THE OLD PREFECTURE OF POLICE
(Formerly Jerusalem Street)
Drawn by A. Maignan
Between Notre-Dame and the Palais de Justice, there once existed a network of small streets round the Sainte-Chapelle and the Prefecture of Police, with gardens that ran nearly down to the water's edge. At the Pont Saint-Michel, some old houses still remain which witnessed the riots of 1793, 1830, and 1848; another is to be found on the Quai des Orfèvres, where the celebrated Sabra worked; he was a popular dentist who modestly called himself the "people's tooth-drawer." To-day it is one of the spots dear to lovers of old books, with its open-air book-stalls, and also to anglers, who, in the sun and out of the way of the river passenger-boats, can practise their tranquil sport.
THE SAINTE-CHAPELLE IN 1875
Etching by Toussaint
Before describing the Conciergerie, let us cross the Cour du Mai; there it was, in front of the steps leading to the Palais de Justice, on the right, that every day the death-carts came during the Terror, and took, at 4 o'clock, their dismal batch of those doomed to death, while, from his office-window, Fouquier-Tinville coldly counted, as he picked his teeth, the number of the victims who were going over there.
From this courtyard of blood, on a foggy day of November 1793, poor Madame Roland, with hair cut and hands tied, started for the scaffold. Her joyous childhood had been spent in a red-and-white brick house which stood at the angle of the Quai de l'Horloge and the platform of the Pont-Neuf, a few yards from the Conciergerie!
The charming landscape in which she had dreamed so fondly of glory and liberty, she saw once more as she was being led to the guillotine amid the shouts of infuriated men and women. Sanson had taken his ghastly procession along the usual road—the Pont-au-Change, the Quai de la Mégisserie, the Trois-Marie Square; and so, turning her eyes to the further bank of the Seine, the poor woman, before she died, was able to give a last look at the scenery she had been familiar with in happier years, scenery over which rose the massive walls of the French Panthéon—it was the new name of Sainte-Geneviève's Church which the Convention had just re-baptized and devoted to the worship of our national glories.
The Conciergerie was entered by a large arched door, containing a triple wicket as protection, at the further side of a gloomy, narrow courtyard, with mouldy paving-stones, which now is found on the right of the large staircase of the Palais de Justice.