His voice seemed suffocated; and my first impulses, which had
suggested to me the duty of obeying the dying request of my
friend, in destroying his enemy, were now suspended by a mixture
of curiosity and compassion. I approached this tremendous being;
I dared not again raise my looks upon his face, there was
something so scaring and unearthly in his ugliness. I attempted
to speak, but the words died away on my lips. The monster
continued to utter wild and incoherent self-reproaches. At
length I gathered resolution to address him, in a pause of the
tempest of his passion: "Your repentance," I said, "is now
superfluous. If you had listened to the voice of conscience, and
heeded the stings of remorse, before you had urged your
diabolical vengeance to this extremity, Frankenstein would yet
have lived."
"And do you dream?" said the dæmon; "do you think that I
was then dead to agony and remorse? -- He," he continued, pointing
to the corpse, "he suffered not more in the consummation of the
deed; -- oh! not the ten-thousandth portion of the anguish that was
mine during the lingering detail of its execution. A frightful
selfishness hurried me on, while my heart was poisoned with
remorse. Think ye that the groans of Clerval were music to my
ears? My heart was fashioned to be susceptible of love and
sympathy; and, when wrenched by misery to vice and hatred, it
did not endure the violence of the change without torture such
as you cannot even imagine.