It has always been a prison, and it was here that the Comte d'Armagnac was murdered, June 12, 1418. Here was made, below the level of the Seine, the prison called La Souricière, from the rats which had the reputation of eating the prisoners alive. The present Conciergerie occupies the lower story of the right wing of the existing Palais de Justice, and extends along the Quai de l'Horloge, as far as the towers of Montgomery and César. It has an entrance on the quay, before which the guillotine-carts received the victims of the Reign of Terror, and another to the right of the great staircase in the Cour d'Honneur.
All other associations of the Conciergerie are lost in those which were attached to it by the great Revolution. The cell in which Marie Antoinette suffered her seventy-five days' agony--from August 2 till October 15, when she was condemned--was turned into a chapel of expiation in 1816. The lamp still exists which lighted the august prisoner and enabled her guards to watch her through the night. The door still exists, tho changed in position, which was cut transversely in half and the upper part fixt that the queen might be forced to bend in going out, because she had said that whatever indignities they might inflict upon her they could never force her to bend the head.
After her condemnation, Marie Antoinette was not brought back to this chamber. It was a far more miserable cell which saw her write her last touching farewell to Madame Elizabeth. But this was the room in which the Girondins spent their last night, when, as Riouffe, himself in the prison at the time, says, "all during this frightful night their songs sounded and if they stopt singing it was but to talk about their country." The adjoining cell, now used as a sacristy, was the prison of Robespierre.
Père la Chaise
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
[Footnote: From "Outre Mer." Published by Houghton, Mifflin Co.]
The cemetery of Père la Chaise is the Westminster Abbey of Paris. Both are the dwellings of the dead; but in one they repose in green alleys and beneath the open sky--in the other their resting-place is in the shadowy aisle, and beneath the dim arches of an ancient abbey. One is a temple of nature; the other a temple of art. In one, the soft melancholy of the scene is rendered still more touching by the warble of birds and the shade of trees, and the grave receives the gentle visit of the sunshine and the shower; in the other, no sound but the passing footfall breaks the silence of the place; the twilight steals in through high and dusky windows; and the damps of the gloomy vault lie heavy on the heart, and leave their stain upon the moldering tracery of the tomb.
Père la Chaise stands just beyond the Barrière d'Aulney, on a hill-side, looking toward the city. Numerous gravel-walks, winding through shady avenues and between marble monuments, lead up from the principal entrance to a chapel on the summit. There is hardly a grave that has not its little inclosure planted with shrubbery; and a thick mass of foliage half conceals each funeral stone. The sighing of the wind, as the branches rise and fall upon it,--the occasional note of a bird among the trees, and the shifting of light and shade upon the tombs beneath, have a soothing effect upon the mind; and I doubt whether any one can enter that inclosure, where repose the dust and ashes of so many great and good men, without feeling the religion of the place steal over him, and seeing something of the dark and gloomy expression pass off from the stern countenance of death.
It was near the close of a bright summer afternoon that I visited this celebrated spot for the first time. The object that arrested my attention, on entering, was a monument in the form of a small Gothic chapel, which stands near the entrance, in the avenue leading to the right hand. On the marble couch within are stretched two figures, carved in stone and drest in the antique garb of the Middle Ages. It is the tomb of Abélard and Héloïse. The history of these unfortunate lovers is too well known to need recapitulation; but perhaps it is not so well known how often their ashes were disturbed in the slumber of the grave. Abélard died in the monastery of Saint Marcel, and was buried in the vaults of the church. His body was afterward removed to the convent of the Paraclet, at the request of Héloïse, and at her death her body was deposited in the same tomb. Three centuries they reposed together; after which they were separated to different sides of the church, to calm the delicate scruples of the lady- abbess of the convent. More than a century afterward, they were again united in the same tomb; and when at length the Paraclet was destroyed, their moldering remains were transported to the church of Nogent-sur- Seine. They were next deposited in an ancient cloister at Paris; and now repose near the gateway of the cemetery of Père la Chaise. What a singular destiny was theirs! that, after a life of such passionate and disastrous love,--such sorrows, and tears, and penitence--their very dust should not be suffered to rest quietly in the grave!--that their death should so much resemble their life in its changes and vicissitudes, its partings and its meetings, its inquietudes and its persecutions!--that mistaken zeal should follow them down to the very tomb--as if earthly passion could glimmer, like a funeral lamp, amid the damps of the charnel-house, and "even in their ashes bum their wonted fires!"....
Leaving this interesting tomb behind me, I took a pathway to the left, which conducted me up the hill-side. I soon found myself in the deep shade of heavy foliage, where the branches of the yew and willow mingled, interwoven with the tendrils and blossoms of the honeysuckle. I now stood in the most populous part of this city of tombs. Every step awakened a new train of thrilling recollections; for at every step my eye caught the name of some one whose glory had exalted the character of his native land, and resounded across the waters of the Atlantic. Philosophers, historians, musicians, warriors, and poets slept side by side around me; some beneath the gorgeous monument, and some beneath the simple headstone. But the political intrigue, the dream of science, the historical research, the ravishing harmony of sound, the tried courage, the inspiration of the lyre--where are they? With the living, and not with the dead! The right hand has lost its cunning in the grave; but the soul, whose high volitions it obeyed, still lives to reproduce itself in ages yet to come.