Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus
and, in executing the award of justice, I shall also sink 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
county-town, where the court was held. Mr. Kirwin charged himself with
every care of collecting witnesses, and arranging my defence. 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 were alike hateful. The cup of life was poisoned for ever; 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 expressive 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. He talked of
Geneva, which I should soon visit--of Elizabeth and Ernest; but these
words only drew deep groans from me. Sometimes, indeed, I felt a wish
for happiness; and thought, with melancholy delight, of my beloved
cousin; or longed, with a devouring _maladie du pays_, to see once more
the blue lake and rapid Rhone, 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 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 act 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 endued 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,--the 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 inquietude and
impatience, my father thought it best to yield. We took our passage on
board a vessel bound for Havre-de-Grace, 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 Clerval, my friend and dearest
companion, had fallen a victim to me and the monster of my creation. I
repassed, in my memory, my whole life; my quiet happiness while residing
with my family in Geneva, the death of my mother, and my departure for
Ingolstadt. I remembered, shuddering, the mad enthusiasm that hurried me
on to the creation of my hideous enemy, and I called to mind the night
in which he 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 laudanum; 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 night-mare; I felt the fiend's grasp in my
neck, and could not free myself from it; groans and cries rung 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.
CHAPTER XXII.
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 my 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 hunt me from the world, did 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 that I felt
deeply the degradation of being obliged to answer a charge of murder,
and he endeavoured to prove to me the futility of pride.
"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 appeared 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 for ever have chained
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, "My dearest Victor, what infatuation is this? My dear son, I
entreat you never to make such an assertion again."
"I am not mad," I cried 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
endeavoured 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. By 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. I would not disturb you at
this period, when so many misfortunes weigh upon you; but a conversation
that I had with my uncle previous to his departure renders some
explanation necessary before we meet.
"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 playfellows 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