bull. He can tell what the bull's gonna do next." The tangled syntax sounded almost like Casey Stengel winding up for one of his all-out assaults on sports writers. Not so. Old Case has some formidable competition these days from fabled Negro Pitcher Leroy ("Satchel") Paige, 60, or thereabouts, and still in the game with the Atlanta Braves. In fact, as he listened to himself, Satchel thought he saw a whole new career. "Man, maybe I'll take to the lecture trail. When you're 6 feet 3 1/2 inches and only weigh 180, you got to eat all that chicken and mashed potatoes so you'll be big enough to lift that heavy baseball."

For part of its Distinguished Visitors Program, the University of Massachusetts students invited Senator Strom Thurmond to speak on any subject of his choosing. The idea, said the school, was to balance the great number of liberal speakers on the program and bring a "seldom-heard opinion" to the campus. As Thurmond stepped to the podium, seven students in white sheets and hoods moved up to encircle the rostrum. "Strom Thurmond loves burning yellow babies and starving black babies," read one of the signs they carried. A Thurmond comment on Viet Nam ("We'll have to fight elsewhere if we don't win here") brought forth chants of "Kill! Kill!" When the Senator finished, he left amid a barrage of obscenities from black students.

Pretty soon they'll be calling him "Danny the Bourgeois." The word from Italy is that Danny ("the Red") Cohn-Bendit, 24, the fiery young radical who last year led fellow students into the streets of Paris, is prancing around Rome engaging in more conventional pastimes. Now he makes the nightclub scene with a dazzling French blonde in tow, is rumored to be spending his days scripting a film for Jean-Luc Godard and working on a second book to complement his recently published Obsolete Communism. It's all so middle-class that he was recently boycotted at Rome University, where students accused him of "being out of touch." As the independent daily La Stampa put it: 'The problems of the revolution seem to have passed into the background. He is more involved with business discussions."

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