Франкенштейн, или Современный Прометей / Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus. Уровень 2

But I, the true murderer, felt the worm alive in my bosom. Elizabeth also wept and was unhappy. Anguish and despair penetrated into the core of my heart; I bore a hell within me which nothing could extinguish. We stayed several hours with Justine.

“I wish,” cried Elizabeth, “to die with you! I cannot live in this world of misery.”

Justine repressed her bitter tears. She embraced Elizabeth and said,

“Farewell, sweet lady, dearest Elizabeth, my beloved and only friend; may heaven bless and

preserve you! Live and be happy, and make others so.

”

And on the morrow Justine died. Elizabeth’s eloquence failed to move the judges from their conviction in the criminality of the saintly sufferer. When I received their cold answers and heard the harsh words, my avowal died away on my lips. Thus I will proclaim myself a madman, but I won’t revoke the sentence. She perished on the scaffold as a murderess!

I contemplated the deep and voiceless grief of my Elizabeth. I did it also! And my father’s woe, and the desolation of that home all was the work of my hands! You weep, unhappy ones, but these are not your last tears! Frankenstein, your son, your kinsman, your friend; he makes you weep!

Thus spoke my prophetic soul.

I felt remorse, horror, and despair upon the graves of William and Justine, my first hapless victims.

Chapter 9

Nothing is more painful to the human mind than the dead calmness of inaction. 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.

Sleep fled from my eyes. I wandered like an evil spirit. I committed deeds of mischief, and more, much more (I persuaded myself) was yet behind. Yet my heart flowed with kindness and the love of virtue.

I began life with benevolent intentions. Now all was blasted. I was seized by remorse and the sense of guilt, which hurried me away to a hell of intense tortures. No language can describe it.

This state of mind preyed upon my health.

All sound of joy or complacency was torture to me. Solitude was my only consolation-deep, dark, deathlike solitude.

My father observed with pain my alteration.

“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 to refrain from unhappiness and grief? We live here, and we must be fit for society.