"Near the queen. I believe so, Madame."
Geneviève turned pale. Maurice frowned, and made a sign to Lorin, who cut himself another slice of ham, double the size of the first. The queen had indeed been removed to the Conciergerie, whither we shall follow her.
THE CONCIERGERIE.
At a corner of the Pont-au-Change and of the Quai aux Fleurs rose the remains of the old palace of Saint Louis, called par excellence the palace, as Rome is called the city, and which still continues to retain the royal cognomen, when the only kings who inhabit it are the registrars, the judges, and the pleaders.
The house of justice was a large and sombre building, exciting more fear than love for the merciless goddess. There might be seen united in this narrow space all the instruments and attributes of human vengeance. The first wards were assigned to those who had been arraigned for crime; farther on were the halls of judgment, and lower down the dungeons of the condemned. By the door was a small space where the red-hot iron stamped its mark of infamy; and about one hundred and fifty paces from the first another space, far more extensive, where the last act of the fearful tragedy took place,—that is to say, La Grève, where they finished the work previously sketched out for them at the Palace. Justice, as we see, reigned paramount over all.
All these portions of the edifice joined one with another, sullen-looking, dark, and gray, pierced by iron-grated windows where the gaping arches resemble the grated dens extending along the side of the Quai des Lunettes. This is the Conciergerie.