Читать книгу Франкенштейн, или Современный Прометей / Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus - Мэри Шелли - Страница 7

We lived together. Harmony was the soul of our companionship. Elizabeth was calm and concentrated. While my companion contemplated with a serious and satisfied spirit of things, I wanted to investigate their causes. The world was to me a secret which I desired to understand.

On the birth of a second son, my parents came to their native country. We possessed a house in Geneva, and a villa on the eastern shore of the lake. I was indifferent to my school-fellows in general; but I had a friend among them. Henry Clerval was the son of a merchant of Geneva. He was a boy of talent and fancy. He loved enterprise, hardship, and even danger. He composed heroic songs and began to write knightly tales.

My temper was violent, and my passions vehement. I wanted to learn. It was the secrets of heaven and earth, the physical secrets of the world that I desired to learn.

Meanwhile Clerval occupied himself with the moral relations of things[8]. The busy stage of life, the virtues of heroes, and the actions of men were his theme. The saintly soul of Elizabeth shone in our peaceful home. Her sympathy was ours; her smile, her soft voice, the sweet glance of her celestial eyes, were there to bless and animate us.

Natural philosophy has regulated my fate. I liked to read the works of Agrippa, Paracelsus and Magnus. I read and studied the works of these writers with delight; they appeared to me treasures. I believed them, and I became their disciple. Under the guidance of my new preceptors I began to look for the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life. I wanted to banish disease from the humankind and save the people from death!

My favourite authors promised to call the ghosts or devils. If my incantations were always unsuccessful, I attributed the failure to my own inexperience and mistake.

When I was about fifteen years old we moved to our house near Belrive. My tormenting studies led to the evil. Destiny was potent, and its immutable laws decreed my terrible destruction.