Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the third 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 Three When I had attained the age of 17, my parents resolved that I should become a student at the University of Inglestad.

I had hitherto attended the schools of Geneva, but my father thought it necessary for the completion of my education that I should be made acquainted with other customs than those of my native country.

My departure was therefore fixed at an early date.

But before the day resolved upon could arrive, the first misfortune of my life occurred in omen, as it were, of my future misery.

Elizabeth had caught the scarlet fever.

Her illness was severe, and she was in the greatest danger.

During her illness, many arguments had been urged to persuade my mother to refrain from attending upon her.

She had at first yielded to our entreaties, but when she heard that the life of her favorite was menaced, she could no longer control her anxiety.

She attended her sick bed.

Her watchful attentions triumphed over the malignant day of the December.

Elizabeth was saved, but the consequences of this imprudence were fatal to her preserver.

On the third day, my mother sickened.

Her fever was accompanied by the most alarming symptoms, and the looks of her medical attendants prognostated the worst event on her deathbed.

The fortitude and benignty of the best of women did not desert her.

She joined to 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.

Elizabeth, my love, you must supply my place to my younger children.

Alas, I regret that I am taken from you and happy and beloved as I have been.

Is it not hard to quit you all?

But these are not thoughts befitting me.

I will endeavour to resign myself cheerfully to death, and will indulge a hope of meeting you in another world.

She died calmly, and her countenance expressed affection even in death.

I need not describe the feelings of those whose dearest ties are rent by that most irreparable evil, the void that presents itself to the soul, and the despair that is exhibited on the countenance.

It is so long before the mind can persuade itself that she whom we saw every day, and whose very existence appeared a part of our own, can have departed forever, that the brightness of a beloved eye can have been extinguished, and the sound of a voice so familiar and dear to the ear can be hushed, never more to be heard.

These are the reflections of the first days.

But when the lapse of time proves the reality of the evil, an actual bitterness of grief commences.

Yet from whom has not that rude hand rent away some dear connection?

And why should I describe a sorrow which all have felt and must feel?

The time at length arrives when grief is rather an indulgence than a necessity, and the smile that plays upon the lips, although it may be deemed a sacrilege, is not banished.

My mother was dead, but we had still duties which we ought to perform.

We must continue our course with the rest and learn to think ourselves fortunate whilst one remains whom the spoiler has not seized.

My departure for inglestad which had been deferred by these events, was now again determined upon.

I obtained from my father a respite of some weeks.

It appeared to me sacrilege so soon to leave the repose akin to death of the house of mourning, and to rush into the thick of life.

I was new to sorrow, but it did not the less alarm me.

I was unwilling to quit the sight of those that remained in me.

And above all I desired to see my sweet Elizabeth in some degree consoled.

She indeed veiled her grief and strove to act as a comforter to us all.

She looked steadily on life and assumed its duties with courage and zeal.

She devoted herself to those whom she had been taught to call her uncle and cousins.

Never was she so enchanting as at this time.

When she recalled the sunshine of her smiles and spent them upon us, she forgot even her own regret in her endeavors to make us forget.

The day of my departure at length arrived.

Clarville spent the last evening with us.

He had endeavored to persuade his father to permit him to accompany me and to become my fellow student, but in vain.

His father was a narrow minded traitor and saw idleness and ruin in the aspirations and ambition of his son.

Henry deeply felt the misfortune of being debarred from a liberal education.

He said little, but when he spoke, I read in his kindling eye and in his animated glance a restrained but firm resolve not to be changed to the miserable details of commerce.

We sat late.

We could not tear ourselves away from each other, nor persuade ourselves to say the word farewell, it was said, and we retired under the pretense of seeking repose, each fancying that the other was deceived.

But when it mornings dawn, I descended to the carriage which was to convey me away.

They were all there.

My father again to bless me, clerval, to press my hand once more, my Elizabeth, to renew her entreaties that I would write often, and to bestow the last feminine attentions on her playmate and friend.

I threw myself into the chase that was to convey me away and indulged in the most melancholy reflections.

I, who had ever been surrounded by amiable companions, continually engaged in endeavoring to bestow mutual pleasure.

I was now alone in the university.

Whither I was going, I must form my own friends and be my own protector.

My life had hitherto been remarkably secluded and domestic, and this had given me invincible repugnance to new countenances.

I loved my brothers Elizabeth and Clerville.

These were old familiar faces, but I believed myself totally unfitted for the company of strangers.

Such were my reflections as I commenced my journey, but as I proceeded, my spirits and hopes rose.

I ardently desired the acquisition of knowledge.

I had often, when at home, thought it hard to remain during my youth cooped up in one place, and had longed to enter the world and take my station among other human beings.

Now my desires were complied with, and it would indeed have been folly to repent.

I had sufficient leisure for these and many other reflections during my journey to Inglestod, which was long and fatiguing.

At length the high white steeple of the town met my eyes.

I alighted and was conducted to my solitary apartment to spend the evening as I pleased.

The next morning I delivered my letters of introduction and paid a visit to some of the principal professors.

Chance, or rather the Evil Influence, the angel of Destruction, which asserted omnipotent sway over me from the moment I turned.

My reluctant steps from my father's door led me first to M.

Krimp, professor of Natural Philosophy.

He was an uncouth man, but deeply imbued in the secrets of his science.

He asked me several questions concerning my progress in the different branches of science.

Appertaining to natural philosophy.

I replied carelessly and partly in contempt, mentioned the names of my alchemists as the principal authors I had studied.

The professor stared.

Have you, he said, really spent your time in studying such nonsense?

I replied in the affirmative.

Every minute, continued M.

Kremp with warmth, every instant that you have wasted on those books is utterly and entirely lost.

You have burdened your memory with exploded systems and useless names.

Good God.

In what desert land have you lived where no one was kind enough to inform you that these fancies which you have so greedily imbibed, are a thousand years old, and as musty as they are ancient.

I little expected in this enlightened and scientific age to find a disciple of Albertus Magnus and paracelsis.

My dear sir, you must begin your studies entirely anew.

So saying, he stepped aside and wrote down a list of several books treating of Natural Philosophy, which he desired me to procure, and dismissed me after mentioning that in the beginning of the following week he intended to commence a course of lectures upon natural philosophy in its General relations, and that M.

Waldman, a fellow professor, would lecture upon chemistry.

The alternate days that he omitted.

I returned home not disappointed, for I have said that I had long considered those authors useless whom the professor reprobated.

But I returned not at all the more inclined to recur to these studies in any shape.

Mcrimp was a little squatman, with a gruff voice and a repulsive countenance.

The teacher, therefore, did not prepossess me in favor of his pursuits.

In rather a too philosophical and connected a strain, perhaps, I had given an account of the conclusions I had come to concerning them in my early years.

As a child, I had not been content with the results promised by the modern professors of natural science, with a confusion of ideas, only to be accounted for by my extreme youth and my want of a guide on such matters.

I had retrod the steps of knowledge along the paths of time, and exchanged the discoveries of recent enquirers for the dreams of forgotten alchemists, besides had a contempt for the uses of modern natural philosophy.

It was very different when the masters of the science sought immortality and power.

Such views, although feudal, were grand.

But now the scene was changed.

The ambition of the enquirer seemed to limit itself to the annihilation of those visions on which my interest in science was chiefly founded.

I was required to exchange chimeras of boundless grandeur for realities of little worth.

Such were my reflections during the first two or three days of my residence at Inglestad, which were chiefly spent, and becoming acquainted with the localities and the principal residents in my new abode.

But as the ensuing week commenced.

I thought of the information which M.

Cremp had given me concerning the lectures and although I could not consent to go and hear that little conceited fellow deliver sentences out of a pulpit.

I recollected what he had said of M.

Waldman.

Whom I had never seen.

As he had hitherto been out of town partly from curiosity and partly from idleness I went into the lecturing room which M.

Waldman entered shortly after.

This professor was very unlike his colleague.

He appeared about 50 years of age, but with an aspect expressive of the greatest benevolence.

A few gray hairs covered his temples, but those at the back of his head were nearly black.

His person was short but remarkably erect, and his voice was the sweetest I had ever heard.

He began his lecture by a recapitulation of the history of chemistry and the various improvements made by the different men of learning, pronouncing with fervor the names of the most distinguished discoverers.

He then took a cursory view of the present state of the science and explained many of its elementary terms.

After having made a few preparatory experiments, he concluded with a pangeric upon modern chemistry, the terms of which I shall never forget.

The ancient teachers of this science said he promised impossibilities and performed nothing.

The modern masters promise very little.

They know that metals cannot be transmuted and that the elixir of life is a chimera.

But these philosophers, whose hands seem only made to dabble in dirt and their eyes to pour over the microscope or crucible, have indeed performed miracles.

They penetrate into the recesses of nature and show how she works in her hiding places.

They ascend into the heavens.

They have discovered how the blood circulates and the nature of the air we breathe.

They have acquired new and almost unlimited powers.

They can command the thunders of heaven, mimic the earthquake, and even mock the invisible world with its own shadows.

Such were the professor's words.

Rather, let me say such the words of the fate announced to destroy me.

As he went on, I felt as if my soul were grappling with a palpable enemy.

One by one the various keys were touched which formed the mechanism of my being.

Chord after cord was sounded and soon my mind was filled with one thought, one conception, one purpose.

So much had been done.

Exclaimed the Soul of Frankenstein.

More, far more, will I achieve.

Treading in the steps already marked, I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation.

I closed my eyes that night.

My internal being was in a state of insurrection and turmoil.

I felt that order would then survive, but I had no power to produce it by degrees.

After the morning's dawn, sleep came.

I awoke, and my yesterday's thoughts were as a dream.

There only remained a resolution to return to my ancient studies and to devote myself to a science for which I believed myself to possess a natural talent.

On the same day I paid M waldman a visit.

His manners in private were even more mild and attractive than in public for there was a certain dignity in his mean during his lecture, which in his own house was replaced by the greatest affability and kindness I gave him pretty nearly the same account of my former pursuits as I had given to his fellow professor.

He heard with attention the little narration concerning my studies, and smiled at the names of Cornelius, Agrippa and Paracelsis, but without the contempt that M.

Cremp had exhibited.

He said that these men.

To whose indefatigable zeal modern philosophers were indebted for most of the foundations of their knowledge.

They had left to us as an easier task to give new names and arrange in connected classifications the facts which they in a great degree had been the instruments of bringing to light the labors of men of genius.

However erroneously directed.

Scarcely ever fail.

In ultimately turning to the solid advantage of mankind.

I listened to his statement, which was delivered without any presumption or affection, and then added that his lecture had removed my prejudices against modern chemists.

I expressed myself in measured terms with the modesty and deference due from a use to his instructor, without letting escape an experience in life would have made me ashamed any of the enthusiasm which stimulated my intended labors.

I requested his advice concerning the books I ought to procure.

I am happy, said M.

Waldman, to have gained a disciple, and if your application equals your ability, I have no doubt of your success.

Chemistry is that branch of natural philosophy in which the greatest improvements have been and may be made.

It is on that account that I have made it my peculiar study.

But at the same time I have not neglected the other branches of science.

A man would make but a very sorry chemist if he attended to that department of human knowledge alone.

If your wish is to become really a man of science and not merely a petty experimentalist, I should advise you to apply to every branch of natural philosophy, including mathematics.

He then took me into his laboratory and explained to me the uses of his various machines, instructing me as to what I ought to procure, and promising me the use of his own when I should have advanced far enough in the science not to derange their mechanism.

He also gave me the list of books which I had requested, and I took my leave.

Thus ended a day memorable to me.

It decided my future destiny.

Thank you for joining Byte 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 at a Time Books for the links for our show.