Strona 448 z 483

Frankenstein discovered that I made notes concerning his history;

he asked to see them and then himself corrected and augmented

them in many places, but principally in giving the life and

spirit to the conversations he held with his enemy. "Since you

have preserved my narration," said he, "I would not that a

mutilated one should go down to posterity."

Thus has a week passed away, while I have listened to the

strangest tale that ever imagination formed. My thoughts and

every feeling of my soul have been drunk up by the interest for

my guest which this tale and his own elevated and gentle manners

have created. I wish to soothe him, yet can I counsel one so

infinitely miserable, so destitute of every hope of consolation,

to live? Oh, no! The only joy that he can now know will be when

he composes his shattered spirit to peace and death. Yet he

enjoys one comfort, the offspring of solitude and delirium; he

believes that when in dreams he holds converse with his friends

and derives from that communion consolation for his miseries or

excitements to his vengeance, that they are not the creations of

his fancy, but the beings themselves who visit him from the

regions of a remote world. This faith gives a solemnity to his

reveries that render them to me almost as imposing and

interesting as truth.