Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the second chapter of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.

Come with us as we release one bite a day of one of your favorite classic novels, plays & short stories. Bree reads these classics like she reads to her daughter, one chapter a day. If you love books or audiobooks and want something to listen to as you're getting ready, driving to work, or as you're getting ready for bed, check out Bite at a Time Books!

Follow, rate, and review Bite at a Time Books where we read you your favorite classics, one bite at a time. Available wherever you listen to podcasts.

Check out our website!

Get exclusive Behind the Scenes content on our YouTube!

We are now part of the Bite at a Time Books Productions network!

If you ever wondered what inspired your favorite classic novelist to write their stories, what was happening in their lives or the world at the time, check out Bite at a Time Books Behind the Story wherever you listen to podcasts.

Follow us on all the socials: Instagram - Twitter - Facebook - TikTok

Follow Bree at: Instagram - Twitter - Facebook

Take a look and a book and let's see what we can find.

Take a chapter by chapter one fight at a time So many adventures and mountains we can climb Take it word for word, line by line we fight at a time.

Video welcome to Bite.

At a Time Books, where we read you your favorite classics one byte at a time.

My name is Brie Carlyle and I love to read and wanted to share my passion with listeners like you.

If you enjoy the podcast, tag us in your social media posts at Bite at a Time Books and you'll be featured in our new Shout Out Saturday segment.

At the end of each week, we'll be including a special Shout Out Saturday episode featuring whoever tagged us that week.

Be sure to follow my show on your favorite podcast platform so you get all the new episodes.

You can find most of our links in the show notes, but also on our website.

Bite atitimebooks.com includes all of the links for our show, including to our patreon to support the show, and YouTube, where we have special behind the narration of the episodes.

We are part of the Byte at a Time Books Productions network.

If you'd also like to hear what inspired your favorite classic author to write.

Their novels and what was going on.

In the world at the time, check out the Bite at a Time Books Behind the Story podcast.

Wherever you listen to podcasts today, we'll.

Be continuing Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.

Chapter Two We were brought up together.

There was not quite a year difference in our ages.

I need not say that we were strangers to any species of disunion or dispute.

Harmony was the soul of our companionship, and the diversity and contrast that subsisted in our characters drew us nearer together.

Elizabeth was of a calmer and more concentrated disposition, but with all my ardure I was capable of a more intense application and was more deeply smitten with the thirst for knowledge.

She busied herself with following the aerial creations of the poets.

And in the majestic and wondrous scenes which surrounded our Swiss home the sublime shapes of the mountains.

The changes of the seasons.

Tempest and calm.

The silence of winter.

And the life and turbulence of our alpine summers.

She found ample scope for admiration and delight.

While my companion contemplated with a serious and satisfied spirit the magnificent appearances of things.

I delighted at investigating their causes.

The world was to me a secret which I desired to divine.

Curiosity, earnest research, to learn the hidden laws of nature, gladness akin to rapture as they were unfolded to me, are among the earliest sensations I can remember on the birth of a second son, my junior.

By seven years, my parents gave up entirely their wandering life and fixed themselves in their native country.

We possessed a house in Geneva and a campaign on Bellerive, the eastern shore of the Lake at the distance of rather more than a league from the city.

We resided principally in the latter, and the lives of my parents were past in considerable seclusion.

It was my temper to avoid a crowd and to attach myself fervently to a few.

I was indifferent, therefore, to my schoolfellows in general, but I united myself in the bonds of the closest friendship to one among them.

Henry Clarville was the son of a merchant of Geneva.

He was a boy of singular talent and fancy.

He loved enterprise, hardship, and even danger for its own sake.

He was deeply read in books of chivalry and romance.

He composed heroic songs and began to write many a tale of enchantment and nightly adventure.

He tried to make us act plays and enter into masquerades in which the characters were drawn from the heroes of Ron Chenchvales, of the Round Table, of King Arthur in the chivalrous train, who shed their blood to redeem the holy schepteler from the hands of the infidels.

No human being could have passed a happier childhood than myself.

My parents were possessed by the very spirit of kindness and indulgence.

We felt that they were not the tyrants to rule our lot according to their caprice, but the agents and creators of all the many delights which we enjoyed.

When I mingled with other families, I distinctly discerned how peculiarly fortunate my lot was, and gratitude assisted the development of familial love.

My temper was sometimes violent, and my passions vehement but by some law.

In my temperament they were turned not towards childish pursuits, but to an eager desire to learn, and not to learn all things indiscriminately.

I confess that neither the structure of languages, nor the code of governments, nor the politics of various states possessed attractions for me.

It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn, and whether it was the outward substance of things or the inner spirit of nature and the mysterious soul of man that occupied me still, my inquiries were directed to the metaphysical, or in its highest sense, the physical secrets of the world.

Meanwhile, Clerville occupied himself, so to speak, with the moral relations of things.

The busy stage of life, the virtues of heroes and the actions of men were his theme and his hope.

And his dream was to become one among those whose names are recorded in story as a galliant and adventurous benefactors of our species.

The saintly soul of Elizabeth shone like a shrine dedicated lamp in our peaceful home.

Her sympathy was ours.

Her smile, her soft voice, the sweet glance of her celestial eyes were ever there to bless and animate us.

She was the living spirit of love to soften and attract.

I might have become sullen in my study, rough through the ardger of my nature, but that she was there to subdue me to a semblance of her own gentleness and Clervyll could aught ill entrench on the noble spirit of clerville.

Yet he might not have been so perfectly humane, so thoughtful in his generosity, so full of kindness and tenderness amidst his passion for adventurous exploit, had she not unfolded to him the real loveliness of beneficians, and made the doing good the end and aim of his soaring ambition.

I feel exquisite pleasure in dwelling on the recollections of childhood, before misfortune had tainted my mind and changed its bright visions of extensive youthfulness into, gloomy and narrow reflections upon self.

Besides, in drawing the picture of my early days, I also recorded those events which fled by insensible steps to my aftertail of misery.

For when I would account to myself for the birth of that passion which afterwards ruled my destiny, I find it a rise like a mountain river, from ignoble and almost forgotten sources.

But swelling as it proceeded, it became the torrent which in its course has swept away all my hopes and joys.

Natural philosophy is the genius that has regulated my fate.

I desire, therefore, in this narration to state those facts which led to my predilection for that science.

When I was 13 years of age, we all went on a party of pleasure to the baths near Fanon.

The inclement see of the weather obliged us to remain a day confined to the inn.

In this house I chanced to find a volume of the works of Cornelius Agrippa.

I opened it with apathy.

The theory which she attempts to demonstrate and the wonderful facts which he relates soon changed this feeling into enthusiasm.

A new light seemed to dawn upon my mind, and bounding with joy, I communicated my discovery to my father.

My father looked carelessly at the title page of my book and said, ah, Cornelius Agrippa.

My dear Victor, do not waste your time upon this.

It is sad trash.

If.

Instead of this remark.

My father had taken the pains to explain to me that the principles of Agrippa had been entirely exploded.

And that a modern system of science had been introduced which possessed much greater powers than the ancient.

Because the powers of the latter were chimerical.

While those of the former were real and practical.

Under such circumstances I should certainly have thrown a Grippa aside and have contented my imagination.

Warmed as it was.

By returning with greater argure to my former studies.

It is even possible that the train of my ideas would never have received the fatal impulse that led to my ruin.

But the cursory glance my father had taken of my volume by no means assured me that he was acquainted with its contents, and I continued to read with the greatest avidity.

When I returned home, my first care was to procure the whole works of this author, and afterwards of Paracelius and Albertus Magnus.

I read and studied the wild fancies of these writers with delight.

They appeared to me treasures known to few besides myself.

I have described myself as always having been imbued with a fervent longing to penetrate the secrets of nature.

In spite of the intense labor and wonderful discoveries of modern philosophers, I always came from my studies discontented and unsatisfied.

Sir Isaac Newton is said to have avowed that he felt like a child picking up shells beside the great and unexplored ocean of truth.

Those of his successors in each branch of natural philosophy with whom I was acquainted appeared even to my boys apprehensions as tyros engaged in the same pursuit.

The untaught peasant beheld the elements around him and was acquainted with their practical uses.

The most learned philosopher knew little more.

He had partially unveiled the face of nature, but her immortal lineuments were still a wonder and a mystery.

He might dissect anatomize and give names, but not to speak of a final cause.

Causes in their secondary and tertiary grades were utterly unknown to him.

I had gazed upon the fortifications and impediments that seemed to keep human beings from entering the citadel of nature, and rashly and ignorantly I had repined.

But here were books, and here were men who had penetrated deeper and knew more.

I took their word for all that they averred, and I became their disciple.

It may appear strange that such should arise in the 18th century, but while I followed the routine of education in the schools of Geneva, I was to a great degree self taught with regard to my favorite studies.

My father was not scientific, and I was left to struggle with a child's blindness added to a student's thirst for knowledge.

Under the guidance of my new preceptors, I entered with the greatest diligence into the search of the philosopher stone and the elixir of life, but the latter soon obtained my undivided attention.

Wealth was an inferior object, but what glory would attend the discovery if I could banish disease from the human frame and render man invulnerable to any but a violent death?

Nor were these my only visions.

The raising of ghosts or devils was a promise liberally accorded by my favorite authors, the fulfillment of which I most eagerly sought.

And if my incantations were always unsuccessful, I attributed the failure rather to my own inexperience and mistake than to a want of skill or fidelity in my instructors.

And thus, for a time, I was occupied by exploded systems, mingling like an unadept 10 contradictory series, and floundering desperately in a very slough of multifarious knowledge, guided by an art and imagination and childish reasoning, till an accident again changed the current of my ideas.

When I was about 15 years old, we had retired to our house near Belreave when we witnessed a most violent and terrible thunderstorm.

It advanced from behind the mountains of Jura, and the thunder burst at once with frightful loudness from various quarters of the heavens.

I remained while the storm lasted, watching its progress with curiosity and delight as I stood at the door on a sudden I beheld a stream of fire issued from an old and beautiful oak which stood about 20 yards from our house, and so soon as the dazzling light vanished, the oak had disappeared, and nothing remained but a blasted stump.

When we visited it the next morning, we found the tree shattered in a singular manner.

It was not splintered by the shock, but entirely reduced to thin ribbons of wood.

I never beheld anything so utterly destroyed.

Before this, I was not unacquainted with the more obvious laws of electricity.

On this occasion, a man of great research and natural philosophy was with us, and excited by this catastrophe, he entered on the explanation of a theory which he had formed on the subject of electricity and galvanism, which was at once new and astonishing to me.

All that he said threw greatly into the shade Cornelius Agrippa, Albertus Magnus, and Paracelius, the lords of my imagination.

But by some fatality, the overthrow of.

These men disinclined me to pursue my accustomed studies.

It seemed to me as if nothing would or could ever be known.

All that had so long engaged my attention suddenly grew despicable by one of those caprices of the mind which we are perhaps most subject to.

In early youth, I at once gave up my former occupations, set down natural history and all its progeny as a deformed and abortive creation, and entertained the greatest disdain for wouldbe science, which could never even step within the threshold of real knowledge.

In this mood of mind, I betook myself to the mathematics and the branches of study appertaining to that science as being built upon secure foundations and so worthy of my consideration.

US.

Strangely are our souls constructed, and by such slight ligaments are we bound to prosperity or ruin.

When I look back, it seems to me as if this almost miraculous change of inclination and will was the immediate suggestion of the guardian angel of my life, the last effort made by the spirit of preservation to avert the storm that was even then hanging in the stars and ready to envelop me.

Her victory was announced by an unusual tranquillity and gladness of soul, which followed the relinquishing of my ancient and laterally tormenting studies.

It was thus that I was to be taught to associate evil with their prosecution, happiness with their disregard.

It was a strong effort of the spirit of good, but it was ineffectual.

Destiny was too potent, and her immutable laws had decreed my utter and terrible destruction.

Thank you for joining Bite at a Time Books today while we read a.

Bite of one of your favorite classics.

Again, my name is Brie Carlyle, and.

I hope you come back tomorrow for the next bite of Frankenstein.

Don't forget to tag us on your social media posts at Byte at a Time Books, and we hope to be able to feature you in this Saturday segment.

Check out the show notes or our website bite out of time.

Books for the links for our show.

As we can climb.