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THE CONCIERGERIE. -BEFORE THE COURT OF PARLIAMENT, GRAND CHAMBER, AND "TOURNELLE."
At eight o'clock on the night of the 29th of May, 1786, while the countess was quietly seated at supper, the gaoler of the Bastille burst into her room with the disagreeable intelligence that her business, "which looked a devilish bad affair indeed, was likely to be terminated _à la grève_" (that is, by the gallows). "Hold you in readiness at eleven o'clock," said he, "for they will begin with you. " At eleven, accordingly, she was conducted to the council hall, where, after being searched by the _huissiers de la chaîne_, she was taken in a coach to the Conciergerie, that grim, grey stone building, at the river's brink, on the Ile de la Cité, whose time-worn, massive, conical-capped round towers frown disdainfully upon the crowd of handsome modern buildings around,-the one unrestored specimen of medieval architecture of the least importance in all Paris.[309] To this same dismal prison some six years subsequently, Marie-Antoinette herself was sent, quitting it only when she went forth to die upon the scaffold.