"Is the Recorder's office on the left, then?" questioned the Incorruptible, his eyes fixed on the dark gallery through which the turnkey had disappeared.
Barassin began another string of details. Yes, that gallery led to it, and to the exit as well, through the concierge's lodge, where the condemned had their hair cut after the roll-call.
"The call takes place here, just where you are standing," he explained.
Robespierre started, and moved away. His eyes rested on the long line of cells, whose doors were lost in long perspective under the vaulted archway he had noticed on his entrance, and which had seemed so vast through the iron bars of the second gate. He lowered his voice to ask if those cells were occupied. Barassin's reply reassured him; there was no one there just then. Then, indicating a cell opposite Robespierre, the watchman continued, carried away by his subject—
"This is the cell in which the Queen was locked up."
He opened a panel in the door that Robespierre might glance within. The Incorruptible hesitated at first, and as he bent over resolutely to look, Barassin found further material for his questionable wit:
"It's not such a palace as her Versailles, eh?"
Robespierre quickly closed the aperture, on the outside of which he perceived a black cross.
"What! a cross?" he exclaimed, staring the while at the sign of redemption.
The watchman told him that some prisoner had probably daubed this cross on the panel after the Queen's death. The prisoners always stopped before it to pray, and it was their habit to scribble in that way over the prison walls with pencils, or even nails.