Ch. 13: Chapter 9

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 for ever. 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 Pélissier, 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 dôme 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

recognised, 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.