I knew well therefore what would be my father’s
feelings, but I could not tear my thoughts from my
employment, loathsome in itself, but which had taken
an irresistible hold of my imagination. I wished,
as it were, to procrastinate all that related to my
feelings of affection until the great object, which
swallowed up every habit of my nature, should be completed.
I then thought that my father would be unjust if he
ascribed my neglect to vice or faultiness on my part,
but I am now convinced that he was justified in conceiving
that I should not be altogether free from blame.
A human being in perfection ought always to preserve
a calm and peaceful mind and never to allow passion
or a transitory desire to disturb his tranquillity.
I do not think that the pursuit of knowledge is an
exception to this rule. If the study to which
you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections
and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures
in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study
is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting
the human mind. If this rule were always observed;
if no man allowed any pursuit whatsoever to interfere
with the tranquillity of his domestic affections,
Greece had not been enslaved, Caesar would have spared
his country, America would have been discovered more
gradually, and the empires of Mexico and Peru had
not been destroyed.
But I forget that I am moralizing in the most interesting
part of my tale, and your looks remind me to proceed.
My father made no reproach in his letters and only
took notice of my silence by inquiring into my occupations
more particularly than before. Winter, spring,
and summer passed away during my labours; but I did
not watch the blossom or the expanding leaves—sights
which before always yielded me supreme delight—so
deeply was I engrossed in my occupation. The
leaves of that year had withered before my work drew
near 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.
