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Page 16
The summer months passed while I was thus engaged, heart and soul, in
one pursuit. It was a most beautiful season; never did the fields
bestow a more plentiful harvest or the vines yield a more luxuriant
vintage, but my eyes were insensible to the charms of nature. And the
same feelings which made me neglect the scenes around me caused me also
to forget those friends who were so many miles absent, and whom I had
not seen for so long a time. I knew my silence disquieted them, and I
well remembered the words of my father: "I know that while you are
pleased with yourself you will think of us with affection, and we shall
hear regularly from you. You must pardon me if I regard any
interruption in your correspondence as a proof that your other duties
are equally neglected."
I knew well therefore what would be my father's feelings, but I could
not tear my thoughts from my employment, loathsome in itself, but which
had taken an irresistible hold of my imagination. I wished, as it
were, to procrastinate all that related to my feelings of affection
until the great object, which swallowed up every habit of my nature,
should be completed.
I then thought that my father would be unjust if he ascribed my neglect
to vice or faultiness on my part, but I am now convinced that he was
justified in conceiving that I should not be altogether free from
blame. A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and
peaceful mind and never to allow passion or a transitory desire to
disturb his tranquillity. I do not think that the pursuit of knowledge
is an exception to this rule. If the study to which you apply yourself
has a tendency to weaken your affections and to destroy your taste for
those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that
study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human
mind. If this rule were always observed; if no man allowed any pursuit
whatsoever to interfere with the tranquillity of his domestic
affections, Greece had not been enslaved, Caesar would have spared his
country, America would have been discovered more gradually, and the
empires of Mexico and Peru had not been destroyed.
But I forget that I am moralizing in the most interesting part of my
tale, and your looks remind me to proceed. My father made no reproach
in his letters and only took notice of my science by inquiring into my
occupations more particularly than before. Winter, spring, and summer
passed away during my labours; but I did not watch the blossom or the
expanding leaves--sights which before always yielded me supreme
delight--so deeply was I engrossed in my occupation. The leaves of
that year had withered before my work drew near to a close, and now
every day showed me more plainly how well I had succeeded. But my
enthusiasm was checked by my anxiety, and I appeared rather like one
doomed by slavery to toil in the mines, or any other unwholesome trade
than an artist occupied by his favourite employment. Every night I was
oppressed by a slow fever, and I became nervous to a most painful
degree; the fall of a leaf startled me, and I shunned my fellow
creatures as if I had been guilty of a crime. Sometimes I grew alarmed
at the wreck I perceived that I had become; the energy of my purpose
alone sustained me: my labours would soon end, and I believed that
exercise and amusement would then drive away incipient disease; and I
promised myself both of these when my creation should be complete.
Chapter 5
It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishment
of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I
collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a
spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was
already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the
panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the
half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature
open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.
How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate
the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to
form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as
beautiful. Beautiful! Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered
the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous
black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these
luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes,
that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which
they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips.
The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings
of human nature. I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole
purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. For this I had
deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour
that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty
of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my
heart. Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I
rushed out of the room and continued a long time traversing my
bed-chamber, unable to compose my mind to sleep. At length lassitude
succeeded to the tumult I had before endured, and I threw myself on the
bed in my clothes, endeavouring to seek a few moments of
forgetfulness. But it was in vain; I slept, indeed, but I was
disturbed by the wildest dreams. I thought I saw Elizabeth, in the
bloom of health, walking in the streets of Ingolstadt. Delighted and
surprised, I embraced her, but as I imprinted the first kiss on her
lips, they became livid with the hue of death; her features appeared to
change, and I thought that I held the corpse of my dead mother in my
arms; a shroud enveloped her form, and I saw the grave-worms crawling
in the folds of the flannel. I started from my sleep with horror; a
cold dew covered my forehead, my teeth chattered, and every limb became
convulsed; when, by the dim and yellow light of the moon, as it forced
its way through the window shutters, I beheld the wretch--the
miserable monster whom I had created. He held up the curtain of the
bed; and his eyes, if eyes they may be called, were fixed on me. His
jaws opened, and he muttered some inarticulate sounds, while a grin
wrinkled his cheeks. He might have spoken, but I did not hear; one
hand was stretched out, seemingly to detain me, but I escaped and
rushed downstairs. I took refuge in the courtyard belonging to the
house which I inhabited, where I remained during the rest of the night,
walking up and down in the greatest agitation, listening attentively,
catching and fearing each sound as if it were to announce the approach
of the demoniacal corpse to which I had so miserably given life.
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