Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus

Mary Shelley's novel unfolds through a nest of voices: the Arctic explorer Robert Walton writes to his sister Margaret Saville; within his letters, the scientist Victor Frankenstein narrates the history of his ambition and its consequences; and within Victor's tale, the Creature himself speaks, telling the story of his wretched birth into consciousness. At the centre of this architecture of testimony is a single act of transgression -- the making of a living being from dead matter -- and the annihilating chain of guilt, abandonment, and revenge that follows from it.

Walton's Letters

Letter 1

Robert Walton writes to his sister from St. Petersburgh. He rejoices that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of his enterprise, which she has regarded with such evil forebodings. As he walks in the streets, the cold northern breeze braces his nerves and fills him with delight, for it has travelled from the regions towards which he is advancing. He tries in vain to be persuaded that the pole is the seat of frost and desolation; it presents itself ever to his imagination as a region of beauty and perpetual splendour. There he may discover the wondrous power which attracts the needle, may tread a land never before imprinted by the foot of man. These enticements are sufficient to conquer all fear of danger or death.

This expedition has been the favourite dream of his early years. His education was neglected, yet he read with ardour the accounts of voyages in his Uncle Thomas' library. He attempted poetry and failed; then, inheriting a fortune, turned his thoughts back to their earlier bent. Six years he has prepared: inuring his body to hardship, accompanying whale-fishers to the North Sea, studying mathematics, medicine, and physical science. His life might have been passed in ease and luxury, but he preferred glory to every enticement that wealth placed in his path. Yet his hopes fluctuate and his spirits are often depressed. He shall depart for Archangel in a fortnight and hire a ship; when he shall return, he cannot say. If he fails, his sister will see him again soon, or never.

Letter 2

From Archangel, Walton writes of one want he has never been able to satisfy: he has no friend. When he glows with the enthusiasm of success, there will be none to share his joy; if disappointed, no one will endeavour to sustain him. He desires the company of a man who could sympathise with him, whose eyes would reply to his own. He is too ardent in execution and too impatient of difficulties; he is self-educated, more illiterate in reality than many schoolboys of fifteen, though his daydreams are more extended and magnificent.

He describes his ship's master, a man of wonderful gentleness and integrity, who once loved a young Russian lady but, discovering she loved another, gave up his farm and his prize-money to his rival and quit the country. A noble fellow, but wholly uneducated. Walton cannot describe the trembling sensation, half pleasurable and half fearful, with which he prepares to depart. Something is at work in his soul which he does not understand: a love for the marvellous intertwined in all his projects, which hurries him out of the common pathways of men.

Letter 3

A few lines in haste: Walton is safe and well advanced. His men are bold and apparently firm of purpose, nor do the floating sheets of ice appear to dismay them. No incidents have befallen them that would make a figure in a letter. He shall be cool, persevering, and prudent -- but success shall crown his endeavours. What can stop the determined heart and resolved will of man?

Letter 4

So strange an accident has happened that Walton cannot forbear recording it. The ship was nearly surrounded by ice, compassed round by thick fog. When the mist cleared, they beheld vast and irregular plains of ice with no end. Then a strange sight attracted their attention: a low carriage fixed on a sledge, drawn by dogs, passing northward at the distance of half a mile, guided by a being of apparently gigantic stature. They watched through telescopes until it was lost among the distant inequalities of the ice.

In the morning, a sledge had drifted towards them on a large fragment of ice. Only one dog remained alive, but there was a human being within it whom the sailors persuaded to enter the vessel. He was not a savage but a European. Before coming aboard, he asked whither they were bound; on hearing it was towards the northern pole, he appeared satisfied and consented. His limbs were nearly frozen, his body dreadfully emaciated. He fainted on quitting the fresh air, and they restored him by rubbing him with brandy. Two days passed before he was able to speak.

He had an expression of wildness, and even madness, in his eyes; but when anyone performed an act of kindness, his whole countenance was lighted up with a beam of benevolence and sweetness that Walton never saw equalled. He was generally melancholy and despairing, and sometimes gnashed his teeth as if impatient of the weight of woes that oppressed him.

When asked why he had come so far upon the ice, his countenance assumed an aspect of the deepest gloom: "To seek one who fled from me." The lieutenant mentioned they had seen a man with dogs drawing a sledge the day before; this aroused the stranger's attention acutely, and he asked a multitude of questions concerning the route the daemon, as he called him, had pursued.

As days passed, Walton began to love him as a brother. The stranger was gentle, wise, his mind cultivated, his words culled with the choicest art yet flowing with unparalleled eloquence. He entered attentively into Walton's projects and arguments. But when Walton spoke with burning ardour of sacrificing his fortune, his existence, his every hope to the furtherance of his enterprise, a dark gloom spread over the stranger's countenance. Tears trickled from between his fingers; a groan burst from his heaving breast: "Unhappy man! Do you share my madness? Have you drunk also of the intoxicating draught? Hear me; let me reveal my tale, and you will dash the cup from your lips!"

He agreed to tell his history. "You seek for knowledge and wisdom, as I once did; and I ardently hope that the gratification of your wishes may not be a serpent to sting you, as mine has been." He warned that many things would appear possible in these wild and mysterious regions which would provoke laughter elsewhere. Walton resolved to record the narrative each night, as nearly as possible in the stranger's own words.

Victor Frankenstein's Narrative

Chapter 1

Victor Frankenstein is by birth a Genevese, his family one of the most distinguished of that republic. His father, Alphonse, passed his younger days in public service and did not marry until the decline of life. The circumstances illustrate his character: his most intimate friend, a merchant named Beaufort, fell through mischance into poverty and retreated with his daughter Caroline to Lucerne, where he lived in wretchedness. Alphonse searched ten months before discovering his abode, and arrived to find Beaufort on his deathbed and Caroline, a girl of uncommon courage, earning a pittance by plaiting straw. Beaufort died in her arms, leaving her an orphan and a beggar. Alphonse came like a protecting spirit, conducted her to Geneva, and two years later made her his wife.

There was a show of gratitude and worship in his attachment, differing wholly from the doting fondness of age; he strove to shelter her as a fair exotic is sheltered by the gardener from every rougher wind. They travelled through Italy, Germany, and France; Victor, their eldest child, was born at Naples, and as an infant accompanied them in their rambles. He was their plaything and idol -- something better: their child, the innocent creature bestowed on them by heaven, guided by a silken cord so that all seemed one train of enjoyment.

When Victor was about five, on the shores of Lake Como, his mother discovered among the half-clothed children of a poor cottage a girl of a different stock: thin and very fair, her hair the brightest living gold, her blue eyes cloudless, her features expressive of sensibility and sweetness -- a being heaven-sent, bearing a celestial stamp. She was Elizabeth Lavenza, the orphaned daughter of a Milanese nobleman who had been imprisoned or killed for his patriotic exertions. With his permission, Victor's mother prevailed on the peasant guardians to yield their charge. On the evening before Elizabeth was brought home, his mother said playfully: "I have a pretty present for my Victor -- tomorrow he shall have it." With childish seriousness, Victor interpreted the words literally and looked upon Elizabeth as his -- mine to protect, love, and cherish.

Chapter 2

Victor and Elizabeth were brought up together in harmony, yet their characters differed. She busied herself with the aerial creations of the poets; he delighted in investigating the causes of things. The world was to him a secret which he desired to divine. His closest friend was Henry Clerval, son of a Geneva merchant -- a boy of singular talent and fancy who loved enterprise and chivalric romance, while Victor's temper was sometimes violent, his passions vehement, and his inquiries directed always to the metaphysical or physical secrets of the world.

At thirteen, on a family excursion to the baths near Thonon, Victor chanced to find a volume of Cornelius Agrippa. A new light seemed to dawn upon his mind. His father glanced carelessly at the title and said: "Ah! Cornelius Agrippa! My dear Victor, do not waste your time upon this; it is sad trash." Had his father taken pains to explain that Agrippa's principles were entirely exploded, Victor would have thrown the book aside. But the cursory dismissal only spurred him. He procured the whole works of Agrippa, Paracelsus, and Albertus Magnus, and read their wild fancies with delight. He pursued the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life: what glory would attend the discovery if he could banish disease from the human frame and render man invulnerable to any but a violent death! He raised ghosts and devils, or tried to; and when his incantations failed, he blamed his own inexperience rather than his instructors.

At fifteen, a most violent thunderstorm destroyed an old oak near their house -- reduced it not to splinters but to thin ribbons of wood. A visiting natural philosopher explained the theory of electricity and galvanism, and at a stroke threw Agrippa, Magnus, and Paracelsus into the shade. By one of those caprices of youth, Victor abandoned his former studies entirely and took up mathematics, entertaining the greatest disdain for a science that could never step within the threshold of real knowledge. This change of inclination seemed the last effort of the guardian angel of his life to avert the storm already hanging in the stars. But destiny was too potent, and her immutable laws had decreed his utter and terrible destruction.

Chapter 3

At seventeen, Victor's parents resolved he should attend the university of Ingolstadt. But before his departure, Elizabeth caught scarlet fever; his mother, unable to resist attending her sickbed, saved Elizabeth but contracted the illness herself. On her deathbed she joined the hands of Elizabeth and Victor: "My children, my firmest hopes of future happiness were placed on the prospect of your union. This expectation will now be the consolation of your father." She died calmly, her countenance expressing affection even in death.

At Ingolstadt, Victor called first on M. Krempe, professor of natural philosophy -- an uncouth man who stared in disbelief at Victor's confession of having studied Agrippa and Paracelsus: "Every instant that you have wasted on those books is utterly and entirely lost. You must begin your studies entirely anew." Victor was not prepossessed; Krempe's repulsive countenance did not recommend his pursuits. But then he attended a lecture by M. Waldman, a benevolent man of fifty with the sweetest voice Victor had ever heard, who delivered a panegyric on modern chemistry: "The ancient teachers promised impossibilities and performed nothing. The modern masters promise very little; but these philosophers, whose hands seem only made to dabble in dirt, have indeed performed miracles. They penetrate into the recesses of nature and show how she works in her hiding-places. They have acquired new and almost unlimited powers; they can command the thunders of heaven, mimic the earthquake, and even mock the invisible world with its own shadows."

These words were enounced to destroy him. As Waldman spoke, Victor felt as if his soul were grappling with a palpable enemy; chord after chord was sounded, and soon his mind was filled with one thought, one purpose: So much has been done -- more, far more, will I achieve. Thus ended a day memorable to him; it decided his future destiny.

Chapter 4

From that day, natural philosophy and chemistry became Victor's sole occupation. He read with ardour, attended lectures, cultivated the acquaintance of men of science, and found in Waldman a true friend who smoothed the path of knowledge. His progress was rapid; his ardour the astonishment of the students, his proficiency that of the masters. Two years passed, during which he paid no visit to Geneva, engaged heart and soul in pursuit of discoveries.

One phenomenon peculiarly attracted his attention: the structure of the human frame, and whence the principle of life proceeded. To examine the causes of life, he must first have recourse to death. He became acquainted with anatomy, spent days and nights in vaults and charnel-houses, observed the natural decay and corruption of the human body. He saw how the fine form of man was degraded and wasted, how the worm inherited the wonders of the eye and brain. He paused, examining the minutiae of causation in the change from life to death and death to life, until from the midst of this darkness a sudden light broke in upon him -- a light so brilliant and wondrous, yet so simple. After days and nights of incredible labour, he succeeded in discovering the cause of generation and life; nay, more: he became himself capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter.

He hesitated concerning the manner in which to employ this power, but his imagination was too exalted to permit doubt. He resolved to create a human being, and as the minuteness of the parts formed a great hindrance, he made the being of gigantic stature -- about eight feet in height. Life and death appeared ideal bounds which he should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world. A new species would bless him as its creator; no father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as he should deserve theirs.

His cheek grew pale with study, his person emaciated with confinement. He collected bones from charnel-houses and disturbed, with profane fingers, the tremendous secrets of the human frame. In a solitary cell at the top of the house, he kept his workshop of filthy creation, his eyeballs starting from their sockets. The dissecting room and the slaughter-house furnished many of his materials. The summer months passed; a most beautiful season, but his eyes were insensible to the charms of nature. He neglected his friends, forgot those who were so many miles absent. Every night he was oppressed by a slow fever; he became nervous to a most painful degree; the fall of a leaf startled him; he shunned his fellow creatures as if guilty of a crime. The energy of his purpose alone sustained him: his labours would soon end, and he promised himself exercise and amusement when his creation should be complete.

Chapter 5

It was on a dreary night of November that Victor beheld the accomplishment of his toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, he collected the instruments of life around him, that he might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at his feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and his candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, he saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.

How can he describe his emotions at this catastrophe? His limbs were in proportion, and Victor had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was lustrous black and flowing, his teeth of a pearly whiteness, but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, his shrivelled complexion, and straight black lips. Victor had worked nearly two years for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body; now that he had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled his heart. Unable to endure the aspect of the being he had created, he rushed from the room.

He threw himself on the bed and slept, but was disturbed by the wildest dreams. He thought he saw Elizabeth walking in the streets of Ingolstadt; delighted, he embraced her, but as he kissed her lips, they became livid with the hue of death, her features changed, and he held the corpse of his dead mother in his arms, a shroud enveloping her form, grave-worms crawling in the folds. He started from his sleep with horror; by the dim yellow light of the moon, the wretch stood at his bedside, holding up the curtain of the bed, his eyes fixed on Victor, his jaws open, a grin wrinkling his cheeks. One hand was stretched out, seemingly to detain him, but Victor escaped and rushed downstairs. He took refuge in the courtyard for the rest of the night, walking up and down in the greatest agitation, catching and fearing each sound as if it were the approach of the demoniacal corpse to which he had so miserably given life.

Morning came -- dismal and wet. Victor paced the streets in terror, like one who doth walk in fear and dread because he knows a frightful fiend doth close behind him tread. At length, near an inn, he saw the Swiss diligence arrive, and Henry Clerval sprang out: "My dear Frankenstein, how glad I am to see you!" Victor grasped his hand; for the first time in many months, he felt calm and serene joy. But his relief was wild and manic: he jumped over chairs, clapped his hands, laughed aloud. Clerval saw a wildness in his eyes: "What, for God's sake, is the matter? How ill you are!" Victor imagined the monster seized him, cried "Save me!" and fell down in a fit. This was the commencement of a nervous fever which confined him for several months. Henry was his only nurse, concealing the extent of his illness from their family in Geneva.

By slow degrees, with frequent relapses, Victor recovered. He perceived that the fallen leaves had disappeared and young buds were shooting from the trees: it was a divine spring. Sentiments of joy and affection revived. But the sight of any chemical instrument renewed the agony of his nervous symptoms, so Clerval removed all his apparatus and changed his apartment.

Chapter 6

A letter from Elizabeth brought news of home: Victor's father in good health, his brother Ernest restless for a military career, and the household's latest addition -- Justine Moritz, a servant girl beloved by the family who had been educated with them and whom Victor's mother had taken under her protection. Justine was clever, gentle, and extremely pretty, her expression continually reminiscent of their late aunt. Little William was growing tall and handsome, with sweet laughing blue eyes and curling hair.

Clerval had come to the university with the design of mastering the oriental languages, and Victor gladly joined this study, finding consolation in the works of Persian and Arabic writers -- their melancholy soothing, their joy elevating. Study had secluded Victor from the intercourse of his fellow creatures, but Clerval called forth the better feelings of his heart: he taught him again to love the aspect of nature and the cheerful faces of children. During a walking tour through the environs of Ingolstadt, Victor felt that a selfish pursuit had cramped and narrowed him until Clerval's gentleness and affection warmed and opened his senses; he became once more the happy creature who loved and was beloved by all.

Chapter 7

A letter from his father shattered this restoration: "William is dead! -- that sweet child, whose smiles delighted and warmed my heart, who was so gentle, yet so gay! Victor, he is murdered!" The boy had disappeared during a family walk in Plainpalais; at five in the morning, Alphonse found him stretched on the grass, livid and motionless, the print of the murderer's finger on his neck. A miniature of Victor's mother, which William had been wearing, was gone -- doubtless the temptation that urged the murderer to the deed.

Victor hastened home. As he approached Geneva by night, he stopped to visit the place of William's death. A thunderstorm broke over the lake -- lightning dazzling his eyes, illuminating the water like a vast sheet of fire. He clasped his hands and exclaimed aloud: "William, dear angel! this is thy funeral, this thy dirge!" Then, in a flash of lightning, he perceived a figure stealing from behind a clump of trees -- and knew it instantly by its gigantic stature and the deformity of its aspect: the wretch, the filthy daemon, to whom he had given life. Could it be the murderer of his brother? No sooner did that idea cross his imagination than he became convinced of its truth. The figure passed him quickly, and Victor lost it in the gloom. Nothing in human shape could have destroyed the fair child. He was the murderer! Victor could not doubt it; the mere presence of the idea was an irresistible proof of the fact. He thought of pursuing the devil, but another flash discovered him hanging among the rocks of the nearly perpendicular ascent of Mont Saleve, a hill that bounds Plainpalais on the south. He soon reached the summit and disappeared. Two years had now nearly elapsed since the night on which he first received life; and was this his first crime? Alas! Victor had turned loose into the world a depraved wretch whose delight was in carnage and misery.

He remained motionless, revolving in his mind the events he had until now sought to forget: the whole train of his progress toward the creation, the appearance of the work of his own hands at his bedside, its departure. He considered the being whom he had cast among mankind, endowed with the will and power to effect purposes of horror, nearly in the light of his own vampire, his own spirit let loose from the grave and forced to destroy all that was dear to him.

Victor resolved to remain silent. His tale would be considered the ravings of insanity, and pursuit of a creature capable of scaling mountain cliffs would be useless. At his father's house, he learned the family believed they had discovered the murderer -- not the daemon, but Justine Moritz. A miniature of his mother had been found in Justine's pocket.

Chapter 8

At the trial, Victor suffered living torture. It was to be decided whether the result of his curiosity and lawless devices would cause the death of two fellow beings: a smiling babe, and a girl of merit whose life was now to be obliterated in an ignominious grave. Justine appeared calm and exquisitely beautiful in her mourning, confident in her innocence. Several strange facts combined against her: she had been out all night, had been seen near the spot where the body was found, and the damning miniature was in her pocket. She gave a plain account -- she had spent the evening at an aunt's house, searched for the child on returning, was shut out of Geneva's gates, and slept in a barn. Concerning the picture, she could give no account.

Elizabeth rose to address the court with generous interference, testifying to Justine's amiable and benevolent character. A murmur of approbation followed, but not in Justine's favour: the public indignation charged her with the blackest ingratitude. The ballots were thrown: all black. Justine was condemned. She had confessed, she told Elizabeth and Victor in prison -- but confessed a lie, coerced by her confessor who threatened excommunication and hellfire. "In an evil hour I subscribed to a lie; and now only am I truly miserable." Victor, the true murderer, felt the never-dying worm alive in his bosom. Justine died on the scaffold, and Elizabeth's heart-rending eloquence failed to move the judges.

Chapter 9

Nothing is more painful to the human mind than the dead calmness that follows a quick succession of events. Justine died, she rested, and Victor was alive. He wandered like an evil spirit, for he had committed deeds of mischief beyond description horrible, and more was yet behind. He shunned the face of man; solitude was his only consolation -- deep, dark, deathlike solitude. His father's serene conscience could offer no comfort to the author of such guilt. Often Victor took the boat at night and passed hours upon the dark water, tempted to plunge into the silent lake that the waters might close over him and his calamities forever. But he was restrained by the thought of Elizabeth and his remaining family, exposed and unprotected to the malice of the fiend he had let loose among them.

Elizabeth reflected upon their fallen world: "When I reflect on the miserable death of Justine Moritz, I no longer see the world as it before appeared to me. Men appear to me as monsters thirsting for each other's blood." Victor felt as a wounded deer dragging its fainting limbs to some untrodden brake, there to gaze upon the arrow which had pierced it, and to die.

Driven by intolerable sensations, he left home and bent his steps toward the Alpine valleys. He sought in the magnificence and eternity of such scenes to forget himself and his ephemeral, because human, sorrows. He rode into the valley of Chamounix, past ruined castles hanging on the precipices of piny mountains, past the impetuous Arve and the mighty glaciers. Mont Blanc, the supreme and magnificent Mont Blanc, raised itself from the surrounding aiguilles, and its tremendous dome overlooked the valley. A tingling long-lost sense of pleasure often came across Victor during this journey. Some turn in the road, some new object suddenly perceived and recognised, reminded him of days gone by, and were associated with the lighthearted gaiety of boyhood. The very winds whispered in soothing accents, and maternal Nature bade him weep no more. Then again the kindly influence ceased to act -- he found himself fettered again to grief and indulging in all the misery of reflection. He threw himself on the grass, weighed down by horror and despair, or spurred on his animal, striving so to forget the world, his fears, and more than all, himself.

Chapter 10

Victor spent the following day roaming through the valley of Chamounix. He stood beside the sources of the Arveiron, where the glacier with slow pace advances from the summit of the hills. The abrupt sides of vast mountains overhung him; the icy wall of the glacier was above; a few shattered pines scattered around; and the solemn silence of this glorious presence-chamber of imperial Nature was broken only by the brawling waves or the thunder sound of the avalanche. These sublime scenes elevated him from all littleness of feeling and subdued his grief.

He ascended Montanvert alone, determined to seek in its desolation some solace. At the summit he sat upon the rock overlooking the sea of ice -- a league in width, rising and falling like a troubled sea, interspersed by rifts that sink deep. He gazed upon Mont Blanc in awful majesty and exclaimed: "Wandering spirits, if indeed ye wander, and do not rest in your narrow beds, allow me this faint happiness, or take me, as your companion, away from the joys of life."

As he spoke, he beheld the figure of a man advancing with superhuman speed, bounding over crevices in the ice. Its stature exceeded that of man. It was the wretch whom he had created. Victor trembled with rage and horror: "Devil! Do you dare approach me? Begone, vile insect! Or rather, stay, that I may trample you to dust!"

The daemon replied with dignity: "All men hate the wretched; how, then, must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things! Yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom thou art bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us. Do your duty towards me, and I will do mine towards you and the rest of mankind. If you refuse, I will glut the maw of death, until it be satiated with the blood of your remaining friends."

Victor sprang at him, but the Creature eluded him easily: "Be calm! I entreat you to hear me before you give vent to your hatred. I am thy creature, and I will be even mild and docile to my natural lord and king if thou wilt also perform thy part. Remember that I am thy creature; I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed. Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous."

Victor refused to hear him. The Creature persisted: "Believe me, Frankenstein, I was benevolent; my soul glowed with love and humanity; but am I not alone, miserably alone? You, my creator, abhor me; what hope can I gather from your fellow creatures, who owe me nothing? The desert mountains and dreary glaciers are my refuge. The caves of ice, which I only do not fear, are a dwelling to me, and the only one which man does not grudge. Listen to my tale; the guilty are allowed, by human laws, bloody as they are, to speak in their own defence before they are condemned."

Partly urged by curiosity, partly by compassion, and feeling for the first time what the duties of a creator towards his creature were, Victor consented. They crossed the ice and entered a hut on the mountain, the fiend with an air of exultation, Victor with a heavy heart. Seating himself by the fire which his odious companion had lighted, the Creature began his tale.

The Creature's Narrative

Chapter 11

The Creature remembers the original era of his being only with difficulty. A strange multiplicity of sensations seized him; he saw, felt, heard, and smelt at the same time. By degrees he learned to distinguish his senses, to perceive the boundaries of the radiant roof of light which canopied him. He wandered from the laboratory into the forest near Ingolstadt, where he lay by a brook resting from his fatigue, ate berries, and slaked his thirst. Darkness fell; he sat down and wept -- a poor, helpless, miserable wretch, feeling pain on all sides.

He discovered fire from the embers of a wandering beggars' camp and was overcome with delight at the warmth, until he thrust his hand into the live embers and cried out in pain. He learned to keep it burning with dry wood, to cook food upon it, and to fan the embers with branches. When food grew scarce, he quit the forest and struck across the open country. He entered a shepherd's hut; the old man within shrieked and fled at the sight of him. He entered a village, where children shrieked, one woman fainted, and the villagers drove him away with stones and missiles.

He took refuge in a low hovel adjoining a neat cottage. Through a chink in the wall, he discovered the cottage's inhabitants: an old blind man who played a guitar, producing sounds sweeter than the voice of the nightingale; a young woman called Agatha; and a young man called Felix. The silver hair and benevolent countenance of the aged cottager won his reverence, while the gentle manners of the girl enticed his love. He withdrew from the window, unable to bear the mixture of pain and pleasure these emotions provoked.

Chapter 12

The Creature remained in his hovel, watching the cottagers daily. He discovered that the old man was blind and that the younger cottagers were not entirely happy: they often went apart and wept, and they suffered poverty, sometimes placing food before the old man while reserving none for themselves. Moved by their kindness, the Creature ceased stealing from their store and instead gathered berries and roots from the wood. He began secretly chopping wood for them at night and clearing their path from the snow, so that they marvelled at the work of an invisible hand and spoke the words "good spirit, wonderful."

He ardently longed to join them, but dared not -- remembering the treatment he had suffered in the village. He resolved first to master their language, which might enable them to overlook his deformity. He learned to pronounce such words as he understood with tolerable ease: fire, milk, bread, wood. He learned that the old man was called father, the girl sister or Agatha, and the youth Felix, brother, or son. One day he viewed himself in a transparent pool and started back, unable to believe it was indeed he who was reflected: when fully convinced that he was in reality the monster that he was, he was filled with the bitterest sensations of despondence and mortification.

Chapters 13-14

With spring came Safie, the sweet Arabian -- a lady on horseback with hair of shining raven black and a countenance of angelic beauty. Felix was ravished with delight at her arrival, every trait of sorrow vanishing from his face. Safie did not speak their language, and as Felix taught her, the Creature learned alongside her -- improving more rapidly, for his organs, though harsh, were supple. Through Volney's Ruins of Empires, read aloud by Felix, the Creature obtained a cursory knowledge of history and the manners, governments, and religions of the different nations of the earth. He wept with Safie over the hapless fate of America's original inhabitants.

These narrations inspired him with strange feelings. Was man, indeed, at once so powerful, so virtuous and magnificent, yet so vicious and base? He turned towards himself: he possessed no money, no friends, no kind of property. He was endued with a figure hideously deformed and loathsome; he was not even of the same nature as man. Was he a monster, a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled and whom all men disowned? "Oh, that I had for ever remained in my native wood, nor known nor felt beyond the sensations of hunger, thirst, and heat!"

He learned the history of his protectors: the De Lacey family had been prosperous in Paris until Felix, moved by the unjust condemnation of Safie's Turkish father, helped the merchant escape -- for which the De Laceys were ruined, stripped of their fortune, and exiled. The Turk, safely free, betrayed Felix by breaking his promise of Safie's hand and fleeing with her to Constantinople. But Safie, whose Christian Arab mother had taught her to aspire to higher powers of intellect than the harem permitted, defied her father, took her jewels and money, and made her own way to the cottage in Germany.

Chapter 15

Three books found in a leathern portmanteau in the wood shaped the Creature's intellect and gave him an infinity of new images and feelings. The Sorrows of Werter combined gentle domestic manners with lofty sentiments, and the disquisitions upon death and suicide filled him with wonder; he wept at Werter's extinction without precisely understanding it. He found himself similar yet strangely unlike the beings concerning whom he read: he sympathised with them, but he was unformed in mind, dependent on none and related to none. "The path of my departure was free, and there was none to lament my annihilation. My person was hideous and my stature gigantic. What did this mean? Who was I? What was I? Whence did I come?"

Plutarch's Lives taught him high thoughts and elevated him above the wretched sphere of his own reflections; he admired peaceable lawgivers in preference to warriors and felt the greatest ardour for virtue rise within him. But Paradise Lost excited the deepest emotions of all. He read it as a true history. Like Adam, he was apparently united by no link to any other being in existence; but Adam had come forth from the hands of God a perfect creature, happy and prosperous, guarded by the especial care of his Creator, allowed to converse with beings of a superior nature. The Creature was wretched, helpless, and alone. Many times he considered Satan as the fitter emblem of his condition, for often, like him, when he viewed the bliss of his protectors, the bitter gall of envy rose within him.

Then he discovered, in the pocket of the dress taken from Victor's laboratory, Victor's journal of the four months preceding his creation -- every step minutely described, mingled with accounts of domestic occurrences. The minutest description of his odious and loathsome person was given, in language which painted Victor's own horrors and rendered the Creature's indelible. He sickened as he read. "Hateful day when I received life!" he exclaimed in agony. "Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemblance. Satan had his companions, fellow devils, to admire and encourage him, but I am solitary and abhorred."

Yet when he contemplated the virtues of the cottagers, he persuaded himself that they would compassionate him and overlook his deformity. He postponed the attempt for some months, for the importance attached to its success inspired him with dread lest he should fail. He resolved to address the blind old man first, when the others were absent, trusting that his eloquence might win an advocate. One autumn day, when Felix, Agatha, and Safie had gone for a walk, he knocked at the cottage door. The old man invited him to enter: "I am blind and cannot judge of your countenance, but there is something in your words which persuades me that you are sincere."

The Creature seated himself and poured out his heart: he had good friends, generous and amiable, but a fatal prejudice clouded their eyes, and where they ought to see a feeling and kind friend, they beheld only a detestable monster. "I am full of fears, for if I fail there, I am an outcast in the world forever." De Lacey replied: "To be friendless is indeed to be unfortunate, but the hearts of men, when unprejudiced by any obvious self-interest, are full of brotherly love and charity. Rely, therefore, on your hopes." The Creature seized the old man's hand in transport: "Now is the time! Save and protect me! You and your family are the friends whom I seek. Do not you desert me in the hour of trial!"

"Great God!" exclaimed the old man. "Who are you?"

At that moment the cottage door opened. Felix, Safie, and Agatha entered. Agatha fainted. Safie rushed from the cottage. Felix darted forward and with supernatural force tore the Creature from his father's knees, dashing him to the ground and striking him violently with a stick. The Creature could have torn him limb from limb, as the lion rends the antelope -- but his heart sank within him as with bitter sickness, and he refrained. He fled the cottage and in the agony of despair gained his hovel.

Chapter 16

The Creature raged in his hovel through the night. When dawn came, he declared everlasting war against the species, and above all against Frankenstein. Yet he could not bring himself to injure the De Laceys. When he returned the next day, they had departed in haste and terror. He howled in anguish. That night, he set the deserted cottage on fire: "A fierce wind arose, and I lighted the dry branch of a tree and danced with fury around the devoted cottage. The wind fanned the fire, and the cottage was quickly enveloped by the flames, which clung to it and licked it with their forked and destroying tongues."

He set out for Geneva, travelling by night. On the journey, finding that his path lay through a deep wood on a fine spring morning, he ventured to continue by daylight. The sun cheered even him, and he felt emotions of gentleness that had long appeared dead. He dared to be happy. Then he heard voices, concealed himself, and saw a young girl come running along a river bank. She slipped and fell into the rapid stream. He rushed from his hiding-place and with extreme labour saved her, dragging her to shore. But when a rustic appeared and saw him bending over the girl, the man tore her from his arms and fired a gun at him. The ball entered his shoulder. "This was then the reward of my benevolence! I had saved a human being from destruction, and as a recompense I now writhed under the miserable pain of a wound which shattered the flesh and bone." The feelings of kindness gave place to hellish rage; he vowed eternal hatred and vengeance to all mankind.

After some weeks his wound healed, and he continued his journey. Near Geneva, he encountered a beautiful child in a field and seized him, hoping that one so young would be unprejudiced. But the boy screamed: "Let me go, monster! Ugly wretch! My papa is a syndic -- he is M. Frankenstein -- he will punish you!" At the name Frankenstein, the Creature grasped the child's throat. In a moment the boy was dead. He was not sorry; his creator had made him a wretch, and this was Frankenstein's own child. On the corpse he found a miniature portrait of a beautiful woman and, consumed by rage, planted it on a young girl he found sleeping in a nearby barn -- Justine -- framing her for the murder.

"This is how I placed the evidence that condemned the hapless Justine," the Creature told Victor. "I am the assassin of those most innocent victims; they died by my machinations."

Chapter 17

Victor shuddered at the Creature's tale. The Creature made his demand: "You must create a female for me with whom I can live in the interchange of those sympathies necessary for my being. This you alone can do, and I demand it of you as a right which you must not refuse to concede."

Victor refused: "Shall I create another like yourself, whose joint wickedness might desolate the world? Begone!" The Creature replied with eloquent reason: "I am malicious because I am miserable. Am I not shunned and hated by all mankind? If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear. 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. My companion must be of the same species and have the same defects. This being you must create."

He promised that if Victor made him a mate, they would quit the neighbourhood of man forever -- would go to the vast wilds of South America, eat acorns and berries, and never again be seen by human eyes. "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; acorns and berries afford me sufficient nourishment. The picture I present to you is peaceful and human."

Victor felt there was some justice in his argument. The Creature saw that he was moved and extracted his promise: "I swear to you, 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, you shall never behold me again." Victor consented, moved by compassion and by the hope of ending the Creature's wretchedness. The Creature said: "I will watch your progress with unutterable anxiety; and fear not but that when you are ready I shall appear." He vanished into the darkness.

Return to Victor's Narrative

Chapter 18

Day after day, week after week passed upon Victor's return to Geneva, and he could not collect the courage to recommence his work. He feared the vengeance of the disappointed fiend, yet was unable to overcome his repugnance to the task enjoined upon him. He would need several months of profound study and laborious disquisition, and he had heard of certain discoveries by an English philosopher that were material to his success. His father, seeing him restored to some degree of health and spirits, proposed the immediate solemnisation of his marriage to Elizabeth. Victor listened in silence: the idea of an immediate union was one of horror and dismay. He was bound by a solemn promise which he had not yet fulfilled and dared not break. He must perform his engagement and let the monster depart with his mate before he allowed himself to enjoy the delight of a union from which he expected peace.

He expressed a wish to visit England, concealing his true reasons, and his father complied. Without Victor's knowledge, Elizabeth and Alphonse arranged that Clerval should join him at Strasbourg as a companion. It was understood that the marriage should take place immediately upon Victor's return.

Chapter 19

In London, Victor occupied himself with obtaining the information necessary for his promise, while Clerval pursued his design of visiting India. Victor began collecting materials for his new creation -- "this was to me like the torture of single drops of water continually falling on the head." After some months they journeyed northward through England and Scotland -- Windsor, Oxford, the Cumberland Lakes. Clerval found delight in everything; Victor saw nothing but the bourne of his travels and the work that awaited him. At Perth, he parted from Clerval, claiming he wished to tour Scotland alone. He traversed the northern highlands and fixed on one of the remotest of the Orkney Islands as the scene of his labours -- hardly more than a rock whose high sides were continually beaten by waves, inhabited by five gaunt persons. There he hired a miserable hut of two rooms, ordered it repaired, and took possession.

He devoted his mornings to labour, but it became every day more horrible and irksome. Sometimes he could not prevail on himself to enter his laboratory for several days; at other times he toiled day and night. It was a filthy process, gone to in cold blood, his heart often sickening at the work of his hands. Every moment he feared to meet his persecutor.

Chapter 20

One evening, as the sun had set and the moon was just rising from the sea, Victor sat idle in his laboratory in a pause of consideration. A train of reflection occurred to him which led him to consider the effects of what he was now doing. Three years before, he had been engaged in the same manner and had created a fiend whose unparalleled barbarity had desolated his heart and filled it forever with the bitterest remorse. He was now about to form another being of whose dispositions he 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 sworn to quit the neighbourhood of man, but she had not; and she, who in 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 already loathed his own deformity, and might conceive a greater abhorrence for it in the female form. She 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, one of the first results of those sympathies for which the daemon thirsted would be children, and a race of devils would be propagated upon the earth who might make the very existence of man a condition precarious and full of terror. Had he the right, for his own benefit, to inflict this curse upon everlasting generations? He had before been moved by the sophisms of the being he had created; he had been struck senseless by his fiendish threats. But now, for the first time, the wickedness of his promise burst upon him; he shuddered to think that future ages might curse him as their pest.

He trembled and his heart failed him when, on looking up, he saw by the light of the moon the daemon at the casement. A ghastly grin wrinkled his lips as he gazed on Victor, where he sat fulfilling his task. Victor looked at the being he was creating -- at the half-finished creature on the table -- and, trembling with passion, tore to pieces the thing on which he was engaged. The wretch saw him destroy the creature on whose future existence he depended for happiness, and with a howl of devilish despair and revenge, withdrew.

Victor left the room and locked the door, resolving never to resume his labours. Several hours later, he heard the Creature's footstep and the door opening: "You have destroyed the work which you began; what is it that you intend? Do you dare to break your promise? 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; do you dare destroy my hopes?"

"Begone! I do break my promise; never will I create another like 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."

The Creature saw Victor's determination and departed with a threat like a knife: "It is well. I go; but remember, I shall be with you on your wedding-night." Victor shuddered but interpreted the words as a threat against himself -- the Creature would seek to destroy his happiness by killing him. So be it; that struggle would decide Victor's fate. But the Creature had another meaning entirely.

That night, Victor gathered the relics of his half-finished creation in a basket, loaded it with stones, and sank it in the sea. He then fell asleep in the boat, and when he awoke, the wind had carried him far from the island. After a dangerous passage lasting many hours, he landed on the coast of Ireland and was immediately seized and brought before a magistrate. A young man's body had been found on the beach that morning -- strangled, with the black marks of fingers on his neck. Victor was led to the room where the corpse lay. The first part of the body that was visible was the neck: as the mark of the fingers was there, Victor was overcome with horror. He gasped for breath and, throwing himself on the body, exclaimed: "Have my murderous machinations deprived you also, my dearest Henry, of life? Two I have already destroyed; other victims await their destiny; but you, Clerval, my friend, my benefactor--" He fell into convulsions and was confined for two months in a fever, raving about the monster. His father came from Geneva to attend him.

Chapter 21

Victor was confined for two months in prison, ill with a fever during which he raved incessantly of the monster and accused himself of the murders of William, Justine, and Clerval. Old Mr. Kirwin, the magistrate, was not unkind; he sent a nurse to attend Victor and, when he discovered the prisoner was the son of his old friend Alphonse Frankenstein, immediately wrote to Geneva. Victor's father came, aged and shaken. The evidence proved Victor had been on the Orkneys at the time of the murder, and he was acquitted. But the acquittal brought him no joy. His father escorted him home, and during the voyage Victor oscillated between the desire for death and the agony of anticipation: the Creature's threat -- "I shall be with you on your wedding-night" -- hung over him like a sentence.

Chapter 22

Elizabeth's letter awaited him -- tender, anxious, and containing a confession that pierced his heart. She feared that Victor might have met another woman whom he loved, and that honour alone bound him to her: "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. Do not let this letter disturb you; do not answer tomorrow, 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."

The tears trickled from Victor's eyes on reading this letter, and he hastened to reply. "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, you 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 allude to it."

Elizabeth was obedient, though distressed. Their wedding was arranged. In the meantime Victor took every precaution: he carried pistols and a dagger constantly about his person, resolved to sell his life dearly in the struggle with the Creature that he believed must come for him on the wedding-night. He would not shrink from the combat; if the Creature's purpose was to kill him, he would face it, and by his death free his family from future persecution. They married and journeyed by water to Evian, where they would spend their first night at an inn on the shores of the lake. The wind, which had hitherto carried them along with amazing rapidity, sank at sunset to a light breeze, and the soft air just ruffled the water and caused a pleasant motion among the trees. As they crossed the lake by water, Victor surveyed the environs with restless anxiety. Elizabeth observed his agitation and asked tenderly: "What is it that agitates you, my dear Victor? What is it you fear?" "Oh! peace, peace, my love," he replied; "this night, and all will be safe; but this night is dreadful, very dreadful."

Chapter 23

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 busy heavens, rendered still busier by the restless waves that were beginning to rise. Suddenly a heavy storm of rain descended.

Victor had been calm during the day, but as night approached, a thousand fears arose in his mind. He was anxious and watchful, his right hand grasping a pistol hidden in his bosom. Every sound terrified him. He earnestly entreated Elizabeth to retire to the bedchamber, resolving not to join her until he had obtained some knowledge of the situation of his enemy. She left him, and he continued to walk up and down the passages of the house, inspecting every corner that might afford a retreat to his adversary.

Suddenly he heard a shrill and dreadful scream. It came from the room into which Elizabeth had retired. As he heard it, the whole truth rushed into his mind: his arms dropped, the motion of every muscle and fibre was suspended. In an instant he recovered and rushed into the room.

Great God! Why did he not then expire! Why was he there to relate the destruction of the best hope and the purest creature on earth? She was there, lifeless and inanimate, thrown across the bed, her head hanging down and her pale and distorted features half covered by her hair. Everywhere he turned he saw the same figure -- her bloodless arms and relaxed form flung by the murderer on its bridal bier. He could have fallen on the body and shrieked; but his heart was heavy, and his blood flowed with a sluggish horror. While he was still hanging over her in the agony of despair, he looked up. The shutters had been thrown back, and with a sensation of horror not to be described, he 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 Elizabeth. Victor drew a pistol from his bosom and fired; but the Creature eluded him, leaped from his station, plunged into the lake, and swam away with the swiftness of lightning.

The report brought a crowd into the room. They followed the Creature, but he escaped. Victor, falling senseless, was carried away in convulsions. When he recovered and reflected, the true meaning of the Creature's words at last broke upon him: "I shall be with you on your wedding-night" -- not a threat against Victor's own life, but a promise to murder the one person whose existence he valued above his own.

His father could not survive the succession of horrors. Old Alphonse Frankenstein, shaken by the deaths of William, Justine, Clerval, and now Elizabeth -- every grief compounded until his heart could bear no more -- sank under the blow and died in Victor's arms a few days later. Victor was seized with madness and confined to a solitary cell for many months, raving of the monster and the destruction it had wrought.

Chapter 24

When Victor recovered from his madness, he went before a magistrate and told the whole extraordinary tale -- the creation, the murders, the pursuit. The man listened with that half kind of belief that is given to a tale of spirits and supernatural events, but when called upon to act officially, he confessed that the means of apprehending the Creature were beyond his power. Victor's rage was boundless: "Man, how ignorant art thou in thy pride of wisdom! Hear me; I will not rest until the fiend is dead, or until I am! I will devote myself to his destruction, and I will pursue him to the very brink of the precipice of eternity." The magistrate replied that vengeance was the province of the law, not of individuals. Victor felt that his story was not credited and left the room, resolving in his own heart to devote himself to the pursuit alone.

He visited the graves of William, Elizabeth, and his father. He 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 daemon 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 will I again behold the sun and tread the green herbage of earth, which otherwise should vanish from my eyes forever." He was answered by a loud and fiendish laugh that rang on his ears. The Creature's whisper came, loud and distinct in the night air: "I am satisfied, miserable wretch! You have determined to live, and I am satisfied."

Victor darted towards the spot from which the sound proceeded, but the devil eluded his grasp. The moon shone full on his ghastly and distorted shape as he fled with more than mortal speed. The chase began. The Creature left marks to guide Victor -- sometimes inscriptions on the bark of trees, sometimes on stone -- taunting, directing, sustaining: "My reign is not yet over; 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." Once he left a dead hare near the path, with a mocking inscription: "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 arrive."

Victor followed across the Mediterranean, through the wilds of Tartary and Russia, northward over the frozen seas, sustained only by his burning thirst for revenge. Scarcity of food was the least of his perils: he had been accursed by some devil and carried about with him his eternal hell. He obtained a dog-sledge and gained upon the Creature, who fled before him across the ice. But the sea swelled, the thunder shook, and the ice cracked with a tremendous sound. In a few minutes a tumultuous sea rolled between him and his enemy, and he was left drifting on a scattered piece of ice that was continually lessening. Many hours passed. Several of his dogs died, and he himself was about to sink under the accumulation of distress when he saw Walton's vessel riding at anchor and felt rescued from the most hopeless and awful situation.

Walton's Conclusion

Victor told Walton that his courage and resources were exhausted. He asked that, should he die before the Creature, Walton would take up the pursuit: "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 fiendlike malice. Hear him not; call on the names of William, Justine, Clerval, Elizabeth, my father, and of the wretched Victor, and thrust your sword into his heart. I will hover near and direct the steel aright."

As the ship remained trapped in ice, the sailors grew mutinous and demanded that Walton consent to turn southward when the ice should free them. Victor, roused to one last effort, addressed them from his deathbed with burning passion: "Did you not call this a glorious expedition? And wherefore was it glorious? Not because the way was smooth and placid as a southern sea, but because it was full of dangers and terror; because at every new incident your fortitude was to be called forth and your courage exhibited; because danger and death surrounded it, and these you were to brave and overcome. Oh! Be men, or be more than men. Be steady to your purposes and firm as a rock. This ice is not made of such stuff as your hearts may be; it is mutable and cannot withstand you if you say that it shall not." But his strength failed; the men were not roused by his words.

In his final hours, Victor reflected: "Seek happiness in tranquillity and avoid ambition, even if it be only the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself in science and discoveries. Yet why do I say this? I have myself been blasted in these hopes, yet another may succeed." He died quietly, pressing Walton's hand, a gentle light stealing over his eyes that was soon quenched, leaving a darkness heavier than night.

Walton entered the cabin to mourn over the body of his friend. Over the coffin hung a form which he could not find words to describe -- gigantic in stature, yet uncouth and distorted in its proportions. As Walton hung over the coffin, the Creature appeared to hear a sound. He sprang towards the window. Never did Walton behold a vision so horrible as the Creature's face, of such loathsome yet appalling hideousness. He shut his eyes involuntarily and endeavoured to recollect what were his duties with regard to this destroyer. He called upon the Creature to stay.

The Creature paused, then approached the body, and exclaimed in accents of anguish: "That is also my victim! In his murder my crimes are consummated; the miserable series is finished! Oh, Frankenstein! Generous and self-devoted being! What does it avail that I now ask thee to pardon me? I, who irretrievably destroyed thee by destroying all thou lovedst. Alas! He is cold, he cannot answer me."

Walton at first felt moved to express his compassion, but when he looked upon the Creature -- the murderer of William, Justine, Clerval, Elizabeth, and by extension of Alphonse -- the filthy daemon to whom he had given life, indignation was rekindled within him. "Wretch!" he said. "It is well that you come here to whine over the desolation that you have made. If you had listened to the voice of conscience and heeded the stings of remorse before you had urged your diabolical vengeance to this extremity, Frankenstein would yet have lived."

"Do you think that I was then dead to agony and remorse?" the Creature replied, fixing his gaze upon Walton with mingled grief and wonder. "He suffered not in the consummation of the deed -- oh! not the ten-thousandth portion of the anguish that was mine during the lingering detail of its execution. A frightful selfishness hurried me on, while my heart was poisoned with remorse. Think you that the groans of Clerval were music to my ears? My heart was fashioned to be susceptible of love and sympathy; and when wrenched by misery to vice and hatred, it did not endure the violence of the change without torture such as you cannot even imagine. After the murder of Clerval I returned to Switzerland, heart-broken and overcome. I pitied Frankenstein; my pity amounted to horror; I abhorred myself. But when I discovered that he, the author at once of my existence and of its unspeakable torments, dared to hope for happiness, then impotent envy and bitter indignation filled me with an insatiable thirst for vengeance. And now it is ended; there is my last victim!"

He looked upon the lifeless form of his creator with a mixture of regret and wonder. Then he said, with solemn enthusiasm: "But soon I shall die, and what I now feel be no longer felt. Soon these burning miseries will be extinct. I shall ascend my funeral pile triumphantly and exult in the agony of the torturing flames. The light of that conflagration will fade away; my ashes will be swept into the sea by the winds. My spirit will sleep in peace, or if it thinks, it will not surely think thus. Farewell."

He sprang from the cabin window upon the ice raft which lay close to the vessel. He was soon borne away by the waves and lost in darkness and distance. That was the last that any living eye beheld of the Creature whom Victor Frankenstein had made.