They might even hate each other; the creature who already lived loathed
his own deformity, and might he not conceive a greater abhorrence for
it when it came before his eyes in the female form? She also might
turn with disgust from him to the superior beauty of man; she might
quit him, and he be again alone, exasperated by the fresh provocation
of being deserted by one of his own species. Even if they were to
leave Europe and inhabit the deserts of the new world, yet one of the
first results of those sympathies for which the daemon thirsted would
be children, and a race of devils would be propagated upon the earth
who might make the very existence of the species of man a condition
precarious and full of terror. Had I right, for my own benefit, to
inflict this curse upon everlasting generations? I had before been
moved by the sophisms of the being I had created; I had been struck
senseless by his fiendish threats; but now, for the first time, the
wickedness of my promise burst upon me; I shuddered to think that
future ages might curse me as their pest, whose selfishness had not
hesitated to buy its own peace at the price, perhaps, of the existence
of the whole human race.
I trembled and my heart failed within me, when, on looking up, I saw by
the light of the moon the daemon at the casement. A ghastly grin
wrinkled his lips as he gazed on me, where I sat fulfilling the task
which he had allotted to me.
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