monster grinning at him through the window of the hut in the
moonlight. Not a moment is lost. He tears his just completed work limb
from limb. The monster disappears in rage, only to return to threaten
eternal revenge on him and his; but the time of weakness is passed;
better encounter any evils that may be in store, even for those he
loves, than leave a curse to humanity. From that time there is no
truce. Clerval is murdered and Frankenstein is seized as the murderer,
but respited for worse fate; he is married to Elizabeth, and she is
strangled within a few hours. When goaded to the verge of madness by
all these events, and seeing his beloved father reduced to imbecility
through their misfortunes, he can make no one believe his
self-accusing story; and if they did, what would it avail to pursue a
being who could scale the Alps, live among glaciers, and pass
unfathomable seas? There is nothing left but a pursuit till
death, single-handed, when one might expire and the other be
appeased--onward, with a deluding sight from time to time of his
avenging demon. Only in sleep and dreams did Frankenstein find
forgetfulness of his self-imposed torture, for he lived again with
those he had loved; he endured life in his pursuit by imagining his
waking hours to be a horrible dream and longing for the night, when
sleep should bring him life. When hopes of meeting his demon failed,
some fresh trace would appear to lead him on through habited and
uninhabited countries; he tracks him to the verge of the eternal ice,
and even there procures a sledge from the wretched and horrified
inhabitants of the last dwelling-place of men to pursue the monster,
who, on a similar vehicle, had departed, to their delight. Onwards,
onwards, over the eternal ice they pass, the pursued and the pursuer,
till consciousness is nearly lost, and Frankenstein is rescued by
those to whom he now narrates his history; all except his fatal
scientific secret, which is to die with him shortly, for the end