Apologies from David Larsen for the cliffhanger end to Friday's beginning.
Some things about blogging (like the element of compulsive time-wasting) I had already guessed, but I never suspected how many everyday obstacles stand between the blogger and a completed thought, or the special agony of a post left half-finished. As Alli's guest I want to spare her readers as much turmoil as I can: if my emotional freedom is on hold, you at least should be free to come and go as you please. That's not always going to be possible, though, with the cliffhangers imposed by the form -- the blog form, I mean, though the same could be said for the Gothic novel itself. Burke must have something to say about the engrossing effect of a sudden, inconclusive ending (sure enough) -- well Mrs. Radcliffe's all about it, so much so you might guess she was trying to maintain suspense between installments of a serial publication. But no, ROTF came out all at once, in 3 volumes.

Now back to the plight of Adeline, who is kept in the second convent for seven years. Unrelentingly the Lady Abbess plies her with threats and stratagems toward making her a lifelong convert to the order. "But in the life to which she would have devoted me, I saw too many forms of real terror to be overcome by the influence of her ideal host, and was resolute in rejecting the veil... Too often had I witnessed the secret tear and a bursting sigh of vain regret, the sullen pinings of discontent, and the mute anguish of despair." On the long-awaited day of her removal from the convent, Adeline's dream of liberation seems to have at last come true. But when she turns with tears swelling in her eyes to ask her father how she can thank him for her deliverance -- "Return, then, to your convent, said he, in a harsh accent." Adeline's carriage is hastened through the streets of Paris to a desolate area several leagues outside the city, where she is led into a neighborless house attended by two gloomy manservants. There follows a confused period during which she is locked in an upstairs chamber and tormented with all the hallmarks of Gothic terror (unseen voices, midnight knocks and hidden closet-door openings), scariest because there's no clue as to her father's intentions, or whether he's even in the house. Then something really weird happens: Adeline is pressed into the custody of a traveler who has lost his way, and is as much a stranger to the scene as she. "If you wish to save your life," the stranger is told, "swear that you will convey this girl where I may never see her more; or rather consent to take her with you, for your oath I would not believe."

And so it is though apparently random happenstance that Adeline winds up in the dubious keeping of Pierre de la Motte, which she and I will be enduring together over the next 300+ pages. Join us, won't you, for the answer to what's dancing through the minds of Alli's patient readers: what kind of man is this Pierre de la Motte?