On perceiving me, the stranger addressed me in English.  “Before I come on board your vessel,” said he, “will you have the kindness to inform me whither you are bound?”

I replied that we were on a voyage of discovery towards the northern pole.

Upon hearing this he consented to come on board.  His limbs were nearly frozen, and his body dreadfully emaciated.  I never saw a man in so wretched a condition, and I often feel that his sufferings had deprived him of understanding.

Once the lieutenant asked why he had come so far upon the ice in so strange a vehicle.  He replied, “To seek one who fled from me.”  “And did the man whom you pursued travel in the same fashion?”

“Yes.”

“Then I fancy we have seen him; for the day before we picked you up, we saw some dogs drawing a sledge, with a man in it, across the ice.”

From this time a new spirit of life animated the decaying frame of the stranger.  He manifested the greatest eagerness to be upon deck, to watch for the sledge which had before appeared.

August 17, 17—­

Yesterday the stranger said to me, “You may easily perceive, Capt.  Walton, that I have suffered great and unparallelled misfortunes.  My fate is nearly fulfilled.  I wait but for one event, and then I shall repose in peace.  Listen to my history, and you will perceive how irrevocably my destiny is determined.”

II.—­Frankenstein’s Story

I am by birth a Genevese; and my family is one of the most distinguished of that republic.  My father has filled several public situations with honour and reputation.  He passed his younger days perpetually occupied by the affairs of his country, and it was not until the decline of life that he became a husband and the father of a family.

When I was about five years old, my mother, whose benevolent disposition often made her enter the cottages of the poor, brought to our house a child fairer than pictured cherub, an orphan whom she found in a peasant’s hut; the infant daughter of a nobleman who had died fighting for Italy.  Thus Elizabeth became the inmate of my parents’ house.  Every one loved her, and I looked upon Elizabeth as mine, to protect, love, and cherish.  We called each other familiarly by the name cousin, and were brought up together.  No human being could have passed a happier childhood than myself.

When I had attained the age of seventeen, my parents resolved that I should become a student at the University of Ingolstadt; I had hitherto attended the schools, of Geneva.

Before the day of my departure arrived, the first misfortune of my life occurred—­an omen of my future misery.  My mother attended Elizabeth in an attack of scarlet fever.  Elizabeth was saved, but my mother sickened and died.  On her deathbed she joined the hands of Elizabeth and myself:—­“My children,” she said, “my firmest hopes of future happiness were placed on the prospect of your union.  This expectation will now be the consolation of your father.”