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]
<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] <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."] <lived.>
"And do you dream?" said the dæmon; "do you think that
{MS I} {FC I} 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] <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] <change, without> torture
such as you cannot even imagine.