cles the most
complicated to unravel of that of any of the kingly suburbs of old
Paris, though in the days of the old locomotion a townlet twenty-six
kilometres from the capital was hardly to be thought of as a suburb.

Marly-le-Roi, at any rate, with Marly-le-Bourg and Marly-le-Chatel, was
a royal dwelling from the days of Thierry III (678). The neighbouring
region had been made into a countship by the early seventeenth
century, and Louis XIV acquired it as his right in exchange for
Neuphle-le-Chateau in 1693, incorporating it into the domain of
Versailles.

By this time it had become known as Marly-le-Roi, in distinction to the
other bourgs, and the king built a chateau-royal, variously known as the
Palais and the Ermitage. For a fact it was neither one thing nor the
other, according to accepted definition, but rather a group of a dozen
dependent pavilions distributed around a central edifice, the whole
straggling off into infinite and manifestly unlovely proportions. It was
as the sun surrounded by the zodiac.

Isolated on a monticule by the river bank the chateau overlooked its
brood of small pavilions, which in a way formed an _entresol_, or foyer,
leading to the Pavilion Royal. All were connected by iron trellises, _en
berceau_, and the effect must have been exceedingly bizarre; certainly
theatrical.

The four faces of these pavilions were frescoed, and balustrades and
vases at the corners were the chief architectural decorations.

The royal pavilion consisted within of four vestibules on the ground
floor, each leading to a grand apartment in the centre. In each of the
four angles was a "self-contained" apartment of three or four rooms.
What this royal abode lacked in beauty it made up for in convenience.

Each of the satellite pavilions was occupied by a high personage at
court. The Chapel and the Corps de Garde were detached from the chateau
proper, and occupied two flanking wings.

The plans of the "Palais-Chateau-Ermitage" of Marly-le-Roi were from the
fertile brain of Mansart, and were arranged with considerable ingenuity,
if not taste, generously interspersed with lindens and truly magnificent
garden plots. There was even a cascade, or rather a tumbling river
(according to the French expression), for it fell softly over
sixty-three marble steps, forming a sort of wrinkled sheet of water,
which must indeed have been a very charming feature. It cost a hundred
thousand _ecus_ to merely lead the water up