ey will be harmless and free from the misery I now feel. Ah, my creator, make me happy. Let me feel gratitude towards you for one benefit. Let me see that I excite the sympathy of some existing thing. Do not deny me my request. I was moved. I shuddered when I thought of the possible consequences of my consent, but I felt there was some justice in his argument. His tale and the feelings he now expressed proved him to be a creature of fine sensations, and did I not, as his maker, owe him all the portion of happiness that it was in my power to bestow? He saw my change of feeling and continued. If you consent, neither you nor any other human being shall ever see us again. I will go to the vast wilds of South America. My food is not that of man. I do not destroy the lamb and the kid to glut my appetite. A corns and berries afford me sufficient nourishment. My companion will be of the same nature as myself, and will be content with the same fare. We shall make our bed of dried leaves. The sun will shine on us as on man, and will ripen our food. The picture I present to you is peaceful and human, and you must feel that you could deny it only in the wantonness of power and cruelty. Pitiless as you have been towards me I now see compassion in your eyes. Let me seize the favourable moment, and persuade you to promise what I so ardently desire. You propose, replied I, to fly from the habitations of men, to dwell in those wilds where the beasts of the field will be your only companions. How can you, who long for the love and sympathy of men, persevere in this exile? You will return and again seek their kindness, and you will meet with their detestation. Your evil passions will be renewed, and you will then have a companion to aid you in the task of destruction. This may not be. Cease to argue the point, for I cannot consent. How inconstant are your feelings! But a moment ago you were moved by my representations, and why do you again harden yourself to my complaints? I swear to you, by the earth which I inhabit, and by you that made me, that with the companion you bestow I will quit the neighbourhood of man and dwell as it may chance in the most savage of places. My evil passions will have fled, for I shall meet with sympathy. My life will flow quietly away, and in my dying moments I shall not curse my maker. His words had a strange effect upon me. I compassionate him, and sometimes felt a wish to console him, but when I looked upon him, when I saw the filthy mass that moved and talked, my heart sickened, and my feelings were altered to those of horror and hatred. I tried to stifle these sensations. I thought that as I could not sympathize with him, I had no right to withhold from him the small portion of happiness which was yet in my power to bestow. You swear, I said, to be harmless, but have you not already shown a degree of malice that should reasonably make me distrust you? May not even this be a faint that will increase your triumph by affording a wider scope for your revenge? How is this? I must not be trifled with, and I demand an answer. If I have no ties and no affections, hatred and vice must be my portion. The love of another will destroy the cause of my crimes, and I shall become a thing of whose existence every one will be ignorant. My vices are the children of a forced solitude that I abhor, and my virtues will necessarily arise when I live in communion with an equal. I shall feel the affections of a sensitive being, and become linked to the chain of existence and events from which I am now excluded. I paused sometimes to reflect on all he had related, and on the various arguments which he had employed. I thought of the promise of virtues which he had displayed on the opening of his existence, and the subsequent blights of all kindly feeling by the loathing and scorn which his protectors had manifested towards him. His power and threats were not omitted in my calculations. A creature who could exist in the ice caves of the glaciers, and hide himself from pursuit among the bridges of inaccessible precipices, was a being possessing faculties it would be vain to cope with. After a long pause of reflection, I concluded that the justice due both to him and my fellow creatures demanded of me that I should comply with his request. Turning to him therefore, I said, I consent to your demand, on your solemn oath to quit Europe forever, and every other place in the neighborhood of man, as soon as I shall deliver into your hands a female who will accompany you in your exile. I swear, he cried, by the sun, and by the blue sky of heaven, and by the fire of love that burns my heart, that if you grant my prayer, while they exist you shall never behold me again. Depart to your home and commence your labors. I shall watch their progress with unutterable anxiety, and fear not, but that when you are ready I shall appear. Saying this, he suddenly quitted me, fearful perhaps of any change in my sentiments. I saw him descend the mountain with greater speed than the flight of an eagle, and quickly lost among the undulations of the sea of ice. His tail had occupied the whole day, and the sun was upon the verge of the horizon, when he departed. I knew that I ought to hasten my descent towards the valley, as I should soon be encompassed in darkness. But my heart was heavy, and my steps slow. The labour of winding among the little paths of the mountain, and fixing my feet firmly as I advanced, perplexed me, occupied as I was by the emotions which the occurrences of the day had produced. Night was far advanced when I came to the halfway resting place, and seated myself beside the fountain. The stars shone at intervals as the clouds pass from over them. The dark pines rose before me, and every here and there a broken tree lay on the ground. It was a scene of wonderful solemnity, and stirred strange thoughts within me. I wept bitterly, and clasping my hands in agony, I exclaimed, Oh, stars and clouds and winds, ye are all about to mock me. If ye really pity me, crush sensation and memory. Let me become as not, but if not, depart, depart, and leave me in darkness. These were wild and miserable thoughts, but I cannot describe to you how the eternal twinkling of the stars weighed upon me, and how I listened to every blast of wind as if it were a dull ugly syrup on its way to consume me. Morning dawned before I arrived at the village of Chamonix. I took no rest, but returned immediately to Geneva. Even in my own heart I could give no expression to my sensations. They weighed on me with a mountain's weight, and their excess destroyed my agony beneath them. Thus I returned home, and entering the house presented myself to the family. My haggard and wild appearance awoke intense alarm, but I answered no question. Scarcely did I speak. I felt as if I were placed under a ban, as if I had no right to claim their sympathies, as if nevermore might I enjoy companionship with them. Yet even thus I loved them to adoration, and to save them I resolved to dedicate myself to my most abhorred task. The prospect of such an occupation made every other circumstance of existence pass before me like a dream, and that thought only had to me the reality of life. This LibriVox recording is in the Public Domain. Day after day, week after week, passed away on my return to Geneva, and I could not collect the courage to recommend my work. I feared the vengeance of the disappointed fiend, yet I was unable to overcome my repugnance to the task which was enjoined me. I found that I could not compose a female without again devoting several months to profound study and laborious disquisition. I had heard of some discoveries having been made by an English philosopher, the knowledge of which was material to my success, and I sometimes thought of obtaining my father's consent to visit England for this purpose. But I clung to every pretense of delay, and shrank from taking the first step in an undertaking whose immediate necessity began to appear less absolute to me. A change indeed had taken place in me. My health, which had hitherto declined, rose proportionately. My father saw this change with pleasure, and he turned his thoughts towards the best method of eradicating the remains of my melancholy, which every now and then would return by fits, and with a devouring blackness overcast the approaching sunshine. At these moments I took refuge in the most perfect solitude. I passed whole days on the lake alone in a little boat, watching the clouds and listening to the rippling of the waves, silent and listless. But the fresh air and the bright sun seldom failed to restore me to some degree of composure, and on my return I met the salutations of my friends, with a readyer smile and a more cheerful heart. It was after my return from one of these rambles that my father, calling me aside, thus addressed me. I am happy to remark, my dear son, that you have resumed your former pleasures and seem to be returning to yourself. And yet you are still unhappy and still avoid our society. For some time I was lost in conjecture as to the cause of this. But yesterday an idea struck me, and if it is well-founded I conjure you to avow it. Reserve on such a point would be not only truly useless, but draw down trouble misery upon us all. I trembled violently at his exhortium, and my father continued, I confess, my son, that I have always looked forward to your marriage with our dear Elizabeth as the tie of our domestic comfort and the stay of my declining years. You were attached to each other from your earliest infancy. You studied together, and appeared, into positions in taste, entirely suited one another. But so blind is the experience of man, that what I conceived to be the best assistance to my plan may have entirely destroyed it. You perhaps regard her as your sister, without any wish that you might become your wife. Nay, you may have met with another whom you may love, and considering yourself as bound in honor to Elizabeth, this struggle may occasion the poignant misery which you appear to feel. My dear father, reassure yourself. I love my cousin tenderly and sincerely. I never saw any woman who excited, as Elizabeth does, my warmest admiration and affection. My future hopes and prospects are entirely bound up in the expectation of our union. The expression of your sediments on this subject, my dear Victor, gives me more pleasure than I have for some time experienced. If you feel thus, we shall surely be happy, however present events may cast a gloom over us. But it is this gloom which appears to have taken so strong a hold of your mind that I wish to dissipate. Tell me, therefore, whether you object to an immediate solemnization of the marriage. We have been unfortunate, and recent events have drawn us from that everyday tranquility befitting my years in infirmities. You are younger, yet I do not suppose, possessed as you are of a competent fortune, that an early marriage would at all interfere with any future plans of honor and utility that you may have formed. Do not suppose, however, that I wish to dictate happiness to you, or that a delay on your part would cause me any serious uneasiness. Interpret my words with candor, and enter me, I conjure you, with confidence and sincerity. I listened to my father in silence, and remained for some time incapable of offering my reply. I revolved rapidly in my mind a multitude of thoughts and endeavour to arrive at some conclusion. Alas! To me the idea of an immediate union with my Elizabeth was one of horror and dismay. I was bound by a solemn promise which I had not yet fulfilled and dare not break, or if I did, what manifold miseries might not impend over me and my devoted family. Could I enter into a festival with this deadly weight yet hanging round my neck and bowing me to the ground? I must perform my engagements and let the monster depart with his mate, before I allowed myself to endure the delight of a union from which I expected peace. I remembered also the necessity imposed upon me of either journeying to England, or entering into a long correspondence with those philosophers of that country, whose knowledge and discoveries were of indispensable use to me in my present undertaking. The latter method of obtaining the desired intelligence was dilatory and unsatisfactory. Besides, I had an insurmountable aversion to the idea of engaging myself in my loathsome task in my father's house, while in habits of familiar intercourse with those I loved. I knew that a thousand fearful accidents might occur, the slightest of which would disclose a tale to thrill all connected with me with horror. I was aware also that I should often lose all self-command, all capacity of hiding the harrowing sensations that would possess me during the progress of my unearthly occupation. I must absent myself from all I loved, while thus employed. Once commenced, it would quickly be achieved, and I might be restored to my family in peace and happiness.  These feelings dictated my answer to my father. I expressed a wish to visit England, but concealing the true reasons of this request, I clothed my desires under a guise which excited no suspicion, while I urged my desire with an earnestness that easily induced my father to comply. After so long a period of an absorbing melancholy that resembled madness in its intensity and effects, he was glad to find that I was capable of taking pleasure in the idea of such a journey, and he hoped that change of scene and varied amusement would, before my return, have restored me entirely to myself. The duration of my absence was left to my own choice. A few months, or at most a year, was the period contemplated. One paternal, kind precaution he had taken to ensure my having a companion. Without previously communicating with me, he had, in concert with Elizabeth, urged that Clairval should join me in Strasbourg. This interfered with the solitude I coveted for the prosecution of my task, yet at the commencement of my journey the presence of my friend could in no way be an impediment, and truly I rejoiced that thus I should be saved from many hours of lonely maddening reflection. Nay, Henry might stand between me and the intrusion of my foe. If I were alone, would he not at times force his abhorred presence on me to remind me of my task, or to contemplate its progress? To England, therefore, I was bound, and it was understood that my union with Elizabeth should take place immediately on my return. My father's age rendered him extremely averse to delay. For myself, there was one reward I promised myself from my detested toils on consolation for my unparalleled sufferings. It was the prospect of that day when enfranchised from my miserable slavery I might claim Elizabeth and forget the past in my union with her. I now made arrangements for my journey, but one feeling haunted me which filled me with fear and agitation. During my absence I should leave my friends unconscious of the existence of their enemy and unprotected from his attacks exasperated as he might be by my departure. But he had promised to follow me wherever I might go, and would he not accompany me to England? This imagination was dreadful in itself, but soothing in as much as it supposed the safety of my friends. I was agonized with the idea of the possibility that the reverse of this might happen, but through the whole period during which I was the slave of my creature I allowed myself to be governed by the impulses of the moment, and my present sensations strongly intimated that the fiend would follow me and accept my family from the danger of his machinations. It was in the latter end of September that I again quitted my native country. My journey had been my own suggestion, and Elizabeth therefore acquiesced, but she was filled with disquiet at the idea of my suffering away from her the inroads of misery and grief. It had been her care which provided me a companion in Clairval, and yet a man is blind to a thousand minute circumstances which called forth a woman's senseless attention. She longed to bid me hasten my return. A thousand conflicting emotions rendered her mute as she bade me a tearful silent farewell. I threw myself into the carriage that was to convey me away, hardly knowing wither I was going, and careless of what was passing around. I remembered only, and it was with a bitter anguish that I reflected on it, to order that my chemical instruments should be packed to go with me, filled with dreary imaginations. I passed through many beautiful and majestic scenes, but my eyes were fixed and unobserving. I could only think of the borne of my travels and the work which was to occupy me whilst they endured. After some days spent in listless indolence, during which I traversed many leagues, I arrived at Strasbourg, where I waited two days for Clairval. He came. Alas, how great was the contrast between us! He was alive to every new scene, joyful when he saw the beauties of the setting sun, and more happy when he beheld it rise and recommence a new day. He pointed out to me the shifting colours of the landscape and the appearances of the sky. This is what it is to live! He cried. How I enjoy existence! But you, my dear Frankenstein, wherefore are you desponding in sorrowful? In truth I was occupied by gloomy thought, and neither saw the descent of the evening star, nor the golden sunrise reflected in the Rhine, and you, my friend, would be far more amused with the Journal of Clairval, who observed the scenery with an eye of feeling and delight, than in listening to my reflections, I, a miserable wretch, haunted by a curse that shot up every avenue to enjoyment. We had agreed to descend the Rhine in a boat from Strasbourg to Rotterdam, wence we might take shipping for London. During this voyage we passed many willowy islands and saw several beautiful towns. We stayed a day at Mannheim, and on the fifth from our departure from Strasbourg arrived at Mainz. The course of the Rhine below Mainz becomes much more picturesque. The river descends rapidly and winds between hills, not high but steep, and of beautiful forms. We saw many ruined castles standing on the edges of precipices, surrounded by black woods, high and inaccessible. This part of the Rhine indeed presents a singularly variegated landscape, in one spot you view rugged hills, ruined castles overlooking tremendous precipices, with the dark Rhine rushing beneath, and on the sudden turn of a promontory, flourishing vineyards with green-slopping banks and a reandering river and populous towns occupy the scene. We travelled at the time of the vintage and heard the song of the laborers as they glided down the stream. Even I, depressed in mind, and my spirits continually agitated by gloomy feelings, even I was pleased. I lay at the bottom of the boat, and as I gazed on the cloudless blue sky, I seemed to drink inner tranquillity to which I had long been a stranger. And if these were my sensations, who can describe those of Henry? He felt as if he had been transported to Fairyland and enjoyed a happiness seldom tasted by man. I have seen, he said, the most beautiful scenes of my own country. I visited the lakes of Lucerne and Urie, with the snowy mountains descend almost perpendicularly to the water, casting black and impenetrable shades, which would cause a gloomy and mournful appearance were it not for the most verdant islands that believe the eye by their gay appearance. I have seen the slick agitated by a tempest, when the wind tore up whirlwinds of water, and gave you an idea of what the water spout must be like on the great ocean, and the waves dash with fury the base of the mountain, where the priest and his mistress were overwhelmed by an avalanche, and their dying voices are still said to be heard amid the pauses of the nightly wind. I have seen the mountains of Lavalé and the Pé Devade, but this country, Victor, pleases me more than all's wonders. The mountains of Switzerland are more majestic and strange, but there is a charm in the banks of this divine river that I never before saw equaled. Look at that castle, which overhangs beyond precipice, and that also on the island almost concealed among the foliage of those lovely trees, and now that group of labourers coming from among their vines, and that village half hid in the recess of the mountain. Oh, surely the spirit that inhabits and guards this place has a soul more in harmony with man than those who pile the glacier, a retire to the inaccessible peaks of mountains of our own country. Clairvalé, beloved friend, even now it delights me to record your words and to dwell on the praise of which you are so eminently desiring. He was a being formed in the very poetry of nature. His wild and enthusiastic imagination was chastened by the sensibility of his heart. His soul overflowed with ardent affection, and his friendship was of that devoted and wondrous nature that the world-minded teaches only to look for in the imagination. But even human sympathies were not sufficient to satisfy his eager mind. The scenery of external nature, which others regard only with admiration, he loved with ardour. The sounding cataracts haunted him like a passion. The tall rock, the mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, their colours and their forms were then to him an appetite, a feeling and a love that had no need of a remote charm by thought supplied or an interest unborrowed from the eye. And where does he now exist? Is this gentle and lovely being lost forever? Has this mind so replete with ideas, imaginations fanciful and magnificent, which formed a world whose existence depended on the life of its creator? Has this mind perished? Does it now only exist in my memory? No, it is not thus. Your form so divinely wrought and beaming with beauty has decayed. But your spirit still visits and consoles your unhappy friend. Pardon this gush of sorrow. These ineffectual words are but a slight tribute to the unexampled worth of Henry. But they soothe my heart, overflowing with the anguish which his remembrance creates. I will proceed with my tale. Beyond Cologne we descended to the plains of Holland, and we resolved to post the remainder of our way, for the wind was contrary and the stream of the river was too gentle to aid us. Our journey here lost the interest arising from beautiful scenery, but we arrived in a few days at Rotterdam, once we proceeded by sea to England. It was on a clear morning in the latter days of December that I first saw the white cliffs of Britain, the banks of the Thames presented a new scene. They were flat but fertile, and almost every town was marked by the remembrance of some story. We saw Tilbury forts and remembered the Spanish Armata, Graves and Woolwich and Greenwich, places which I had heard of even in my country. At length we saw the numerous steeples of London, St. Paul's towering above all, and the tower famed in English history. CHAPTER XIX London was our present point of rest. We determined to remain several months in this wonderful and celebrated city. Cleval desired the intercourse of the men of genius and talent who flourished at this time, but this was with me a secondary object. I was principally occupied with the means of obtaining the information necessary for the completion of my promise, and quickly availed myself of the letters of introduction that I had brought with me, addressed to the most distinguished natural philosophers. If this journey had taken place during my days of study and happiness, it would have afforded me inexpressible pleasure. But a blight had come over my existence, and I only visited these people for the sake of the information they might give me on the subject in which my interest was so terribly profound. Company was irksome to me, and I could thus cheat myself into a transitory piece, but busy, uninteresting, joyous faces brought back despair to my heart. I saw an insurmountable barrier placed between me and my fellow men. This barrier was sealed with the blood of William and Justine, and to reflect on the events connected with these names filled my soul with anguish. But in Clairval I saw the image of my former self. He was inquisitive and anxious to gain experience and instruction. The difference of manners which he observed was to him an inexhaustible source of instruction and amusement. He was also pursuing an object he had long had in view. His design was to visit India in the belief that he had in his knowledge of its various languages, and in the views he had taken of its society, the means of materially assisting the progress of European colonization and trade. In Britain only could he further the execution of his plan. He was forever busy, and the only check to his enjoyments was my sorrow and dejected mind. I tried to conceal this as much as possible, that I might not debar him from the pleasures natural to one who was entering on a new scene of life, undisturbed by any care or bitter recollection. I often refused to accompany him, alleging another engagement that I might remain alone. I now also began to collect the materials necessary for my new creation, and this was to me like the torture of single drops of water continually falling on the head. Every thought that was devoted to it was an extreme anguish, and every word that I spoke in allusion to it caused my lifts to quaver and my heart to palpitate. After passing some months in London we received a letter from a person in Scotland who had formerly been our visitor in Geneva. He mentioned the beauties of his native country, and asked us if those were not sufficient allurements to induce us to prolong our journey as far north as Perth, where he resided. Clairval eagerly desired to accept this invitation, and I, although I abhorred society, wished to view again mountains and streams and all the wondrous works with which nature adorns her chosen dwelling places. We had arrived in England at the beginning of October, and it was now February. We accordingly determined to commence our journey towards the north at the expiration of another month. In this expedition we did not intend to follow the Great Road to Edinburgh, but to visit Windsor, Oxford, Matlock, and the Cumberland Lakes, resolving to arrive at the completion of this tour about the end of July. I packed up my chemical instruments and the materials I had collected, resolving to finish my labours in some obscure nook in the northern highlands of Scotland. We quitted London on the 27th of March, and remained a few days at Windsor, rambling in its beautiful forest. This was a new sense to us smartoneers, the majestic oaks, the quantity of game, and the herds of stately deer were all novel days to us. From thence we proceeded to Oxford. As we entered this city, our minds were filled with the remembrance of the events that had been transacted here more than a century and a half before. It was here that Charles I had collected his forces. This city had remained faithful to him after the whole nation had forsaken his cause to join the standard of Parliament and Liberty. The memory of that unfortunate King and his companions, the amiable Falkland, the insolent Goring, his Queen and Son, gave a peculiar interest to every part of the city, which they might be supposed to have inhabited. The spirit of elder days found a dwelling here, and we delighted to trace its footsteps. If these feelings had not found an imaginary gratification, the appearance of the city had yet in itself sufficient beauty to obtain our admiration. The colleges were ancient and picturesque. The streets are almost magnificent, and the lovely Isis, which flows beside it through meadows of exquisite verdure, is spread forth into a placid expanse of waters, which reflects this majestic assemblage of towers and spires and domes embosomed among aged trees. I enjoyed this scene, and yet my enjoyment was embittered both by the memory of the past and the anticipation of the future. I was formed for peaceful happiness. During my youthful days, discontent never visited my mind, and if I was ever overcome by own we, the sight of what is beautiful in nature or the study of what is excellent and sublime in the productions of man could always interest my heart and communicate elasticity to my spirit. But I am a blasted tree. The bolt has entered my soul, and I felt then that I should survive to exhibit what I shall soon cease to be a miserable spectacle of wrecked humanity, pitiable to others, and intolerable to myself. We passed a considerable period at Oxford, rambling among its environs and endeavoring to identify every spot which might relate to the most animating epoch of English history. Our little voyages of discovery were often prolonged by the success of objects that presented themselves. We visited the tomb of the illustrious Hampton and the field on which that patriot fell. For a moment, my soul was elevated from its debasic and miserable fears to contemplate the divine ideas of liberty and self-sacrifice of which these sites were the monuments and the remembrancers. For an instant, I dared to shake off my chains and look around me with a free and lofty spirit, but the iron had eaten into my flesh, and I sank again, trembling and hopeless, into my miserable self. We left Oxford with regret and proceeded to Matlock, which was our next place of rest. The country and the neighborhood of this village resembled, to a greater degree, the scenery of Switzerland. But everything is on a lower scale and the green hills want the crown of distant white alps, which always attend on the piney mountains of my native country. We visited the wondrous cave and the little cabinets of natural history where the curiosities are disposed in the same manner as in the collections at Cervaux and Chamonix. The latter name made me tremble when pronounced by Henry, and I hastened to quit Matlock, with which that terrible scene was thus associated. From Darby, still journeying northwards, we passed two months in Cumberland and Westmoreland. I could now almost fancy myself among the Swiss mountains. The little patches of snow which yet lingered on the northern sides of the mountain, the lakes and the dashing of the rocky streams, were all familiar and dear sights to me. Here also we made some acquaintances who almost contrived to cheat me into happiness. The delight of Cervaux was proportionately greater than mine. His mind expanded in the company of men of talent, and he found in his own nature greater capacities and resources than he could have imagined himself to have possessed while he associated with his inferiors. I could pass my life here, said he to me, and among these mountains I should scarcely regret, Switzerland and the Rhine. But he found that a traveller's life is one that includes much pain amidst its enjoyments. His feelings are forever on the stretch, and when he begins to sink into repose, he finds himself obliged to quit that on which he rests in pleasure for something new, which again engages his attention, and which also he forsakes for other novelties. We had scarcely visited the various lakes of Cumberland and Westmoreland and conceived an affection for some of the inhabitants when the period of our appointment with our scotch friend approached, and we left them to travel on. For my own part I was not sorry. I had now neglected my promise for some time, and I feared the effects of the demon's disappointment. He might remain in Switzerland and rake his vengeance on my relatives. This idea pursued me and tormented me at every moment from which I might otherwise have snatched repose and peace. I waited for my letters with feverish impatience. If they were delayed, I was miserable and overcome by a thousand fears, and when they arrived, and I saw the superscription of Elizabeth or my father, I hardly dared to read and ascertain my fate. Sometimes I thought that the fiend followed me and might expedite my remissness by murdering my companion. When these thoughts possessed me, I would not quit Henry for a moment, but followed him as his shadow to protect him from the fancied rage of his destroyer. I felt as if I had committed some great crime, the consciousness of which haunted me. I was guiltless, but I had indeed drawn down a horrible curse upon my head, as mortal as that of crime. I visited Edinburgh with languid eyes and mind, and yet that city might have interested the most unfortunate being. Clairval did not like it so well as Oxford, for the antiquity of the latter city was more pleasing to him. But the beauty and regularity of the new town of Edinburgh, its romantic castle and its environs, the most beautiful in the world, Arthur's seat, St. Bernard's well and the Pentland Hills, compensated him for the change, and filled him with cheerfulness and admiration. But I was impatient to arrive at the termination of my journey. We left Edinburgh in a week, passing through Coupar, St Andrews, and along the banks of the Tay to Perth, where our friend expected us. But I was in no mood to laugh and talk with strangers or enter into their feelings or plans with the good humour expected from a guest, and accordingly I told Clairval that I wished to make the tour of Scotland alone. Do you, said I, enjoy yourself, and let this be our rendezvous. I may be absent a month or two, but do not interfere with my emotions, I entreat you. Leave me to peace and solitude for a short time, and when I return I hope it will be with a lighter heart, more congenial to your own temper. Henry wished to dissuade me, but seeing me bent on this plan ceased to remonstrate. He entreated me to write often. I had rather be with you. He said? In your solitary rambles, then with these scotch people whom I do not know, hasten then my dear friend to return, that I may again feel myself somewhat at home, which I cannot do in your absence. Having parted from my friend, I determined to visit some remote spot of Scotland and to finish my work in solitude. I did not doubt but that the monster followed me, and would discover himself to me when I should have finished, that he might receive his companion. With this resolution I traversed the Northern Highlands and fixed on one of the remotest of the Orkneys, as the scene of my labours. It was a place fitted for such a work, being hardly more than a rock whose high sides were continually beaten upon by the waves. The soil was barren, scarcely affording pasture for a few miserable cows and oatmeal for its inhabitants, which consisted of five persons, whose gaunt and scraggly limbs gave tokens of their miserable fare. Vegetables and bread, when they had dosed in such luxuries, and even fresh water, was to be cured from the mainland, which was about five miles distant. On the whole island there were but three miserable huts, and one of those was vacant when I arrived. This I hired. It contained but two rooms, and these exhibited all the squalidness of the most miserable penury. The thatch had fallen in, the walls were unplastered, and the door was off its hinges. I ordered it to be repaired, bought some furniture, and took possession, an incident which would doubtless have occasioned some surprise, had not all the senses of the cottagers been benumbed by want and squalid poverty. As it was, I lived ungased-ass and unmolested, hardly thanked for the pittance of food and clothes which I gave, so much does suffering blunt even the coarsest sensations of men. In this retreat I devoted the morning to labour, but in the evening, when the weather permitted, I walked on the stony beach of the sea to listen to the waves as they roared and dashed at my feet. It was a monotonous, yet ever-changing scene. I thought of Switzerland. It was far different from this desolate and appalling landscape. Its hills are covered with vines, and its cottages are scattered thickly in the plains. Its fair lakes reflect a blue and gentle sky, and when troubled by the winds, their tumult is but as the play of a lively infant when compared to the roarings of the giant ocean. In this manner I distributed my occupations when I first arrived, but as I proceeded in my labour it became every day more horrible and irksome to me. Sometimes I could not prevail on myself to enter my laboratory for several days, and at other times I toiled day and night in order to complete my work. It was indeed a filthy process in which I was engaged. During my first experiment a kind of enthusiastic frenzy had blinded me to the horror of my employment. My mind was intently fixed on the consummation of my labour, and my eyes were shut to the horror of my proceedings. But now I went to it in cold blood, and my hearts often sickened at the work of my hands. Thus situated, employed in the most detestable occupation, immersed in a solitude where nothing could for an instant call my attention from the actual scene in which I was engaged. My spirits became unequal. I grew restless and nervous. Every moment I feared to meet my persecutor. Sometimes I sat with my eyes fixed on the ground, fearing to raise them lest they should encounter the object which I so much dreaded to behold. I feared to wander from the sight of my fellow creatures, lest, when alone, he should come to claim his companion. In the meantime, I worked on, and my labour was already considerably advanced. I looked towards its completion with a tremulous and eager hope, which I dared not trust myself to question, but which was intermixed with obscure forebodings of evil that made my heart sicken in my bosom. I sat one evening in my laboratory. The sun had set, and the moon was just rising from the sea. I had not sufficient light for my employment, and I remained idle in a pause of consideration of whether I should leave my labour for the night, or hasten its conclusion by an unremitting attention. As I sat, a train of reflection occurred to me, which led me to consider the effects of what I was now doing. Three years before, I was engaged in the same manner, and had created a fiend whose unparalleled barbarity had desolated my heart and filled it forever with the bitterest remorse. I was now about to form another being of whose dispositions I was alike ignorant. She might become ten thousand times more malignant than her mate, and delight for its own sake in murder and wretchedness. He had swore to quit the neighbourhood of man and hide himself in deserts, but she had not, and she, who with all probability was to become a thinking and reasoning animal, might refuse to comply with a compact made before her creation. They might even hate each other. The creature who already lived loathed his own deformity, and might he not conceive a greater abhorrence for it when it came before his eyes in the female form. She also might turn with disgust from him to the superior beauty of man. She might quit him, and he be again alone, exasperated by the fresh provocation of being deserted by one of his own species. Even if they were to leave Europe and inhabit the deserts of the New World, yet one of the first results of those sympathies, for which the demon thirsted would be children, and a race of devils would be propagated upon the earth, who might make the very existence of the species of man a conditioned precarious and full of terror. Had I right, for my own benefit, to inflict this curse upon everlasting generations, I had before been moved by the sophisms of the being I had created. I had been struck senseless by his fiendish threat. But now, for the first time, the wickedness of my promise burst upon me. I shuddered to think that future ages might curse me as their past, whose selfishness had not hesitated to buy its own piece at the price, perhaps, of the existence of the whole human race. I trembled, and my heart filled within me. When, on looking up, I saw, by the light of the moon, the demon at the casement. A ghastly grin wrinkled his lips as he gazed on me, or I sat fulfilling the task which he had allotted to me. Yes, he had followed me in my travels. He had loitered in forests, hid himself in caves, or taken refuge in wide and desert heaths. And he now came to mark my progress and claim the fulfillment of my promise. As I looked on him, his countenance expressed the utmost extent of malice and treachery. I thought with a sensation of madness on my promise of creating another like to him, and trembling with passion, tore to pieces the thing on which I was engaged. The wretch saw me destroy the creature on whose future existence he depended for happiness, and with a howl of devilish despair and revenge with true. I left the room, and locking the door, made a solemn vow in my own heart never to resume my labours. And then, with trembling steps, I sought my own apartment. I was alone, none was near me to dissipate the gloom, and relieve me from the sickening oppression of the most terrible reveries. Several hours passed, and I remained near my window gazing on the sea. It was almost motionless, for the winds were hushed, and all nature reposed under the eye of the quiet moon. A few fishing vessels alone specked the water, and now and then the gentle breeze wafted the sound of voices as the fishermen called to one another. I felt the silence, although I was hardly conscious of its extreme profundity, until my ear was suddenly arrested by the paddling of oars near the shore, and a person landed close to my house. In a few minutes after, I heard the creaking of my door, as if someone endeavored to open it softly. I trembled from head to foot. I felt a presentiment of who it was, and wished to rouse one of the presence who dwelt in a cottage not far from mine. But I was overcome by the sensation of helplessness, so often felt in frightful dreams, when you, in vain, endeavored to fly from an impending danger, and was rooted to the spot. Presently I heard the sound of footsteps along the passage. The door opened, and the wretch whom I dreaded appeared. Sharing the door, he approached me, and said, in a smothered voice, You have destroyed the work which you began.  I have endured toil and misery. I left Switzerland with you. I crept along the shores of the Rhine, among its willow islands, and over the summits of its hills. I have dwelt many months in the heaths of England, and among the deserts of Scotland. I have endured incalculable fatigue, and cold and hunger.  Begone! I do break my promise. Never will I create another life yourself, equal in deformity and wickedness. Slave! I before reasoned with you, but you have proved yourself unworthy of my condescension. Remember that I have power. You believe yourself miserable, but I can make you so wretched that the light of day will be hateful to you. You are my creator, but I am your master. Obey! The hour of my irresolution is past, and the period of your power is arrived. Your threats cannot move me to do an act of wickedness, but they confirm me in a determination of not creating you a companion in vice. Shall I, in cool blood, set loose upon the earth a demon whose delight is in death and wretchedness? Begone! I am firm, and your words will only exasperate my rage. The monster saw my determination in my face, and gnashed his teeth in the impotence of anger. Shall each man, cried he, find a wife for his bosom, and each beast have his mate, and I be alone? I had feelings of affection, and they were requited by detestation and scorn. Man! You may hate, but beware! Your hours will pass in dread and misery, and soon the bolt will fall, which must ravish from you your happiness forever. Are you to be happy, while I grovel in the intensity of my wretchedness? You can blast my other passions, but revenge remains. Revenge, henceforth, dearer than light or food. I may die, but first you, my tyrant and tormentor, shall curse the sun that gazes on your misery. Beware, for I am fearless, and therefore powerful. I will watch with the wiliness of a snake that I may sting with his venom. Man, you shall be pent of the injuries you infect. Devil, cease, and do not poison the air with these sounds of malice. I have declared my resolution to you, and I am no coward to bend beneath words. Leave me, I am inexorable. It is well. I go, but remember, I shall be with you on your wedding night. I started forward and exclaimed, Villain, before you sign my death warrant, be sure that you are yourself safe. I would have seized him, but he eluded me and quitted the house with precipitation. In a few moments I saw him in his boats, which shot across the waters with an arrow-y swiftness, and was soon lost amidst the waves. All was again silent, but his words rang in my ears. I burned with rage to pursue the murderer of my peace and precipitated him into the ocean. I walked up and down my room hastily and perturbed, when my imagination conjured up a thousand images to torment and sting me. Why had I not followed him and closed with him in mortal strife? But I had suffered him to depart, and he had directed his course towards the mainland. I shuddered to think who might be the next victim sacrificed to his insatiate revenge. And then I thought again of his words. I will be with you on your wedding night. That, then, was the period fixed for the fulfilment of my destiny, and that hour I should die and at once satisfy and extinguish his malice. The prospect did not move me to fear, yet, when I thought of my beloved Elizabeth, of her tears and endless sorrow, when she should find her lover so barbarously snatched from her, tears, the first I had shed for many months, streamed from my eyes, and I resolved not to fall before my enemy without a bitter struggle. The night passed away, and the sun rose from the ocean. My feelings became calmer, if it may be called calmness, when the violence of rage sinks into the depths of despair. I left the house, the horrid scene of the last night's contention, and walked on the beach of the sea, which I almost regarded as an insuperable barrier between me and my fellow-creatures. Nay, a wish that such should prove the fact stole across me. I desired that I might pass my life on that barren rock, wearily it is true, but uninterrupted by any sudden shock of misery.  I walked about the isle like a reckless specter, separated from all it loved, and miserable in the separation. When it became noon and the sun rose higher, I laid down on the grass and was overpowered by a deep sleep. I had been awake the whole of the preceding night, my nerves were agitated, and my eyes inflamed by watching and misery. The sleep into which I now sank refreshed me, and when I awoke, I again felt as if I belonged to a race of human beings like myself, and I began to reflect upon what had passed with greater composure. Yet still the words of the fiend rang in my ears like a death knell. They appeared like a dream, yet distinct and oppressive as a reality. The sun had far descended, and I still sat on the shore, satisfying my appetite, which had become ravenous, with an otten cake, when I saw a fishing boat land close to me, and one of the men brought me a packet. It contained letters from Geneva, and one from Clairval in treating me to join him. He said that he was wearing away his time fruitlessly where he was, that letters from friends he had formed in London desired his return to complete the negotiation they had entered into for his Indian enterprise. He could not any longer delay his departure, but as his journey to London might be followed, even sooner that he now conjectured, by his longer voyage, he had treated me to bestow as much of my society on him as I could spare. He besought me, therefore, to leave my solitary isle and to meet him at Perth, that we might proceed southwards together. This letter in a degree recalled me to life, and I determined to quit my island at the expiration of two days. Yet, before I departed, there was a task to perform on which I shuddered to reflect. I must pack up my chemical instruments, and for that purpose I must enter the room which had been the scene of my odious work, and I must handle those utensils the sight of which was sickening to me. The next morning, at daybreak, I summoned sufficient courage and unlocked the door of my laboratory. The remains of the half-finished creature whom I had destroyed lay scattered on the floor, and I almost felt as if I had mangled the living flesh of a human being. I paused to recollect myself, and then entered the chamber. With trembling hand I conveyed the instruments out of the room, but I reflected that I ought not to leave the relics of my work to excite the horror and suspicion of the peasants, and I accordingly put them into a basket with a great quantity of stones, and laying them up determined to throw them into the sea that very night. And in the meantime I sat upon the beach, employed in cleaning and arranging my chemical apparatus. Nothing could be more complete than the alteration that had taken place in my feelings since the night of the appearance of the demon. I had before regarded my promise with a gloomy despair as a thing that, with whatever consequences, must be fulfilled. But I now felt as if a film had been taken from before my eyes, and that I for the first time saw clearly. The idea of renewing my labours did not for one instant occur to me. The threat that I heard weighed on my thoughts, but I did not reflect that a voluntary act of mine could avert it. I had resolved in my own mind that to create another, like the fiend I had first made, would be an act of the basest and most atrocious selfishness, and I banished from my mind every thought that could lead to a different conclusion. Between two and three in the morning the moon rose, and I then, putting my basket aboard a little skiff, sailed out about four miles from the shore. The scene was perfectly solitary. A few boats were running towards land, but I sailed away from them. I felt as if I was about the commission of a dreadful crime, and avoided with shuttering anxiety any encounter with my fellow creatures. At one time the moon, which had before been clear, was suddenly overspread by a thick cloud, and I took advantage of the moment of darkness and cast my basket into the sea. I listened to the gurgling sound as it sank, and then sailed away from the spot. The sky became clouded, but the air was pure, although chilled by the northeast breeze that was then rising. But it refreshed me and filled me with such agreeable sensations that I resolved to prolong my stay on the water, and fixing the rudder in a direct position, stretched myself at the bottom of the boat. Clouds hid the moon, everything was obscure, and I heard only the sound of the boats as its keel cut through the waves. The murmur lulled me, and in a short time I slept soundly. I do not know how long I remained in this situation, but when I awoke I found that the sun had already mounted considerably. The wind was high, and the waves continually threatened the safety of my little skiff. I found that the wind was northeast, and must have driven me far from the coast from which I had embarked. I endeavored to change my course, but quickly found that if I again made the attempt the boat would be instantly filled with water. Thus situated, my only resource was to drive before the wind. I confess that I felt a few sensations of terror. I had no compass with me, and was so slenderly acquainted with the geography of this part of the world that the sun was of little benefit to me. I might be driven into the wide Atlantic and feel all the torches of starvation, or be swallowed up in the immeasurable waters that roared and buffeted around me. I had already been out many hours and felt the torment of a burning thirst, a prelude to my other sufferings. I looked on the heavens, which were covered by clouds that flew before the wind, only to be replaced by others. I looked upon the sea. It was to be my grave. Feigned, I exclaimed, your task is already fulfilled. I thought of Elizabeth, of my father, and of Clairvaux, all left behind, on whom the monster might satisfy his sanguinary and merciless passions. This idea plunged me into a reverie so despairing and frightful that even now, when the scene is on the point of closing before me forever, I shudder to reflect on it. Some hours passed, thus, but by degrees, as the sun declined towards the horizon, the wind died away to a gentle breeze, and the sea became free from breakers. But these gave place to a heavy swell. I felt sick and hardly able to hold the rudder, when suddenly I saw a line of high land towards the south. Almost spent, as I was, my fatigue and the dreadful suspense I endured for several hours, this sudden certainty of life rushed like a flood of warm joy to my heart, and tears gushed from my eyes. How mutable are our feelings, and how strange is that clinging love we have of life, even in the excess of misery. I constructed another sail with a part of my dress, and eagerly steered my course towards the land. It had a wild and rocky appearance, but as I approached nearer, I easily perceived the traces of cultivation. I saw vessels near the shore, and found myself suddenly transported back to the neighborhood of civilized man. I carefully traced the windings of the land, and hailed a steeple, which I at length saw issuing from behind a small promontory. As I was in a state of extreme debility, I resolved to sail directly towards the town, as a place where I could most easily procure nourishment. Fortunately, I had money with me. As I turned the promontory, I perceived a small, neat town, and a good harbor, which I entered, my heart bounding with joy at my unexpected escape. As I was occupied in fixing the boats and arranging the sails, several people crowded towards the spot. They seemed much surprised at my appearance, but instead of offering me any assistance, whispered together with gestures that at any other time might have produced in me a slight sensation of alarm. As it was, I merely remarked that they spoke English, and I therefore addressed them in that language. My good friends, said I, will you be so kind as to tell me the name of this town and inform me where I am? You will know that soon enough, replied a man with a horse voice. Maybe you will come to a place that will not prove much to your taste, but you will not be consulted as to your quarters, I promise you. I was exceedingly surprised on receiving so rude an answer from a stranger, and I was also disconcerted on perceiving the frowning and angry countenances of his companions. Why do you answer me so roughly? I replied. Surely it is not the custom of Englishmen to receive strangers so inhospitably. I do not know what the custom of the English may be, but it is the custom of the Irish to hate villains. While this strange dialogue continued, I perceived the crowd rapidly increase. Their faces expressed a mixture of curiosity and anger, which annoyed and in some degree alarmed me. I inquired the way to the inn, but no one replied. I then moved forward, and a murmuring sound arose from the crowd as they followed and surrounded me, when an ill-looking man approaching tapped me on the shoulder and said, Come, sir, you must follow me to Mr. Carwin's to give an account of yourself. Who is Mr. Carwin? Why am I to give an account of myself? Is not this a free country? Aye, sir, free enough for honest folks. Mr.  This answer startled me, but I presently recovered myself. I was innocent, that could easily be proved. Accordingly, I followed my conductor in silence, and was led to one of the best houses in the town. I was ready to sink from fatigue and hunger, but being surrounded by a crowd, I thought it politic to rouse all my strength, that no physical debility might be construed into apprehension or conscious guilt. Little did I then expect the calamity that was in a few moments to overwhelm me and extinguish in horror and despair all fear of ignominy or death. I must pause here, for it requires all my fortitude to recall the memory of the frightful events which I am about to relate in proper detail to my recollection. End of Section 22. Section 23 of Frankenstein. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, by Mary Shelley. Section 23. Chapter 21. I was soon introduced into the presence of the magistrate, an old benevolent man with calm and mild manners. He looked upon me, however, with some degree of severity, and then, turning towards my conductors, he asked who appeared as witnesses on this occasion. About half a dozen men came forward, and one being selected by the magistrate, he deposed that he had been out fishing the night before with his son and brother-in-law, Daniel Nugent. When, about ten o'clock, they observed a strong, northerly blast rising, and they accordingly put in for port. It was a very dark night, as the moon had not yet risen. They did not land at the harbor, but as they had been accustomed, at a creek about two miles below. He walked on first, carrying a part of the fishing tackle, and his companions followed him at some distance. As he was proceeding along the sands, he struck his foot against something, and fell at his length on the ground. His companions came up to assist him, and by the light of their lantern, they found that they had fallen on the body of a man, who was to all appearance dead. Their first supposition was that it was the corpse of some person who had been drowned and was thrown on shore by the waves, but on examination they found that the clothes were not wet, and even that the body was not then cold. They instantly carried it to the cottage of an old woman, near the spot, and endeavored, but in vain to restore it to life. It appeared to be a handsome young man, about five and twenty years of age. He had apparently been strangled, for there was no sign of any evidence, except the black mark of fingers on his neck. The first part of this deposition did not in the least interest me, but when the mark of the fingers was mentioned, I remembered the murder of my brother, and felt myself extremely agitated. My limbs trembled and a mist came over my eyes, which obliged me to lean on a chair for support. The magistrate observed me with a keen eye, and of course drew an unfavorable augury from my manner. The son confirmed his father's account, but when Daniel Nugent was called, he swore positively that just before the fall of his companion, he saw a boat with a single man in it at a short distance from the shore. As far as he could judge by the light of a few stars, it was the same boat on which I had just landed. A woman deposed that she lived near the beach and was standing at the door of her cottage, waiting for the return of the fisherman, about an hour before she heard the discovery of the body, when she saw a boat with only one man in it push off from that part of the shore where the corpse was afterwards found. Another woman confirmed the account of the fisherman having brought the body into her house. It was not cold. They put it into a bed and rubbed it, and Daniel went to the town for an apothecary, but life was quite gone. Several other men were examined concerning my landing, and they agreed that with the strong north wind that had arisen during the night, it was very probable that I had been beaten about for many hours and had been obliged to return nearly to the same spot from which I had departed. Besides, they observed that it appeared that I had brought the body from another place, and it was likely that, as I did not appear to know the shore, I might have put into the harbour ignorant of the distance of the town from the place where I had deposited the corpse. Mr. Kerwin, on hearing this evidence, desired that I should be taken into the room where the body lay for interment, that it might be observed what effect the sight of it would produce upon me. This idea was probably suggested by the extreme agitation I had exhibited when the mode of the murder had been described. I was accordingly conducted by the magistrate and several other persons to the inn. I could not help being struck by the strange coincidences that had taken place during this eventful night. But knowing that I had been conversing with several persons in the island, I had inhabited about the time that the body had been found, I was perfectly tranquil as to the consequences of the affair. I entered the room where the corpse lay and was led up to the coffin. How can I describe my sensations on beholding it? I feel yet parts with horror, nor can I reflect on that terrible moment without shuddering and agony. The examination, the presence of the magistrate and witnesses, passed like a dream from my memory when I saw the lifeless form of Henry Clairval stretched before me. I gasped for breath and, throwing myself on the body, I exclaimed, Have my murderous machinations deprived you also my dearest Henry of life? Too have I already destroyed. Other victims await their destiny. But you, Clairval, my friend, my benefactor. The human frame could no longer support the agonies that I endured, and I was carried out of the room in strong convulsions. A fever succeeded to this. I lay for two months on the point of death. My bravings, as I afterwards heard, were frightful. I called myself the murderer of William, of Justine, and of Clairval. Sometimes I untreated my attendants to assist me in the destruction of the fiend by whom I was tormented, and at others I felt the fingers of the monster already grasping my neck and screamed aloud with agony and terror. Fortunately, as I spoke my native language, Mr. Curwen alone understood me, but my gestures and bitter cries were sufficient to affright the other witnesses. Why did I not die? More miserable than man ever was before, why did I not sink into forgetfulness and rest? Death snatches away many blooming children, the only hopes of their doting parents. How many brides and youthful lovers have been one day in the bloom of health and hope, and the next a pray for worms and the decay of the tomb? Of what materials was I made that I could thus resist so many shocks, which, like the turning of the wheel, continually renewed the torture? But I was doomed to live, and in two months found myself as awaking from a dream in a prison stretched on a wretched bed surrounded by jailers, turnkeys, bolts, and all the miserable apparatus of a dungeon. It was morning, I remember, when I thus awoke to understanding. I had forgotten the particulars of what had happened, and only felt as if some great misfortune had suddenly overwhelmed me. But when I looked around and saw the barrel windows and the squaliness of the room in which I was, all flashed across my memory, and I groaned bitterly. The sound disturbed an old woman who was sleeping in a chair beside me. She was a hired nurse, the wife of one of the turnkeys, and her countenance expressed all those bad qualities, which often characterized that class. The lines of her face were hard and rude, like that of persons accustomed to see without sympathizing in sights of misery. Her tone expressed her entire indifference. She addressed me in English, and the voice struck me as one that I had heard during my sufferings. Are you better now, sir? I replied in the same language, with a feeble voice. I believe I am, but if it all be true, if indeed I did not dream, I am sorry that I am still alive to feel this misery and horror. For that matter, replied the old woman, if you mean about the gentleman you murdered, I believe that it were better for you if you were dead. For I fancy it will go hard with you. However, that's none of my business. I am sent to nurse you and get you well. I do my duty with a safe conscience. It were well if everybody did the same. I turned with loathing from the woman who could utter so unfeeling a speech to a person just saved on the very edge of death, that I felt languid and unable to reflect on all that had passed. The whole series of my life appeared to me as a dream. I sometimes doubted if indeed it were all true, for it never presented itself to my mind with a force of reality. As the images that floated before me became more distinct, I grew feverish. A darkness pressed around me. No one was near me who soothed me with a gentle voice of love. No dear hand supported me. The physician came and prescribed medicines, and the old woman prepared them for me. But utter carelessness was visible in the first, and the expression of brutality was strongly marked in the visage of the second. Who could be interested in the fate of a murderer, but the hangman who would gain his fee? These were my first reflections. But I soon learned that Mr. Curwin had shown me extreme kindness. He had caused the best room in the prison to be prepared for me. Bretchard indeed was the best. And it was he who had provided a physician and a nurse. It is true he seldom came to see me, for although he ardently desired to relieve the sufferings of every human creature, he did not wish to be present at the agonies and miserable ravings of a murderer. He came, therefore, sometimes to see that I was not neglected, but his visits were short and with long intervals. One day, while I was gradually recovering, I was seated in a chair, my eyes half open and my cheeks livid like those in death. I was overcome by gloom and misery, and often reflected that I had better seek death than desire to remain in a world which to me was replete with wretchedness. At one time I considered whether I should not declare myself guilty and suffer the penalty of the law less innocent than poor Justine had been. Such were my thoughts when the door of my apartment was opened and Mr. Curwin entered. His confidence expressed sympathy and compassion. He drew a chair close to mine and addressed me in French. I fear that this place is very shocking to you. Can I do anything to make you more comfortable? I thank you, but all that you mention is nothing to me. On the whole earth there is no comfort which I am capable of receiving. I know that the sympathy of a stranger can be but of little relief to one born down as you are by so strange your misfortune. But you will, I hope, soon quit this melancholy abode. For doubtless, evidence can easily be brought to for you from the criminal charge. That is my least concern. I am, by a course of strange events, become the most miserable of mortals. Persecuted and tortured as I am and have been, can death be any evil to me? Nothing indeed could be more unfortunate in agonizing than the strange chances that have lately occurred. You were thrown by some surprising accident on the shore renowned for its hospitality, seized immediately, and charged with murder. The first sight that was presented to your eyes was the body of your friend, murdered in so unaccountable a manner and placed as it were, by some fiend across your path. As Mr. Curwin said this, notwithstanding the agitation I endured on this retrospect of my sufferings, I also felt considerable surprise at the knowledge he seemed to possess concerning me. I suppose some astonishment was exhibited in my countenance, for Mr. Curwin hastened to say, Immediately upon your being taken ill all the papers that were on your person were brought to me, and I examined them that I might discover some trace by which I could send your relations an account of your misfortune and illness. I found several letters, and among others one which I discovered from its commencement to be from your father. I instantly wrote to Geneva, nearly two months of a life since the departure of my letter. But you are ill. Even now you tremble. You are unfit for agitation of any kind. This suspense is a thousand times worse than the most horrible event. Tell me what new scene of death has been acted and whose murder I am now to lament. Your family is perfectly well. Said Mr. Curwin, with gentleness. And someone, a friend, has come to visit you. I know not by what chain of thought the idea presented itself, but it instantly darted into my mind that the murderer had come to mock at my misery and taunt me with the death of Clairval, as a new incitement for me to comply with his hellish desires. I put my hand before my eyes and cried out in agony, Oh, take him away. I cannot see him. For God's sake, do not let him enter. Mr. Curwin regarded me with a troubled confidence. He could not help regarding my exclamation as a presumption of my guilt, and said in rather a severe tone. I should have thought, young man, that the presence of your father would have been welcome instead of inspiring such violent repugnance. My father? Cried I, while every feature and every muscle was relaxed from anguish to pleasure. Is my father indeed come? Oh, how kind! How very kind! But where is he? Why does he not hasten to me? My change of manner surprised and pleased a magistrate. Perhaps he thought that my former exclamation was a momentary return of delirium, and now he instantly resumed his former benevolence. He rose and quitted the room with my nurse, and in a moment my father entered it. Nothing at this moment could have given me greater pleasure than the arrival of my father. I stretch out my hand to him and cried, Are you then safe, and Elizabeth, and Ernest? My father calmed me with assurances of their welfare and endeavoured my dwelling on these subjects so interesting to my heart to raise my desponding spirits. But he soon felt that a prison cannot be the abode of chairfulness.  Said he, looking mournfully at the barred windows and wretched appearance of the room. You travel to seek happiness, but a fatality seems to pursue you. And poor Clavel? The name of my unfortunate and murdered friend was an agitation too great to be endured in my weak state. I shed tears. Alas, yes, my father, replied I, Some destiny of the most horrible kind hangs over me, and I must live to fulfil it, for surely I should have died on the coffin of Henry. We were not allowed to converse for any length of time, for the precarious state of my health rendered every precaution necessary that could ensure tranquility. Mr. Curwin came in and insisted that my strength should not be exhausted by too much exertion. But the appearance of my father was to me like that of a good angel, and I gradually recovered my health. As my sickness quitted me, I was absorbed by a gloomy and black melancholy that nothing could dissipate. The image of Clavel was forever before me, ghastly and murdered. More than once, the agitation into which these reflections threw me made my friends dreaded dangerous relapse. Alas, why did they preserve so miserable and detested a life? It was surely that I might fulfil my destiny, which is now drawing to a close. Soon, oh, very soon, will death extinguish these throbbing and relieve me from the mighty weight of anguish that bears me to the dust, and in executing the award of justice I shall also seek to rest. Then the appearance of death was distant, although the wish was ever present to my thoughts, and I often sat for hours motionless and speechless, wishing for some mighty revolution that might bury me and my destroyer in its ruins. The season of the Assizes approached. I had already been three months in prison, and although I was still weak and in continual danger of a relapse, I was obliged to travel nearly a hundred miles to the country town where the court was held. Mr. Curwen charged himself with every care of collecting witnesses and arranging my defense. I was spared the disgrace of appearing publicly as a criminal, as the case was not brought before the court that decides on life and death. The grand jury rejected the bill on its being proved that I was on the Orkney Islands at the hour the body of my friend was found, and a fortnight after my removal I was liberated from prison. My father was enraptured on finding me freed from the vexations of a criminal charge, that I was again allowed to breathe the fresh atmosphere and permitted to return to my native country. I did not participate in these feelings, for to me the walls of a dungeon or a palace are alike hateful. The cup of life was poisoned forever, and although the sun shone upon me as upon the happy and gay of heart, I saw around me nothing but a dense and frightful darkness penetrated by no light but the glimmer of two eyes that glared upon me. Sometimes they were the expensive eyes of Henry languishing in death, the dark orbs nearly covered by the lids and the long black lashes that fringed them. Sometimes it was the watery, clouded eyes of the monster as I first saw them in my chamber at Ingolstadt. My father tried to awaken in me the feelings of affection, a talk of Geneva which I should soon visit, of Elizabeth and Ernest, but these words only drew deep groans from me. Sometimes indeed I fell to wish for happiness and thought with melancholy delight of my beloved cousin, alonged with a devouring Maladidupai to see once more the blue lake and rapid road that had been so dear to me in early childhood. But my general state of feeling was a torpor in which a prison was as welcome as a residence as the divinest scene in nature, and these fits were seldom interrupted but by paroxysms of anguish and despair. At these moments I often endeavoured to put an end to the existence I loathed, and it required unceasing attendance and vigilance to restrain me from committing some dreadful acts of violence. Yet one duty remained to me, the recollection of which finally triumphed over my selfish despair. It was necessary that I should return without delay to Geneva, there to watch over the lives of those I so fondly loved, and to lie in wait for the murderer, that if any chance led me to the place of his concealment, or if he dared again to blast me by his presence, I might, with unfailing aim, put an end to the existence of the monstrous image which I had endured with the mockery of a soul still more monstrous. My father still desired to delay our departure, fearful that I could not sustain the fatigues of a journey, for I was a shattered wreck, a shadow of a human being. My strength was gone, I was a mere skeleton, and fever night and day preyed upon my wasted frame. Still, as I urged our leaving Ireland with such inquiritude and impatience, my father thought it best to yield. We took our passage on board a vessel bound for Havre de Grasse, and sailed with a fair wind from the Irish shores. It was midnight, I lay on the deck looking at the stars and listening to the dashing of the waves. I hailed the darkness that shut Ireland from my sight, and my pulse beat with a feverish joy when I reflected that I should soon see Geneva. The past appeared to me in the light of a frightful dream, yet the vessel in which I was, the wind that blew me from the detested shore of Ireland, and the sea which surrounded me, told me too forcibly that I was deceived by no vision, and that Clairval, my friend and dearest companion, had fallen a victim to me and the monster of my creation. I repast in my memory my whole life, my quiet happiness while residing with my family in Geneva, the death of my mother, and my departure from Ingolstadt. I remembered, shuddering, the mad enthusiasm that hurried me onto the creation of my hideous enemy, and I called to mind the night in which he had first lived. I was unable to pursue the train of thought, a thousand feelings pressed upon me, and I wept bitterly. Ever since my recovery from the fever, I had been in the custom of taking every night a small quantity of london, for it was by means of this drug only that I was enabled to gain the rest necessary for the preservation of life, oppressed by the recollection of my various misfortunes. I now swallowed double my usual quantity, and soon slept profoundly. But sleep did not afford me respite from thought and misery. My dreams presented a thousand objects that scared me. Towards morning I was possessed by a kind of nightmare. I felt the fiends grasp in my neck, and could not free myself from it. Growns and cries rang in my ears. My father, who was watching over me, perceiving my restlessness, awoke me. The dashing waves were around, the cloudy sky above. The fiend was not here. A sense of security, a feeling that a truce was established between the present hour and the irresistible disastrous future, imparted to me a kind of calm forgetfulness, of which the human mind is by its structure peculiarly susceptible. The voyage came to an end. We landed and proceeded to Paris. I soon found that I had overtaxed my strength and that I must repose before I could continue my journey. My father's care and attentions were indefatigable, but he did not know the origin of my sufferings and sought erroneous methods to remedy the incurable ill. He wished me to seek amusement in society. I abhorred the face of man. Oh, not abhorred. They were brethren, my fellow beings, and I felt attracted even to the most repulsive among them as to creatures of an angelic nature and celestial mechanism, but I felt that I had no right to share their intercourse. I had unchained an enemy among them whose joy it was to shed their blood and to revel in their groans. How they would each and all abhor me and haunt me from the world if they know my unhallowed acts and the crimes which had their source in me. My father yielded at length to my desire to avoid society and strove by various arguments to banish my despair. Sometimes he thought I felt deeply the degradation of being obliged to answer a charge of murder, and he endeavored to prove to me the futility of hope. Alas, my father said I, how little do you know me. Human beings, their feelings and passions would indeed be degraded if such a wretch as I felt pride. Justine, poor unhappy Justine, was as innocent as I, and she suffered the same charge. She died for it, and I am the cause of this. I murdered her. William, Justine and Henry, they all died by my hands. My father had often, during my imprisonment, heard me make the same assertion. When I thus accused myself, he sometimes seemed to desire an explanation, and at others he prepared to consider it as the offspring of delirium, and that, during my illness, some idea of this kind had presented itself to my imagination, the remembrance of which I preserved in my convalescence. I avoided explanation, and maintained a continual silence concerning the wretch I had created. I had a persuasion that I should be supposed mad, and this in itself would forever have changed my tongue. But besides, I could not bring myself to disclose a secret which would fill my hearer with consternation, and make fear and unnatural horror the inmates of his breast. I checked, therefore, my impatient thirst for sympathy, and was silent when I would have given the world to have confided the fatal secret. Yet still, words like those I have recorded would burst uncontrollably from me. I could offer no explanation of them, but their truth, in part, relieved the burden of my mysterious woe. Upon this occasion, my father said, with an expression of unbounded wonder, I am not mad, I said energetically. The sun and the heavens who have viewed my operations can bear witness of my truth. I am the assassin of those most innocent victims. They died by my machinations. A thousand times would I have shed my own blood, drop by drop, to have saved their lives. But I could not, my father. Indeed, I could not sacrifice the whole human race. The conclusion of this speech convinced my father that my ideas were deranged, and he instantly changed the subject of our conversation, and endeavored to alter the course of my thoughts. He wished as much as possible to obliterate the memory of the scenes that had taken place in Ireland, and never alluded to them, or suffered me to speak of my misfortunes. As time passed away, I became more calm. Misery had her dwelling in my heart, but I no longer talked in the same incoherent manner of my own crimes. Sufficient for me was the consciousness of them. For the utmost self-violence, I curbed the imperious voice of wretchedness, which sometimes desired to declare itself to the whole world, and my manners were calmer and more composed than they had ever been since my journey to the sea of ice. A few days before we left Paris on our way to Switzerland, I received the following letter from Elizabeth. My dear friend, it gave me the greatest pleasure to receive a letter from my uncle dated at Paris. You are no longer at a formidable distance, and I may hope to see you in less than a fortnight. My poor cousin, how much you must have suffered. I expect to see you looking even more ill than when you quitted Geneva. This winter has been passed most miserably, tortured as I have been by anxious suspense. Yet I hope to see peace in your countenance, and to find that your heart is not totally void of comfort and tranquillity. Yet I fear that the same feelings now exist that made you so miserable a year ago, even perhaps augmented by time.  Explanation. You may possibly say, what can Elizabeth have to explain? If you really say this, my questions are answered, and all my doubts satisfied. But you are distant from me. And it is possible that you may dread and yet be pleased with this explanation, and in a probability of this being the case, I dare not any longer postpone writing what, during your absence, I have often wished to express to you, but have never had the courage to begin. You well know, Victor, that our union had been the favourite plan of your parents ever since our infancy. We were told this when young, and taught to look forward to it as an event that would certainly take place. We were affectionate play-fellows during childhood, and I believe dear and valued friends to one another as we grew older. But as brother and sister often entertain a lively affection towards each other without desiring a more intimate union, may not such also be our case. Tell me, dearest Victor. Answer me, I conjure you by our mutual happiness with simple truth. Do you not love another? You have travelled. You have spent several years of your life at Ingolstadt. And I confess to you, my friend, that when I saw you last autumn so unhappy, flying to solitude from the society of every creature, I could not help supposing that you might regret our connection, and believe yourself bound in honour to fulfil the wishes of your parents, although they opposed themselves to your inclinations. But this is false reasoning. I confess to you, my friend, that I love you, and that in my airy dreams of futurity you have been my constant friend and companion. But it is your happiness I desire as well as my own, when I declare to you that our marriage would render me eternally miserable unless it were the dictate of your own free choice. Even now I weep to think that, borne down as you are by the cruelest misfortunes, you may stifle, by the word honour, all hope of that love and happiness which would alone restore you to yourself. I, who have so disinterested in affection for you, may increase your miseries tenfold by being an obstacle to your wishes. Oh, Victor, be assured that your cousin and playmate has too sincere a love for you not to be made miserable by the supposition. Be happy, my friend, and if you obey me in this one request, remain satisfied that nothing on earth will have the power to interrupt my tranquillity. Do not let this letter disturb you. Do not answer to-morrow or the next day or even until you come if it will give you pain. My uncle will send me news of your health, and if I see but one smile on your lips when we meet, occasioned by this or any other exertion of mine, I shall need no other happiness. Elizabeth Lavenza. Geneva. May 18th. 17. Lank. This letter revived in my memory what I had before forgotten, the threat of the fiend. I will be with you on your wedding night. Such was my sentence, and on that night with the demon employ every art to destroy me, and tear me from the glimpse of happiness which promised partly to console my sufferings. On that night he had determined to consummate his crimes by my death. Well, be it so. A deadly struggle would then assuredly take place, in which if he were victorious I should be at peace, and his power from me be at an end. If he were vanquished, I should be a free man. Alas! What freedom! Such as the peasant employs when his family have been massacred before his eyes, his cottage burnt, his landslade waste, and he is turned adrift, homeless, penniless, and alone, but free. Such would be my liberty, except that in my Elizabeth I possessed treasure. Alas! Balanced by those horrors of remorse and guilt which would pursue me until death, sweet and beloved Elizabeth. I read and re-read her letter, and some softened feelings stole into my heart to dare to whisper para-desirical dreams of love and joy, that the apple was already eaten, and the angels are bared to drive me from all hope. Yet I would die to make her happy. If the monster executed his threat, death was inevitable. Yet again I considered whether my marriage would hasten my fate. My destruction might indeed arrive a few months sooner, but if my torturer should suspect that I postponed it, influenced by his menaces, he would surely find other and perhaps more dreadful means of revenge. He had vowed to be with me on my wedding night, yet he did not consider that threat as binding him to peace in the meantime, for as if to show me that he was not yet satiated with blood, he had murdered Clairval immediately after the enunciation of his threats. I resolved, therefore, that if my immediate union with my cousin would induce either to hers or to my father's happiness, my adversary's designs against my life should not retard it a single hour. In this state of mind I wrote to Elizabeth. My letter was calm and affectionate. I fear my beloved girl, I said, little happiness remains for us on earth, yet all that I may one day enjoy is centered in you. Chase away your idle fears. To you alone do I consecrate my life and my endeavors for contentment. I have one secret, Elizabeth, a dreadful one. When revealed to you, it will chill your frame with horror, and then, far from being surprised at my misery, he will only wonder that I survive what I have endured. I will confide this tale of misery and terror to you the day after our marriage shall take place. For, my sweet cousin, there must be perfect confidence between us. But until then, I conjure you. Do not mention or elude to it. This I most earnestly entreat, and I know you will comply. In about a week after the arrival of Elizabeth's letter, we return to Geneva. A sweet girl welcomed me with warm affection, yet tears were in her eyes as she beheld my emaciated frame and feverish cheeks. I saw her change in her also. She was thinner and had lost much of that heavenly vivacity that had before charmed me. But her gentleness and soft looks of compassion made her a more fit companion for one blasted and miserable as I was. The tranquility which I now enjoyed did not endure. Memory brought madness with it, and when I thought of what had passed, a real insanity possessed me. Sometimes I was furious and burnt with rage, sometimes low and despondent. I neither spoke nor looked at anyone, but sat motionless, bewildered by the multitude of miseries that overcame me. Elizabeth alone had the power to draw me from these fits. Her gentle voice would soothe me when transported by passion and inspire me with human beings when sunk in torpor. She wept with me and for me. When reason returned, she would remonstrate an endeavour to inspire me with resignation. Ah, it is well for the unfortunate to be resigned, but for the guilty there is no peace. The agonies of remorse poison the luxury there is otherwise sometimes found in indulging the excess of grief. Soon after my arrival, my father spoke of my immediate marriage with Elizabeth. I remained silent. Have you, then, some other attachment? None on earth. I love Elizabeth and look forward to our union with delight. Let the day therefore be fixed, and on it I will consecrate myself in life or death to the happiness of my cousin. My dear Victor, do not speak thus. Heavy misfortunes have befallen us, but let us only cling closer to what remains and transfer our love for those whom we have lost, to those whom yet live. Our circle will be small but bound close by the ties of affection and mutual misfortune. And when time shall have softened your despair, new and dear objects of care will be borne to replace those of whom we have been so cruelly deprived. Such were the lessons of my father, but to me the remembrance of the threat returned, nor can you wonder that, omnipotent as the fiend had yet been in his deeds of blood, I should almost regard him as invincible, and that when he had pronounced the words, I shall be with you on your wedding night. I should regard the threatened fates as unavoidable. But death was no evil to me if the loss of Elizabeth were balanced with it, and I therefore, with a contented and even cheerful confidence, agreed with my father that if my cousin would consent, the ceremony should take place in ten days, and thus put, as I imagined, the seal to my fate. Great God, if for one instant I had thought what might be the hellish intention of my fiendish adversary, I would rather have banished myself forever from my native country and wandered a friendless outcast over the earth than have consented to this miserable marriage. But, as if possessed by magic powers, the monster had blinded me to his real intentions, and when I thought that I had prepared only my own death, I hastened that of a far dearer victim. As the period fixed for our marriage to nearer, whether from cowardice or a prophetic feeling, I felt my heart sink within me, but I concealed my feelings by an appearance of hilarity that brought smiles and joy to the countenance of my father, but hardly deceived the ever watchful and nicer eye of Elizabeth. She looked forward to our union with placid contentment, not unmingled with a little fear, which past misfortunes had impressed, that what now appeared certain and tangible happiness might soon dissipate into an airy dream and leave no trace but deep and everlasting regret. Preparations were made for the event, congratulatory visits were received, and all wore a smiling appearance. I shot up as well as I could, in my own heart, the anxiety that prayed there had entered with seeming earnestness into the plans of my father, although they might only serve as the decorations of my tragedy. Through my father's exertions, a part of the inheritance of Elizabeth had been restored to her by the Austrian government. A small possession on the shores of Como belonged to her. It was agreed that immediately after our union we should proceed to Villa Lavenza and spend our last days of happiness beside the beautiful lake near which it stood. In the meantime, I took every precaution to defend my person in case the fiend should openly attack me. I carried pistols and a dagger constantly about me, and was ever on the watch to prevent artifice, and by these means gained a greater degree of tranquillity. Indeed, as the period approached, the threat appeared more as a delusion, not to be regarded as worthy to disturb my peace, while the happiness I hoped for in my marriage were a greater appearance of certainty, as the day fixed for its solemnization drew nearer, and I heard it continually spoken of as an occurrence which no accident could possibly prevent. Elizabeth seemed happy. My tranquil demeanor contributed greatly to calm her mind, but on the day that was to fulfill my wishes and my destiny, she was melancholy, and a presentiment of evil pervaded her, and perhaps also she thought of the dreadful secret which I had promised to reveal to her on the following day. My father was in the meantime overjoyed, and in the bustle of preparation only recognized in the melancholy of his niece the diffidence of a bride. After the ceremony was performed, a large party assembled at my father's, but it was agreed that Elizabeth and I should commence our journey by water, sleeping that night at Avion, and continuing our voyage on the following day. The day was fair, the wind favorable, all smiled on our nuptial embarkation. Those were the last moments of my life during which I enjoyed the feeling of happiness. We passed rapidly along. The sun was hot, but we were sheltered from its rays by a kind of canopy while we enjoyed the beauty of the scene, sometimes on one side of the lake, where we saw Mosalev, the present banks of Montelagre, and at a distance, surmounting all the beautiful Mont Blanc and the assemblage of snowy mountains that in vain endeavour to emulate her. Sometimes, coasting the opposite banks, we saw the mighty Jura opposing its dark side to the ambition that would quit its native country, and an almost insurmountable barrier to the invader who should wish to enslave it. I took the hand of Elizabeth. You are sorrowful, my love. Ah, if you knew what I have suffered, and what I may yet endure, you would endeavour to let me taste the quiet and freedom from despair that this one day at least permits me to enjoy. Be happy, my dear Victor, replied Elizabeth. There is, I hope, nothing to distress you, and be assured that if a lively joy is not painted in my face, my heart is contented. Something whispers to me not to depend too much on the prospect that is opened before us, but I will not listen to such a sinister voice. Observe how fast we move along, and how the clouds, which sometimes obscure and sometimes rise above the dome of Mont Blanc, render this scene of beauty still more interesting. Look also at the innumerable fish that are swimming in the clear waters, where we can distinguish every pebble that lies at the bottom.  How happy and serene all nature appears! Thus Elizabeth endeavour to divert her thoughts and mind from all reflection upon melancholy subjects, but her temper was fluctuating, joy for a few instance shown in her eyes, but it continually gave place to destruction and reverie. The sun sank lower in the heavens. We passed the River Drance and observed its path through the chasms of the higher and the glens of the lower hills. The Alps here come closer to the lake, and we approached the amphitheater of mountains which forms its eastern boundary. The spire of Avion shown under the woods that surrounded it, and the range of mountain above mountain by which it was overhung. The wind, which had hitherto carried us along with amazing rapidity, sank at sunset to a light breeze. The soft air just briffled the water and caused a pleasant motion among the trees as we approached the shore, from which it wafted the most delightful scent of flowers and hay. The sun sank beneath the horizon as we landed, and as I touched the shore, I felt those cares and fears revive, which soon were to clasp me and cling to me forever. It was eight o'clock when we landed. We walked for a short time on the shore, enjoying the transitory light, and then retired to the inn and contemplated the lovely scene of waters, woods, and mountains obscured in darkness, yet displaying their black outlines. The wind, which had fallen in the south, now rose with great violence in the west, the moon had reached her summit in the heavens and was beginning to descend. The clouds swept across it swifter than the flight of the vulture, and dimmed her rays, while the lake reflected the scene of the busy heavens, rendered still busier by the restless waves that were beginning to rise. Suddenly a heavy storm of rain descended. I had been calm during the day, but so soon as night obscured the shapes of objects, a thousand fears arose in my mind. I was anxious and watchful, while my right hand grasped a pistol which was hidden in my bosom. Every sound terrified me, but I resolved that I would sell my life dearly and not shrink from the conflict until my own life, for that of my adversary, was extinguished. Elizabeth observed my agitation for some time in timid and fearful silence, but there was something in my glance which communicated terror to her and trembling, she asked. What is it that agitates you, my dear Victor? What is it you fear? Oh, peace, peace, my love, replied I. This night and all will be safe, but this night is dreadful, very dreadful. I passed an hour in this state of mind, when suddenly I reflected how fearful the combat which I momentarily expected would be to my wife, and I earnestly entreated her to retire, resolving not to join her until I had obtained some knowledge as to the situation of my enemy. She left me, and I continued some time walking up and down the passages of the house, and inspecting every corner that might afford a retreat to my adversary. But I discovered no trace of him, and was beginning to conjecture that some fortunate chance had intervened to prevent the execution of his menaces, when suddenly I heard a shrill and dreadful scream. It came from the room into which Elizabeth had retired. As I heard it, the whole truth rushed into my mind, my arms dropped, the motion of every muscle and fiber was suspended. I could feel the blood trickling in my veins and tingling in the extremities of my limbs. This state lasted, but for an instant the scream was repeated, and I rushed into the room. Great God, why did I not then expire? Why am I here to relate the destruction of the best hope in the purest creature on earth?  Everywhere I turn I see the same figure, her bloodless arms and relaxed form flung by the murderer on its bridal beer. Could I behold this and live? Alas, life is obstinate, and cling's closest where it is most hated. For a moment only did I lose recollection. I fell senseless on the ground. When I recovered, I found myself surrounded by the people of the inn. Their confidences expressed a breathless terror, but the horror of others appeared only as a mockery of shadow of the feelings that oppressed me. I escaped from them to the room where lay the body of Elizabeth, my love, my wife, so lately living, so dear, so worthy.  I rushed towards her and embraced her with ardour, but the deadly languor and coldness of the limbs told me that what I now held in my arms had ceased to be the Elizabeth whom I had loved and cherished. The murderous mark of the fiend's grasp was on her neck, and the breath had ceased to issue from her lips. While I still hung over her in the agony of despair, I happened to look up. The windows of the room had before been darkened, and I felt a kind of panic on seeing the pale yellow light of the moon illuminate the chamber. The shadows had been thrown back, and with a sensation of horror not to be described, I saw at the open window a figure the most hideous and abhorred. A grin was on the face of the monster. He seemed to jeer, as with his fiendish finger he pointed towards the corpse of my wife. I rushed towards the window and drawing a pistol from my bosom fired, but he eluded me, leaped from his station, and running with the swiftness of lightning plunged into the lake. The report of the pistol brought a crowd into the room. I pointed to the spot where he had disappeared, and we followed the track with boats. Nats were cast, but in vain. After passing several hours, we returned hopeless, most of my companions believing it to have been a form conjured up by my fancy. After having landed, we proceeded to search the country, parties going in different directions among the woods and vines. I attempted to accompany them, and proceeded a short distance from the house, but my head whirled round. My steps were like those of a drunken man. I fell, at last, in the state of utter exhaustion. A film covered my eyes, and my skin was parched with the heat of fever. In this state I was carried back and placed on a bed, hardly conscious of what had happened. My eyes wandered round the room as if to seek something that I had lost. After an interval I arose, and as if by instinct crawled into the room where the corpse of my beloved lay. There were women weeping around. I hung over it, and joined my sad tears to theirs. All this time no distinct idea presented itself to my mind, but my thoughts rambled to various subjects, reflecting confusedly on my misfortunes and their cause. I was bewildered in a cloud of wonder and horror. The death of William, the execution of Justine, the murder of Cleval, and lastly of my wife. Even at that moment I knew not that my only remaining friends were safe from the malignity of the fiend. My father even now might be writhing under his grasp, and Ernest might be dead at his feet. This idea made me shudder and recalled me to action. I started up and resolved to return to Geneva with all possible speed. There were no horses to be procured, and I must return by the lake. But the wind was unfavorable, and the rain fell in torments. However, it was hardly morning, and I might reasonably hope to arrive by night. I hired men to row and took on an oar myself, for I had always experienced relief from mental torments in bodily exercise. But the overflowing misery I now felt, and the excess of agitation that I endured rendered me incapable of any exertion. I threw down the oar, and leaning my head upon my hands gave way to every gloomy idea that arose. If I looked up, I saw scenes which were familiar to me in my happier time, and which I had contemplated but the day before in the company of her who was now but a shadow and a recollection. Tears streamed from my eyes. The rain had ceased for a moment, and I saw the fish play in the waters as they had done a few hours before. They had then been observed by Elizabeth. Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change. The sun might shine, or the clouds might lower, but nothing could appear to me as it had done the day before. A fiend had snatched from me every hope of future happiness. No creature had ever been so miserable as I was. So frightful an event is single in the history of man.  Mine has been a tale of horrors. I have reached their acme, and what I must now relate can be battelious to you. Know that, one by one, my friends were snatched away. I was left desolate. My own strength is exhausted, and I must tell, in a few words, what remains of my hideous narration. I arrived at Geneva. My father and Ernest yet lived, but the former sunk under the tidings that I bore. I see him now, excellent and venerable old man, his eyes wandered in vacancy, for they had lost their charm and their delight, his Elizabeth, his more-than-daughter, whom he dothed on with all that affection which a man feels, who in the decline of life, having few affections, clings more earnestly to those that remain. Cursed, cursed be the fiend that brought misery on his grey hairs and doomed him to waste in wretchedness. He could not live under the horrors that were accumulated around him. The springs of existence suddenly gave way. He was unable to rise from his bed, and in a few days he died in my arms. What then became of me? I know not. I lost sensation, and chains and darkness were the only objects that pressed upon me. Sometimes, indeed, I dreamt that I wandered in flowery meadows and pleasant veils with the friends of my youth. But I awoke and found myself in a dungeon, melancholy followed. But by degrees I gained a clear conception of my miseries and situation, and was then released from my prison. For they had called me mad, and during many months, as I understood, a solitary cell had bent my habitation. Liberty, however, had been a useless gift to me, had I not, as I awakened to reason, at the same time awakened to revenge. As the memory of past misfortunes pressed upon me, I began to reflect on their cause, the monster whom I had created, the miserable demon whom I had sent abroad into the world for my destruction. I was possessed by a maddening rage when I thought of him, and desired and ardently prayed that I might have him within my grasp to wreak a great and signal revenge on his cursed head. Nor did my hate long confine itself to useless wishes. I began to reflect on the best means of securing him, and for this purpose, about a month after my release, I repaired to a criminal judge in the town, and told him that I had an accusation to make, that I knew the destroyer of my family, and that I required him to exert his whole authority for the apprehension of the murderer. The magistrate listened to me with attention and kindness. Be assured, sir, said he. No pains or exertions on my part shall be spared to discover the villain. I thank you, replied I. Listen, therefore, to the deposition that I have to make. It is indeed a tale so strange, that I should fear you would not credit it, were there not something in truth which, however wonderful, forces conviction. The story is too connected to be mistaken for a dream, and I have no motive for falsehood. My manner, as I thus addressed him, was impressive, but calm. I had formed in my own heart a resolution to pursue my destroyer to death, and this purpose quieted my agony, and for an interval reconciled me to life. I now related my history, briefly, but with firmness and precision, marking the dates with accuracy, and never deviating into invective or exclamation. The magistrate appeared at first perfectly incredulous, but as I continued he became more attentive and interested. I saw him sometimes shudder with horror, and others a lively surprise unmingled with disbelief was painted on his countenance.  It is your duty as a magistrate, and I believe and hope that your feelings as a man will not revolt from the execution of these functions on this occasion. This address caused a considerable change in the physiognomy of my own auditor. He heard my story with that half-kind of belief that is given to a tale of spirits and supernatural events, but when he was called upon to act officially in consequence, the whole tide of his incredulity returned. He, however, answered mildly, I would willingly afford you every aid in your pursuit, but the creature of whom you speak appears to have powers which would put all my exertions to defiance. Who can follow an animal which can traverse the sea of ice and inhabit caves and dens where no man ventured to intrude? Besides, some months have elapsed since the commission of his crimes, and no one can conjecture to what place he has wandered or what region he may now inhabit. I do not doubt that he hovers near the spot which I inhabit, and if he has indeed taken refuge in the Alps, he may be hunted like the Shamwa and destroyed as a beast of prey. What I perceive your thoughts, you do not credit my narrative and do not intend to pursue my enemy with the punishment which is his dessert. As I spoke, rage sparkled in my eyes, the magistrate was intimidated. You are mistaken, said he. I will exert myself, and if it is in my power to seize the monster, be sure that he shall suffer punishment proportionate to his crimes. But I fear from what you have yourself described to be his properties, that this will prove impracticable, and thus, while every proper measure is pursued, you should make up your mind to disappointment. That cannot be, but all that I can say will be of little avail. My revenge is of no moment to you. Yet, while I allow it to be a vice, I confess that it is the devouring and only passion of my soul. My rage is unspeakable when I reflect that the murderer, whom I have turned loose upon society, still exists.  I have but one resource, and I devote myself, either in my life or death, to his destruction. I trembled with excess of agitation, as I said this, and something I doubt not of that hearty fierceness which the martyrs of old are said to have possessed. But to a geneven magistrate, whose mind was occupied by far other ideas than those of devotion and heroism, this elevation of mind had much the appearance of madness. He endeavored to soothe me as a nurse does a child, and revered it to my tail as the effects of delirium.  Seize, you know not what it is you say. I broke from the house angry and disturbed, and retired to meditate on some other mode of action. CHAPTER XXIV My present situation was one in which all voluntary thought was swallowed up and lost. I was hurried away by fury. Revenge alone endowed me with strength and composure. It moulded my feelings and allowed me to be calculating and calm at periods when otherwise delirium or death would have been my portion. My first resolution was to quit Geneva forever. My country, which, when I was happy and beloved, was dear to me, now in my adversity became hateful. I provided myself with a sum of money, together with a few jewels which had belonged to my mother and departed. And now my wanderings began which are to cease but with life. I traversed a vast portion of the earth, and have endured all the hardships which travelers in deserts and barbarous countries are wont to meet. How I have lived, I hardly know. Many times have I stretched my failing limbs upon the sandy plain and prayed for death. But revenge kept me alive.  When I quit at Geneva, my first labour was to gain some clue by which I might trace the steps of my fiendish enemy. But my plan was unsettled, and I wandered many hours around the confines of the town, uncertain what path I should pursue. As night approached, I found myself at the entrance of the cemetery where William, Elizabeth, and my father reposed. I entered and approached the tomb which marked their graves. Everything was silent except the leaves of the trees, which were gently agitated by the wind. The night was nearly dark, and the scene would have been solemn and affecting even to an uninterested observer. The spirits of the departed seemed to flit around and to cast a shadow which was felt but not seen around the head of the mourner. The deep grief which this scene had at first excited quickly gave way to rage and despair.  I knelt on the grass and kissed the earth, and with quivering lips exclaimed, by the sacred earth on which I kneel, by the shades that wander near me, by the deep and eternal grief that I feel, I swear, and by thee, O night and the spirits that preside over thee, to pursue the demon who caused this misery, until he or I shall perish in mortal conflict. For this purpose I will preserve my life, to execute this dear revenge while I again behold the sun and tread the green abage of earth, which otherwise would vanish from my eyes forever. And I call on you, spirits of the dead, and on you, wandering ministers of vengeance, to aid and conduct me in my work. Let the cursed and hellish monster drink deep of agony, let him feel the despair that now torments me. I had begun my adoration with solemnity, and an awe which almost assured me that the shades of my murdered friends heard and approved my devotion. But the furies possessed me as I concluded, and rage choked by utterance. I was answered through the stillness of night by a loud and fiendish laugh that rang on my ears long and heavily. The mountains re-echoed it, and I felt as if all hail surrounded me with mockery and laughter. Surely in that moment I should have been possessed by frenzy and have destroyed my miserable existence, but that my vow was heard and that I was reserved for vengeance. The laughter died away, when a well-known and abhorred voice, apparently close to my ear, addressed me in an audible whisper. I am satisfied, miserable wretch. You have determined to live, and I am satisfied. I darted towards the spot from which the sound proceeded, but the devil eluded my grasp. Suddenly the broad disc of the moon arose and shone full upon his ghastly and distorted shape, as he fled with more than mortal speed. I pursued him, and for many months this has been my task. Guided by a slight clue, I followed the windings of the Rhone, but vainly. The blue meritorierine appeared, and by a strange chance I saw the feed enter by night and hide himself in a vessel bound for the Black Sea. I took my passage in the same ship, but he escaped. I know not how. Amidst the wiles of tartary in Russia, although he still evaded me, I have ever followed in his track. Sometimes the peasants scared by this horrid apparition informed me of his path. Sometimes he himself, who feared that if I lost all trace of him I should despair and die, left some mark to guide me. The snows descended on my head, and I saw the print of his huge step on the white plain. To you, first entering on life, to whom care is new and agony unknown, how can you understand what I have felt and still feel? Cold once and fatigue were the last pains which I was destined to endure.  Yet still a spirit of good followed and directed my steps, and when I most murmured, would suddenly extricate me from seemingly insurmountable difficulties. Sometimes when nature, overcome by hunger, sank under the exhaustion, a repast was prepared for me in the desert that restored and inspired me. The fair was indeed coarse, such as the peasants of the country ate, but I will not doubt that it was set there by the spirits that I had invoked to aid me. Often, when all was dry, the heavens cloudless, and I was parched by thirst, a slight cloud would be dim the sky, which had the few drops that revived me and vanished. I followed when I could the courses of the rivers, but the demon generally avoided these, as it was here that the population of the country chiefly collected. In other places, human beings were seldom seen, and I generally subsisted on the wild animals that crossed my path. I had money with me, and gained the friendship of the villagers by distributing it. Or I brought with me some food that I had killed, which, after taking a small part, I always presented to those who had provided me with fire and utensils for cooking. My life, as it passed thus, was indeed hateful to me, and it was during sleep alone that I could taste joy. Oh, blessed sleep! Often, when most miserable, I sank to repose, and my dreams lulled me even to rapture. The spirits that guarded me had provided these moments, or rather hours of happiness, that I might retain strength to fulfil my pilgrimage. Deprived of this respite, I should have sunk under my hardships. During the day I was sustained and inspired by the hope of night, for in sleep I saw my friends, my wife, and my beloved country. Again I saw the benevolent countenance of my father, heard the silver tones of my Elizabeth's voice, and beheld Clairvoile enjoying health and youth. Often, when wearied by a toil of march, I persuaded myself that I was dreaming until night should come, and that I should then enjoy reality in the arms of my dearest friends. What agonising fondness did I feel for them? How did I cling to their dear forms, and sometimes they haunted even my waking hours, and persuade myself that they still lived? At such moments, vengeance that burned within me died in my heart, and I pursued my path towards the destruction of the demon, more as a task enjoined by heaven, as the mechanical impulse of some power of which I was unconscious, than as the ardent desire of my soul. What his feelings were whom I pursued, I cannot know. Sometimes, indeed, he left marks in writing on the barks of the trees or cut in stone that guided me and instigated my fury. My reign is not yet over. These words were legible in one of these inscriptions. You live, and my power is complete. Follow me. I seek the everlasting ices of the north, where you will feel the misery of cold and frost to which I am impassive. You will find near this place, if you follow not too tardily, a dead hair. Eat and be refreshed. Come on, my enemy, we have yet to wrestle for our lives, but many hard and miserable hours must you endure, until that period shall arise. Scoffing devil, again do I vow vengeance, again do I devote the miserable fiend to torture and death. Never will I give up my search until he or I perish, and then with what ecstasy shall I join my Elizabeth and my departed friends, who even now prepare for me the reward of my tedious toil and horrible pilgrimage. As I still pursued my journey to the northward, the snows thickened, and the cold increased in a degree almost too severe to support. The peasants were shut up in their hovels, and only a few of the most hardy ventured forth to seize the animals whom starvation had forced from their hiding places to seek for prey. The rivers were covered with ice, and no fish could be procured, and thus I was cut off from my chief article of maintenance. The triumph of my enemy increased with the difficulty of my labours. One inscription that he left was in these words. Prepare. Your toils only begin. Wrap yourself in furs and provide food, for we shall soon enter upon a journey where your sufferings will satisfy my everlasting hatred. My courage and perseverance were invigorated by these scoffing words. I resolved not to fail in my purpose, and calling on heaven to support me, I continued with unabated fervour to traverse immense deserts until the ocean appeared at a distance and formed the utmost boundary of the horizon. Oh, how unlike it was to the blue seasons of the south. Covered with ice it was only to be distinguished from land by its superior wildness and ruggedness. The Greeks wept for joy when they beheld the Mediterranean from the hills of Asia, and hailed with rapture the boundary of their toils. I did not weep, but I knelt down, and with a full heart thanked my guiding spirit for conducting me in safety to the place where I hoped, notwithstanding my adversaries' jibe, to meet and grapple with him. Some weeks before this period I had procured a sledge and dogs, and thus traversed the snows with inconceivable speed. My no-nots were to the fiend possess the same advantages, but I found that as before I had daily lost ground in the pursuit, I now gained on him so much so that when I first saw the ocean he was but one day's journey in advance, and I hoped to intercept him before he should reach the beach. With new courage therefore I pressed on, and in two days arrived at the wretched hamlets on the seashore. I inquired of the inhabitants concerning the fiend and gained accurate information. A gigantic monster, they said, had arrived the night before, armed with a gun and many pistols, putting to flight the inhabitants of a solitary cottage through fear of his terrific appearance. He had carried off their store of winter food, and placing it in a sledge, to draw which he had seized on a numerous drove of trained dogs, he had harnessed them, and the same night to the joy of the horror-struck villagers had pursued his journey across the sea in a direction that led to no land. And they conjectured that he must speedily be destroyed by the breaking of ice or frozen by the eternal frosts. On hearing this information I suffered a temporary access of despair. He had escaped me, and I must commence a destructive and almost endless journey across the mountainous ices of the ocean, amidst cold that few of the inhabitants could long endure, and which I, the native of a genial and sunny climate, could not hope to survive. Yet at the idea that the fiend should live and be triumphant, my rage and vengeance returned, and like a mighty tide overwhelmed every other feeling. After a slight repose, during which the spirits of the dead hovered round and instigated me to toil and revenge, I prepared for my journey. I exchanged my landslides for one fashion for the inequalities of the frozen ocean, and, purchasing a plentiful stock of provisions, I departed from land. I cannot guess how many days have passed since then, but I have endured misery which nothing but the eternal sentiment of a just retribution burning within my heart could have enabled me to support. Immense and rugged mountains of ice often barred up my passage, and I often heard the thunder of the ground sea which threatened my destruction. But again the frost came and made the paths of the sea secure. By the quantity of provision which I had consumed, I should guess that I had passed three weeks in this journey, and the continual protraction of hope returning back upon the heart often wrung bitter drops of despondency and grief from my eyes. Despair had indeed almost secured her prey, and I should soon have sunk beneath this misery. Once, after the poor animals that conveyed me, had with incredible toil gained the summit of a sloping ice mountain, and one, sinking under his fatigue, died. I viewed the expanse before me with anguish. When suddenly my eye caught a dark speck upon the dusky plain, I strained my sight to discover what it could be, and uttered a wild cry of ecstasy when I distinguished a sledge, and the distorted proportions of a well-known form within. Oh, with what a burning gush did hope revisit my heart. Warm tears filled my eyes, which I hastily wiped away that they might not intercept the view I had of the demon. But still my sight was dimmed by the burning drops, until, giving way to the emotion that oppressed me, I wept aloud. But this was not the time for delay. I disencumbered the dogs of their dead companion, gave them a plentiful portion of food, and after an hour's rest, which was absolutely necessary, and yet which was bitterly irksome to me, I continued my route. The sledge was still visible, nor did I again lose sight of it, except that the moments when for a short time some ice rock concealed it with its intervening crags. I indeed perceptibly gained on it, and when, after two days' journey, I beheld my enemy at no more than a mile distant, my heart bounded within me. But now, when I appeared almost within grasp of my foe, my hopes were suddenly extinguished, and I lost all trace of it more utterly than I had ever done before. A ground sea was heard, the thunder of its progress, as the waters rolled and swelled beneath me, became every moment more ominous and terrific. I pressed on, but in vain. The wind arose, the sea roared, and as with the mighty shock of an earthquake, it split and cracked with a tremendous and overwhelming sound. The work was soon finished. In a few minutes, a tumultuous sea rolled between me and my enemy, and I was left drifting on a scatter-piece of ice that was continually lessening and thus preparing for me a hideous death. In this manner many appalling hours passed, several of my dogs died, and I myself was about to sink under the accumulation of distress when I saw your vessel riding at anchor and holding forth to me hopes of succour and life. I had no conception that vessels ever came so far north and was astounded at the sight. I quickly destroyed part of my sludge to construct oars, and by these means was enabled, with infinite fatigue, to move my ice raft in the direction of your ship. I had determined, if you were going southwards, still to trust myself to the mercy of the seas rather than abandon my purpose. I hoped to induce you to grant me a boat with which I could pursue my enemy, but your direction was northwards. You took me on board when my vigor was exhausted, and I should soon have sunk under my multiplied hardships into a death which I still dread, for my task is unfulfilled. Oh, when will my guiding spirit in conducting me to the demon allow me the rest I so much desire? Or must I die, and he yet live? If I do, swear to me, Walton, that he shall not escape, that you will seek him and satisfy my vengeance in his death, and do I dare to ask of you to undertake my pilgrimage to endure the hardships that I have undergone? Now, I am not so selfish. Yet, when I am dead, if he should appear, if the ministers of vengeance should conduct him to you, swear that he shall not live, swear that he shall not triumph over my accumulated woes, and survive to add to the list of his dark crimes. He is eloquent and persuasive, and once his words had even power over my heart. But trust him not. His soul is as hellish as his form, full of treachery and fiend-like manners. Hear him not. Call on the names of William, Justine, Clairval, Elizabeth, my father, and of the wretched Victor, and thrust your sword into his heart. I will hover near and direct the steel aright. August 26, in an undisclosed year in the 18th century. You have read this strange and terrific story, Margaret, and do you not feel your blood congeal with horror, like that which even now curdles mine? Sometimes, seized with sudden agony, he would not continue his tale. At others, his voice broken yet piercing, uttered with difficulty, the words so replete with anguish, his fine and lovely eyes were now lighted up with indignation, now subdued to downcast sorrow and quenched in infinite wretchedness. Sometimes he commanded his countenance and tones and related the most horrible incidents with a tranquil voice, suppressing every mark of agitation. Then, like a volcano bursting forth, his face would suddenly change to an expression of the wildest rage, as he shrieked out imprecations on his persecutor. His tale is connected and told with an appearance of the simplest truth, yet I own to you that the letters of Felix and Safi, which he showed me, and the aberration of the monster seen from our ship, brought to me greater conviction of the truth of his narrative than his asseverations, however earnest and connected. Such a monster has, then, really existed. I cannot doubt it, yet I am lost in surprise and admiration. Sometimes I endeavour to gain from Frankenstein the particulars of his creature's formation, but on this point he was impenetrable. Are you mad, my friend? said he. Or whither does your senseless curiosity lead you? Would you also create for yourself and the world a demoniical enemy? Peace! Peace! Learn my miseries, and do not seek to increase your own. Frankenstein discovered that I made notes concerning his history. He asked to see them, and then himself corrected and augmented them in many places, but principally in giving the life and spirit to the conversations he held with his enemy. Since you have preserved my narration, said he, I would not that a mutilated one should go down to posterity. Thus has a week passed away while I have listened to the strangest tale that ever imagination formed. My thoughts and every feeling of my soul have been drunk up by the interest for my guest which this tale and his ever-elevated and gentle manners have created. I wish to soothe him. Yet can I counsel one so infinitely miserable, so destitute of every hope of consolation to live? Oh, no. The only joy that he can now know will be when he composes his shattered spirit to peace and death. Yet he enjoys one comfort, the offspring of solitude and delirium. He believes that when in dreams he holds converse with his friends and derives from that communication consolation for his miseries or excitements to his vengeance. That they are not the creations of his fancy but the beings themselves who visit him from the regions of a remote world. This faith gives a solemnity to his reveries that render them to me almost as imposing and interesting as truth. Our conversations are not always confined to his own history and misfortunes. On every point of general literature he displays unbounded knowledge and quick and piercing apprehension. His eloquence is forcible and touching, nor can I hear him when he relates a pathetic incident or endeavors to move the passions of pity or love without tears. Oh, what a glorious creature must he have been in the days of his prosperit