from what it was before the
conflagration.

This Salle consists of two parallel naves separated by a range of
arcades and lighted by two great circular openings with four
round-headed windows at either end. Its attributes are practically the
same as they were in 1622. The structure, take it as a whole, may be
said to date only from the seventeenth century, but certain it is that
the old Palais de la Cite is incorporated therein, every stone of it,
and if its career was humdrum that was the fault of circumstances rather
than from any inherent faults of its own.

The Conciergerie, that inelegant, inconsistent architectural mixture of
the ancient and modern, considered apart, though it properly enough is
usually considered with the Palais de Justice, was formerly the dwelling
or guardhouse of the Concierge of the Palais de la Cite. His post was
not merely that of the keeper of the gates; he was a personage at court
and was as autocratic as his more plebeian contemporaries of to-day, for
the Paris concierge, as we, who have for years lived under their
despotism well know, is a very dreadful person.

In addition to being the governor of the royal dwelling this concierge
was the guardian of the royal prisoners. In 1348 he was further invested
with the official title of Bailli and the post was, at times, occupied
by the highest and the most noble in the land, among others Philippe de
Savoie, the friend of Charles VI, and Juvenal des Oursins, the historian
of this prince. The first to combine the two functions, that of Bailli
and Concierge, was Jacques Coictier, the doctor of Louis XI.

As a virtual prison the Conciergerie only came to be transformed when
Charles V quitted the residence of the Palais de la Cite, and the
Conciergerie, as such, only figures on the Tournelles registers under
date of 1391.

The fire of the latter part of the eighteenth century destroyed a large
part of the building, but enough remained to patch together the most
serviceable of Revolutionary prisons, for at one time it held at least
twelve hundred poor souls, of whom two hundred and eighty-eight were
killed off at one fell blow.

But one woman among them all actually came to her death within the
prison walls. This was La Belle Bouquetiere of the Palais Royal who, in
an access of jealous furor, horribly mutilated a royal guardsman, and
for this met a most cruel death by being transfixed to a post and
submitting to a trial of "_le fer et le fe