The little château itself, built during the reign of Louis XIV. for the _grand-veneur_ of the forest of Marly, is intensely French in type,—a long, low building on a stone terrace, with no trace of ornament about its white façade or on its slanting roof. Inside, all the rooms are “front,” communicating with each other _en suite_, and open into a corridor running the length of the building at the back, which, in turn, opens on a stone court. Two lateral wings at right angles to the main building form the sides of this courtyard, and contain _les communs_, the kitchen, laundry, servants’ rooms, and the other annexes of a large establishment. This arrangement for a summer house is for some reason neglected by our American architects. I can recall only one home in America built on this plan. It is Giraud Foster’s beautiful villa at Lenox. You may visit five hundred French châteaux and not find one that differs materially from this plan. The American idea seems on the contrary to be a square house with a room in each corner, and all the servants’ quarters stowed away in a basement. Cottage and palace go on reproducing that foolish and inconvenient arrangement indefinitely. After an hour’s chat over our drinks, during host has rippled on from one subject to another with the lightness of touch of a born talker, we get on to the subject of the grounds, and his plans for their improvement. Good luck has placed in Sardou’s hands an old map of the gardens as they existed in the time of Louis XV., and several prints of the château dating from about the same epoch have found their way into his portfolios. The grounds are, under his care, slowly resuming the appearance of former days. Old avenues reopen, statues reappear on the disused pedestals, fountains play again, and clipped hedges once more line out the terraced walks. In order to explain how complete this work will be in time, Sardou hurries me off to inspect another part of his collection. Down past the stables, in an unused corner of the grounds, long sheds have been erected, under which is stored the débris of a dozen palaces, an assortment of eighteenth-century art that could not be duplicated even in France. One shed shelters an entire semicircle of _treillage_, pure Louis XV., an exquisite example of a lost art. Columns, domes, panels, are packed away in straw awaiting resurrection in some corner hereafter to be chosen. A dozen seats in rose-colored marble from Fontainebleau are huddled together near by in company with a row of gigantic marble masques brought originally from Italy to decorate Fouquet’s fountains at his château of Vaux in the short day of its glory. Just how this latter find is to be utilized their owner has not yet decided. The problem, however, to judge from his manner, is as important to the great playwright as the plot of his next drama.