us to his friends, wonderful and brilliant people, gave us
liberally of his charm and knowledge, and finally gave us the chance to
buy this old house and its two acres of gardens.

The negotiations for the house were long and tedious. Our offer was an
insult, a joke, a ridiculous affair to the man who had the selling of
it! He laughed at us, and demanded twice the amount of our offer. We
were firm, outwardly, and refused to meet him halfway, but secretly we
spent hours and hours in the old house, sitting patiently on folding
camp-stools, and planning the remaking of the house as happily as
children playing make-believe.

I remember vividly the three of us, Miss Marbury, Sardou, and I,
standing in the garden on a very rainy day. Sardou was bounding up and
down, saying: "Buy it, buy it! If you don't buy it before twelve o'clock
to-morrow I will buy it myself!" We were standing there soaking wet,
perfectly oblivious to the downpour, wondering if we dared do such an
audacious thing as to purchase property so far from our American
anchorage.

[Illustration: A FINE OLD CONSOLE IN THE VILLA TRIANON]

Well, we bought it, and at our own price, practically, and for eight
years we have been restoring the house and gardens to their Seventeenth
Century beauty. Sardou was our neighbor, and his wonderful chateau at
Marly, overlooking the valley and terraces of St. Germain, was a
never-failing surprise to us, so full was it of beauty and charm, so
flavored with the personality of its owner. Sardou was of great help
to us when we finally purchased our house. His fund of information never
failed us, there seemed to be no question he could not answer. He was
quite the most erudite man I have ever known. He had as much to say
about the restoration of our house as we. He introduced us to Monsieur
de Nolhac, the conservator of the Chateau de Versailles, who gave us the
details of our villa as it had been a century and a half ago, and helped
us remake the garden on the lines of the original one. He loaned us
pictures and documents, and we felt we were living in a modern version
of the Sleeping Beauty, with the sleeping villa for heroine.

Our house had always been called "Villa Trianon," and so we kept the
name, but it should not be confused with the Grand Trianon or the Petit
Trianon. Of course everyone knows about the Park at Versailles, but
everyone forgets, so I shall review the history of the Park briefly,
that you may appreciate ou