I shall relate events that impressed me with feelings which, from what I had been, have made me what I am.
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.
Sometimes I endeavoured to gain from Frankenstein the particulars of his creature’s formation; but on this point he was impenetrable.
Was there no injustice in this? Am I to be thought the only criminal, when all humankind sinned against me? Why do you not hate Felix, who drove his friend from his door with contumely? Why do you not execrate the rustic who sought to destroy the saviour of his child? Nay, these are virtuous and immaculate beings! I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled on. Even now my blood boils at the recollection of this injustice.
Prepare! your toils only begin: wrap yourself in furs, and provide food, for we shall.
Peace, peace! learn my miseries, and do not seek to increase your own.
I am malicious because I am miserable. Am I not shunned and hated by all mankind? You, my creator, would tear me to pieces and triumph; remember that, and tell me why I should pity man more than he pities me?
Some weeks before this period I had procured a sledge and dogs, and thus traversed the snows with inconceivable speed.
Darkness had no effect upon my fancy, and a churchyard was to me merely the receptacle of bodies deprived of life, which, from being the seat of beauty and strength, had become food for the worm.
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 communion consolation for his miseries, or excitements to his vengeance, that they are not the creations of his fancy, but the real beings who visit him from the regions of a remote world.
On every point of general literature he displays unbounded knowledge, and a quick and piercing apprehension. His eloquence is forcible and touching;.
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.
What a glorious creature must he have been in the days of his prosperity, when he is thus noble and godlike in ruin. He seems to feel his own worth, and the greatness of his fall.
All my speculations and hopes are as nothing; and, like the archangel who aspired to omnipotence, I am chained in an eternal hell.
I trod heaven in my thoughts, now exulting in my powers, now burning with the idea of their effects.
That is also my victim!” he exclaimed; “in his murder my crimes are consummated; the miserable series of my being is wound to its close! 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 may not answer me.
An open and capacious forehead gave indications of a good understanding, joined to great frankness of disposition.
I indeed perceptibly gained on it; and when, after nearly two days’ journey, I beheld my enemy at no more than a mile distant, my heart bounded within me.
My proud step was no interpreter of my heart, for I deeply felt that, though surrounded by every luxury, I was a beggar.
It is true, we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world; but on that account we shall be more attached to one another. Our lives will not be happy, but they will be harmless and free from the misery I now feel.