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.



My father observed with pain the alteration perceptible

in my disposition and habits and endeavoured by arguments

deduced from the feelings of his serene conscience and guiltless life

to inspire me with fortitude and awaken in me the courage

to dispel the dark cloud which brooded over me. "Do you think, Victor,"

said he, "that I do not suffer also? No one could love a child

more than I loved your brother"--tears came into his eyes as he spoke--

"but is it not a duty to the survivors that we should refrain

from augmenting their unhappiness by an appearance of immoderate grief?

It is also a duty owed to yourself, for excessive sorrow

prevents improvement or enjoyment, or even the discharge

of daily usefulness, without which no man is fit for society."



This advice, although good, was totally inapplicable to my case;

I should have been the first to hide my grief and console my friends

if remorse had not mingled its bitterness, and terror its alarm,

with my other sensations. Now I could only answer my father

with a look of despair and endeavour to hide myself from his view.



About this time we retired to our house at Belrive. This change

was particularly agreeable to me. The shutting of the gates

regularly at ten o'clock and the impossibility of remaining

on the lake after that hour had rendered our residence within

the walls of Geneva very irksome to me. I was now free.

Often, after the rest of the family had retired for the night,

I took the boat and passed many hours upon the water. Sometimes,

with my sails set, I was carried by the wind; and sometimes,

after rowing into the middle of the lake, I left the boat to pursue

its own course and gave way to my own miserable reflections.

I was often tempted, when all was at peace around me,

and I the only unquiet thing that wandered restless in a scene

so beautiful and heavenly--if I except some bat, or the frogs,

whose harsh and interrupted croaking was heard only when I approached

the shore--often, I say, I was tempted to plunge into the silent lake,

that the waters might close over me and my calamities forever.

But I was restrained, when I thought of the heroic and suffering Elizabeth,

whom I tenderly loved, and whose existence was bound up in mine.

I thought also of my father and surviving brother; should I

by my base desertion leave them exposed and unprotected to the malice

of the fiend whom I had let loose among them?



At these moments I wept bitterly and wished that peace

would revisit my mind only that I might afford them consolation

and happiness. But that could not be. Remorse extinguished every hope.

I had been the author of unalterable evils, and I lived in daily fear

lest the monster whom I had created should perpetrate some new wickedness.

I had an obscure feeling that all was not over and that he would still

commit some signal crime, which by its enormity should almost efface

the recollection of the past. There was always scope for fear

so long as anything I loved remained behind. My abhorrence of this fiend

cannot be conceived. When I thought of him I gnashed my teeth,

my eyes became inflamed, and I ardently wished to extinguish

that life which I had so thoughtlessly bestowed. When I reflected

on his crimes and malice, my hatred and revenge burst all bounds

of moderation. I would have made a pilgrimage to the highest peak

of the Andes, could I when there have precipitated him to their base.

I wished to see him again, that I might wreak the utmost extent

of abhorrence on his head and avenge the deaths of William and Justine.

Our house was the house of mourning. My father's health was deeply shaken

by the horror of the recent events. Elizabeth was sad and desponding;

she no longer took delight in her ordinary occupations; all pleasure

seemed to her sacrilege toward the dead; eternal woe and tears

she then thought was the just tribute she should pay to innocence

so blasted and destroyed. She was no longer that happy creature

who in earlier youth wandered with me on the banks of the lake

and talked with ecstasy of our future prospects. The first

of those sorrows which are sent to wean us from the earth had visited her,

and its dimming influence quenched her dearest smiles.



"When I reflect, my dear cousin," said she, "on the miserable death

of Justine Moritz, I no longer see the world and its works

as they before appeared to me. Before, I looked upon the accounts

of vice and injustice that I read in books or heard from others

as tales of ancient days or imaginary evils; at least they were remote

and more familiar to reason than to the imagination; but now misery

has come home, and men appear to me as monsters thirsting

for each other's blood. Yet I am certainly unjust. Everybody believed

that poor girl to be guilty; and if she could have committed the crime

for which she suffered, assuredly she would have been the most depraved

of human creatures. For the sake of a few jewels, to have murdered the son

of her benefactor and friend, a child whom she had nursed from its birth,

and appeared to love as if it had been her own! I could not consent

to the death of any human being, but certainly I should have thought

such a creature unfit to remain in the society of men.

But she was innocent. I know, I feel she was innocent;

you are of the same opinion, and that confirms me. Alas! Victor,

when falsehood can look so like the truth, who can assure themselves

of certain happiness? I feel as if I were walking on the edge

of a precipice, towards which thousands are crowding and endeavouring

to plunge me into the abyss. William and Justine were assassinated,

and the murderer escapes; he walks about the world free,

and perhaps respected. But even if I were condemned to suffer

on the scaffold for the same crimes, I would not change places

with such a wretch."



I listened to this discourse with the extremest agony. I, not in deed,

but in effect, was the true murderer. Elizabeth read my anguish

in my countenance, and kindly taking my hand, said, "My dearest friend,

you must calm yourself. These events have affected me,

God knows how deeply; but I am not so wretched as you are.

There is an expression of despair, and sometimes of revenge,

in your countenance that makes me tremble. Dear Victor,

banish these dark passions. Remember the friends around you,

who centre all their hopes in you. Have we lost the power

of rendering you happy? Ah! While we love, while we are true

to each other, here in this land of peace and beauty,

your native country, we may reap every tranquil blessing--

what can disturb our peace?"



And could not such words from her whom I fondly prized before

every other gift of fortune suffice to chase away the fiend

that lurked in my heart? Even as she spoke I drew near to her,

as if in terror, lest at that very moment the destroyer

had been near to rob me of her.



Thus not the tenderness of friendship, nor the beauty of earth,

nor of heaven, could redeem my soul from woe; the very accents

of love were ineffectual. I was encompassed by a cloud

which no beneficial influence could penetrate. The wounded deer

dragging its fainting limbs to some untrodden brake, there to gaze

upon the arrow which had pierced it, and to die, was but a type of me.



Sometimes I could cope with the sullen despair that overwhelmed me,

but sometimes the whirlwind passions of my soul drove me to seek,

by bodily exercise and by change of place, some relief

from my intolerable sensations. It was during an access of this kind

that I suddenly left my home, and bending my steps towards

the near Alpine valleys, sought in the magnificence,

the eternity of such scenes, to forget myself and my ephemeral,

because human, sorrows. My wanderings were directed towards

the valley of Chamounix. I had visited it frequently

during my boyhood. Six years had passed since then: I was a wreck,

but nought had changed in those savage and enduring scenes.



I performed the first part of my journey on horseback.

I afterwards hired a mule, as the more sure-footed and least liable

to receive injury on these rugged roads. The weather was fine;

it was about the middle of the month of August, nearly two months

after the death of Justine, that miserable epoch from which I dated

all my woe. The weight upon my spirit was sensibly lightened

as I plunged yet deeper in the ravine of Arve. The immense mountains

and precipices that overhung me on every side, the sound of the river

raging among the rocks, and the dashing of the waterfalls around

spoke of a power mighty as Omnipotence--and I ceased to fear

or to bend before any being less almighty than that which had created

and ruled the elements, here displayed in their most terrific guise.

Still, as I ascended higher, the valley assumed a more magnificent

and astonishing character. Ruined castles hanging on the precipices

of piny mountains, the impetuous Arve, and cottages every here and there

peeping forth from among the trees formed a scene of singular beauty.

But it was augmented and rendered sublime by the mighty Alps,

whose white and shining pyramids and domes towered above all,

as belonging to another earth, the habitations of another race of beings.



I passed the bridge of Pelissier, where the ravine, which the river forms,

opened before me, and I began to ascend the mountain that overhangs it.

Soon after, I entered the valley of Chamounix. This valley

is more wonderful and sublime, but not so beautiful and picturesque

as that of Servox, through which I had just passed. The high

and snowy mountains were its immediate boundaries, but I saw no more

ruined castles and fertile fields. Immense glaciers approached the road;

I heard the rumbling thunder of the falling avalanche and marked the smoke

of its passage. Mont Blanc, the supreme and magnificent Mont Blanc,

raised itself from the surrounding aiguilles, and its tremendous dome

overlooked the valley.



A tingling long-lost sense of pleasure often came across me

during this journey. Some turn in the road, some new object

suddenly perceived and recognized, reminded me of days gone by,

and were associated with the lighthearted gaiety of boyhood.

The very winds whispered in soothing accents, and maternal Nature

bade me weep no more. Then again the kindly influence ceased to act--

I found myself fettered again to grief and indulging in all the misery

of reflection. Then I spurred on my animal, striving so to forget

the world, my fears, and more than all, myself--or, in a more desperate

fashion, I alighted and threw myself on the grass, weighed down

by horror and despair.



At length I arrived at the village of Chamounix. Exhaustion succeeded

to the extreme fatigue both of body and of mind which I had endured.

For a short space of time I remained at the window watching

the pallid lightnings that played above Mont Blanc and listening

to the rushing of the Arve, which pursued its noisy way beneath.

The same lulling sounds acted as a lullaby to my too keen sensations;

when I placed my head upon my pillow, sleep crept over me; I felt it

as it came and blessed the giver of oblivion.

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