THE
ROMANCE OF THE FOREST:
INTERSPERSED
WITH SOME PIECES OF POETRY.
BY THE
AUTHORESS OF "THE MYSTERIES OF UDOLPHO."
&c. &c.
EMBELLISHED
WITH ENGRAVINGS ON WOOD.
London:
PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY J. LIMBIRD, 143, STRAND,
(Near Somerset House.)
1824.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIV
CHAPTER XXV
CHAPTER XXVI
THE
ROMANCE OF THE FOREST
CHAPTER I
So weary with disasters, tugg'd with fortune,
That I would set my life on any chance,
To mend it, or be rid ou't.
When once sordid interest seizes on the heart, it freezes up the sourceof every warm and liberal feeling; it is an enemy alike to virtue and totaste—this it perverts, and that it annihilates. Thetime may come, my friend, when death shall dissolve the sinews of avarice,and justice be permitted to resume her rights.
Such were the words of the Advocate Nemours to Pierre de la Motte, asthe latter stept at midnight into the carriage which was to bear him farfrom Paris, from his creditors and the persecution of the laws. De laMotte thanked him for this last instance of his kindness; the assistancehe had given him in escape; and, when the carriage drove away, uttered asad adieu! The gloom of the hour, and the peculiar emergency of hiscircumstances, sunk him in silent reverie.
Whoever has read Gayot de Pitaval, the most faithful of those writerswho record the proceedings in the Parliamentary Courts of Paris duringthe seventeenth century, must surely remember the striking story ofPierre de la Motte and the Marquess Philippe de Montalt: let all such,therefore, be informed, that the person here introduced to their noticewas that individual Pierre d