Frankenstein

Chapter 9

Nothing is more painful to the human mind, than, after the
feelings have been worked up by a quick succession of events,
the dead calmness of inaction and certainty which follows, and
deprives the soul both of hope and fear. Justine died; she
rested; and I was alive. The blood flowed freely in my veins,
but a weight of despair and remorse pressed on my heart, which
nothing could remove. Sleep fled from my eyes; I wandered
like an evil spirit, for I had committed deeds of mischief
beyond description horrible, and more, much more (I persuaded
myself), was yet behind. Yet my heart overflowed with
kindness, and the love of virtue. I had begun life with
benevolent intentions, and thirsted for the moment when I
should put them in practice, and make myself useful to my
fellow-beings. Now all was blasted: instead of that serenity
of conscience, which allowed me to look back upon the past with
self satisfaction, and from thence to gather promise of new
hopes, I was seized by remorse and the sense of guilt, which
hurried me away to a hell of intense tortures, such as no
language can describe.

This state of mind preyed upon my health, which had perhaps
never entirely recovered from the first shock it had sustained.
I shunned the face of man; all sound of joy or complacency was
torture to me; solitude was my only consolation--deep, dark,
deathlike solitude.

My father observed with pain the alteration perceptible in my
disposition and habits, and endeavoured by arguments deduced
from the feelings of his serene conscience and guiltless life,
to inspire me with fortitude, and awaken in me the courage to
dispel the dark cloud which brooded over me. "Do you think,
Victor," said he, "that I do not suffer also? No one could love
a child more than I loved your brother" (tears came into his
eyes as he spoke); "but is it not a duty to the survivors, that
we should refrain from augmenting their unhappiness by an
appearance of immoderate grief? It is also a duty owed to
yourself; for excessive sorrow prevents improvement or
enjoyment, or even the discharge of daily usefulness, without
which no man is fit for society."

This advice, although good, was totally inapplicable to my
case; I should have been the first to hide my grief, and
console my friends, if remorse had not mingled its bitterness,
and terror its alarm with my other sensations. Now I could
only answer my father with a look of despair, and endeavour to
hide myself from his view.

About this time we retired to our house at Belrive. This
change was particularly agreeable to me. The shutting of the
gates regularly at ten o'clock, and the impossibility of
remaining on the lake after that hour, had rendered our
residence within the walls of Geneva very irksome to me. I was
now free. Often, after the rest of the family had retired for
the night, I took the boat, and passed many hours upon the
water. Sometimes, with my sails set, I was carried by the
wind; and sometimes, after rowing into the middle of the lake,
I left the boat to pursue its own course, and gave way to my
own miserable reflections. I was often tempted, when all was
at peace around me, and I the only unquiet thing that wandered
restless in a scene so beautiful and heavenly if I except some
bat, or the frogs, whose harsh and interrupted croaking was
heard only when I approached the shore--often, I say, I was
tempted to plunge into the silent lake, that the waters might
close over me and my calamities for ever. But I was
restrained, when I thought of the heroic and suffering
Elizabeth, whom I tenderly loved, and whose existence was bound
up in mine. I thought also of my father and surviving
brother: should I by my base desertion leave them exposed and
unprotected to the malice of the fiend whom I had let loose
among them?

At these moments I wept bitterly, and wished that peace would
revisit my mind only that I might afford them consolation and
happiness. But that could not be. Remorse extinguished every
hope. I had been the author of unalterable evils; and I lived
in daily fear, lest the monster whom I had created should
perpetrate some new wickedness. I had an obscure feeling that
all was not over, and that he would still commit some signal
crime, which by its enormity should almost efface the
recollection of the past. There was always scope for fear, so
long as anything I loved remained behind. My abhorrence of
this fiend cannot be conceived. When I thought of him, I
gnashed my teeth, my eyes became inflamed, and I ardently
wished to extinguish that life which I had so thoughtlessly
bestowed. When I reflected on his crimes and malice, my hatred
and revenge burst all bounds of moderation. I would have made
a pilgrimage to the highest peak of the Andes, could I, when
there, have precipitated him to their base. I wished to see
him again, that I might wreak the utmost extent of abhorrence
on his head, and avenge the deaths of William and Justine.

Our house was the house of mourning. My father's health was
deeply shaken by the horror of the recent events. Elizabeth
was sad and desponding; she no longer took delight in her
ordinary occupations; all pleasure seemed to her sacrilege
toward the dead; eternal woe and tears she then thought was the
just tribute she should pay to innocence so blasted and
destroyed. She was no longer that happy creature, who in
earlier youth wandered with me on the banks of the lake, and
talked with ecstasy of our future prospects. The first of
those sorrows which are sent to wean us from the earth, had
visited her, and its dimming influence quenched her dearest smiles.

"When I reflect, my dear cousin," said she, "on the miserable
death of Justine Moritz, I no longer see the world and its
works as they before appeared to me. Before, I looked upon the
accounts of vice and injustice, that I read in books or heard
from others, as tales of ancient days, or imaginary evils; at
least they were remote, and more familiar to reason than to the
imagination; but now misery has come home, and men appear to
me as monsters thirsting for each other's blood. Yet I am
certainly unjust. Everybody believed that poor girl to be
guilty; and if she could have committed the crime for which
she suffered, assuredly she would have been the most depraved
of human creatures. For the sake of a few jewels, to have
murdered the son of her benefactor and friend, a child whom she
had nursed from its birth, and appeared to love as if it had
been her own! I could not consent to the death of any human
being; but certainly I should have thought such a creature
unfit to remain in the society of men. But she was innocent.
I know, I feel she was innocent; you are of the same opinion,
and that confirms me. Alas! Victor, when falsehood can look so
like the truth, who can assure themselves of certain happiness?
I feel as if I were walking on the edge of a precipice, towards
which thousands are crowding, and endeavouring to plunge me
into the abyss. William and Justine were assassinated, and the
murderer escapes; he walks about the world free, and perhaps
respected. But even if I were condemned to suffer on the
scaffold for the same crimes, I would not change places with
such a wretch."

I listened to this discourse with the extremest agony I, not in
deed, but in effect, was the true murderer Elizabeth read my
anguish in my countenance, and kindly taking my hand, said, "My
dearest friend, you must calm yourself. These events have
affected me, God knows how deeply; but I am not so wretched
as you are. There is an expression of despair, and sometimes
of revenge, in your countenance, that makes me tremble.
Dear Victor, banish these dark passions. Remember the friends
around you, who centre all their hopes in you. Have we lost
the power of rendering you happy? Ah! while we love--while we
are true to each other, here in this land of peace and beauty,
your native country, we may reap every tranquil blessing--what
can disturb our peace?"

And could not such words from her whom I fondly prized before
every other gift of fortune, suffice to chase away the fiend
that lurked in my heart? Even as she spoke I drew near to her,
as if in terror; lest at that very moment the destroyer had
been near to rob me of her.

Thus not the tenderness of friendship, nor the beauty of earth,
nor of heaven, could redeem my soul from woe: the very accents
of love were ineffectual. I was encompassed by a cloud which
no beneficial influence could penetrate. The wounded deer
dragging its fainting limbs to some untrodden brake, there to
gaze upon the arrow which had pierced it, and to die--was but
a type of me.

Sometimes I could cope with the sullen despair that overwhelmed
me: but sometimes the whirlwind passions of my soul drove me to
seek, by bodily exercise and by change of place, some relief
from my intolerable sensations. It was during an access of
this kind that I suddenly left my home, and bending my steps
towards the near Alpine valleys, sought in the magnificence,
the eternity of such scenes, to forget myself and my ephemeral,
because human, sorrows. My wanderings were directed towards
the valley of Chamounix. I had visited it frequently during my
boyhood. Six years had passed since then: _I_ was a
wreck--but nought had changed in those savage and enduring scenes.

I performed the first part of my journey on horseback I
afterwards hired a mule, as the more sure footed, and least
liable to receive injury on these rugged roads. The weather
was fine: it was about the middle of the month of August,
nearly two months after the death of Justine; that miserable
epoch from which I dated all my woe. The weight upon my spirit
was sensibly lightened as I plunged yet deeper in the ravine of
Arve. The immense mountains and precipices that overhung me on
every side--the sound of the river raging among the rocks, and
the dashing of the waterfalls around, spoke of a power mighty
as Omnipotence--and I ceased to fear, or to bend before any
being less almighty than that which had created and ruled the
elements, here displayed in their most terrific guise. Still,
as I ascended higher, the valley assumed a more magnificent and
astonishing character. Ruined castles hanging on the
precipices of piny mountains; the impetuous Arve, and cottages
every here and there peeping forth from among the trees, formed
a scene of singular beauty. But it was augmented and rendered
sublime by the mighty Alps, whose white and shining pyramids
and domes towered above all, as belonging to another earth, the
habitations of another race of beings.

I passed the bridge of Pelissier, where the ravine, which the
river forms, opened before me, and I began to ascend the
mountain that overhangs it. Soon after I entered the valley of
Chamounix. This valley is more wonderful and sublime, but not
so beautiful and picturesque, as that of Servox, through which
I had just passed. The high and snowy mountains were its
immediate boundaries; but I saw no more ruined castles and
fertile fields. Immense glaciers approached the road; I heard
the rumbling thunder of the falling avalanche, and marked the
smoke of its passage. 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 me
during this journey. Some turn in the road, some new object
suddenly perceived and recognised, reminded me of days gone by,
and were associated with the light-hearted gaiety of boyhood.
The very winds whispered in soothing accents, and maternal
nature bade me weep no more. Then again the kindly influence
ceased to act--I found myself fettered again to grief, and
indulging in all the misery of reflection. Then I spurred on
my animal, striving so to forget the world, my fears, and, more
than all, myself--or, in a more desperate fashion, I alighted,
and threw myself on the grass, weighed down by horror and despair.

At length I arrived at the village of Chamounix. Exhaustion
succeeded to the extreme fatigue both of body and of mind which
I had endured. For a short space of time I remained at the
window, watching the pallid lightnings that played above Mont
Blanc, and listening to the rushing of the Arve, which pursued
its noisy way beneath. The same lulling sounds acted as a
lullaby to my too keen sensations: when I placed my head upon
my pillow, sleep crept over me; I felt it as it came, and blest
the giver of oblivion.

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