Both the Conciergerie and Sainte Chapelle were breathtaking. I took more pictures today than the others combined. The Conciergerie is a beautiful building, and I would have never guessed the horrors that took place in its walls. What stood out from me the fact that prisoners were treated according to their wealth, not crimes.

Prisoners of the lower class were exposed to unsanitary conditions in the Revolutionary Prison, closed in cramped spaces, left with nothing but straw, and exposed to disease, while those of the upper class, most notably Marie Antoinette, lived in a relatively comfortable space. The divide between classes is one of the major factors of the French Revolution, and this is clearly shown in the Conciergerie. 

Wordsworth mentions this issue in The Prelude Book Nine with the comparison of a poor girl described as “hunger bitten” and as a “meek, the lowly, patient child of toil,” and there was also a wealthy girl “busy knitting in a heartless mood / Of solitude.” Quoting his friend, Wordsworth stated: “’tis against ‘that’ that we are fighting.”