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 I am a man, 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 source of every warm and liberal feeling; it is an enemy alike to virtue and to taste--_this_ it perverts, and _that_ it annihilates. The time 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, as the latter stept at midnight into the carriage which was to bear him far from Paris, from his creditors and the persecution of the laws. De la Motte thanked him for this last instance of his kindness; the assistance he had given him in escape; and, when the carriage drove away, uttered a sad adieu! The gloom of the hour, and the peculiar emergency of his circumstances, sunk him in silent reverie. Whoever has read Gayot de Pitaval, the most faithful of those writers who record the proceedings in the Parliamentary Courts of Paris during the seventeenth century, must surely remember the striking story of Pierre de la Motte and the Marquess Philippe de Montalt: let all such, therefore, be informed, that the person here introduced to their notice was that individual Pierre de la Motte.