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It is through Felix's conversation and language tutoring to Safie that the Creature learns to speak and read. As he becomes more proficient in the language, he learns Felix's story: he had fallen in love with Safie and arranged her father's escape from prison (2.6.2), but, betrayed by her father (2.6.5), he finds his family imprisoned and Safie taken out of his reach. The De Laceys flee to "a miserable asylum in the cottage in Germany."
Felix is never aware of the Creature until he returns to the cottage to find his father in the Creature's presence. Fearing for his father's safety, he "darted forward, and with supernatural force tore me from his father, to whose knees I clung: in a transport of fury, he dashed me to the ground and struck me violently with a stick" (2.7.10). The Creature flees; on his return, he discovers that the De Laceys have abandoned the cottage.
Felix seems to have served as a role model for the Creature, who reverts to his betrayal by him in speaking to Walton: "Am I to be thought the only criminal, when all human kind sinned against me? Why do you not hate Felix, who drove his friend from his door with contumely?" (Walton 15).