Monaco's legal wheels spun for more than a year, and at last His Serene Highness Prince Rainier, 43, came up a winner. Monaco's Supreme Court decided that the Prince's government was perfectly within its rights when it issued itself 600,000 new shares of stock in the Societe des Bains de Mer, thus guaranteeing control of the outfit that runs the famed Monte Carlo Casino and 33% of the principality's real estate. The big loser: Greek Shipping Magnate Aristotle Onassis, 60, who hitherto controlled the Societe with 500,000 shares. Onassis' next move may well be to offer his shares to Rainier, who is bound by law to buy them. If Onassis does sell out, the Prince will have the problem of raising some $10 million to cash in his ex-partner's chips.

An organizer for the benefit observed philosophically: "The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away." On the debit side were Lynda Bird Johnson and Actor George Hamilton, who couldn't make it to Manhattan for the U.S. premiere of the Elizabeth Taylor-Richard Burton version of The Taming of the Shrew. Among the credits were Bobby Kennedy and his sister Pat Lawford, joining a glittering list of 500 who paid $100 each to help the Society for the Rehabilitation of the Facially Disfigured. But it was the Duke and Duchess of Windsor who drew shrieks from the people watchers outside the theater. Resplendent in a blue-and-pink Givenchy gown, the duchess turned and waved. The duke, after blowing some stogie smoke at photographers, went to shake hands enthusiastically with fans in the crowd.

Cornell University's West Sibley Hall had a jewel of a janitor--for a couple of hours, anyway, as Historian Clinton Rossiter, 49, scrabbled around with bucket and scrub brush. Rossiter doesn't think the hired help who are supposed to clean up the 100-year-old home of the government and history departments have been paying attention to his office. "The janitors have no time to clean up here," Rossiter announced, as he staged a protest "scrub-in" with six of his students and three other professors. "They're too busy watering the potted palms over at the Business School. I think this whole situation reflects the priorities of this campus. The sciences must work in antiseptic surroundings, but the humanities can live in dirt."

This time of year thou mayest in Casey Stengel behold a lot of the old juice. As he has for the past 52 years, "the perfessor," 75, arrived for spring training, flying to the New York Mets' camp at St. Petersburg, Fla., where he started a verbal pepper game with the press. Though he retired as Mets manager in 1965, Case still works as their West Coast scout, and after looking over the lads, he announced: "The future of this here ball club is brighter." For one thing, said Case, there is Tommy Davis, acquired from the Los Angeles Dodgers: "I saw Davis play and he didn't limp like I do." That's encouraging. On another Dodger Davis, Willie, who became a World Series anti-hero last fall with his three spectacular errors against the Orioles, Casey observed: "He drops fly balls sometimes, and at a bad time of the year."

"I feel so much better now," she said. "For a year and a half I did not feel like living. Last November I started to live again. Now I like living." The miracle, of course, was that Actress Patricia Neal, 41, was alive at all, after the three massive strokes that left her paralyzed and speechless two years ago. She feels so much better that this summer she will star in a movie version of Broadway's The Subject Was Roses. In Manhattan to deliver a speech for the benefit of the New York Association for Brain-Injured Children, Pat told a press conference that her husband. Writer Roald Dahl, wanted her to resume her career. "He's making me do it," she explained. "He thinks I'm playing too much bridge."

Tugging open all those empty refrigerators for Westinghouse hardly gave her a meat-and-potatoes background for her new job. Indeed, onetime TV Pitchgirl Betty Furness, 51, was as surprised as anyone when President Johnson appointed her his $26,000-a-year Special Assistant on Consumer Affairs, replacing Mrs. Esther Peterson, who returns to full-time duties as Assistant Secretary of Labor. Betty got interested in politics while doing commercials at national conventions, stumped a bit for L.B.J. in 1964, lately has been recruiting for Project Head Start and VISTA. Becoming the consumer's guardian angel is "going to be very largely on-the-job training as far as I am concerned," she admitted, as she started doing her own grocery shopping for the first time in 15 years. Then she wryly reported her research to a women's club in Royal Oak, Mich. "Eggs," she confided, "are 59-c- a dozen."

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