Frankenstein

I was soon intro­duced into the pres­ence of the mag­is­trate, an old benev­o­lent man with calm and mild man­ners. He looked upon me, how­ev­er, with some degree of sever­i­ty, and then, turn­ing towards my con­duc­tors, he asked who appeared as wit­ness­es on this occasion. 

About half a dozen men came for­ward; and, one being select­ed by the mag­is­trate, he deposed that he had been out fish­ing the night before with his son and broth­er-in-law, Daniel Nugent, when, about ten o’clock, they observed a strong norther­ly blast ris­ing, and they accord­ing­ly put in for port. It was a very dark night, as the moon had not yet risen; they did not land at the har­bour, but, as they had been accus­tomed, at a creek about two miles below. He walked on first, car­ry­ing a part of the fish­ing tack­le, and his com­pan­ions fol­lowed him at some dis­tance. As he was pro­ceed­ing along the sands, he struck his foot against some­thing and fell at his length on the ground. His com­pan­ions came up to assist him, and by the light of their lantern they found that he had fall­en on the body of a man, who was to all appear­ance dead. Their first sup­po­si­tion was that it was the corpse of some per­son who had been drowned and was thrown on shore by the waves, but on exam­i­na­tion they found that the clothes were not wet and even that the body was not then cold. They instant­ly car­ried it to the cot­tage of an old woman near the spot and endeav­oured, but in vain, to restore it to life. It appeared to be a hand­some young man, about five and twen­ty years of age. He had appar­ent­ly been stran­gled, for there was no sign of any vio­lence except the black mark of fin­gers on his neck. 

The first part of this depo­si­tion did not in the least inter­est me, but when the mark of the fin­gers was men­tioned I remem­bered the mur­der of my broth­er and felt myself extreme­ly agi­tat­ed; my limbs trem­bled, and a mist came over my eyes, which oblig­ed me to lean on a chair for sup­port. The mag­is­trate observed me with a keen eye and of course drew an unfavourable augury from my manner. 

The son con­firmed his father’s account, but when Daniel Nugent was called he swore pos­i­tive­ly that just before the fall of his com­pan­ion, he saw a boat, with a sin­gle man in it, at a short dis­tance from the shore; and as far as he could judge by the light of a few stars, it was the same boat in which I had just landed. 

A woman deposed that she lived near the beach and was stand­ing at the door of her cot­tage, wait­ing for the return of the fish­er­men, about an hour before she heard of the dis­cov­ery of the body, when she saw a boat with only one man in it push off from that part of the shore where the corpse was after­wards found. 

Anoth­er woman con­firmed the account of the fish­er­men hav­ing brought the body into her house; it was not cold. They put it into a bed and rubbed it, and Daniel went to the town for an apothe­cary, but life was quite gone. 

Sev­er­al oth­er men were exam­ined con­cern­ing my land­ing, and they agreed that, with the strong north wind that had arisen dur­ing the night, it was very prob­a­ble that I had beat­en about for many hours and had been oblig­ed to return near­ly to the same spot from which I had depart­ed. Besides, they observed that it appeared that I had brought the body from anoth­er place, and it was like­ly that as I did not appear to know the shore, I might have put into the har­bour igno­rant of the dis­tance of the town of —— from the place where I had deposit­ed the corpse. 

Mr. Kir­win, on hear­ing this evi­dence, desired that I should be tak­en into the room where the body lay for inter­ment, that it might be observed what effect the sight of it would pro­duce upon me. This idea was prob­a­bly sug­gest­ed by the extreme agi­ta­tion I had exhib­it­ed when the mode of the mur­der had been described. I was accord­ing­ly con­duct­ed, by the mag­is­trate and sev­er­al oth­er per­sons, to the inn. I could not help being struck by the strange coin­ci­dences that had tak­en place dur­ing this event­ful night; but, know­ing that I had been con­vers­ing with sev­er­al per­sons in the island I had inhab­it­ed about the time that the body had been found, I was per­fect­ly tran­quil as to the con­se­quences of the affair. 

I entered the room where the corpse lay and was led up to the cof­fin. How can I describe my sen­sa­tions on behold­ing it? I feel yet parched with hor­ror, nor can I reflect on that ter­ri­ble moment with­out shud­der­ing and agony. The exam­i­na­tion, the pres­ence of the mag­is­trate and wit­ness­es, passed like a dream from my mem­o­ry when I saw the life­less form of Hen­ry Cler­val stretched before me. I gasped for breath, and throw­ing myself on the body, I exclaimed, “Have my mur­der­ous machi­na­tions deprived you also, my dear­est Hen­ry, of life? Two I have already destroyed; oth­er vic­tims await their des­tiny; but you, Cler­val, my friend, my benefactor—” 

The human frame could no longer sup­port the ago­nies that I endured, and I was car­ried out of the room in strong convulsions. 

A fever suc­ceed­ed to this. I lay for two months on the point of death; my rav­ings, as I after­wards heard, were fright­ful; I called myself the mur­der­er of William, of Jus­tine, and of Cler­val. Some­times I entreat­ed my atten­dants to assist me in the destruc­tion of the fiend by whom I was tor­ment­ed; and at oth­ers I felt the fin­gers of the mon­ster already grasp­ing my neck, and screamed aloud with agony and ter­ror. For­tu­nate­ly, as I spoke my native lan­guage, Mr. Kir­win alone under­stood me; but my ges­tures and bit­ter cries were suf­fi­cient to affright the oth­er witnesses. 

Why did I not die? More mis­er­able than man ever was before, why did I not sink into for­get­ful­ness and rest? Death snatch­es away many bloom­ing chil­dren, the only hopes of their dot­ing par­ents; how many brides and youth­ful lovers have been one day in the bloom of health and hope, and the next a prey for worms and the decay of the tomb! Of what mate­ri­als was I made that I could thus resist so many shocks, which, like the turn­ing of the wheel, con­tin­u­al­ly renewed the torture? 

But I was doomed to live and in two months found myself as awak­ing from a dream, in a prison, stretched on a wretched bed, sur­round­ed by gaol­ers, turnkeys, bolts, and all the mis­er­able appa­ra­tus of a dun­geon. It was morn­ing, I remem­ber, when I thus awoke to under­stand­ing; I had for­got­ten the par­tic­u­lars of what had hap­pened and only felt as if some great mis­for­tune had sud­den­ly over­whelmed me; but when I looked around and saw the barred win­dows and the squalid­ness of the room in which I was, all flashed across my mem­o­ry and I groaned bitterly. 

This sound dis­turbed an old woman who was sleep­ing in a chair beside me. She was a hired nurse, the wife of one of the turnkeys, and her coun­te­nance expressed all those bad qual­i­ties which often char­ac­terise that class. The lines of her face were hard and rude, like that of per­sons accus­tomed to see with­out sym­pa­this­ing in sights of mis­ery. Her tone expressed her entire indif­fer­ence; she addressed me in Eng­lish, and the voice struck me as one that I had heard dur­ing my sufferings. 

“Are you bet­ter now, sir?” said she. 

I replied in the same lan­guage, with a fee­ble voice, “I believe I am; but if it be all true, if indeed I did not dream, I am sor­ry that I am still alive to feel this mis­ery and horror.” 

“For that mat­ter,” replied the old woman, “if you mean about the gen­tle­man you mur­dered, I believe that it were bet­ter for you if you were dead, for I fan­cy it will go hard with you! How­ev­er, that’s none of my busi­ness; I am sent to nurse you and get you well; I do my duty with a safe con­science; it were well if every­body did the same.” 

I turned with loathing from the woman who could utter so unfeel­ing a speech to a per­son just saved, on the very edge of death; but I felt lan­guid and unable to reflect on all that had passed. The whole series of my life appeared to me as a dream; I some­times doubt­ed if indeed it were all true, for it nev­er pre­sent­ed itself to my mind with the force of reality. 

As the images that float­ed before me became more dis­tinct, I grew fever­ish; a dark­ness pressed around me; no one was near me who soothed me with the gen­tle voice of love; no dear hand sup­port­ed me. The physi­cian came and pre­scribed med­i­cines, and the old woman pre­pared them for me; but utter care­less­ness was vis­i­ble in the first, and the expres­sion of bru­tal­i­ty was strong­ly marked in the vis­age of the sec­ond. Who could be inter­est­ed in the fate of a mur­der­er but the hang­man who would gain his fee? 

These were my first reflec­tions, but I soon learned that Mr. Kir­win had shown me extreme kind­ness. He had caused the best room in the prison to be pre­pared for me (wretched indeed was the best); and it was he who had pro­vid­ed a physi­cian and a nurse. It is true, he sel­dom came to see me, for although he ardent­ly desired to relieve the suf­fer­ings of every human crea­ture, he did not wish to be present at the ago­nies and mis­er­able rav­ings of a mur­der­er. He came, there­fore, some­times to see that I was not neglect­ed, but his vis­its were short and with long intervals. 

One day, while I was grad­u­al­ly recov­er­ing, I was seat­ed in a chair, my eyes half open and my cheeks livid like those in death. I was over­come by gloom and mis­ery and often reflect­ed I had bet­ter seek death than desire to remain in a world which to me was replete with wretched­ness. At one time I con­sid­ered whether I should not declare myself guilty and suf­fer the penal­ty of the law, less inno­cent than poor Jus­tine had been. Such were my thoughts when the door of my apart­ment was opened and Mr. Kir­win entered. His coun­te­nance expressed sym­pa­thy and com­pas­sion; he drew a chair close to mine and addressed me in French, 

“I fear that this place is very shock­ing to you; can I do any­thing to make you more comfortable?” 

“I thank you, but all that you men­tion is noth­ing to me; on the whole earth there is no com­fort which I am capa­ble of receiving.” 

“I know that the sym­pa­thy of a stranger can be but of lit­tle relief to one borne down as you are by so strange a mis­for­tune. But you will, I hope, soon quit this melan­choly abode, for doubt­less evi­dence can eas­i­ly be brought to free you from the crim­i­nal charge.” 

“That is my least con­cern; I am, by a course of strange events, become the most mis­er­able of mor­tals. Per­se­cut­ed and tor­tured as I am and have been, can death be any evil to me?” 

“Noth­ing indeed could be more unfor­tu­nate and ago­nis­ing than the strange chances that have late­ly occurred. You were thrown, by some sur­pris­ing acci­dent, on this shore, renowned for its hos­pi­tal­i­ty, seized imme­di­ate­ly, and charged with mur­der. The first sight that was pre­sent­ed to your eyes was the body of your friend, mur­dered in so unac­count­able a man­ner and placed, as it were, by some fiend across your path.” 

As Mr. Kir­win said this, notwith­stand­ing the agi­ta­tion I endured on this ret­ro­spect of my suf­fer­ings, I also felt con­sid­er­able sur­prise at the knowl­edge he seemed to pos­sess con­cern­ing me. I sup­pose some aston­ish­ment was exhib­it­ed in my coun­te­nance, for Mr. Kir­win has­tened to say, 

“Imme­di­ate­ly upon your being tak­en ill, all the papers that were on your per­son were brought me, and I exam­ined them that I might dis­cov­er some trace by which I could send to your rela­tions an account of your mis­for­tune and ill­ness. I found sev­er­al let­ters, and, among oth­ers, one which I dis­cov­ered from its com­mence­ment to be from your father. I instant­ly wrote to Gene­va; near­ly two months have elapsed since the depar­ture of my let­ter. But you are ill; even now you trem­ble; you are unfit for agi­ta­tion of any kind.” 

“This sus­pense is a thou­sand times worse than the most hor­ri­ble event; tell me what new scene of death has been act­ed, and whose mur­der I am now to lament?” 

“Your fam­i­ly is per­fect­ly well,” said Mr. Kir­win with gen­tle­ness; “and some­one, a friend, is come to vis­it you.” 

I know not by what chain of thought the idea pre­sent­ed itself, but it instant­ly dart­ed into my mind that the mur­der­er had come to mock at my mis­ery and taunt me with the death of Cler­val, as a new incite­ment for me to com­ply with his hell­ish desires. I put my hand before my eyes, and cried out in agony, 

“Oh! Take him away! I can­not see him; for God’s sake, do not let him enter!” 

Mr. Kir­win regard­ed me with a trou­bled coun­te­nance. He could not help regard­ing my excla­ma­tion as a pre­sump­tion of my guilt and said in rather a severe tone, 

“I should have thought, young man, that the pres­ence of your father would have been wel­come instead of inspir­ing such vio­lent repugnance.” 

“My father!” cried I, while every fea­ture and every mus­cle was relaxed from anguish to plea­sure. “Is my father indeed come? How kind, how very kind! But where is he, why does he not has­ten to me?” 

My change of man­ner sur­prised and pleased the mag­is­trate; per­haps he thought that my for­mer excla­ma­tion was a momen­tary return of delir­i­um, and now he instant­ly resumed his for­mer benev­o­lence. He rose and quit­ted the room with my nurse, and in a moment my father entered it. 

Noth­ing, at this moment, could have giv­en me greater plea­sure than the arrival of my father. I stretched out my hand to him and cried, 

“Are you then safe—and Elizabeth—and Ernest?” 

My father calmed me with assur­ances of their wel­fare and endeav­oured, by dwelling on these sub­jects so inter­est­ing to my heart, to raise my despond­ing spir­its; but he soon felt that a prison can­not be the abode of cheer­ful­ness. “What a place is this that you inhab­it, my son!” said he, look­ing mourn­ful­ly at the barred win­dows and wretched appear­ance of the room. “You trav­elled to seek hap­pi­ness, but a fatal­i­ty seems to pur­sue you. And poor Clerval—” 

The name of my unfor­tu­nate and mur­dered friend was an agi­ta­tion too great to be endured in my weak state; I shed tears. 

“Alas! Yes, my father,” replied I; “some des­tiny of the most hor­ri­ble kind hangs over me, and I must live to ful­fil it, or sure­ly I should have died on the cof­fin of Henry.” 

We were not allowed to con­verse for any length of time, for the pre­car­i­ous state of my health ren­dered every pre­cau­tion nec­es­sary that could ensure tran­quil­li­ty. Mr. Kir­win came in and insist­ed that my strength should not be exhaust­ed by too much exer­tion. But the appear­ance of my father was to me like that of my good angel, and I grad­u­al­ly recov­ered my health. 

As my sick­ness quit­ted me, I was absorbed by a gloomy and black melan­choly that noth­ing could dis­si­pate. The image of Cler­val was for ever before me, ghast­ly and mur­dered. More than once the agi­ta­tion into which these reflec­tions threw me made my friends dread a dan­ger­ous relapse. Alas! Why did they pre­serve so mis­er­able and detest­ed a life? It was sure­ly that I might ful­fil my des­tiny, which is now draw­ing to a close. Soon, oh, very soon, will death extin­guish these throb­bings and relieve me from the mighty weight of anguish that bears me to the dust; and, in exe­cut­ing the award of jus­tice, I shall also sink to rest. Then the appear­ance of death was dis­tant, although the wish was ever present to my thoughts; and I often sat for hours motion­less and speech­less, wish­ing for some mighty rev­o­lu­tion that might bury me and my destroy­er in its ruins. 

The sea­son of the assizes approached. I had already been three months in prison, and although I was still weak and in con­tin­u­al dan­ger of a relapse, I was oblig­ed to trav­el near­ly a hun­dred miles to the coun­try town where the court was held. Mr. Kir­win charged him­self with every care of col­lect­ing wit­ness­es and arrang­ing my defence. I was spared the dis­grace of appear­ing pub­licly as a crim­i­nal, as the case was not brought before the court that decides on life and death. The grand jury reject­ed the bill, on its being proved that I was on the Orkney Islands at the hour the body of my friend was found; and a fort­night after my removal I was lib­er­at­ed from prison. 

My father was enrap­tured on find­ing me freed from the vex­a­tions of a crim­i­nal charge, that I was again allowed to breathe the fresh atmos­phere and per­mit­ted to return to my native coun­try. I did not par­tic­i­pate in these feel­ings, for to me the walls of a dun­geon or a palace were alike hate­ful. The cup of life was poi­soned for ever, and although the sun shone upon me, as upon the hap­py and gay of heart, I saw around me noth­ing but a dense and fright­ful dark­ness, pen­e­trat­ed by no light but the glim­mer of two eyes that glared upon me. Some­times they were the expres­sive eyes of Hen­ry, lan­guish­ing in death, the dark orbs near­ly cov­ered by the lids and the long black lash­es that fringed them; some­times it was the watery, cloud­ed eyes of the mon­ster, as I first saw them in my cham­ber at Ingolstadt. 

My father tried to awak­en in me the feel­ings of affec­tion. He talked of Gene­va, which I should soon vis­it, of Eliz­a­beth and Ernest; but these words only drew deep groans from me. Some­times, indeed, I felt a wish for hap­pi­ness and thought with melan­choly delight of my beloved cousin or longed, with a devour­ing mal­adie du pays, to see once more the blue lake and rapid Rhone, that had been so dear to me in ear­ly child­hood; but my gen­er­al state of feel­ing was a tor­por in which a prison was as wel­come a res­i­dence as the divinest scene in nature; and these fits were sel­dom inter­rupt­ed but by parox­ysms of anguish and despair. At these moments I often endeav­oured to put an end to the exis­tence I loathed, and it required unceas­ing atten­dance and vig­i­lance to restrain me from com­mit­ting some dread­ful act of violence. 

Yet one duty remained to me, the rec­ol­lec­tion of which final­ly tri­umphed over my self­ish despair. It was nec­es­sary that I should return with­out delay to Gene­va, there to watch over the lives of those I so fond­ly loved and to lie in wait for the mur­der­er, that if any chance led me to the place of his con­ceal­ment, or if he dared again to blast me by his pres­ence, I might, with unfail­ing aim, put an end to the exis­tence of the mon­strous image which I had endued with the mock­ery of a soul still more mon­strous. My father still desired to delay our depar­ture, fear­ful that I could not sus­tain the fatigues of a jour­ney, for I was a shat­tered wreck—the shad­ow of a human being. My strength was gone. I was a mere skele­ton, and fever night and day preyed upon my wast­ed frame. 

Still, as I urged our leav­ing Ire­land with such inqui­etude and impa­tience, my father thought it best to yield. We took our pas­sage on board a ves­sel bound for Havre-de-Grace and sailed with a fair wind from the Irish shores. It was mid­night. I lay on the deck look­ing at the stars and lis­ten­ing to the dash­ing of the waves. I hailed the dark­ness that shut Ire­land from my sight, and my pulse beat with a fever­ish joy when I reflect­ed that I should soon see Gene­va. The past appeared to me in the light of a fright­ful dream; yet the ves­sel in which I was, the wind that blew me from the detest­ed shore of Ire­land, and the sea which sur­round­ed me, told me too forcibly that I was deceived by no vision and that Cler­val, my friend and dear­est com­pan­ion, had fall­en a vic­tim to me and the mon­ster of my cre­ation. I repassed, in my mem­o­ry, my whole life; my qui­et hap­pi­ness while resid­ing with my fam­i­ly in Gene­va, the death of my moth­er, and my depar­ture for Ingol­stadt. I remem­bered, shud­der­ing, the mad enthu­si­asm that hur­ried me on to the cre­ation of my hideous ene­my, and I called to mind the night in which he first lived. I was unable to pur­sue the train of thought; a thou­sand feel­ings pressed upon me, and I wept bitterly. 

Ever since my recov­ery from the fever, I had been in the cus­tom of tak­ing every night a small quan­ti­ty of lau­danum, for it was by means of this drug only that I was enabled to gain the rest nec­es­sary for the preser­va­tion of life. Oppressed by the rec­ol­lec­tion of my var­i­ous mis­for­tunes, I now swal­lowed dou­ble my usu­al quan­ti­ty and soon slept pro­found­ly. But sleep did not afford me respite from thought and mis­ery; my dreams pre­sent­ed a thou­sand objects that scared me. Towards morn­ing I was pos­sessed by a kind of night­mare; I felt the fiend’s grasp in my neck and could not free myself from it; groans and cries rang in my ears. My father, who was watch­ing over me, per­ceiv­ing my rest­less­ness, awoke me; the dash­ing waves were around, the cloudy sky above, the fiend was not here: a sense of secu­ri­ty, a feel­ing that a truce was estab­lished between the present hour and the irre­sistible, dis­as­trous future impart­ed to me a kind of calm for­get­ful­ness, of which the human mind is by its struc­ture pecu­liar­ly susceptible.