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From the perspective of 1793, as tireless purveyor of victims for the scaffold, the Conciergerie was, you might say, overflowing with prisoners who could be turned into the condemned in an hour at most. In those days, the old prison of Saint Louis really meant business—as the leader in the death trade.

Under the archway over the entrance, at night, a red lantern swung as sinister ensign of this house of horrors.

The day before the day when Maurice, Lorin, and Geneviève breakfasted together, a heavy sound of rolling wheels shook the cobblestones of the quai de l’Horloge and the prison windows. The rolling stopped in front of the ogival door. Gendarmes banged on the door with the scabbards of their sabers, the door opened, and the carriage rolled into the courtyard; with the door firmly shut behind her and the bolts shot home, a woman descended.

She was immediately swallowed up by the cavernous registration office. A few curious heads bobbed up, creeping forward to check out the prisoner by the light of their torches, and appeared in halftones before plunging back into darkness. Then a few vulgar guffaws could be heard, along with crude farewells batted about by men leaving the building who could be heard but not seen.

The woman brought in had remained penned inside the first wicket with the gendarmes. She could see that she had to go through a second wicket, but she did not realize that she needed to pick her feet up and lower her head at the same time, for suddenly a step comes up at you from ground level right where the ceiling descends.

Still unused to prison architecture, no doubt, despite the prolonged stay she had already enjoyed in one, the prisoner forgot to duck and banged her head violently against the iron beam.

“Did you hurt yourself, citizeness?” one of the gendarmes asked.

But the woman moved on without a murmur of complaint, even though her forehead clearly bore the mark of contact with the iron beam and looked about to bleed.

Soon the concierge’s armchair could be made out, an armchair more venerable in the eyes of prisoners than a king’s throne is in the eyes of courtesans, for the concierge of a prison is the dispenser of favors and every favor is vital for a prisoner, for often the slightest favor changes his or her gloomy sky into a luminous firmament.

Richard,3 the concierge, was comfortably ensconced in his armchair, and though thoroughly convinced of his importance he had not budged an inch, despite the clanging of the gates and the rolling of the carriage, which announced the arrival of his new guest. Richard the concierge took up his tobacco, eyed the prisoner, opened a great walloping register, and hunted around for a quill on a small black wooden inkstand, where the ink, solidified around the edges, still preserved a bit of moist sludge in the middle, just as there is always a bit of molten matter in the middle of a volcano’s crater.

“Citizen concierge,” said the chief of the escort, “do the committal on this one for us and make it snappy—they’re waiting impatiently for us in the Commune.”

“Oh! It won’t take long!” said the concierge, pouring into his inkpot a few drops of the dregs of the wine in his glass. “My hand’s made for the job, thank the Lord! Your surname and Christian name, citizeness?”

Dipping his pen in the improvised ink, he prepared to squeeze in at the bottom of a page that was already practically full the committal details of the new inmate, while the benign-looking citizeness Richard stood behind him, gazing with open-mouthed amazement that bordered on respect at the woman her husband was questioning—a woman who looked so sad, so noble, and so proud at once.

“Marie Antoinette Jeanne Josèphe de Lorraine,” the prisoner replied, “Archduchess of Austria and Queen of France.”

“Queen of France,” the concierge repeated, gripping the arms of his chair and hoisting himself up in amazement.

“Queen of France,” repeated the prisoner in the same uninflected tone.

“In other words, Widow Capet,”4 said the chief of the escort.