And on the morrow Justine died. Elizabeth’s
heart-rending eloquence failed to move the judges
from their settled conviction in the criminality of
the saintly sufferer. My passionate and indignant
appeals were lost upon them. And when I received
their cold answers and heard the harsh, unfeeling
reasoning of these men, my purposed avowal died away
on my lips. Thus I might proclaim myself a madman,
but not revoke the sentence passed upon my wretched
victim. She perished on the scaffold as a murderess!
From the tortures of my own heart, I turned to contemplate
the deep and voiceless grief of my Elizabeth.
This also was my doing! And my father’s
woe, and the desolation of that late so smiling home
all was the work of my thrice-accursed hands!
Ye weep, unhappy ones, but these are not your last
tears! Again shall you raise the funeral wail,
and the sound of your lamentations shall again and
again be heard! Frankenstein, your son, your
kinsman, your early, much-loved friend; he who would
spend each vital drop of blood for your sakes, who
has no thought nor sense of joy except as it is mirrored
also in your dear countenances, who would fill the
air with blessings and spend his life in serving you—he
bids you weep, to shed countless tears; happy beyond
his hopes, if thus inexorable fate be satisfied, and
if the destruction pause before the peace of the grave
have succeeded to your sad torments!
Thus spoke my prophetic soul, as, torn by remorse,
horror, and despair, I beheld those I loved spend
vain sorrow upon the graves of William and Justine,
the first hapless victims to my unhallowed arts.
Chapter 9
Nothing is more painful to the human mind than, after
the feelings have been worked up by a quick succession
of events, the dead calmness of inaction and certainty
which follows and deprives the soul both of hope and
fear. Justine died, she rested, and I was alive.
The blood flowed freely in my veins, but a weight
of despair and remorse pressed on my heart which nothing
could remove. Sleep fled from my eyes; I wandered
like an evil spirit, for I had committed deeds of mischief
beyond description horrible, and more, much more (I
persuaded myself) was yet behind. Yet my heart
overflowed with kindness and the love of virtue.
I had begun life with benevolent intentions and thirsted
for the moment when I should put them in practice
and make myself useful to my fellow beings.
Now all was blasted; instead of that serenity of conscience
which allowed me to look back upon the past with self-satisfaction,
and from thence to gather promise of new hopes, I
was seized by remorse and the sense of guilt, which
hurried me away to a hell of intense tortures such
as no language can describe.
This state of mind preyed upon my health, which had
perhaps never entirely recovered from the first shock
it had sustained. I shunned the face of man;
all sound of joy or complacency was torture to me;
solitude was my only consolation—deep, dark,
deathlike solitude.
