towards the window. Never did I behold a vision so horrible as his face, of
such loathsome yet appalling hideousness. I shut my eyes involuntarily and
endeavoured to recollect what were my duties with regard to this destroyer.
I called on him to stay.
He paused, looking on me with wonder, and again turning towards the
lifeless form of his creator, he seemed to forget my presence, and
every feature and gesture seemed instigated by the wildest rage of some
uncontrollable passion.
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 cannot answer
me.
His voice seemed suffocated, and my first impulses, which had suggested to
me the duty of obeying the dying request of my friend in destroying his
enemy, were now suspended by a mixture of curiosity and compassion. I
approached this tremendous being; I dared not again raise my eyes to his
face, there was something so scaring and unearthly in his ugliness. I
attempted to speak, but the words died away on my lips. The monster
continued to utter wild and incoherent self-reproaches. At length I
gathered resolution to address him in a pause of the tempest of his passion.
Your repentance, I said, is now superfluous. If you
had listened to the voice of conscience and heeded the stings of remorse
before you had urged your diabolical vengeance to this extremity,
Frankenstein would yet have lived.
And do you dream? said the d mon. Do you think that I was then
dead to agony and remorse? He, he continued, pointing to the corpse,
he suffered not in the consummation of the deed. Oh! Not the
ten-thousandth portion of the anguish that was mine during the
lingering detail of its execution. A frightful selfishness hurried me
on, while my heart was poisoned with remorse. Think you that the
groans of Clerval were music to my ears? My heart was fashioned to be
susceptible of love and sympathy, and when wrenched by misery to vice
and hatred, it did not endure the violence of the change without
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