Throughout the Napoleonic epoch the Conciergerie was appropriated largely to political prisoners; and at the Restoration it was the last resting-place of Marshal Ney, who left it only to be shot. Comte de La Valette, who had been one of Napoleon’s aides-de-camp, and who was arrested after Waterloo on no other charge than that of loyalty to his old master, was sent also to the Conciergerie, and detained there under sentence of death. The story of his escape, through the devotion of his wife and the friendly assistance of three English gentlemen, two of them officers of the army, is told in his own “Memoirs.” When he was taken to the Conciergerie he was lodged in the cell which had been occupied by Marshal Ney, a long, narrow room, terminated by a window with a shutter that made reading impossible except for a short period on the brightest days. He lay here for some weeks, sustaining himself with the hope of escaping the scaffold, being told that his punishment would be limited to a few years of imprisonment. The cell he occupied was just over the woman’s ward, and this neighborhood irritated and annoyed him greatly; for all day long he could hear their voices chattering continually and using the most abominable language. The two windows of the Queen’s prison had also looked upon this courtyard, and she had been subjected to the same annoyance. It was a dark den at the end of a blind corridor, and during her occupancy had held only a common bedstead, a table and two chairs. The room was divided by a heavy portière, and on the far side a gendarme and gaoler were constantly on duty. When La Valette was most depressed he comforted himself by the thought that he did not suffer as much as this high-born daughter of a long line of emperors. Close alongside his quarters was the condemned cell, but no one was executed while he was there. One man, who had murdered his wife under horrible circumstances, seemed certain to lose his life; but the violent hysterics, into which he fell on returning from court, and which La Valette concluded were caused by his sentence to death, were really the result of joy at his acquittal.