The Romance of the Forest

The Marquis tells La Motte that Adeline must die, and he wants La Motte to kill her. La Motte confronts a dilemma: He still feels some compassion for Adeline, which wars with his interest in self-preservation. He promises the Marquis he will comply.

Adeline continues to suffer from thoughts of Theodore in prison and soothes herself by contemplating the sunset. La Motte goes to her chamber, and the sight of her innocent sleep moves him. Waking her, he tells her to dress, and then he leads her to the forest where a horse is waiting. Peter takes Adeline to Savoy, where he is from. The scenery is novel to Adeline, and when she, “for the first time, caught a view of the distant alps, whose majestic heads, seeming to prop the vault of heaven, [they] filled her mind with sublime emotions” (235). At Lyon, they board a boat and sail the Rhone River, and then they make their way to the village of Leloncourt. As they sail, “various, wild, and romantic scenery” moves Adeline (235), which soothes her melancholy over thoughts of Theodore. She pictures the Marquis’s rage that she escaped him and wonders what she will do next.