It is only in the characters of her villains that good and evil are intertwined, and she awakens our sympathy for them equally with our horror. Monsieur La Motte, a weak man in the power of an unscrupulous one, is the best drawn character in _The Romance of the Forest_. He has taken Adeline under his protection and has been as a father to her. But before this he had committed a crime which has placed his life in the hands of a powerful marquis. To free himself he consents to surrender Adeline to the marquis, who has become enamoured of her beauty, hoping by the sacrifice of her honour to save his own life. He is agitated in the presence of Adeline, and trembles at the approach of any stranger. Scott said of him, "He is the exact picture of the needy man who has seen better days." In _The Italian_, Schedoni, a monk of the order of Black Penitents for whom the novel is named, is guilty of the most atrocious crimes in order that he may further his own ambition, but he is not devoid of natural feeling. Scott says the scene in which he "is in the act of raising his arm to murder his sleeping victim, and discovers her to be his own child, is of a new, grand, and powerful character; and the horrors of the wretch who, on the brink of murder, has just escaped from committing a crime of yet more exaggerated horror, constitute the strongest painting which has been produced by Mrs. Radcliffe's pencil, and form a crisis well fitted to be actually embodied on canvas by some great master." Every book has one or more gloomy, deep-plotting villains. But all the people of rank bear unmistakable marks of their nobility, even when their natures have become depraved by crime. In this she is the equal of Scott. In every ruined abbey and castle there is a servant who brings in a comic element and relieves the strained feelings. Peter, Annette, and Paulo are all faithful but garrulous, and often bring disaster upon their masters by overzeal in their service. When Vivaldi, the hero of _The Italian_, is brought before the tribunal of the inquisition, his faithful servant, Paulo, rails bitterly at the treatment his master has received. Vivaldi, well knowing the danger which they both incur by too free speech, bids him speak in a whisper: "'A whisper,' shouted Paulo, 'I scorn to speak in a whisper. I will speak so loud that every word I say shall ring in the ears of all those old black devils on the benches yonder, ay, and those on that mountebank stage, too, that sit there looking so grim and angry, as if they longed to tear us in pieces. They--' "'Silence,' said Vivaldi with emphasis. 'Paulo, I command you to be silent.'