ile endeavoring to endow Paris and the
Supreme Court with a palace worthy of France. It is a matter for study
for some years before beginning the work. Another new prison or two like
that of La Roquette, and the palace of Saint-Louis will be safe.

In these days many grievances afflict this vast mass of buildings,
buried under the Palais de Justice and the quay, like some antediluvian
creature in the soil of Montmartre; but the worst affliction is that it
is the Conciergerie. This epigram is intelligible. In the early days of
the monarchy, noble criminals--for the villeins (a word signifying the
peasantry in French and English alike) and the citizens came under the
jurisdiction of the municipality or of their liege lord--the lords
of the greater or the lesser fiefs, were brought before the king and
guarded in the Conciergerie. And as these noble criminals were few, the
Conciergerie was large enough for the king's prisoners.

It is difficult now to be quite certain of the exact site of the
original Conciergerie. However, the kitchens built by Saint-Louis still
exist, forming what is now called the mousetrap; and it is probable that
the original Conciergerie was situated in the place where, till 1825,
the Conciergerie prisons of the Parlement were still in use, under the
archway to the right of the wide outside steps leading to the supreme
Court. From thence, until 1825, condemned criminals were taken to
execution. From that gate came forth all the great criminals, all the
victims of political feeling--the Marechale d'Ancre and the Queen of
France, Semblancay and Malesherbes, Damien and Danton, Desrues and
Castaing. Fouquier-Tinville's private room, like that of the public
prosecutor now, was so placed that he could see the procession of carts
containing the persons whom the Revolutionary tribunal had sentenced to
death. Thus this man, who had become a sword, could give a last glance
at each batch.

After 1825, when Monsieur de Peyronnet was Minister, a great change
was made in the Palais. The old entrance to the Conciergerie, where
the ceremonies of registering the criminal and of the last toilet were
performed, was closed and removed to where it now is, between the Tour
de l'Horloge and the Tour de Montgomery, in an inner court entered
through an arched passage. To the left is the "mousetrap," to the right
the prison gates. The "salad-baskets" can drive into this irregularly
shaped courtyard, can stand there and turn