slept; but presently he called to me in a feeble voice, and bidding me
come near, said, "Alas! The strength I relied on is gone; I feel that
I shall soon die, and he, my enemy and persecutor, may still be in
being. Think not, Walton, that in the last moments of my existence I
feel that burning hatred and ardent desire of revenge I once expressed;
but I feel myself justified in desiring the death of my adversary.
During these last days I have been occupied in examining my past
conduct; nor do I find it blamable. In a fit of enthusiastic madness I
created a rational creature and was bound towards him to assure, as far
as was in my power, his happiness and well-being.
"This was my duty, but there was another still paramount to that. My
duties towards the beings of my own species had greater claims to my
attention because they included a greater proportion of happiness or
misery. Urged by this view, I refused, and I did right in refusing, to
create a companion for the first creature. He showed unparalleled
malignity and selfishness in evil; he destroyed my friends; he devoted
to destruction beings who possessed exquisite sensations, happiness,
and wisdom; nor do I know where this thirst for vengeance may end.
Miserable himself that he may render no other wretched, he ought to
die. The task of his destruction was mine, but I have failed. When
actuated by selfish and vicious motives, I asked you to undertake my
unfinished work, and I renew this request now, when I am only induced
by reason and virtue.
"Yet I cannot ask you to renounce your country and friends to fulfil
this task; and now that you are returning to England, you will have
little chance of meeting with him. But the consideration of these
points, and the well balancing of what you may esteem your duties, I
leave to you; my judgment and ideas are already disturbed by the near
approach of death. I dare not ask you to do what I think right, for I
may still be misled by passion.
"That he should live to be an instrument of mischief disturbs me; in
other respects, this hour, when I momentarily expect my release, is the
only happy one which I have enjoyed for several years. The forms of
the beloved dead flit before me, and I hasten to their arms. Farewell,
Walton! Seek happiness in tranquillity and avoid ambition, even if it
be only the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself in
science and discoveries. Yet why do I say this? I have myself been
blasted in these hopes, yet another may succeed."
His voice became fainter as he spoke, and at length, exhausted by his
effort, he sank into silence. About half an hour afterwards he
attempted again to speak but was unable; he pressed my hand feebly, and
his eyes closed forever, while the irradiation of a gentle smile passed
away from his lips.
Margaret, what comment can I make on the untimely extinction of this
glorious spirit? What can I say that will enable you to understand the
depth of my sorrow? All that I should express would be inadequate and
feeble. My tears flow; my mind is overshadowed by a cloud of
disappointment. But I journey towards England, and I may there find
consolation.
I am interrupted. What do these sounds portend? It is midnight; the
breeze blows fairly, and the watch on deck scarcely stir. Again there
is a sound as of a human voice, but hoarser; it comes from the cabin
where the remains of Frankenstein still lie. I must arise and examine.
Good night, my sister.
Great God! what a scene has just taken place! I am yet dizzy with the
remembrance of it. I hardly know whether I shall have the power to
detail it; yet the tale which I have recorded would be incomplete
without this final and wonderful catastrophe. I entered the cabin where
lay the remains of my ill-fated and admirable friend. Over him hung a
form which I cannot find words to describe--gigantic in stature, yet
uncouth and distorted in its proportions. As he hung over the coffin,
his face was concealed by long locks of ragged hair; but one vast hand
was extended, in colour and apparent texture like that of a mummy. When
he heard the sound of my approach, he ceased to utter exclamations of
grief and horror and sprung 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 daemon. "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
torture such as you cannot even imagine.
"After the murder of Clerval I returned to Switzerland, heart-broken
and overcome. I pitied Frankenstein; my pity amounted to horror; I
abhorred myself. But when I discovered that he, the author at once of
my existence and of its unspeakable torments, dared to hope for
happiness, that while he accumulated wretchedness and despair upon me
he sought his own enjoyment in feelings and passions from the
indulgence of which I was forever barred, then impotent envy and bitter
indignation filled me with an insatiable thirst for vengeance. I
recollected my threat and resolved that it should be accomplished. I
knew that I was preparing for myself a deadly torture, but I was the
slave, not the master, of an impulse which I detested yet could not
disobey. Yet when she died! Nay, then I was not miserable. I had
cast off all feeling, subdued all anguish, to riot in the excess of my
despair. Evil thenceforth became my good. Urged thus far, I had no
choice but to adapt my nature to an element which I had willingly
chosen. The completion of my demoniacal design became an insatiable
passion. And now it is ended; there is my last victim!"
I was at first touched by the expressions of his misery; yet, when I
called to mind what Frankenstein had said of his powers of eloquence
and persuasion, and when I again cast my eyes on the lifeless form of
my friend, indignation was rekindled within me. "Wretch!" I said. "It
is well that you come here to whine over the desolation that you have
made. You throw a torch into a pile of buildings, and when they are
consumed, you sit among the ruins and lament the fall. Hypocritical
fiend! If he whom you mourn still lived, still would he be the object,
again would he become the prey, of your accursed vengeance. It is not
pity that you feel; you lament only because the victim of your
malignity is withdrawn from your power."
"Oh, it is not thus--not thus," interrupted the being. "Yet such must
be the impression conveyed to you by what appears to be the purport of
my actions. Yet I seek not a fellow feeling in my misery. No sympathy
may I ever find. When I first sought it, it was the love of virtue,
the feelings of happiness and affection with which my whole being
overflowed, that I wished to be participated. But now that virtue has
become to me a shadow, and that happiness and affection are turned into
bitter and loathing despair, in what should I seek for sympathy? I am
content to suffer alone while my sufferings shall endure; when I die, I
am well satisfied that abhorrence and opprobrium should load my memory.
Once my fancy was soothed with dreams of virtue, of fame, and of
enjoyment. Once I falsely hoped to meet with beings who, pardoning my
outward form, would love me for the excellent qualities which I was
capable of unfolding. I was nourished with high thoughts of honour and
devotion. But now crime has degraded me beneath the meanest animal. No
guilt, no mischief, no malignity, no misery, can be found comparable to
mine. When I run over the frightful catalogue of my sins, I cannot
believe that I am the same creature whose thoughts were once filled
with sublime and transcendent visions of the beauty and the majesty of
goodness. But it is even so; the fallen angel becomes a malignant
devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates
in his desolation; I am alone.
"You, who call Frankenstein your friend, seem to have a knowledge of my
crimes and his misfortunes. But in the detail which he gave you of them
he could not sum up the hours and months of misery which I endured
wasting in impotent passions. For while I destroyed his hopes, I did
not satisfy my own desires. They were forever ardent and craving; still
I desired love and fellowship, and I was still spurned. Was there no
injustice in this? Am I to be thought the only criminal, when all
humankind sinned against me? Why do you not hate Felix, who drove his
friend from his door with contumely? Why do you not execrate the rustic
who sought to destroy the saviour of his child? Nay, these are virtuous
and immaculate beings! I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an
abortion, to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled on. Even now my
blood boils at the recollection of this injustice.
"But it is true that I am a wretch. I have murdered the lovely and the
helpless; I have strangled the innocent as they slept and grasped to
death his throat who never injured me or any other living thing. I
have devoted my creator, the select specimen of all that is worthy of
love and admiration among men, to misery; I have pursued him even to
that irremediable ruin.
"There he lies, white and cold in death. You hate me, but your
abhorrence cannot equal that with which I regard myself. I look on the
hands which executed the deed; I think on the heart in which the
imagination of it was conceived and long for the moment when these
hands will meet my eyes, when that imagination will haunt my thoughts
no more.
"Fear not that I shall be the instrument of future mischief. My work
is nearly complete. Neither yours nor any man's death is needed to
consummate the series of my being and accomplish that which must be
done, but it requires my own. Do not think that I shall be slow to
perform this sacrifice. I shall quit your vessel on the ice raft which
brought me thither and shall seek the most northern extremity of the
globe; I shall collect my funeral pile and consume to ashes this
miserable frame, that its remains may afford no light to any curious
and unhallowed wretch who would create such another as I have been. I
shall die. I shall no longer feel the agonies which now consume me or
be the prey of feelings unsatisfied, yet unquenched. He is dead who
called me into being; and when I shall be no more, the very remembrance
of us both will speedily vanish. I shall no longer see the sun or
stars or feel the winds play on my cheeks.
"Light, feeling, and sense will pass away; and in this condition must I
find my happiness. Some years ago, when the images which this world
affords first opened upon me, when I felt the cheering warmth of summer
and heard the rustling of the leaves and the warbling of the birds, and
these were all to me, I should have wept to die; now it is my only
consolation. Polluted by crimes and torn by the bitterest remorse,
where can I find rest but in death?
"Farewell! I leave you, and in you the last of humankind whom these
eyes will ever behold. Farewell, Frankenstein! If thou wert yet alive
and yet cherished a desire of revenge against me, it would be better
satiated in my life than in my destruction. But it was not so; thou
didst seek my extinction, that I might not cause greater wretchedness;
and if yet, in some mode unknown to me, thou hadst not ceased to think
and feel, thou wouldst not desire against me a vengeance greater than
that which I feel. Blasted as thou wert, my agony was still superior to
thine, for the bitter sting of remorse will not cease to rankle in my
wounds until death shall close them forever.
"But soon," he cried with sad and solemn enthusiasm, "I shall die, and
what I now feel be no longer felt. Soon these burning miseries will be
extinct. I shall ascend my funeral pile triumphantly and exult in the
agony of the torturing flames. The light of that conflagration will
fade away; my ashes will be swept into the sea by the winds. My spirit
will sleep in peace, or if it thinks, it will not surely think thus.
Farewell."
He sprang from the cabin window as he said this, upon the ice raft
which lay close to the vessel. He was soon borne away by the waves and
lost in darkness and distance.
;
,
1
,
,
"
!
;
2
,
,
,
3
.
,
,
4
;
5
.
6
7
;
.
8
,
9
,
-
.
10
11
"
,
.
12
13
14
.
,
,
,
15
.
16
;
;
17
,
,
18
;
.
19
,
20
.
,
.
21
,
22
,
,
23
.
24
25
"
26
;
,
27
.
28
,
,
29
;
30
.
,
31
.
32
33
"
;
34
,
,
,
35
.
36
,
.
,
37
!
,
38
39
.
?
40
,
.
"
41
42
,
,
43
,
.
44
;
,
45
,
46
.
47
48
,
49
?
50
?
51
.
;
52
.
,
53
.
54
55
.
?
;
56
,
.
57
,
;
58
.
.
59
,
.
60
61
!
!
62
.
63
;
64
.
65
-
.
66
-
-
,
67
.
,
68
;
69
,
.
70
,
71
.
72
,
73
.
74
.
75
.
76
77
,
,
78
,
,
79
80
.
81
82
"
!
"
.
"
83
;
!
84
,
!
-
!
85
?
,
86
.
!
,
87
.
"
,
,
88
89
,
90
.
;
91
,
92
.
,
93
.
94
-
.
95
.
96
97
"
,
"
,
"
.
98
99
,
100
.
"
101
102
"
?
"
.
"
103
?
,
"
,
,
104
"
.
!
105
-
106
.
107
,
.
108
?
109
,
110
,
111
.
112
113
"
,
-
114
.
;
;
115
.
,
116
,
117
,
118
119
,
120
.
121
.
122
,
123
,
,
124
.
!
,
.
125
,
,
126
.
.
,
127
128
.
129
.
;
!
"
130
131
;
,
132
133
,
134
,
.
"
!
"
.
"
135
136
.
,
137
,
.
138
!
,
,
139
,
.
140
;
141
.
"
142
143
"
,
-
-
,
"
.
"
144
145
.
.
146
.
,
,
147
148
,
.
149
,
150
,
?
151
;
,
152
.
153
,
,
154
.
,
155
,
156
.
157
.
.
158
,
,
,
,
159
.
,
160
161
162
.
;
163
.
164
;
.
165
166
"
,
,
167
.
168
169
.
,
170
.
;
171
,
.
172
?
,
173
?
,
174
?
175
?
,
176
!
,
,
177
,
,
,
.
178
.
179
180
"
.
181
;
182
.
183
,
184
,
;
185
.
186
187
"
,
.
,
188
.
189
;
190
191
,
192
.
193
194
"
.
195
.
'
196
197
,
.
198
.
199
200
;
201
,
202
.
203
.
204
,
.
205
;
,
206
.
207
.
208
209
"
,
,
;
210
.
,
211
,
212
,
213
,
;
214
.
,
215
?
216
217
"
!
,
218
.
,
!
219
,
220
.
;
221
,
;
222
,
,
223
,
224
.
,
225
,
226
.
227
228
"
,
"
,
"
,
229
.
230
.
231
.
232
;
.
233
,
,
.
234
.
"
235
236
,
237
.
238
.
239