chapter 70

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Victor在遗憾中离开了这个世界，他死后怪物前来哀悼。怪物对Walton说，自己的创造者已经死去，自己也是时候离开了，那么Walton会杀掉怪物吗？本章即将迎来大结局～

-chapter 70-

I was at first touched by the expressions of his misery; yet, when I called

to mind what Frankenstein had said of his powers of eloquence and

persuasion, and when I again cast my eyes on the lifeless form of my

friend, indignation was rekindled within me. “Wretch!” I said.

“It is well that you come here to whine over the desolation that you

have made. You throw a torch into a pile of buildings, and when they are

consumed, you sit among the ruins and lament the fall. Hypocritical fiend!

If he whom you mourn still lived, still would he be the object, again would

he become the prey, of your accursed vengeance. It is not pity that you

feel; you lament only because the victim of your malignity is withdrawn

from your power.”

“Oh, it is not thus—not thus,” interrupted the being.

“Yet such must be the impression conveyed to you by what appears to

be the purport of my actions. Yet I seek not a fellow feeling in my misery.

No sympathy may I ever find. When I first sought it, it was the love of

virtue, the feelings of happiness and affection with which my whole being

overflowed, that I wished to be participated. But now that virtue has

become to me a shadow, and that happiness and affection are turned into

bitter and loathing despair, in what should I seek for sympathy? I am

content to suffer alone while my sufferings shall endure; when I die, I am

well satisfied that abhorrence and opprobrium should load my memory. Once

my fancy was soothed with dreams of virtue, of fame, and of enjoyment. Once

I falsely hoped to meet with beings who, pardoning my outward form, would

love me for the excellent qualities which I was capable of unfolding. I was

nourished with high thoughts of honour and devotion. But now crime has

degraded me beneath the meanest animal. No guilt, no mischief, no

malignity, no misery, can be found comparable to mine. When I run over the

frightful catalogue of my sins, I cannot believe that I am the same

creature whose thoughts were once filled with sublime and transcendent

visions of the beauty and the majesty of goodness. But it is even so; the

fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man

had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone.

“You, who call Frankenstein your friend, seem to have a knowledge of my

crimes and his misfortunes. But in the detail which he gave you of them

he could not sum up the hours and months of misery which I endured

wasting in impotent passions. For while I destroyed his hopes, I did

not satisfy my own desires. They were for ever ardent and craving; still

I desired love and fellowship, and I was still spurned.  Was there no

injustice in this? Am I to be thought the only criminal, when all

humankind sinned against me? Why do you not hate Felix, who drove his

friend from his door with contumely? Why do you not execrate the rustic

who sought to destroy the saviour of his child? Nay, these are virtuous

and immaculate beings! I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an

abortion, to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled on. Even now my

blood boils at the recollection of this injustice.

“But it is true that I am a wretch. I have murdered the lovely and

the helpless; I have strangled the innocent as they slept and grasped to

death his throat who never injured me or any other living thing. I have

devoted my creator, the select specimen of all that is worthy of love and

admiration among men, to misery; I have pursued him even to that

irremediable ruin. There he lies, white and cold in death. You hate me, but

your abhorrence cannot equal that with which I regard myself. I look on the

hands which executed the deed; I think on the heart in which the

imagination of it was conceived and long for the moment when these hands

will meet my eyes, when that imagination will haunt my thoughts no more.

“Fear not that I shall be the instrument of future mischief. My work

is nearly complete. Neither yours nor any man’s death is needed to

consummate the series of my being and accomplish that which must be done,

but it requires my own. Do not think that I shall be slow to perform this

sacrifice. I shall quit your vessel on the ice raft which brought me

thither and shall seek the most northern extremity of the globe; I shall

collect my funeral pile and consume to ashes this miserable frame, that its

remains may afford no light to any curious and unhallowed wretch who would

create such another as I have been. I shall die. I shall no longer feel the

agonies which now consume me or be the prey of feelings unsatisfied, yet

unquenched. He is dead who called me into being; and when I shall be no

more, the very remembrance of us both will speedily vanish. I shall no

longer see the sun or stars or feel the winds play on my cheeks. Light,

feeling, and sense will pass away; and in this condition must I find my

happiness. Some years ago, when the images which this world affords first

opened upon me, when I felt the cheering warmth of summer and heard the

rustling of the leaves and the warbling of the birds, and these were all to

me, I should have wept to die; now it is my only consolation. Polluted by

crimes and torn by the bitterest remorse, where can I find rest but in

death?

“Farewell!  I leave you, and in you the last of humankind whom these

eyes will ever behold. Farewell, Frankenstein! If thou wert yet alive

and yet cherished a desire of revenge against me, it would be better

satiated in my life than in my destruction. But it was not so; thou

didst seek my extinction, that I might not cause greater wretchedness;

and if yet, in some mode unknown to me, thou hadst not ceased to think

and feel, thou wouldst not desire against me a vengeance greater than

that which I feel. Blasted as thou wert, my agony was still superior to

thine, for the bitter sting of remorse will not cease to rankle in my

wounds until death shall close them for ever.

“But soon,” he cried with sad and solemn enthusiasm, “I

shall die, and what I now feel be no longer felt. Soon these burning

miseries will be extinct. I shall ascend my funeral pile triumphantly and

exult in the agony of the torturing flames. The light of that conflagration

will fade away; my ashes will be swept into the sea by the winds. My spirit

will sleep in peace, or if it thinks, it will not surely think thus.

Farewell.”

He sprang from the cabin-window as he said this, upon the ice raft

which lay close to the vessel.  He was soon borne away by the waves and

lost in darkness and distance.

今日短语

1. cast one's eyes on 审视

2. be content to 满足

3. have a knowledge of 了解，知道

4. sum up 合计，总结

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