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 sequel 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 III. 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 for
ever 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 and wretchedness. He had sworn to quit the neighbourhood
of man, and hide himself in deserts; but she had not; and she, who in
all probability was to become a thinking and reasoning animal, might
refuse to comply with a compact made before her creation. They might
even hate each other; the creature who already lived loathed his own
deformity, and might he not conceive a greater abhorrence for it when it
came before his eyes in the female form? She also might turn with
disgust from him to the superior beauty of man; she might quit him, and
he be again alone, exasperated by the fresh provocation of being
deserted by one of his own species. Even if they were to leave Europe, and inhabit the deserts of the new
world, yet one of the first results of those sympathies for which the
dæmon thirsted would be children, and a race of devils would be
propagated upon the earth, who might make the very existence of the
species of man a condition precarious and full of terror. Had I a right,
for my own benefit, to inflict this curse upon everlasting generations? I had before been moved by the sophisms of the being I had created; I
had been struck senseless by his fiendish threats: but now, for the
first time, the wickedness of my promise burst upon me; I shuddered to
think that future ages might curse me as their pest, whose selfishness
had not hesitated to buy its own peace at the price perhaps of the
existence of the whole human race. I trembled, and my heart failed within me; when, on looking up, I saw,
by the light of the moon, the dæmon at the casement. A ghastly grin
wrinkled his lips as he gazed on me, where I sat fulfilling the task
which he had allotted to me. Yes, he had followed me in my travels; he
had loitered in forests, hid himself in caves, or taken refuge in wide
and desert heaths; and he now came to mark my progress, and claim the
fulfilment of my promise. As I looked on him, his countenance expressed the utmost extent of
malice and treachery. I thought with a sensation of madness on my
promise of creating another like to him, and, trembling with passion,
tore to pieces the thing on which I was engaged. The wretch saw me
destroy the creature on whose future existence he depended for
happiness, and, with a howl of devilish despair and revenge, withdrew. I left the room, and, locking the door, made a solemn vow in my own
heart never to resume my labours; and then, with trembling steps, I
sought my own apartment. I was alone; none were near me to dissipate the
gloom, and relieve me from the sickening oppression of the most terrible
reveries. Several hours past, and I remained near my window gazing on the sea; it
was almost motionless, for the winds were hushed, and all nature reposed
under the eye of the quiet moon. A few fishing vessels alone specked the
water, and now and then the gentle breeze wafted the sound of voices, as
the fishermen called to one another. I felt the silence, although I was
hardly conscious of its extreme profundity until my ear was suddenly
arrested by the paddling of oars near the shore, and a person landed
close to my house. In a few minutes after, I heard the creaking of my door, as if some one
endeavoured to open it softly. I trembled from head to foot; I felt a
presentiment of who it was, and wished to rouse one of the peasants who
dwelt in a cottage not far from mine; but I was overcome by the
sensation of helplessness, so often felt in frightful dreams, when you
in vain endeavour to fly from an impending danger, and was rooted to the
spot. Presently I heard the sound of footsteps along the passage; the door
opened, and the wretch whom I dreaded appeared. Shutting the door, he
approached me, and said, in a smothered voice—

“You have destroyed the work which you began; what is it that you
intend? Do you dare to break your promise? I have endured toil and
misery: I left Switzerland with you; I crept along the shores of the
Rhine, among its willow islands, and over the summits of its hills. I
have dwelt many months in the heaths of England, and among the deserts
of Scotland.