assionated him, and
concluded that the justest view both to him and my fellow-creatures
demanded of me that I should comply with his request.

"I consent to your demand," I said, "on your solemn oath to quit Europe
forever."

"I swear," he cried, "by the sun and by the fire of love which burns in
my heart that if you grant my prayer, while they exist you shall never
behold me again. Depart to your home, and commence your labours: I shall
watch their progress with unutterable anxiety."

Saying this, he suddenly quitted me, fearful, perhaps, of any change in
my sentiments.

_IV.--The Doom of Frankenstein_

I travelled to England with my friend Henry Clerval, and we parted in
Scotland. I had fixed on one of the remotest of the Orkneys as the scene
of my labours.

Three years before I was engaged in the same manner, and had created a
fiend whose barbarity had desolated my heart. I was now about to form
another being, of whose dispositions I was alike ignorant. He had sworn
to quit the neighbourhood of man, and hide himself in deserts, but she
had not. They might even hate each other, and she might quit him. Even
if they were to leave Europe, a race of devils would be propagated upon
the earth, who might make the very existence of man precarious and full
of terror.

I was alone on a solitary island, when looking up, the monster whom I
dreaded appeared. My mind was made up: I would never create another like
to him.

"Begone," I cried, "I break my promise. Never will I create your equal
in deformity and wickedness. Leave me; I am inexorable."

The monster saw my determination in my face, and gnashed his teeth in
anger. "Shall each man," cried he, "find a wife for his bosom, and each
beast have his mate, and I be alone? I had feelings of affection, and
they were requited by detestation and scorn. Are you to be happy, while
I grovel in the intensity of my wretchedness? I go, but remember, I
shall be with you on your wedding night."

I started forward, but he quitted the house with precipitation. In a few
moments I saw him in his boat, which shot across the waters with an
arrowy swiftness.

The next day I set off to rejoin Clerval, and return home. But I never
saw my friend again. The monster murdered him, and for a time I lay in
prison on suspicion of the crime. On my release one duty remained to me.
It was necessary that I should hasten without delay to Geneva, there to
watch over the lives of those I loved,