صفحة 116 من 483

Day dawned; and I directed my steps towards the town. The gates

were open, and I hastened to my father's house. My first thought

was to discover what I knew of the murderer, and cause instant

pursuit to be made. But I paused when I reflected on the story

that I had to tell. A being whom I myself had formed, and endued

with life, had met me at midnight among the precipices of an

inaccessible mountain. I remembered also the nervous fever with

which I had been seized just at the time that I dated my

creation, and which would give an air of delirium to a tale

otherwise so utterly improbable. I well knew that if any other

had communicated such a relation to me, I should have looked upon

it as the ravings of insanity. Besides, the strange nature of the

animal would elude all pursuit, even if I were so far credited as

to persuade my relatives to commence it. And then of what use

would be pursuit? Who could arrest a creature capable of scaling

the overhanging sides of Mont Saleve?