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Page 67
Chapter 22
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 forever 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.
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