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
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