17. [Speaker: Frankenstein]
The being finished speaking and fixed his looks upon me in the expectation of a
reply. But I was bewildered, perplexed, and unable to arrange my ideas
sufficiently to understand the full extent of his proposition. He continued,
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.
The latter part of his tale had kindled anew in me the anger that had died away
while he narrated his peaceful life among the cottagers, and as he said this I
could no longer suppress the rage that burned within me.
I do refuse it,
I replied;
and no torture shall ever extort a consent
from me. You may render me the most miserable of men, but you shall never
make me base in my own eyes. Shall I create another like yourself, whose
joint wickedness might desolate the world. Begone! I have answered you; you
may torture me, but I will never consent.
You are in the wrong,
replied the fiend;
and instead of threatening, I
am content to reason with you. 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? You would
not call it murder if you could
precipitate me into one of those ice-rifts and destroy my frame, the work of
your own hands. Shall I respect man when he condemns me? Let him live with
me in the interchange of kindness, and instead of injury I would bestow
every benefit upon him with tears of gratitude at his acceptance. But that
cannot be; the human senses are insurmountable barriers to our union. Yet
mine shall not be the submission of abject slavery. I will revenge my
injuries; if I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear, and chiefly towards
you my arch-enemy, because my creator, do I swear inextinguishable hatred.
Have a care; I will work at your destruction, nor finish until I desolate
your heart, so that you shall curse the hour of your birth.
A fiendish rage animated him as he said this; his face was wrinkled into
contortions too horrible for human eyes to behold; but presently he calmed
himself and proceeded,
I intended to reason. This passion is detrimental to
me, for you do not reflect that you are the cause of its excess. If any
being felt emotions of benevolence towards me, I should return them a
hundred and a hundredfold; for that one creature's sake I would make peace
with the whole kind! But I now indulge in dreams of bliss that cannot be
realized. What I ask of you is reasonable and moderate; I demand a creature
of another sex, but as hideous as myself; the gratification is small, but it
is all that I can receive, and it shall content me. 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. Oh! My creator, make me happy;
let me feel gratitude towards you for one benefit! Let me see that I excite
the sympathy of some existing thing; do not deny me my request!
I was moved. I shuddered when I thought of the possible consequences of my
consent, but I felt that there was some justice in his argument. His tale and
the feelings he now expressed proved him to be a creature of fine sensations,
and did I not as his maker owe him all the portion
of happiness
that it was in my power to bestow? He saw my change of feeling and continued,
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. My companion will be of the same
nature as myself and will be content with the same fare. We shall make our
bed of dried leaves; the sun will shine on us as on man and will ripen our
food. The picture I present to you is peaceful and human, and you must feel
that you could deny it only in the wantonness of power and cruelty. Pitiless
as you have been towards me, I now see compassion in your eyes; let me seize
the favourable moment and persuade you to promise what I so ardently
desire.
You propose,
replied I,
to fly from the habitations of man, to dwell in
those wilds where the beasts of the field will be your only companions. How
can you, who long for the love and sympathy of man, persevere in this exile?
You will return and again seek their kindness, and you will meet with their
detestation; your evil passions will be renewed, and you will then have a
companion to aid you in the task of destruction. This may not be; cease to
argue the point, for I cannot consent.
How inconstant are your feelings! But a moment ago you were moved by my
representations, and why do you again harden yourself to my complaints? I
swear to you, by the earth which I inhabit, and by you that made me, that
with the companion you bestow I will quit the neighbourhood of man and
dwell, as it may chance, in the most savage of places. My evil passions will
have fled, for I shall meet with sympathy! My life will flow quietly away,
and in my dying moments I shall not curse my maker.
His words had a strange effect upon me. I compassionated him and sometimes felt a
wish to console him, but when I looked upon him, when I saw the filthy mass that
moved and talked, my heart sickened and my feelings were altered to those of
horror and hatred. I tried to
stifle these sensations; I thought
that as I could not sympathize with him, I had no right to withhold from him the
small portion of happiness which was yet in my power to bestow.
You swear,
I said,
to be harmless; but have you not already shown a
degree of malice that should reasonably make me distrust you? May not even
this be a feint that will increase your triumph by affording a wider scope
for your revenge?
How is this? I must not be trifled with, and I demand an answer. If I have no
ties and no affections, hatred and vice must be my portion; the love of
another will destroy the cause of my crimes, and I shall become a thing of
whose existence everyone will be ignorant. 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. I shall feel the affections of a sensitive
being and become linked to the chain of existence and events from which I am
now excluded.
I paused some time to reflect on all he had related and the various arguments
which he had employed. I thought of the promise of virtues which he had
displayed on the opening of his existence and the subsequent blight of all
kindly feeling by the loathing and scorn which his protectors had manifested
towards him. His power and threats were not omitted in my calculations; a
creature who could exist in the ice caves of the glaciers and hide himself from
pursuit among the ridges of inaccessible precipices was a being possessing
faculties it would be vain to cope with. After a long pause of reflection I
concluded that the justice due both to him and my fellow creatures demanded of
me that I should comply with his request. Turning to him, therefore, I said,
I consent to your demand, on your solemn oath to quit Europe forever, and
every other place in the neighbourhood of man, as soon as I shall deliver
into your hands a female who will accompany you in your exile.
I swear,
he cried,
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, while
they exist you shall
never behold me again. Depart to your
home and commence your labours; I shall watch their progress with
unutterable anxiety; and fear not but that when you are ready I shall
appear.
Saying this, he suddenly quitted me, fearful, perhaps, of any change in my
sentiments. I saw him descend the mountain with greater speed than the flight of
an eagle, and quickly lost among the undulations of the sea of ice.
His tale had occupied the whole day, and the sun was upon the verge of the
horizon when he departed. I knew that I ought to hasten my descent towards the
valley, as I should soon be encompassed in darkness; but my heart was heavy, and
my steps slow. The labour of winding among the little paths of the mountain and
fixing my feet firmly as I advanced perplexed me, occupied as I was by the
emotions which the occurrences of the day had produced. Night was far advanced
when I came to the halfway resting-place and seated myself beside the fountain.
The stars shone at intervals as the clouds passed from over them; the dark pines
rose before me, and every here and there a broken tree lay on the ground; it was
a scene of wonderful solemnity and stirred strange thoughts within me. I wept
bitterly, and clasping my hands in agony, I exclaimed,
Oh! Stars and clouds
and winds, ye are all about to mock me; if ye really pity me, crush
sensation and memory; let me become as nought; but if not, depart, depart,
and leave me in darkness.
These were wild and miserable thoughts, but I cannot describe to you how the
eternal twinkling of the stars weighed upon me and how I listened to every blast
of wind as if it were a dull ugly siroc on its way to consume me.
Morning dawned before I arrived at the village of Chamounix; I took no rest, but
returned immediately to Geneva. Even in my own heart I could give no expression
to my sensations—they weighed on me with a mountain's weight and their
excess destroyed my agony beneath them. Thus I returned home, and entering the
house, presented myself to the family. My haggard and wild appearance awoke
intense alarm, but I answered no question,
scarcely did I speak. I
felt as if I were placed under a ban—as if I had no right to claim
their sympathies—as if never more might I enjoy companionship with
them. Yet even thus I loved them to adoration; and to save them, I resolved to
dedicate myself to my most abhorred task. The prospect of such an occupation
made every other circumstance of existence pass before me like a dream, and that
thought only had to me the reality of life.