s the old _Grande Chambre_, rebuilt by Louis XII.
on the occasion of his marriage with Princess Mary of England, which
replaced the earlier bed-chamber of St. Louis.

Fra Gioconda's sumptuous decorations of 1502, which won for it the
name of the _Chambre doree_, the gold used being, it is said, equal in
purity to the famous Dutch golden florin, have been partially
restored. Here the kings of France held their Beds of Justice; here
the Fronde held its sittings, and here on 15th April, 1654, the young
king Louis XIV. strode in, booted and spurred, and is said to have
uttered the famous words _l'Etat c'est moi_. Here too, renamed the
Salle Egalite, the dread Revolutionary Tribunal held its sittings and
condemned 2742 victims; here on 14th October 1793, at half-past four
in the morning, appeared Marie Antoinette, "widow of Louis Capet,"
before her implacable judges and heard her doom; hence the twenty-one
Girondins trooped forth to their common fate; here Robespierre,
St. Just, and, at length, the unwearied minister of death,
Fouquier-Tinville himself, the revolutionary public prosecutor, heard
their condemnation. We leave by the Cour du Mai and note, to our L.,
the restored clock tower, replacing the most ancient and famous clock
of Paris. It was renewed by Germain Pilon in 1588 and restored in
1685. Demolished during the Revolution, the face and decoration were
again renewed in 1852. The silvery-toned bell that hung here, called
the _tocsin_, cast in 1371 and known as the _cloche d'argent_, was
accused, together with the bell of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, before the
Commune on 21st August 1792, of having given the signal for the
massacre of St. Bartholomew, and its immediate destruction was
ordered. We turn along the picturesque river facade, and between
its two mediaeval towers, de Cesar and d'Argent, enter the
Conciergerie.[183] The condemned cell of Marie Antoinette (transformed
into a chapel) and the cell of Robespierre are shown, together with
the chapel where the Girondins passed their last night and where their
legendary banquet is famed to have taken place. The so-called _Cuisine
de St. Louis_, a remain of the old Gothic palace of Philip le Bel, is
no longer shown. The third tower on the river facade, which we pass on
our way westward, has been wholly rebuilt. In the original tower was
the judicial torture-chamber (an adjunct of every court of justice in
olden times), used to wrest confessions from prisoners and evi