"That is also my victim!" he exclaimed. "In his murder my crimes are
consummated; the miserable series of my being is wound to its close!
Oh, Frankenstein! Generous and self-devoted being! What does it avail
that I now ask thee to pardon me? I, who irretrievably destroyed thee
by destroying all thou lovedst. Alas! He is cold, he cannot answer
me." His voice seemed suffocated, and my first impulses, which had
suggested to me the duty of obeying the dying request of my friend in
destroying his enemy, were now suspended by a mixture of curiosity and
compassion. I approached this tremendous being; I dared not again
raise my eyes to his face, there was something so scaring and unearthly
in his ugliness. I attempted to speak, but the words died away on my
lips. The monster continued to utter wild and incoherent
self-reproaches. At length I gathered resolution to address him in a
pause of the tempest of his passion.
"Your repentance," I said, "is now superfluous. If you had listened to
the voice of conscience and heeded the stings of remorse before you had
urged your diabolical vengeance to this extremity, Frankenstein would
yet have lived."
"And do you dream?" said the daemon. "Do you think that I was then
dead to agony and remorse? He," he continued, pointing to the corpse,
"he suffered not in the consummation of the deed. Oh! Not the
ten-thousandth portion of the anguish that was mine during the
lingering detail of its execution.
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