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In calling attention to a set of carved and gilded furniture, covered in Beauvais tapestry, such as sold recently in Paris at the Valen�ay sale-Talleyrand collection-for sixty thousand dollars, Sardou mentions with a laugh that he got his fifteen pieces for fifteen hundred dollars, the year after the war, from an old ch�teau back of Cannes! One unique piece of tapestry had cost him less than one-tenth of that sum. He discovered it in a peasant’s stable under a two-foot layer of straw and earth, where it had probably been hidden a hundred years before by its owner, and then all record of it lost by his descendants.

The mention of Cannes sets Sardou off on another train of thought. His family for three generations have lived there. Before that they were Sardinian fishermen. His great-grandfather, he imagines, was driven by some tempest to the shore near Cannes and settled where he found himself. Hence the name! For in the patois of Proven�al France an inhabitant of Sardinia is still called un Sardou.

The sun is off the front of the house by this time, so we migrate to a shady corner of the lawn for our apéritif, the inevitable vermouth or “bitters” which Frenchmen take at five o’clock. Here another surprise awaits the visitor, who has not realized, perhaps, to what high ground the crawling local train has brought him. At our feet, far below the lawn and shade trees that encircle the ch�teau, lies the Seine, twisting away toward Saint Germain, whose terrace and dismantled palace stand outlined against the sky. To our right is the plain of Saint Denis, the cathedral in its midst looking like an opera-glass on a green table. Further still to the right, as one turns the corner of the terrace, lies Paris, a white line on the horizon, broken by the mass of the Arc de Triomphe, the roof of the Opéra, and the Eiffel Tower, resplendent in a fresh coat of yellow lacquer!

The ground where we stand was occupied by the feudal castle of Les Sires de Marly; although all traces of that stronghold disappeared centuries ago, the present owner of the land points out with pride that the extraordinary beauty of the trees around his house is owing to the fact that their roots reach deep down to the rich loam collected during centuries in the castle’s moat.

The little ch�teau 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 fa�ade 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 ch�teaux 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.