He drew the table up under the window without making any noise, took off
his coat and waistcoat, and got on the table unhesitatingly to break a
pane above and one below the iron cross-bar. Standing on the table, he
could look out across the yard on a magical view, which he then beheld
for the first time. The Governor of the prison, in deference to Monsieur
Camusot's request that he should deal as leniently as possible with
Lucien, had led him, as we have seen, through the dark passages of the
Conciergerie, entered from the dark vault opposite the Tour d'Argent,
thus avoiding the exhibition of a young man of fashion to the crowd of
prisoners airing themselves in the yard. It will be for the reader to
judge whether the aspect of the promenade was not such as to appeal
deeply to a poet's soul.

The yard of the Conciergerie ends at the quai between the Tour d'Argent
and the Tour Bonbec; thus the distance between them exactly shows from
the outside the width of the plot of ground. The corridor called the
Galerie de Saint-Louis, which extends from the Galerie Marchande to
the Courts of Appeals and the Tour Bonbec--in which, it is said,
Saint-Louis' room still exists--may enable the curious to estimate the
depths of the yard, as it is of the same length. Thus the dark cells
and the private rooms are under the Galerie Marchande. And Queen Marie
Antoinette, whose dungeon was under the present cells, was conducted to
the presence of the Revolutionary Tribunal, which held its sittings in
the place where the Court of Appeals now performs its solemn functions,
up a horrible flight of steps, now never used, in the very thickness of
the wall on which the Galerie Marchande is built.

One side of the prison-yard--that on which the Hall of Saint-Louis forms
the first floor--displays a long row of Gothic columns, between which
the architects of I know not what period have built up two floors of
cells to accommodate as many prisoners as possible, by choking the
capitals, the arches, and the vaults of this magnificent cloister with
plaster, barred loopholes, and partitions. Under the room known as the
Cabinet de Saint-Louis, in the Tour Bonbec, there is a spiral stair
leading to these dens. This degradation of one of the immemorial
buildings of France is hideous to behold.

From the height at which Lucien was standing he saw this cloister,
and the details of the building that joins the two towers, in sharp
perspective; before him were th