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
chirping 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 human kind 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 hast not yet ceased to
think and feel, thou desirest not my life for my own misery. Blasted as
thou wert, my agony was still superior to thine; for the bitter sting of
remorse may not cease to rankle in my wounds until death shall close
them for ever. “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 sprung 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.