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 with ease, and in case of a riot find some protection behind the strong grating of the gate under the arch; whereas they formerly had no room to move in the narrow space dividing the outside steps from the right wing of the palace.
In our day the Conciergerie, hardly large enough for the prisoners committed for trial — room being needed for about three hundred, men and women — no longer receives either suspected or remanded criminals excepting in rare cases, as, for instance, in these of Jacques Collin and Lucien.
All who are imprisoned there are committed for trial before the Bench.
As an exception criminals of the higher ranks are allowed to sojourn there, since, being already disgraced by a sentence in open court, their punishment would be too severe if they served their term of imprisonment at Melun or at Poissy.
Ouvrard preferred to be imprisoned at the Conciergerie rather than at Sainte–Pelagie.
At this moment of writing Lehon the notary and the Prince de Bergues are serving their time there by an exercise of leniency which, though arbitrary, is humane.
As a rule, suspected criminals, whether they are to be subjected to a preliminary examination — to “go up,” in the slang of the Courts — or to appear before the magistrate of the lower Court, are transferred in prison vans direct to the “mousetraps.”
The “mousetraps,” opposite the gate, consist of a certain number of old cells constructed in the old kitchens of Saint–Louis’ building, whither prisoners not yet fully committed are brought to await the hour when the Court sits, or the arrival of the examining judge.
The “mousetraps” end on the north at the quay, on the east at the headquarters of the Municipal Guard, on the west at the courtyard of the Conciergerie, and on the south they adjoin a large vaulted hall, formerly, no doubt, the banqueting-room, but at present disused.
Above the “mousetraps” is an inner guardroom with a window commanding the court of the Conciergerie; this is used by the gendarmerie of the department, and the stairs lead up to it.
When the hour of trial strikes the sheriffs call the roll of the prisoners, the gendarmes go down, one for each prisoner, and each gendarme takes a criminal by the arm; and thus, in couples, they mount the stairs, cross the guardroom, and are led along the passages to a room contiguous to the hall where sits the famous sixth chamber of the law (whose functions are those of an English county court).
The same road is trodden by the prisoners committed for trial on their way to and from the Conciergerie and the Assize Court.
In the Salle des Pas–Perdus, between the door into the first court of the inferior class and the steps leading to the sixth, the visitor must observe the first time he goes there a doorway without a door or any architectural adornment, a square hole of the meanest type.
Through this the judges and barristers find their way into the passages, into the guardhouse, down into the prison cells, and to the entrance to the Conciergerie.
The private chambers of all the examining judges are on different floors in this part of the building.
They are reached by squalid staircases, a maze in which those to whom the place is unfamiliar inevitably lose themselves.
The windows of some look out on the quay, others on the yard of the Conciergerie.
In 1830 a few of these rooms commanded the Rue de la Barillerie.
Thus, when a prison van turns to the left in this yard, it has brought prisoners to be examined to the “mousetrap”; when it turns to the right, it conveys prisoners committed for trial, to the Conciergerie.
Now it was to the right that the vehicle turned which conveyed Jacques Collin to set him down at the prison gate.
Nothing can be more sinister.
Prisoners and visitors see two barred gates of wrought iron, with a space between them of about six feet. These are never both opened at once, and through them everything is so cautiously scrutinized that persons who have a visiting ticket pass the permit through the bars before the key grinds in the lock.
The examining judges, or even the supreme judges, are not admitted without being identified.
Imagine, then, the chances of communications or escape!
— The governor of the Conciergerie would smile with an expression on his lips that would freeze the mere suggestion in the most daring of romancers who defy probability.
In all the annals of the Conciergerie no escape has been known but that of Lavalette; but the certain fact of august connivance, now amply proven, if it does not detract from the wife’s devotion, certainly diminished the risk of failure.
The most ardent lover of the marvelous, judging on the spot of the nature of the difficulties, must admit that at all times the obstacles must have been, as they still are, insurmountable.
No words can do justice to the strength of the walls and vaulting; they must be seen.
Though the pavement of the yard is on a lower level than that of the quay, in crossing this Barbican you go down several steps to enter an immense vaulted hall, with solid walls graced with magnificent columns. This hall abuts on the Tour de Montgomery — which is now part of the governor’s residence — and on the Tour d’Argent, serving as a dormitory for the warders, or porters, or turnkeys, as you may prefer to call them.
The number of the officials is less than might be supposed; there are but twenty; their sleeping quarters, like their beds, are in no respect different from those of the pistoles or private cells.
The name pistole originated, no doubt, in the fact that the prisoners formerly paid a pistole (about ten francs) a week for this accommodation, its bareness resembling that of the empty garrets in which great men in poverty begin their career in Paris.
To the left, in the vast entrance hall, sits the Governor of the Conciergerie, in a sort of office constructed of glass panes, where he and his clerk keep the prison-registers.
Here the prisoners for examination, or committed for trial, have their names entered with a full description, and are then searched. The question of their lodging is also settled, this depending on the prisoner’s means.
Opposite the entrance to this hall there is a glass door. This opens into a parlor where the prisoner’s relations and his counsel may speak with him across a double grating of wood.
The parlor window opens on to the prison yard, the inner court where prisoners committed for trial take air and exercise at certain fixed hours.