La Motte

“ Each individual of the party appeared silent and abstracted; but very different was the aspect of their features, and still more the complexion of their thoughts. La Motte seemed agitated by impatient fear, yet the sullenness of despair overspread his countenance; a certain wildness in his eye at times expressed the sudden start of horror, and again his features would sink into the gloom of despondency.
Madame La Motte seemed harassed with anxiety; she watched every turn of her husband's countenance, and impatiently awaited the arrival of the Marquis. Louis was composed and thoughtful. ”

“ Madame La Motte was also sensible of it, and it renewed a painful sensation. The effusions of gratitude she mistook for those of tenderness.
La Motte returned frequently to the trap-door to listen if any body was in the abbey; but no sound disturbed the stillness of night: at length they sat down to supper; the repast was a melancholy one. If the officers do not come hither to-night, said Madame La Motte, sighing, suppose, my dear, Peter returns to Auboine to-morrow? He may there learn something more of this affair; or, at least, he might procure a carriage to convey us hence. ”

“ True, my dear, said La Motte, and let the remembrance of what you once thought them soothe your discontent now; these cells are also a palace compared to the Bicêtre, or the Bastille, and to the terrors of further punishment which would accompany them: let the apprehension of the greater evil teach you to endure the less: I am contented if we find here the refuge I seek.
Madame La Motte was silent, and Adeline, forgetting her late unkindness, endeavoured as much as she could to console her ”

“ La Motte now took her hand, and would have led her from the room; but she stopped, and with a kind of desperate courage made an effort to engage him to pity and to save her. He interrupted her; It is not in my power, said he in a voice of emotion; I am not master of myself or my conduct; inquire no further—it is sufficient for you to know that I pity you; more I cannot do. He gave her no time to reply, but taking her hand led her to the stairs of the tower, and from thence to the chamber she had formerly occupied. ”

“ The dismal spectacle he had seen here, deterred La Motte from passing a night in this chamber; and the furniture had, by his own order, been conveyed to the cells below. He was anxious that his family should not perceive the skeleton; an object which would probably excite a degree of horror not to be overcome during their stay. La Motte now passed the chest in haste; and Madame La Motte and Adeline were too much engrossed by their own thoughts, to give minute attention to external circumstances. ”

“ So La Motte, Madame La Motte, and the beautiful girl drive away, La Motte’s one desire being to find a retreat safe from the police of an offended justice.
Is this not a very original, striking, and affecting situation; provocative, too, of the utmost curiosity? A fugitive from justice, in a strange, small, dark, ancient house, is seized, threatened, and presented with a young and lovely female stranger. In this opening we recognise the hand of a master genius. ”

“ The Marquis looked back and stopped: but still hesitating whether to proceed, the supplications of Adeline, who was now returned, added to those of La Motte, determined him, and he sat down. I request of you, my Lord, said La Motte, that we may converse for a few moments by ourselves.
The request is bold, and the indulgence perhaps dangerous, said the Marquis: it is more also than I will grant. You can have nothing to say with which your family are not acquainted—speak your purpose and be brief. La Motte's complexion varied to every sentence of this speech. ”

“ If you return within an hour, you die: after then, you are at liberty to come here when you please.
La Motte, without answering, raised the lovely girl from the floor, and was so much relieved from his own apprehensions, that he had leisure to attempt dissipating hers. Let us be gone, said the ruffian, and have no more of this nonsense; you may think yourself well off it's no worse. I'll go and get the horse ready.
The last words roused La Motte, and perplexed him with new fears; he dreaded to discover his carriage, lest its appearance might tempt the banditti to plunder ”

“ The reader is empoigné in the first page, and eagerly follows the flight of La Motte, also of Peter, his coachman, an attached, comic, and familiar domestic. After a few days, the party observe, in the recesses of a gloomy forest, the remains of a Gothic abbey. They enter; by the light of a flickering lamp they penetrate “horrible recesses,” discover a room handsomely provided with a trapdoor, and determine to reside in a dwelling so congenial, though, as La Motte judiciously remarks, “not in all respects strictly Gothic.” ”

“ In an instant the Binnenhof was filled with more than three thousand spectators.
The old statesman, leaning on his staff, walked out upon the scaffold and calmly surveyed the scene. Lifting his eyes to Heaven, he was heard to murmur, "O God! what does man come to!" Then he said bitterly once more: "This, then, is the reward of forty years' service to the State!"
La Motte, who attended him, said fervently: "It is no longer time to think of this. Let us prepare your coming before God."
"Is there no cushion or stool to kneel upon?" said Barneveld, looking around him. ”

“ With startling suddenness, a door bursts open, and a ruffian, putting a pistol to La Motte's breast with one hand, and, with the other, dragging along a beautiful girl, exclaims ferociously,
"You are wholly in our power, no assistance can reach you; if you wish to save your life, swear that you will convey this girl where I may never see her more... If you return within an hour you will die." ”

“ And the lives of your family, rejoined Louis.—Of course, said La Motte.
It would be well to have more certainty upon that head, rejoined Louis; I am considering how we may obtain it.
'Tis useless to consider that, said La Motte; the inquiry itself brings danger with it; your life would perhaps be paid for the indulgence of your curiosity; our only chance of safety is by endeavouring to remain undiscovered. Let us move towards the abbey. ”

“ La Motte, extremely shocked at Peter's intelligence, made no other reply than by cursing his folly, and immediately went in search of Madame, who was walking with Adeline on the banks of the river. La Motte was too much agitated to soften his information by preface. We are discovered! said he, the king's officers have been inquiring for me at Auboine, and Peter has blundered upon my ruin. He then informed her of what Peter had related, and bade her prepare to quit the abbey.
But whither can we fly? said Madame La Motte, scarcely able to support herself. ”

“ It was not the least of her afflictions that she had been obliged to quit Paris without bidding adieu to her only son, who was now on duty with his regiment in Germany; and such had been the precipitancy of this removal, that had she even known where he was stationed, she had no time to inform him of it, or of the alteration in his father's circumstances.
Pierre de la Motte was a gentleman, descended from an ancient house of France. He was a man whose passions often overcame his reason, and, for a time, silenced his conscience ”

“ Madame La Motte soon followed, and it was not till evening that she had an opportunity of returning to the MS. When Monsieur and Madame La Motte were in their chamber, and all was still, she drew forth the narrative, and trimming her lamp, sat down to read as follows:
The ruffians unbound me from my horse, and led me through the hall up the spiral staircase of the abbey: resistance was useless; but I looked around in the hope of seeing some person less obdurate than the men who brought me hither; some one who might be sensible to pity, and capable at least of civil treatment. ”

“ Yet he hardly dared to doubt the integrity of his friend, who had been intrusted with the secret of his flight and the plan of his route, and had procured him the carriage in which he had escaped. Such depravity, exclaimed La Motte, cannot surely exist in human nature; much less in the heart of Nemours! ”

“ While Walaeus had been absent, the Reverend Jean la Motte (or Lamotius) and another clergyman of the Hague had come to the prisoner's apartment. La Motte could not look upon the Advocate's face without weeping, but the others were more collected. Conversation now ensued among the four; the preachers wishing to turn the doomed statesman's thought to the consolations of religion. ”

“ Our interest is inclined to flag when life at the abbey seems uneventful, but we are ere long rewarded by a visit from a stranger, whose approach flings La Motte into so violent a state of alarm that he vanishes with remarkable abruptness beneath a trapdoor. It proves, however, that the intruder is merely La Motte's son, and the timid marquis is able to emerge. Meanwhile, La Motte's wife, suspicious of her husband's morose habits and his secret visits to a Gothic sepulchre, becomes jealous of Adeline, the girl they have befriended. ”

“ The soldiers he left behind him deserted their posts for the sake of rifling the town. The officer in command, instead of keeping them to their duty, joined in the chase. The citizens roused themselves, attacked their invaders, killed many of them, and put the rest to flight. When La Motte returned; he found the panic general. His whole force, including the fresh soldiers just brought to the rescue, were beside themselves with fear. He killed several with his own hand, but the troops were not to be rallied. His quick triumph was changed into an absolute defeat. ”

“ When they have searched the abbey, without finding me, they will depart; we may then emerge from this recess, and take measures for removing to a distant country.
Madame La Motte acknowledged the justice of his words; and her mind being relieved by the little apology he had made, she became tolerably cheerful. Supper being ended, La Motte stationed the faithful though simple Peter at the foot of the steps that ascended to the closet, there to keep watch during the night. Having done this, he returned to the lower cells, where he had left his little family. The beds were spread ”

“ The feet masterless, as the spirit had been masterless, years ago. The three judges in white blouses stood with arms folded, motionless. The patients in the beds sat up and tittered. The man who had been kicked by a horse raised himself and smiled. He who had been knocked down by a despatch rider sat up, as did those with bronchitis, and those with ptomaine poisoning. They sat up, looked, and sniggered. They knew. So did André. So did the Paris surgeon, and the little staff doctor, and the swarthy orderly and the priest-orderly. They all knew. ”

“ He married Anne Tivelyn of Canterbury. By her he had two daughters, who were baptised at the Dutch church in Austinfriars, via. Hester, married to John Manyng and (according to La Motte's will) to Sir Thomas Honywood, and Elisabeth, who married Maurice Abbot, second son of Sir Maurice Abbot, lord mayor of London (Visitation of London, Hart. Soc., ii. 42) . Only the elder survived her father (Moens, Registers of the Dutch Church, 1884, p. 43) . William King (1663–1712) [q. v.] claims La Motte as his great-grandfather (Adversaria) . ”

“ I sometimes seriously proposed my objections to a great number of most accomplished men, with whom I had been long conversant, and never could receive any satisfactory return." Therefore he said in his prayer before the sermon, “Forgive, O my God! forgive me the sin of having so long detained Thy truth in unrighteousness, against my conscience and Thy secret motions.”
De la Motte seems to have been a distinguished Brother of the Order of the Carmelites. He was admitted by the Bishops to be a Preacher in Cathedrals ”

“ Mrs. Motte not only assented, but declared that she was "gratified with the opportunity of contributing to the good of her country, and should view the approaching scene with delight." Moreover, shortly after, seeing by accident the bow and arrows which had been prepared to carry the balls of blazing rosin and brimstone to the shingled roof of the mansion, Mrs. Motte sent for Lee, and presented him with a bow and its apparatus, which had been imported from India, and was better adapted for the object than those provided. ”

“ For more than ten years Miss La Motte and I have been engaged in working at the same problems, from the same broad though different personal viewpoint. Our work has brought us into almost daily contact. ”

“ One more effort, once more to feel his power, once more to hear the stimulating rush of praise,—then he would give it up again, quite content to sit beneath his wine-glass till the end. But this first.
"So I put him down where I have told you, on a lonely island. Somewhat north of the Equator, ten thousand miles away from Her. Wistfully, he said it was quite the right spot. He could feel it. So we helped him, the [229] China-boys and I, to build a little hut, up on stilts, thatched with palm leaves. Very desolate it is. On all sides the burnished ocean, hot and breathless. ”

“ Motte interposed. "There are now twenty thousand ragmen from the provinces encamped on the hills of Montmartre, fit for everything good. I have been through them, and when a St. Marcellese holds his nose, you may fancy. Man never saw such a choice crowd of breechesless. Get them started and go to the women to-morrow."
"To-morrow, then, let it be. The cries are to be 'Bread' and 'The King to Paris,' the fishwomen to lead; the Big Bench sign to be the red wool of 'our Friend Orleans'; then sack the bakers; then the Hôtel de Ville; then the château of Versailles ”