 As for Thackeray, in his last, unfinished novel, "Denis Duval" we find de la Motte and his sometime accomplice, Henry Lutterloh, figuring there as leading characters.Thackeray portrays de la Motte as a tortured, demonic figure, which is not at all how he comes across in contemporary reports in the press.Still less is that the impression conveyed in a sympathetic memoir published by a French writer some time between the trial verdict and the execution — in the hope (perhaps) of mitigating the severity of the sentence.