Frankenstein - According to

up facing
the other way. My steps were like those of a drunken man and I fell at last in
a state of utter exhaustion. In this state I was carried back and placed on a
bed, hardly conscious of what had happened. My eyes wandered round the room and
eventually returned to me.
    After
an interval I arose and, as if by instinct, crawled across the room; many
thought I was a dog and patted me. There in the room, the corpse of my beloved
lay. There were women weeping around; I hung over her boobs but gradually I
slid off. I joined my sad tears to theirs and soon the room was ankle deep in
tears.
    I
knew not whether my friends and my cigarettes were safe from the malignity of
the fiend; my father even now might be writhing under his grasp and threatening
him with the police. Who knows? Ernest might be dead at his feet. King Edward
might be trampled underfoot. I started up and resolved to return to Geneva with
all possible speed. There were no horses to be procured, so instead we boiled
some eggs.
    However,
it was hardly morning, and I might reasonably hope to arrive by night. I hired
men to row and took an oar myself because I always experienced relief from
mental torment by bodily exercise. But the overflowing misery I now felt, and
the excess agitation that I endured, rendered me incapable of any exertion. I
threw down the oar and, leaning my head upon my hands, tears streamed from my
eyes which flooded the boat and we had to try to bail out. I saw the fish play
in the wafers as they had done a few hours before; they had then been observed
by Elizabeth. In memory of her, I stripped and dived in and retrieved a fish,
and in memory of her, I ate it. The sun might shine, or the clouds might lower,
but nothing could appear to me as it had done the day before. A fiend had
snatched from me every hope of future happiness, plus twenty cigarettes: no
creature in the history of man had ever been so miserable as I was then. Mind
you, that might be a bit of an exaggeration. Mine had been a tale of hirror and
horror. I have reached their acme, and what I must now relate can be tedious to
you. [It’s all been bloody tedious. Ed.]
    My
father and Ernest yet lived, but the former sunk under the tidings that I bore.
We threw him a life belt. His Elizabeth, his more-than-daughter, whom he doted
on; in fact she was a mass of dote marks. But alas, the springs of existence
suddenly gave way: he was unable to rise from his bed and in a few days he died
in the arms of his bank manager who, at the last gasp, got him to pay his
overdraft.
    What
then became of me? I know not; and I asked somebody what had become of me; they
said I became a train. I lost sensation, and chains and darkness were the only
objects that pressed upon me. Sometimes I dreamed that I wandered in flowery
meadows and pleasant vales with the friends of my youth, but I awoke and found
myself in a public toilet. I gained a clear conception of my miseries and
situation and was then released from my prison because they called me mad as a
result of me saying I was Julius Caesar and was on my way to invade England and
become a director of Hansons.
    I
began to reflect on the reason why I thought I was a Chinese junk. I think it
was the monster whom I had created. I was possessed by a maddening rage when I
thought of him and I prayed that I might have him within my grasp; I would tie
grenades to his balls and explode them.
    I
began to reflect on the best means of securing him, and for this purpose I
repaired to a criminal judge in the town and told him that I had an accusation
to make — that I knew the destroyer of my wife, and who had stolen my fags.
    The
magistrate listened with attention and kindness. At this stage he signalled two
attendants who rushed forward and put me in a straitjacket. As I spoke, rage
sparkled in my eyes; the magistrate was intimidated: ‘You are mistaken,’ said
he, stifling a laugh. ‘I will exert myself; and if it is in my power to seize
the monster, I shall.’ He was laughing, with tears running down his cheeks.
    They
confined me to a padded cell, so I started to devote my life to the destruction
of this monster. But to the magistrate, this elevation of mind had much the
appearance of madness. He endeavoured to sooth me as a nurse does a child,
pushing me in a pram and giving me a milk bottle.
    ‘Man,’
I cried, ‘how ignorant art thou in thy pride of wisdom! Cease; you know not
what it is you say.’ They remembered it and let me free, and for a