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| 1 | 171 | 343 | 514 | 685 |
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on the right, which led to the Court of Appeal, the other on the left,
which led to the Court of Cassation. The folding-doors to the left opened
upon an old gallery called St. Louis, recently restored, and which serves
at the present time for a Salle des Pas Perdus to the barristers of the
Court of Cassation. A wooden statue of St. Louis stood opposite the
entrance door. An entrance contrived in a niche to the right of this
statue led into a winding lobby ending in a sort of blind passage, which
apparently was closed by two double doors. On the door to the right might
be read "First President's Room;" on the door to the left, "Council
Chamber." Between these two doors, for the convenience of the barristers
going from the Hall to the Civil Chamber, which formerly was the Great
Chamber of Parliament, had been formed a narrow and dark passage, in
which, as one of them remarked, "every crime could be committed with
impunity."
Leaving on one side the First President's Room and opening the door which
bore the inscription "Council Chamber," a large room was crossed,
furnished with a huge horse-shoe table, surrounded by green chairs. At
the end of this room, which in 1793 had served as a deliberating hall for
the juries of the Revolutionary Tribunal, there was a door placed in the
wainscoting, which led into a little lobby where were two doors, on the
right the door of the room appertaining to the President of the Criminal
Chamber, on the left the door of the Refreshment Room. "Sentenced to
death!--Now let us go and dine!" These two ideas, Death and Dinner, have
jostled against each other for centuries. A third door closed the
extremity of this lobby. This door was, so to speak, the last of the
Palace of Justice, the farthest off, the least known, the most hidden; it
opened into what was called the Library of the Court of Cassation, a
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