Nothing is more painful to the human mind, than, after the feelings have
been worked up by a quick succession of events, the dead calmness of
inaction and certainty which follows, and deprives the soul both of hope
and fear. Justine died; she rested; and I was alive. The blood flowed
freely in my veins, but a weight of despair and remorse pressed on my
heart, which nothing could remove. Sleep fled from my eyes; I wandered
like an evil spirit, for I had committed deeds of mischief beyond
description horrible, and more, much more (I persuaded myself), was yet
behind. Yet my heart overflowed with kindness, and the love of virtue. I
had begun life with benevolent intentions, and thirsted for the moment
when I should put them in practice, and make myself useful to my
fellow-beings. Now all was blasted: instead of that serenity of
conscience, which allowed me to look back upon the past with
self-satisfaction, and from thence to gather promise of new hopes, I was
seized by remorse and the sense of guilt, which hurried me away to a
hell of intense tortures, such as no language can describe.
This state of mind preyed upon my health, which had perhaps never
entirely recovered from the first shock it had sustained. I shunned the
face of man; all sound of joy or complacency was torture to me; solitude
was my only consolation--deep, dark, deathlike solitude.
My father observed with pain the alteration perceptible in my
disposition and habits, and endeavoured by arguments deduced from the
feelings of his serene conscience and guiltless life, to inspire me with
fortitude, and awaken in me the courage to dispel the dark cloud which
brooded over me. "Do you think, Victor," said he, "that I do not suffer
also? No one could love a child more than I loved your brother;" (tears
came into his eyes as he spoke;) "but is it not a duty to the survivors,
that we should refrain from augmenting their unhappiness by an
appearance of immoderate grief? It is also a duty owed to yourself; for
excessive sorrow prevents improvement or enjoyment, or even the
discharge of daily usefulness, without which no man is fit for society."
This advice, although good, was totally inapplicable to my case; I
should have been the first to hide my grief, and console my friends, if
remorse had not mingled its bitterness, and terror its alarm with my
other sensations. Now I could only answer my father with a look of
despair, and endeavour to hide myself from his view.
About this time we retired to our house at Belrive. This change was
particularly agreeable to me. The shutting of the gates regularly at ten
o'clock, and the impossibility of remaining on the lake after that hour,
had rendered our residence within the walls of Geneva very irksome to
me. I was now free. Often, after the rest of the family had retired for
the night, I took the boat, and passed many hours upon the water.
Sometimes, with my sails set, I was carried by the wind; and sometimes,
after rowing into the middle of the lake, I left the boat to pursue its
own course, and gave way to my own miserable reflections. I was often
tempted, when all was at peace around me, and I the only unquiet thing
that wandered restless in a scene so beautiful and heavenly--if I except
some bat, or the frogs, whose harsh and interrupted croaking was heard
only when I approached the shore--often, I say, I was tempted to plunge
into the silent lake, that the waters might close over me and my
calamities for ever. But I was restrained, when I thought of the heroic
and suffering Elizabeth, whom I tenderly loved, and whose existence was
bound up in mine. I thought also of my father, and surviving brother:
should I by my base desertion leave them exposed and unprotected to the
malice of the fiend whom I had let loose among them?
At these moments I wept bitterly, and wished that peace would revisit my
mind only that I might afford them consolation and happiness. But that
could not be. Remorse extinguished every hope. I had been the author of
unalterable evils; and I lived in daily fear, lest the monster whom I
had created should perpetrate some new wickedness. I had an obscure
feeling that all was not over, and that he would still commit some
signal crime, which by its enormity should almost efface the
recollection of the past. There was always scope for fear, so long as
any thing I loved remained behind. My abhorrence of this fiend cannot be
conceived. When I thought of him, I gnashed my teeth, my eyes became
inflamed, and I ardently wished to extinguish that life which I had so
thoughtlessly bestowed. When I reflected on his crimes and malice, my
hatred and revenge burst all bounds of moderation. I would have made a
pilgrimage to the highest peak of the Andes, could I, when there, have
precipitated him to their base. I wished to see him again, that I might
wreak the utmost extent of abhorrence on his head, and avenge the deaths
of William and Justine.
Our house was the house of mourning. My father's health was deeply
shaken by the horror of the recent events. Elizabeth was sad and
desponding; she no longer took delight in her ordinary occupations; all
pleasure seemed to her sacrilege toward the dead; eternal woe and tears
she then thought was the just tribute she should pay to innocence so
blasted and destroyed. She was no longer that happy creature, who in
earlier youth wandered with me on the banks of the lake, and talked with
ecstasy of our future prospects. The first of those sorrows which are
sent to wean us from the earth, had visited her, and its dimming
influence quenched her dearest smiles.
"When I reflect, my dear cousin," said she, "on the miserable death of
Justine Moritz, I no longer see the world and its works as they before
appeared to me. Before, I looked upon the accounts of vice and
injustice, that I read in books or heard from others, as tales of
ancient days, or imaginary evils; at least they were remote, and more
familiar to reason than to the imagination; but now misery has come
home, and men appear to me as monsters thirsting for each other's blood.
Yet I am certainly unjust. Every body believed that poor girl to be
guilty; and if she could have committed the crime for which she
suffered, assuredly she would have been the most depraved of human
creatures. For the sake of a few jewels, to have murdered the son of her
benefactor and friend, a child whom she had nursed from its birth, and
appeared to love as if it had been her own! I could not consent to the
death of any human being; but certainly I should have thought such a
creature unfit to remain in the society of men. But she was innocent. I
know, I feel she was innocent; you are of the same opinion, and that
confirms me. Alas! Victor, when falsehood can look so like the truth,
who can assure themselves of certain happiness? I feel as if I were
walking on the edge of a precipice, towards which thousands are
crowding, and endeavouring to plunge me into the abyss. William and
Justine were assassinated, and the murderer escapes; he walks about the
world free, and perhaps respected. But even if I were condemned to
suffer on the scaffold for the same crimes, I would not change places
with such a wretch."
I listened to this discourse with the extremest agony. I, not in deed,
but in effect, was the true murderer. Elizabeth read my anguish in my
countenance, and kindly taking my hand, said, "My dearest friend, you
must calm yourself. These events have affected me, God knows how deeply;
but I am not so wretched as you are. There is an expression of despair,
and sometimes of revenge, in your countenance, that makes me tremble.
Dear Victor, banish these dark passions. Remember the friends around
you, who centre all their hopes in you. Have we lost the power of
rendering you happy? Ah! while we love--while we are true to each other,
here in this land of peace and beauty, your native country, we may reap
every tranquil blessing,--what can disturb our peace?"
And could not such words from her whom I fondly prized before every
other gift of fortune, suffice to chase away the fiend that lurked in my
heart? Even as she spoke I drew near to her, as if in terror; lest at
that very moment the destroyer had been near to rob me of her.
Thus not the tenderness of friendship, nor the beauty of earth, nor of
heaven, could redeem my soul from woe: the very accents of love were
ineffectual. I was encompassed by a cloud which no beneficial influence
could penetrate. The wounded deer dragging its fainting limbs to some
untrodden brake, there to gaze upon the arrow which had pierced it, and
to die--was but a type of me.
Sometimes I could cope with the sullen despair that overwhelmed me: but
sometimes the whirlwind passions of my soul drove me to seek, by bodily
exercise and by change of place, some relief from my intolerable
sensations. It was during an access of this kind that I suddenly left my
home, and bending my steps towards the near Alpine valleys, sought in
the magnificence, the eternity of such scenes, to forget myself and my
ephemeral, because human, sorrows. My wanderings were directed towards
the valley of Chamounix. I had visited it frequently during my boyhood.
Six years had passed since then: _I_ was a wreck--but nought had changed
in those savage and enduring scenes.
I performed the first part of my journey on horseback. I afterwards
hired a mule, as the more sure-footed, and least liable to receive
injury on these rugged roads. The weather was fine: it was about the
middle of the month of August, nearly two months after the death of
Justine; that miserable epoch from which I dated all my woe. The weight
upon my spirit was sensibly lightened as I plunged yet deeper in the
ravine of Arve. The immense mountains and precipices that overhung me on
every side--the sound of the river raging among the rocks, and the
dashing of the waterfalls around, spoke of a power mighty as
Omnipotence--and I ceased to fear, or to bend before any being less
almighty than that which had created and ruled the elements, here
displayed in their most terrific guise. Still, as I ascended higher, the
valley assumed a more magnificent and astonishing character. Ruined
castles hanging on the precipices of piny mountains; the impetuous
Arve, and cottages every here and there peeping forth from among the
trees, formed a scene of singular beauty. But it was augmented and
rendered sublime by the mighty Alps, whose white and shining pyramids
and domes towered above all, as belonging to another earth, the
habitations of another race of beings.
I passed the bridge of Pélissier, where the ravine, which the river
forms, opened before me, and I began to ascend the mountain that
overhangs it. Soon after I entered the valley of Chamounix. This valley
is more wonderful and sublime, but not so beautiful and picturesque, as
that of Servox, through which I had just passed. The high and snowy
mountains were its immediate boundaries; but I saw no more ruined
castles and fertile fields. Immense glaciers approached the road; I
heard the rumbling thunder of the falling avalanche, and marked the
smoke of its passage. Mont Blanc, the supreme and magnificent Mont
Blanc, raised itself from the surrounding _aiguilles_, and its
tremendous _dôme_ overlooked the valley.
A tingling long-lost sense of pleasure often came across me during this
journey. Some turn in the road, some new object suddenly perceived and
recognised, reminded me of days gone by, and were associated with the
light-hearted gaiety of boyhood. The very winds whispered in soothing
accents, and maternal nature bade me weep no more. Then again the kindly
influence ceased to act--I found myself fettered again to grief, and
indulging in all the misery of reflection. Then I spurred on my animal,
striving so to forget the world, my fears, and, more than all,
myself--or, in a more desperate fashion, I alighted, and threw myself on
the grass, weighed down by horror and despair.
At length I arrived at the village of Chamounix. Exhaustion succeeded to
the extreme fatigue both of body and of mind which I had endured. For a
short space of time I remained at the window, watching the pallid
lightnings that played above Mont Blanc, and listening to the rushing of
the Arve, which pursued its noisy way beneath. The same lulling sounds
acted as a lullaby to my too keen sensations: when I placed my head upon
my pillow, sleep crept over me; I felt it as it came, and blest the
giver of oblivion.