MARLY-LE-ROI, chief place of a canton in the department of Seine-et-Oise, France, 5 miles to the north of Versailles and 3 miles to the south of St Germain-en-Laye, is, notwithstanding some fine country houses, a dull and unattractive village of 1250 inhabitants, which owes all its celebrity to the sumptuous chateau of Louis XIV. It was originally designed as a simple hermitage to which the king could occasionally retire with a few of his more intimate friends from the pomp of Versailles, but gradually it grew until it became one of the most ruinous extravagances of the Grand Monarque. The central pavilion (inhabited by the king himself) and its twelve subsidiary pavilions were intended to suggest the sun surrounded by the signs of the zodiac. Seldom visited by Louis XV.,and wholly abandoned by Louis XVI., it was demolished after the Revolution, its art treasures having previously been dispersed, and all that now remains consists of a few mouldering ivy-grown walls, some traces of parterres with magnificent trees, the park, which is well stocked with game, and the forest of 8∣ square miles, one of the most pleasant promenades of the neighbourhood of Paris....