Chapter 2



We were brought up together; there was not quite a year

difference in our ages. I need not say that we were strangers

to any species of disunion or dispute. Harmony was the soul

of our companionship, and the diversity and contrast

that subsisted in our characters drew us nearer together.

Elizabeth was of a calmer and more concentrated disposition;

but, with all my ardour, I was capable of a more intense application

and was more deeply smitten with the thirst for knowledge.

She busied herself with following the aerial creations

of the poets; and in the majestic and wondrous scenes

which surrounded our Swiss home--the sublime shapes

of the mountains, the changes of the seasons, tempest and calm,

the silence of winter, and the life and turbulence

of our Alpine summers--she found ample scope for admiration

and delight. While my companion contemplated with a serious

and satisfied spirit the magnificent appearances of things,

I delighted in investigating their causes. The world was to me

a secret which I desired to divine. Curiosity, earnest research

to learn the hidden laws of nature, gladness akin to rapture,

as they were unfolded to me, are among the earliest sensations

I can remember.



On the birth of a second son, my junior by seven years,

my parents gave up entirely their wandering life and fixed themselves

in their native country. We possessed a house in Geneva, and a campagne

on Belrive, the eastern shore of the lake, at the distance

of rather more than a league from the city. We resided principally

in the latter, and the lives of my parents were passed

in considerable seclusion. It was my temper to avoid a crowd

and to attach myself fervently to a few. I was indifferent, therefore,

to my school-fellows in general; but I united myself in the bonds

of the closest friendship to one among them. Henry Clerval

was the son of a merchant of Geneva. He was a boy

of singular talent and fancy. He loved enterprise, hardship,

and even danger for its own sake. He was deeply read

in books of chivalry and romance. He composed heroic songs

and began to write many a tale of enchantment and knightly adventure.

He tried to make us act plays and to enter into masquerades,

in which the characters were drawn from the heroes of Roncesvalles,

of the Round Table of King Arthur, and the chivalrous train

who shed their blood to redeem the holy sepulchre

from the hands of the infidels.



No human being could have passed a happier childhood than myself.

My parents were possessed by the very spirit of kindness and indulgence.

We felt that they were not the tyrants to rule our lot

according to their caprice, but the agents and creators

of all the many delights which we enjoyed. When I mingled

with other families I distinctly discerned how peculiarly fortunate

my lot was, and gratitude assisted the development of filial love.



My temper was sometimes violent, and my passions vehement;

but by some law in my temperature they were turned

not towards childish pursuits but to an eager desire to learn,

and not to learn all things indiscriminately. I confess

that neither the structure of languages, nor the code of governments,

nor the politics of various states possessed attractions for me.

It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn;

and whether it was the outward substance of things

or the inner spirit of nature and the mysterious soul of man

that occupied me, still my inquiries were directed to the metaphysical,

or in its highest sense, the physical secrets of the world.



Meanwhile Clerval occupied himself, so to speak,

with the moral relations of things. The busy stage of life,

the virtues of heroes, and the actions of men were his theme;

and his hope and his dream was to become one among those

whose names are recorded in story as the gallant

and adventurous benefactors of our species. The saintly soul

of Elizabeth shone like a shrine-dedicated lamp in our peaceful home.

Her sympathy was ours; her smile, her soft voice, the sweet glance

of her celestial eyes, were ever there to bless and animate us.

She was the living spirit of love to soften and attract;

I might have become sullen in my study, through the ardour of my nature,

but that she was there to subdue me to a semblance of her own gentleness.

And Clerval--could aught ill entrench on the noble spirit of Clerval?

Yet he might not have been so perfectly humane, so thoughtful

in his generosity, so full of kindness and tenderness

amidst his passion for adventurous exploit, had she not unfolded

to him the real loveliness of beneficence and made the doing good

the end and aim of his soaring ambition.



I feel exquisite pleasure in dwelling on the recollections of childhood,

before misfortune had tainted my mind and changed its bright visions

of extensive usefulness into gloomy and narrow reflections upon self.

Besides, in drawing the picture of my early days, I also record

those events which led, by insensible steps, to my after tale of misery,

for when I would account to myself for the birth of that passion

which afterward ruled my destiny I find it arise, like a mountain river,

from ignoble and almost forgotten sources; but, swelling as it proceeded,

it became the torrent which, in its course, has swept away

all my hopes and joys. Natural philosophy is the genius

that has regulated my fate; I desire, therefore, in this narration,

to state those facts which led to my predilection for that science.

When I was thirteen years of age we all went on a party of pleasure

to the baths near Thonon; the inclemency of the weather

obliged us to remain a day confined to the inn. In this house

I chanced to find a volume of the works of Cornelius Agrippa.

I opened it with apathy; the theory which he attempts

to demonstrate and the wonderful facts which he relates

soon changed this feeling into enthusiasm. A new light

seemed to dawn upon my mind, and bounding with joy,

I communicated my discovery to my father. My father looked carelessly

at the title page of my book and said, "Ah! Cornelius Agrippa!

My dear Victor, do not waste your time upon this; it is sad trash."



If, instead of this remark, my father had taken the pains

to explain to me that the principles of Agrippa

had been entirely exploded and that a modern system of science

had been introduced which possessed much greater powers

than the ancient, because the powers of the latter were chimerical,

while those of the former were real and practical,

under such circumstances I should certainly have thrown Agrippa aside

and have contented my imagination, warmed as it was,

by returning with greater ardour to my former studies.

It is even possible that the train of my ideas

would never have received the fatal impulse that led to my ruin.

But the cursory glance my father had taken of my volume

by no means assured me that he was acquainted with its contents,

and I continued to read with the greatest avidity.

When I returned home my first care was to procure the whole works

of this author, and afterwards of Paracelsus and Albertus Magnus.

I read and studied the wild fancies of these writers with delight;

they appeared to me treasures known to few besides myself.

I have described myself as always having been imbued

with a fervent longing to penetrate the secrets of nature.

In spite of the intense labour and wonderful discoveries

of modern philosophers, I always came from my studies discontented

and unsatisfied. Sir Isaac Newton is said to have avowed

that he felt like a child picking up shells beside the great

and unexplored ocean of truth. Those of his successors

in each branch of natural philosophy with whom I was acquainted

appeared even to my boy's apprehensions as tyros engaged

in the same pursuit.



The untaught peasant beheld the elements around him and was acquainted

with their practical uses. The most learned philosopher knew little more.

He had partially unveiled the face of Nature, but her immortal

lineaments were still a wonder and a mystery. He might dissect,

anatomize, and give names; but, not to speak of a final cause,

causes in their secondary and tertiary grades were utterly unknown to him.

I had gazed upon the fortifications and impediments that seemed

to keep human beings from entering the citadel of nature,

and rashly and ignorantly I had repined.



But here were books, and here were men who had penetrated deeper

and knew more. I took their word for all that they averred,

and I became their disciple. It may appear strange that such

should arise in the eighteenth century; but while I followed the routine

of education in the schools of Geneva, I was, to a great degree,

self-taught with regard to my favourite studies. My father

was not scientific, and I was left to struggle with a child's blindness,

added to a student's thirst for knowledge. Under the guidance

of my new preceptors I entered with the greatest diligence

into the search of the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life;

but the latter soon obtained my undivided attention.

Wealth was an inferior object, but what glory would attend

the discovery if I could banish disease from the human frame

and render man invulnerable to any but a violent death!

Nor were these my only visions. The raising of ghosts or devils

was a promise liberally accorded by my favourite authors,

the fulfillment of which I most eagerly sought; and if my incantations

were always unsuccessful, I attributed the failure rather to my own

inexperience and mistake than to a want of skill or fidelity

in my instructors. And thus for a time I was occupied by exploded systems,

mingling, like an unadept, a thousand contradictory theories

and floundering desperately in a very slough of multifarious knowledge,

guided by an ardent imagination and childish reasoning, till an accident

again changed the current of my ideas. When I was

about fifteen years old we had retired to our house near Bekive,

when we witnessed a most violent and terrible thunderstorm.

It advanced from behind the mountains of Jura, and the thunder burst

at once with frightful loudness from various quarters of the heavens.

I remained, while the storm lasted, watching its progress

with curiosity and delight. As I stood at the door, on a sudden

I beheld a stream of fire issue from an old and beautiful oak

which stood about twenty yards from our house; and so soon

as the dazzling light vanished, the oak had disappeared,

and nothing remained but a blasted stump. When we visited it

the next morning, we found the tree shattered in a singular manner.

It was not splintered by the shock, but entirely reduced

to thin ribbons of wood. I never beheld anything so utterly destroyed.



Before this I was not unacquainted with the more obvious

laws of electricity. On this occasion a man of great research

in natural philosophy was with us, and excited by this catastrophe,

he entered on the explanation of a theory which he had formed

on the subject of electricity and galvanism, which was at once new

and astonishing to me. All that he said threw greatly

into the shade Cornelius Agrippa, Albertus Magnus, and Paracelsus,

the lords of my imagination; but by some fatality the overthrow

of these men disinclined me to pursue my accustomed studies.

It seemed to me as if nothing would or could ever be known.

All that had so long engaged my attention suddenly grew despicable.

By one of those caprices of the mind which we are perhaps

most subject to in early youth, I at once gave up

my former occupations, set down natural history and all its progeny

as a deformed and abortive creation, and entertained

the greatest disdain for a would-be science which

could never even step within the threshold of real knowledge.

In this mood of mind I betook myself to the mathematics

and the branches of study appertaining to that science

as being built upon secure foundations, and so worthy

of my consideration.



Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by such slight ligaments

are we bound to prosperity or ruin. When I look back,

it seems to me as if this almost miraculous change of inclination

and will was the immediate suggestion of the guardian angel

of my life--the last effort made by the spirit of preservation

to avert the storm that was even then hanging in the stars

and ready to envelop me. Her victory was announced

by an unusual tranquillity and gladness of soul which followed

the relinquishing of my ancient and latterly tormenting studies.

It was thus that I was to be taught to associate evil with their prosecution,

happiness with their disregard.



It was a strong effort of the spirit of good, but it was ineffectual.

Destiny was too potent, and her immutable laws had decreed

my utter and terrible destruction.

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