3.28.2005

Dept. of Corrections: Whatever David Larsen wrote yesterday about 18th-century heroines showing no desires of their own could not have been more short-sighted. Eight pages later, Adeline is already demonstrating a marked preference for Theodore, a cavalier of the Marquis's party whose sentiments are "so congenial with her own--his manners so engaging--his countenance so animated--so ingenious and so noble etc." that it's starting to look kind of bad for young Louis. As the son of such a venal, craven man as Pierre La Motte I suppose he's been indicated all along as a poor choice for Adeline. But I was really taken in by that scene with the fawn, and now I hardly know how to feel about the whole ordeal stretching in front of us.

Nor for that matter does anyone else in La Motte's family, because he's not at all forthcoming about the character and intentions of the Marquis. The private interview that passes between them is overheard only in snatches, but it's enough to guide Madame La Motte to the conclusion that her husband's shifty behavior, "which had for so many months oppressed her with anxiety, and the late scene with the Marquis originated from the same cause." As for Louis, "He had no doubt that the Marquis was intimately concerned in the event which made it necessary for La Motte to leave Paris." But it's Adeline who articulates the most horrifying possibility of all, which is the Marquis's identity with the "nobleman" of the abbey's gruesome legend. At this La Motte razzes her for lending credence to vulgar fables, but Adeline remains firm:

" 'You mistake me, Sir,' said she, 'it was not concerning supernatural agency that I would inquire: I alluded to a different part of the report, which hinted, that some person had been confined here by order of the Marquis, who was said to have died unfairly. This was alleged as a reason for the Marquis's having abandoned the abbey.'

" 'All the mere coinage of idleness,' said La Motte; 'a romantic tale to excite wonder: to see the Marquis is alone sufficient to refute this; and if we credit half the number of those stories that spring from the same source, we prove ourselves little superior to the simpletons who invent them.' " Which is totally messed up, because La Motte has even seen the skeleton for himself.

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