though the overcharged painted programmes were simplified and restrained in the execution. The Sun King attended the opening of the completed hydraulic works in June 1684 and by 1686 development was sufficiently advanced for the King to stay there for the first time, with a selected entourage. The theme of Marly was that it was a simple hunting lodge, just enough to accommodate the Royal Hunt. In 1688 the Grand Abreuvoir à chevaux was installed on the terrace, a mere "horse trough." Throughout the rest of his life, Louis continued to embellish the wooded park, with wide straight rides, in which ladies or the infirm might follow the hunt, at some distance, in a carriage, and with more profligate waterworks than waterless Versailles could provide: the Rivière or Grande Cascade dates to 1697–1698. Versailles was provided with water from Marly. The famous description of Marly in the memoirs of Louis de Rouvroy, duc de Saint-Simon were written in retrospect and, for the initiation of Marly, at second hand; when Saint-Simon wrote, in 1715, Marly's heyday was ending, with the death of Louis XIV that year. Louis' heirs found the north-facing slope made Marly damp and dreary, and rarely visited. The "river" was filled in and grassed in 1728. During the Revolution the marble horses by Guillaume Coustou the Elder, the Chevaux de Marly, were transported to Paris (1794), to flank the opening of the Champs-Élysées in the soon-to-be-renamed Place de la Concorde. (They are now in the Musée du Louvre, along with many other Marly sculptures.) In 1799/1800, Marly was sold to an industrialist, M. Sagniel, who installed machinery to spin cotton thread. When the factory failed in 1806, the château was demolished and its building materials sold, including the lead from its roof. Napoleon bought back the estate the following year; the empty gardens and the surrounding woodland park still belong to the State. Remains At the end of the 19th century several connoisseurs purchased leases on the individual garçonnières, cleaned up the overgrowth, recovered some bruised and broken statuary and recreated small gardens among the ruins: Alexandre Dumas, fils and the playwright and collector of 18th-century furnishings Victorien Sardou. The Cour Marly of the Louvre museum was inaugurated in 1993. It contains mostly works of art from Marly, displayed on three levels. The Marly machine Providing a sufficient water supply for the fountains at Versailles had been a