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 eyes to 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 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 you 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.