I knew that I possessed no money, no friends, no kind
of property. I was, besides, endued with a figure
hideously deformed and loathsome; I was not even of
the same nature as man. I was more agile than
they and could subsist upon coarser diet; I bore the
extremes of heat and cold with less injury to my frame;
my stature far exceeded theirs. When I looked
around I saw and heard of none like me. Was I,
then, a monster, a blot upon the earth, from which
all men fled and whom all men disowned?
“I cannot describe to you the agony that these
reflections inflicted upon me; I tried to dispel them,
but sorrow only increased with knowledge. Oh,
that I had forever remained in my native wood, nor
known nor felt beyond the sensations of hunger, thirst,
and heat!
“Of what a strange nature is knowledge!
It clings to the mind when it has once seized on
it like a lichen on the rock. I wished sometimes
to shake off all thought and feeling, but I learned
that there was but one means to overcome the sensation
of pain, and that was death—a state which
I feared yet did not understand. I admired virtue
and good feelings and loved the gentle manners and
amiable qualities of my cottagers, but I was shut
out from intercourse with them, except through means
which I obtained by stealth, when I was unseen and
unknown, and which rather increased than satisfied
the desire I had of becoming one among my fellows.
The gentle words of Agatha and the animated smiles
of the charming Arabian were not for me. The
mild exhortations of the old man and the lively conversation
of the loved Felix were not for me. Miserable,
unhappy wretch!
“Other lessons were impressed upon me even more
deeply. I heard of the difference of sexes,
and the birth and growth of children, how the father
doted on the smiles of the infant, and the lively sallies
of the older child, how all the life and cares of
the mother were wrapped up in the precious charge,
how the mind of youth expanded and gained knowledge,
of brother, sister, and all the various relationships
which bind one human being to another in mutual bonds.
“But where were my friends and relations?
No father had watched my infant days, no mother had
blessed me with smiles and caresses; or if they had,
all my past life was now a blot, a blind vacancy in
which I distinguished nothing. From my earliest
remembrance I had been as I then was in height and
proportion. I had never yet seen a being resembling
me or who claimed any intercourse with me. What
was I? The question again recurred, to be answered
only with groans.
“I will soon explain to what these feelings
tended, but allow me now to return to the cottagers,
whose story excited in me such various feelings of
indignation, delight, and wonder, but which all terminated
in additional love and reverence for my protectors
(for so I loved, in an innocent, half-painful self-deceit,
to call them).”
Chapter 14
Copyrights
Frankenstein from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
