In this retreat I devoted the morning to labour; but
in the evening, when the weather permitted, I walked
on the stony beach of the sea to listen to the waves
as they roared and dashed at my feet. It was
a monotonous yet ever-changing scene. I thought
of Switzerland; it was far different from this desolate
and appalling landscape. Its hills are covered
with vines, and its cottages are scattered thickly
in the plains. Its fair lakes reflect a blue
and gentle sky, and when troubled by the winds, their
tumult is but as the play of a lively infant when
compared to the roarings of the giant ocean.
In this manner I distributed my occupations when I
first arrived, but as I proceeded in my labour, it
became every day more horrible and irksome to me.
Sometimes I could not prevail on myself to enter my
laboratory for several days, and at other times I toiled
day and night in order to complete my work.
It was, indeed, a filthy process in which I was engaged.
During my first experiment, a kind of enthusiastic
frenzy had blinded me to the horror of my employment;
my mind was intently fixed on the consummation of
my labour, and my eyes were shut to the horror of
my proceedings. But now I went to it in cold
blood, and my heart often sickened at the work of my
hands.
Thus situated, employed in the most detestable occupation,
immersed in a solitude where nothing could for an
instant call my attention from the actual scene in
which I was engaged, my spirits became unequal; I
grew restless and nervous. Every moment I feared
to meet my persecutor. Sometimes I sat with
my eyes fixed on the ground, fearing to raise them
lest they should encounter the object which I so much
dreaded to behold. I feared to wander from the
sight of my fellow creatures lest when alone he should
come to claim his companion.
In the mean time I worked on, and my labour was already
considerably advanced. I looked towards its
completion with a tremulous and eager hope, which
I dared not trust myself to question but which was
intermixed with obscure forebodings of evil that made
my heart sicken in my bosom.
Chapter 20
I sat one evening in my laboratory; the sun had set,
and the moon was just rising from the sea; I had not
sufficient light for my employment, and I remained
idle, in a pause of consideration of whether I should
leave my labour for the night or hasten its conclusion
by an unremitting attention to it. As I sat,
a train of reflection occurred to me which led me
to consider the effects of what I was now doing.
Three years before, I was engaged in the same manner
and had created a fiend whose unparalleled barbarity
had desolated my heart and filled it forever with
the bitterest remorse. I was now about to form
another being of whose dispositions I was alike ignorant;
she might become ten thousand times more malignant
than her mate and delight, for its own sake, in murder
Copyrights
Frankenstein from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
