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 to it. The expenses of the Pavilion de Marly, in the ten years from 1680 to 1690, amounted to 4501279 _livres_, 12 _sols_, 3 _deniers_. From this one may well judge that it was no mean thing. The honour of being accounted a person of Marly in those times was accredited as a great distinction, for it went without saying in that case one had something to do with affairs of court, though one might only have been a "furnisher." To be a courtier of Louis XIV, or to be a _pensionnaire_ at Versailles, could hardly have carried more distinction. The court usually resided at Marly from Wednesday until Saturday, and as "the game" was the thing it is obvious that the stakes were high. The vogue of the day was gaming at table, and Marly, of all other suburban Paris palaces, was an ideal and discreet place for it. "High play and midnight suppers were the rule at Marly." This, one reads in the court chronicle, and further that: "The royal family usually lost a hundred thousand _ecus_ at play at each visit." One "gentleman croupier" gained as much as three thousand _louis_ at a single sitting.