Chapter 7

• “I wish to prepare you for the woeful news, but I know it is impossible; even now your eye skims over the page, to seek the words which are to convey to you the horrible things.”
• “William is dead! – that sweet child, whose smiles delighted and warmed my heart, who was so gentle, yet so gay! Victor, he is murdered!”
• “I will not attempt to console you; but will simply relate the circumstances of the transaction.”
• “Oh God! I have murdered my darling child!””
• “Come Victor; not brooding thoughts of vengeance against the assassin, but with feelings of peace and gentleness, that will heal, instead of festering, the wounds of our minds.”
• “my countenance betrayed the secret to Elizabeth" [...] Clerval, who had watched my countenance as I read this letter, was surprised to observe the despair
• “How much more a murderer, that could destroy such radiant innocence!”
• “He can no longer be a subject for pity; we must reserve that for his miserable survivors.”
• when I drew near my native town, I slackened my progress.
• “I fear, my friend, that I shall render myself tedious by dwelling on these preliminary circumstances; but they were the days of comparative happiness, and I think of them with pleasure"
• By degrees the calm and heavenly scene restored me
• “I foresaw obscurely that I was destined to become the most wretched of human beings.”
• “I resolved to visit the spot where my poor William had been murdered.”
• “flashes of lightning dazzled my eyes, illuminating the lake, making it appear like a vast sheet of fire”
• “so beautiful yet so terrific”
• “A flash of lightning illuminated the object, and discovered its shape plainly to me, its gigantic stature, and the deformity of its aspect, more hideous than belongs to humanity.”
• “it was the wretch, the filthy demon”
• “What did he there? Could he be (…) the murderer of my brother?”
• “He was the murderer! I could not doubt it. The mere presence of the idea was an irresistible proof of the fact.”
• “I told the servants not to disturb the family, and went into the library”
• “I gazed on the picture of my mother, which stood over the mantlepiece. It was a historical subject, painted at my father’s desire, and represented Caroline Beaufort in an agony of despair, kneeling by the coffin of her dead father.”
• “who could attempt to pursue him? It is impossible; one might as well try to overtake the winds, or confine a mountain stream with a straw/”
• “the living monument of presumption and rash ignorance”
• “[Alphonse] I had rather have been forever ignorant than have discovered so much depravity and ingratitude in one I valued so highly”
• She is innocent, my Elizabeth