alais de Justice stands,
and forms the corner of the quay.

These four towers and these walls are shrouded in the black winding
sheet which, in Paris, falls on every facade to the north. About
half-way along the quay at a gloomy archway we see the beginning of the
private houses which were built in consequence of the construction of
the Pont Neuf in the reign of Henry IV. The Place Royale was a replica
of the Place Dauphine. The style of architecture is the same, of brick
with binding courses of hewn stone. This archway and the Rue de Harlay
are the limit line of the Palais de Justice on the west. Formerly the
Prefecture de Police, once the residence of the Presidents of Parlement,
was a dependency of the Palace. The Court of Exchequer and Court of
Subsidies completed the Supreme Court of Justice, the Sovereign's Court.
It will be seen that before the Revolution the Palace enjoyed that
isolation which now again is aimed at.

This block, this island of residences and official buildings, in
their midst the Sainte-Chapelle--that priceless jewel of Saint-Louis'
chaplet--is the sanctuary of Paris, its holy place, its sacred ark.

For one thing, this island was at first the whole of the city, for the
plot now forming the Place Dauphine was a meadow attached to the Royal
demesne, where stood a stamping mill for coining money. Hence the name
of Rue de la Monnaie--the street leading to the Pont Neuf. Hence, too,
the name of one of the round towers--the middle one--called the Tour
d'Argent, which would seem to show that money was originally coined
there. The famous mill, to be seen marked in old maps of Paris, may very
likely be more recent than the time when money was coined in the Palace
itself, and was erected, no doubt, for the practice of improved methods
in the art of coining.

The first tower, hardly detached from the Tour d'Argent, is the Tour
de Montgomery; the third, and smallest, but the best preserved of the
three, for it still has its battlements, is the Tour Bonbec.

The Sainte-Chapelle and its four towers--counting the clock tower as
one--clearly define the precincts; or, as a surveyor would say, the
perimeter of the Palace, as it was from the time of the Merovingians
till the accession of the first race of Valois; but to us, as a result
of certain alterations, this Palace is more especially representative of
the period of Saint-Louis.

Charles V. was the first to give the Palace up to the Parlement, then a