however earnest and connected. Such a monster has, then, really existence!
I cannot doubt it, yet I am lost in surprise and admiration. Sometimes I
endeavoured to gain from Frankenstein the particulars of his
creature s formation, but on this point he was impenetrable.
Are you mad, my friend? said he. Or whither does your
senseless curiosity lead you? Would you also create for yourself and the
world a demoniacal enemy? Peace, peace! Learn my miseries and do not seek
to increase your own.
Frankenstein discovered that I made notes concerning his history; he asked
to see them and then himself corrected and augmented them in many places,
but principally in giving the life and spirit to the conversations he held
with his enemy. Since you have preserved my narration, said
he, I would not that a mutilated one should go down to
posterity.
Thus has a week passed away, while I have listened to the strangest
tale that ever imagination formed. My thoughts and every feeling of my
soul have been drunk up by the interest for my guest which this tale
and his own elevated and gentle manners have created. I wish to soothe
him, yet can I counsel one so infinitely miserable, so destitute of
every hope of consolation, to live? Oh, no! The only joy that he can
now know will be when he composes his shattered spirit to peace and
death. 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 beings themselves who visit him from the regions of a
remote world. This faith gives a solemnity to his reveries that render
them to me almost as imposing and interesting as truth.
Our conversations are not always confined to his own history and
misfortunes. On every point of general literature he displays
unbounded knowledge and a quick and piercing apprehension. His
eloquence is forcible and touching; nor can I hear him, when he relates
a pathetic incident or endeavours to move the passions of pity or love,
without tears. 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.
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