Frankenstein's Monster Read Online Free Page A

the bottom of the tower. First I made certain that the structure was not shelter to someone else, then I settled down in its most secluded part to rest.
    It is dawn. Men are already about on morning business. Voices outside the campanile complain about the city’s occupation. After a thousand years of glory, Venice has begun to change hands as often as a weary old whore. The Austrians claim her now, not for the first time. Arguing over who is worse, the Austrians or the French, the voices at last move away.
    My clothes and boots are still wet, my cloak still soaked, but the oilcloth I keep wrapped around my few belongings has once more kept my treasures dry. A candle, a flint, my precious journal, pen and ink, and my current book—each is safe.
May
2
    Sometimes Fate offers me gifts. No matter how small, I count each one a treasure.
    This morning, before dawn had stolen the safety of the lingering shadows, I found a man facedown in an alley, his expression beatific, his cheek comfortably resting on a pillow ofdung. And there—by the fool’s hand—a book! I have read the Cavalcanti five times over. A new book was more welcome than usual. I picked it up, wiped it on the man’s shoulder, and slipped it into my cloak, still wet after its bath in the Adriatic. There the book bumped against the volume of poetry.
    I was nearly to the next street when I turned and walked back. A fool with a book is less a fool for having one, given most fools and most books. I gave him the Cavalcanti in exchange for his and hope he finds some wisdom in it.
    My new prize is
Sorrows of Young Werther
. It was one of the first books I ever read, along with
Paradise Lost
and Plutarch’s
Lives
, and had such a profound effect on me that I hesitate taking it up again. Then, I had read it as my introduction to the entire race of humans. I believed all men to be like Werther: deep, sensitive, overwrought, noble, suffering with the agony and isolation of sheer existence. Now I hope to read the book as a cautionary tale against emotionalism, against the dangers of believing oneself to be accepted—nay, more seductive, against the dangers of believing oneself acceptable.
May
3
    “Light a candle,” said the voice, and a candle was lit.
    “Light another,” the voice repeated, and another candle was lit.
    On and on the voice commanded, until a full candelabra blazed in the darkness.
    In the dream, I wrote in my journal by the candles’ radiance, breathing in the thousand spices of Venice: not the stink of the rotting hulk in which I now dwell, drained by centuries of extravagance, but the incense of ancient Venice, jewel of the sea.
    On waking, I eagerly dwelt for hours on every detail of the dream, burning each into my mind as a memory of actual life. Such fleeting images, the mere suggestions of printed words, offer me more joy, more consolation, than reality ever has.
May
4
    “Alms for the poor and blind!” the little beggar cried out. “Pave your way to Heaven with alms! A coin for me is worth more indulgences than a dozen novenas!”
    Today I have met Lucio, master beggar, who gives twice what he gets, though not in the same coin.
    The abandoned campanile is a mere dozen streets from the Piazzetta, next to the old Ducal Palace and overlooking the Basin of San Marco. Yesterday I wandered from alley to alley till the sun set. I drank in the light that is so peculiarly Venetian, its luminosity doubled by the water. The facade of the palace deepened from pink to rose. The building seems to be supported by air alone, lacy columns beneath, with a solid angular bulk on top. It is an impossible structure, and for that I feel kinship with its stones.
    Today I arrived at the Piazzetta early and settled in a corner, enthralled with the conversations around me. An hour after I arrived, a blind man took up position a few feet away and held out a wooden bowl to be filled. Instead of sitting in silence as I did, he harangued every person who walked by, grabbing