struggled violently. 'Let me go,' he cried; 'monster! Ugly
wretch! You wish to eat me and tear me to pieces. You are an ogre.
Let me go, or I will tell my papa.'

"'Boy, you will never see your father again; you must come with me.'

"'Hideous monster! Let me go. My papa is a syndic--he is M.
Frankenstein--he will punish you. You dare not keep me.'

"'Frankenstein! you belong then to my enemy--to him towards whom I have
sworn eternal revenge; you shall be my first victim.'

"The child still struggled and loaded me with epithets which carried
despair to my heart; I grasped his throat to silence him, and in a
moment he lay dead at my feet.

"I gazed on my victim, and my heart swelled with exultation and hellish
triumph; clapping my hands, I exclaimed, 'I too can create desolation;
my enemy is not invulnerable; this death will carry despair to him, and
a thousand other miseries shall torment and destroy him.'

"As I fixed my eyes on the child, I saw something glittering on his
breast. I took it; it was a portrait of a most lovely woman. In spite
of my malignity, it softened and attracted me. For a few moments I
gazed with delight on her dark eyes, fringed by deep lashes, and her
lovely lips; but presently my rage returned; I remembered that I was
forever deprived of the delights that such beautiful creatures could
bestow and that she whose resemblance I contemplated would, in
regarding me, have changed that air of divine benignity to one
expressive of disgust and affright.

"Can you wonder that such thoughts transported me with rage? I only
wonder that at that moment, instead of venting my sensations in
exclamations and agony, I did not rush among mankind and perish in the
attempt to destroy them.

"While I was overcome by these feelings, I left the spot where I had
committed the murder, and seeking a more secluded hiding-place, I
entered a barn which had appeared to me to be empty. A woman was
sleeping on some straw; she was young, not indeed so beautiful as her
whose portrait I held, but of an agreeable aspect and blooming in the
loveliness of youth and health. Here, I thought, is one of those whose
joy-imparting smiles are bestowed on all but me. And then I bent over
her and whispered, 'Awake, fairest, thy lover is near--he who would
give his life but to obtain one look of affection from thine eyes; my
beloved, awake!'

"The sleeper stirred; a thrill of terror ran through me. Should she
indeed a