The Romance of the Forest

La Motte, in prison, is sunk in grief at his misfortunes and reflects on his crime. While living at the abbey, he had become desperate for money and attempted robbery. The man he attacked and left for dead was the Marquis. La Motte hid the jewels he took in the tomb and, in guilt, often went to check on their hiding place, which accounted for his long absences. When the Marquis promised to forgive his crimes, La Motte “had neither resolution or virtue sufficient to reject the terms” and consented to give Adeline into the Marquis’s keeping (318). In his defense at the trial, La Motte reveals that the Marquis asked him to murder Adeline.

La Luc travels to Paris to petition the king to pardon his son, but the Marquis persuades the king that Theodore is guilty. Adeline, who is ill with distress, presses Louis for news of Theodore and asks to see him. Theodore asks Louis to keep him company the night before his execution.

The morning Theodore is to be executed, La Luc, Clara, and Adeline visit his prison cell. Theodore and Adeline embrace, but their reunion is “mingled tenderness and despair” (326). They struggle with their sadness until Louis arrives with a stay of execution and the hope that a pardon might be possible, as La Motte’s trial in Paris has been casting doubt on the character of his accuser, the Marquis.

The man from the cottage approaches La Motte in prison, who tells him to take Adeline away. The man, Du Bosse, is in prison for debt but holds a grudge against the Marquis.

Du Bosse comes to La Motte’s trial and testifies that he joined his accomplice, Jean d’Aunoy, in a plot to bring a young girl away from the convent where she had been raised. D’Aunoy was told that the girl was the natural daughter of the Marquis and was ordered to do away with her. Unable to kill the girl, Du Bosse instead gave her to La Motte. The Marquis is confined until witnesses can be brought. Madame La Motte writes to tell Louis of the discovery, and Louis petitions Theodore’s commanding officer to delay his sentence.

Adeline journeys to Paris to testify at the trial, moved by the hope that she can help both Theodore and La Motte. Adeline feels even more indebted to La Motte when she learns he saved her from being murdered. Louis accompanies her, and Madame La Motte gives Adeline a respectable place to stay in Paris. Adeline shudders at the thought that the Marquis might be her father.

Adeline comes before the court with her testimony. Further witnesses confirm that La Motte attacked the Marquis, and the death sentence is pronounced. Then Jean d’Aunoy, who was discovered in a provincial prison, is brought forward for examination.

D’Aunoy describes how, in 1642, he and his accomplices were hired by one Henry Marquis de Montalt. On the orders of his half-brother, Philippe, Henry was imprisoned in the Abbey of St. Clair, in Fontanville Forest, and thereafter murdered. Philippe then claimed the title and estates. Adeline recalls the manuscript she found at the abbey. The new Marquis gave Henry’s infant daughter to d’Aunoy and ordered him to take her away. D’Aunoy took the name St. Pierre and raised the girl as his own. Upon this news, Adeline faints. D’Aunoy further explains that after his wife died, the girl was taken to a convent. He brought her out on the Marquis’s orders, but when he learned that the Marquis intended to kill the girl, he left.

The Marquis is thrown into prison. The narrator explains that his motives for “so monstrous a deed were ambition, and the love of pleasure” (342). When Henry’s wife died giving birth to Adeline, Philippe conceived of his plot. Philippe had married a wealthy lady who possessed property, including the Abbey of St. Clair. Philippe rarely visited until he found La Motte in residence. The night he left in haste, he was presumably overcome with guilt over his brother’s murder. The Marquis realized who Adeline was when he saw her seal, which bears the arms of her mother’s family. D’Aunoy had stolen the seal from the Marquis when he took Adeline away to raise.

Adeline’s feelings, the narrator says, “were too complex to be analysed” (346). She has gone from a penniless orphan to an heiress of considerable wealth. She is overcome to think that her father wrote the diary she discovered. She shies from the thought of having to accuse the Marquis of his deeds in a public trial. Clara writes that La Luc is very ill, and Adeline reflects that she seems to bring all around her to calamity.

Monsieur Vernueil appears to reveal he is Adeline’s relation through her mother’s family. He shows her a miniature of her mother. Theodore writes to Adeline, and his letter tenderly moves her.

The day of the trial, Adeline is quite emotional, “but adding to the natural dignity of her air an expression of soft timidity, and to her downcast eyes a sweet confusion, it [her emotion] rendered her an object still more interesting, and she attracted the universal pity and admiration of the assembly” (351-52). Word comes that the Marquis is dying; he has taken poison to avoid judgment. Adeline is acknowledged as the heir. She begs the king for a pardon for Theodore. For La Motte, who repents of his former habits, his sentence is commuted to exile.

Adeline meets more of her family. She has her father’s remains removed from the chest in the abbey and properly buried. D’Aunoy is tried and hanged for murder. Theodore is released from prison, and he and Adeline happily reunite. Monsieur Verneuil wishes to marry Clara, and La Luc’s health is restored.

After observing a period of mourning for her father, Adeline marries Theodore. Clara marries Monsieur Verneuil the same day. La Luc returns to his parish in Savoy, and Peter welcomes them home. The celebration lasts all night, with dancing. Theodore and Clara both find residences nearby. Theodore and Adeline live in great happiness, “possessing the pure and rational delights of a love refined into the most tender friendship, surrounded by the friends so dear to them, and visited by a select and enlightened society” (362), which includes Louis and his wife. Their lives are examples of trials endured and virtues rewarded.