It is difficult to realize the place as it was, for the quincunces of limes which stood between the pavilions on either side of the steep avenue leading to the royal residence, formerly dipt and kept close, are now huge trees, marking still the design of the grounds, but obscuring the views, and, by their great growth, making the main avenue very narrow. St. Simon exaggerates the extravagance of Louis XIV. at Marly, who spent there four and a half million francs between 1679 and 1690, and probably as much or more between 1690 and 1715, perhaps in all ten or twelve millions, which would represent fifty million francs at the present time. Nevertheless the expense of the amusements of Louis XIV. greatly exceeded the whole revenue of Henri IV., and those of the early years of Louis XIII. From the central pavilion in which the flattery of Mansart placed him as the sun, Louis XIV. emerged every morning to visit the occupiers of the twelve smaller pavilions, Les Pavilions des Seigneurs, the constellations, his courtiers, who came out to meet him and swelled his train. These pavilions, arranged on each side of the gardens, stood in double avenues of clipt lime-trees looking upon the garden and its fountains, and leading up to the palace. The device of the sun was carried out in the palace itself, where all the smaller apartments circled round the grand salon, the king and queen having apartments to the back, the dauphin and dauphine to the front, each apartment consisting of an anteroom, bedroom, and sitting-room, and each set being connected with one of the four square saloons, which opened upon the great octagonal hall, of which four faces were occupied by chimney-pieces and four by the doors of the smaller saloons. The central hall occupied the whole height of the edifice, and was lighted from the upper story. The great ambition of every courtier was to be of the Marly circle, and all curried favor with the king by asking to accompany him on his weekly journey to Marly. The Court used to arrive at Marly on a Wednesday and leave it on a Saturday; this was an invariable rule. The king always passed his Sundays at Versailles, which was his parish. ... The leading figure at Marly was Mme. de Maintenon, who occupied the apartments intended for Queen Marie Thérèse, but who led the simplest of lives, bored almost to extinction. She used to compare the carp languishing in the tanks of Marly to herself--"Like me they regret their native mud." ... At first Mme. de Maintenon dined, in the midst of the other ladies in the square salon which separated her apartment from that of the king; but soon she had a special table, to which a very few other ladies, her intimates, came by invitation.