Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the sixth 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 Six Clervil then put the following letter into my hands.

It was from my own Elizabeth my dearest cousin, you've been ill, very ill, and even the constant letters of dear, kind Henry are not sufficient to reassure me on your account.

You are forbidden to write, to hold a pen, yet one word from you, dear Victor, is necessary to calm our apprehensions.

For a long time I have thought that each post would bring this line, and my persuasions have restrained my uncle from undertaking a journey to inglestad.

I have prevented his encountering the inconveniences and perhaps dangers of so long a journey.

Yet how often have I regretted not being able to perform it myself?

I figured to myself that the task of attending on your sick bed has devolved on some mercenary old nurse who could never guess your wishes, nor minister to them with the care and affection of your poor cousin.

Yet that is over now.

Clerville writes that indeed you are getting better.

I eagerly hope that you will confirm this intelligence soon, in your own handwriting.

Get well and return to us.

You will find a happy, cheerful home and friends who love you dearly.

Your father's health is vigorous, and he asks but to see you, but to be assured that you are well and not a care will ever cloud his benevolent countenance.

How pleased you would be to remark this improvement of our earnest.

He is now 16 and full of activity and spirit.

His desirous to be a true Swiss and enter in the foreign service.

But we cannot part with him, at least until his elder brother returns to us.

My uncle is not pleased with the idea of a military career in a distant country.

But Ernest never had your powers of application.

He looks upon study as an odious fetter.

His time is spent in the open air, climbing the hills or rowing on the lake.

I fear that he will become an idler unless we yield the point and permit him to enter on the profession which he has selected.

Little alliteration except the growth of our dear children has taken place since you left us.

The blue lake and snowclad mountains, they never change.

And I think our placid home and our contented hearts are regulated by the same immutable laws.

My trifling occupations take up my time and amuse me, and I am rewarded for any exertions by seeing none but happy, kind faces around me.

Since you left us, but one change has taken place in our little household.

Do you remember on what occasion Justine Moritz answered our family?

Probably you do not.

I will relate her history therefore, in a few words.

Madame Moritz, her mother was a widow with four children, of whom Justine was the third.

This girl had always been the favorite of her father, but through a strange perversity, her mother could not endure her, and after the death of immoritz, treated her very ill.

My aunt observed this, and when Justine was twelve years of age, prevailed on her mother to allow her to live at our house.

The republican institutions of our country have produced simpler and happier manners than those which prevail in the great monarchies that surround it.

Hence there is less distinction between the several classes of its inhabitants and the lower orders.

Being neither so poor nor so despised, their manners are more refined and moral.

A servant in Geneva does not mean the same thing as a servant in France and England.

Justine, thus received in our family, learned the duties of a servant, a condition which in our fortunate country does not include the idea of ignorance and a sacrifice of the dignity of a human being.

Justine, you may remember, was a great favorite of yours, and I recollect you once remarked that if you were in an ill humor, one glance from Justine could dissipate it for the same reason that Aristo gives concerning the beauty of Angelica.

She looked so frankhearted and happy.

My aunt conceived a great attachment for her, by which she was induced to give her an education superior to that which she had at first intended.

This benefit was fully repaid.

Justine was the most grateful little creature in the world.

I do not mean that she made any professions.

I never heard one pass her lips, but you could see by her eyes that she almost adored her protectress.

Although her disposition was gay and in many respects inconsiderate, yet she paid the greatest attention to every gesture of my aunt.

She thought her the model of all excellence, and endeavored to imitate her phraseology and manners, so that even now she often reminds me of her.

When my dearest aunt died, everyone was too much occupied in their own grief to notice poor Justine, who had attended her during her illness with the most anxious affection.

Poor Justine was very ill, but other trials were reserved for her.

One by one her brothers and sister died, and her mother, with the exception of her neglected daughter, was left childless.

The conscience of the woman was troubled.

She began to think that the deaths of her favorites was a judgement from heaven to chastise her partiality.

She was a Roman Catholic, and I believe her confessor confirmed the idea which she had conceived accordingly.

A few months after your departure for Inglestodd, justine was called home by her repentant mother.

Poor girl.

She wept when she quitted our house.

She was much altered since the death of my aunt.

Grief had given softness and a winning mildness to her manners, which had before been remarkable for vivacity.

Nor was her residence at her mother's house of a nature to restore her gaiety.

The poor woman was very facilitating in her repentance.

She sometimes begged Justine to forgive her unkindness, but much oftener accused her of having caused the deaths of her brothers and sister, perpetual fretting at length through Madam Maurice, into a decline which at first increased her irritability, but she is now at peace forever.

She died on the first approach of cold weather at the beginning of this last winter.

Justine has just returned to us, and I assure you I love her tenderly.

She is very clever and gentle and extremely pretty, as I mentioned before.

Her mean and her expression continually remind me of my dear aunt.

I must say also a few words to you, my dear cousin, of little darling William.

I wish you could see him.

He is very tall of his age, with sweet laughing blue eyes, dark eyelashes and curling hair.

When he smiles, two little dimples appear on each cheek which are rosy with health.

He has already had one or two little wives, but Louisa Byron is his favorite.

A pretty little girl of five years of age.

Now, dear Victor, I dare say you wish to be indulged in a little gossip concerning the good people of Geneva.

The pretty Miss Mansfield has already received the congratulatory visits on her approaching marriage with a young Englishman, john Melbourne, Esquire.

Her ugly sister Menon married Im Dauvalard, the rich banker, last autumn.

Your favorite school fellow, Louis Manoire, has suffered several misfortunes since the departure of Clerval from Geneva, but he has already recovered his spirits and is reported to be on the point of marrying a lively, pretty French woman.

Madame Tavernier she is a widow and much older than memoir, but she is very much admired and a favorite with everybody.

I've written myself into better spirits, dear cousin, but my anxiety returns upon me as I conclude.

Right.

Dearest Victor, one line, one word will be a blessing to us.

10,000 thanks to Henry for his kindness, his affection, and his many letters.

We are sincerely grateful.

Adieu, my cousin.

Take care of yourself, and I entreat you right.

Elizabeth Lavenza, Geneva.

March 18, 1700.

Dear, dear Elizabeth, I exclaimed when I had read her letter.

I will write instantly and relieve them from the anxiety they must feel.

I wrote, and this exertion greatly fatigued me.

But my convalescence had commenced and proceeded regularly.

In another fortnight I was able to leave my chamber.

One of my first duties on my recovery was to introduce Clervil to the several professors of the university.

In doing this I underwent a kind of rough usage.

Ill befitting the wounds that my mind had sustained ever since the fatal night, the end of my labors, and the beginning of my misfortunes.

I had conceived a violent antipathy, even to the name of natural philosophy.

When I was otherwise quite restored to health, the sight of a chemical instrument would renew all the agony of my nervous symptoms.

Henry saw this and had removed all my apparatus from my view.

He had also changed my apartment, for he perceived that I had acquired a dislike for the room which had previously been my laboratory.

But these cares of clerval were made of no avail.

When I visited the professors, m.

Waldman inflicted torture.

When he praised with kindness and warmth the astonishing progress I had made in the sciences.

He soon perceived that I disliked the subject, but not guessing the real cause, he attributed my feelings to modesty, and changed the subject from my improvement to the science itself, with a desire, as I evidently saw, of drawing me out.

What could I do?

He meant to please, and he tormented me.

I felt as if he had placed carefully, one by one, in my view, those instruments which were to be afterwards used in putting me to a slow and cruel death.

I rised under his words, yet dared not exhibit the pain I felt.

Clerville, whose eyes and feelings were always quick and discerning the sensations of others, declined the subject, alleging an excuse, his total ignorance, and the conversation took a more general turn.

I thanked my friend for my heart, but I did not speak.

I saw plainly that he was surprised, but he never attempted to draw my secret from me, and although I loved him with a mixture of affection and reverence that knew no bounds, yet I could never persuade myself to confide in him that event which was so often present to my recollection, but which I feared the detail to another would only impress more deeply.

Mcrimp was not equally docile, and in my condition at that time of almost insupportable sensitiveness.

His harsh, blunt encomiums gave me even more pain than the benevolent approbation of M.

Waldman.

D*** the fellow.

Cried he.

Why, M.

Clerville, I assure you he has outstripped us all.

I stare, if you please, but it is nevertheless true.

A youngster who but a few years ago believed in Cornelius Agrippa as firmly as in the Gospel, has now set himself at the head of the university.

And if he is not soon pulled down, we shall all be out of countenance.

I, I, continued he, observing my face expressive of suffering.

M.

Frankenstein, is modest an excellent quality in a young man.

Young men should be diffident of themselves, you know, Mclerville.

I was myself when young, but that wears out in a very short time.

Mcrump had now commenced a eulogy on himself which happily turned the conversation from a subject that was so annoying to me.

Clerville had never sympathized in my tastes for natural science, and his literary pursuits differed wholly from those which had occupied me.

He came to the university with the design of making himself complete master of the Oriental languages, and thus he should open a field for the plan of life he had marked out for himself.

Resolved to pursue no inglorious career, he turned his eyes toward the east as a fording scope for his spirit of enterprise.

The Persian, Arabic and Sanskrit languages engaged his attention, and I was easily induced to enter on the same studies.

Idleness had ever been irksome to me, and now that I wished to fly from reflection and hated my former studies, I felt great relief in being a fellow pupil with my friend, and found not only instruction but constellation in the works of the Orientalists.

I did not, like him attempt a critical knowledge of their dialects, for I did not contemplate making any other use of them than temporary amusement.

I read merely to understand their meaning, and they well repaid my labors.

Their melancholy is soothing, and their joy elevating to a degree I never experienced in studying the authors of any other country.

When you read their writings, life appears to consist in a warm sun and a garden of roses, in the smiles and frowns of a fair enemy, and the fire that consumes your own heart.

How different from the manly and heroical poetry of Greece and Rome.

Some are passed away in these occupations, and my return to Geneva was fixed for the latter end of autumn.

But being delayed by several accidents, winter and snow arrived, the roads were deemed impassable, and my journey was retarded until the ensuing spring.

I felt this delay very bitterly, for I longed to see my native town and my beloved friends.

My return had only been delayed so long from an unwillingness to leave Clervill in a strange place before he had become acquainted with any of its inhabitants.

The winter, however, was spent cheerfully and although the spring was uncommonly late when it came, its beauty compensated for its dilatoriness.

The month of May had already commenced, and I expected the letter daily, which was to fix the date of my departure.

When Henry proposed a pedestrian tour in the environment of Inglestad that I might bid a personal farewell to the country I had so long inhabited.

I acceded with pleasure to this proposition.

I was fond of exercise, and Clarville had always been my favorite companion in the ramble of this nature that I had taken among the scenes of my native country.

We passed a fortnight in these paramulations.

My health and spirits had long been restored, and they gained additional strength from the salubrious air I breathed.

The natural incidence of our progress and the conversation of my friend study had before secluded me from the intercourse of my fellow creatures and rendered me unsocial.

But Clerville called forth the better feelings of my heart.

He again taught me to love the aspect of nature and the cheerful faces of children.

Excellent friend, how sincerely you did love me and endeavored to elevate my mind until it was on a level with your own.

A selfish pursuit had cramped and narrowed me until your gentleness and affection warmed and opened my senses.

I became the same happy creature who a few years ago, loved and beloved by all, had no sorrow or care.

When happy, inanimate nature had the power of bestowing on me the most delightful sensations.

A serene sky and verdant fields filled me with ecstasy.

The present season was indeed divine.

The flowers of spring bloomed in the hedges, while those of summer were already in bud.

I was undisturbed by thoughts which during the preceding year had pressed upon me, notwithstanding my endeavors to throw them off with an invincible burden.

Henry rejoiced in my gaiety and sincerely sympathized in my feelings.

He exerted himself to amuse me while he expressed the sensations that filled his soul.

The resources of his mind on this occasion were truly astonishing.

His conversation was full of imagination and very often in imitation of the Persian and Arabic writers.

He invented tales of wonderful fancy and passion.

At other times he repeated my favorite poems or drew me out into arguments which he supported with great ingenuity.

We returned to our college on a Sunday afternoon.

The peasants were dancing, and everyone we met appeared gay and happy.

My own spirits were high, and I bounded along with feelings of unbridled joy and hilarity.

Thank you for joining Bite Out of 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 Bite 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 at a time.

Books for the links for our show.