Page:Modern literature (1804 Volume 2).djvu/238

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her destitute situation, conceiving herself the victim of villany and treachery, where she for a time had experienced protection, torn from the man that she loved, and apprehensive of violation from the man that she hated, in a vast and desolate edifice, which she had recently discovered to be the scene of murder, hearing noises at the still hour of midnight, is perfectly consonant to nature, in apprehending a visitation from the apparitions of the dead. The fears which disturb the marquis, and drive him from the abbey, the scene of conscious murder, is perfectly consonant to the feelings of enormous guilt. La Motte vacillating between the depravity of habitual indulgence ripened into profligacy, and the remains of honourable and virtuous feelings, by temporary impulse driven to crime, but by the remnants of humanity held from hardened atrocity, is a charac-