The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein Read Free

fervour; no Zealot or Essene could have more eagerly hunted after truth. Yet my evening discussions with Bysshe continued, and were no less animated. He longed passionately for the dissolution of Christianity and had sworn revenge on the one he called “the pale Galilean,” but his fury was reserved for the omniscient God of the prophets. I had been educated in the Reformed Church of Geneva, but the religion of my father and my family had left little impression on my mind. I had affirmed the god of Nature itself, but my early faith in some maker of the universe was now shaken by Bysshe’s denial of an eternal and omnipotent being. This deity was venerated as the creator of life, but what if others of less exalted nature were able to perform that miracle? What then?
    Bysshe argued from the precepts of reason that there was no God. He affirmed that truth was the only means to promote the best interests of mankind. Once he had discovered a truth, then it was incumbent upon him to declare it as forcefully as possible. He also stated that, since belief is a passion of the mind, no degree of criminality can be attached to disbelief. In this, as he realised soon enough, he ignored the general prejudices of English society. He wrote a short essay, entitled “On the Necessity of Atheism,” which was then printed and puton sale at the bookseller across the high street from the college. It had been on the shelves for no more than twenty minutes when one of the fellows of the college, Mr. Gibson, read it and berated the owner of the shop for putting such incendiary literature on display. The copies were immediately withdrawn and, I believe, burned in a stove at the rear of the premises.
    The authorship of the anonymous pamphlet was soon detected, on the information of the bookseller himself, and Bysshe was summoned to a meeting of the Master and fellows. A copy of “On the Necessity of Atheism” lay before them, as he told me later. But he refused to answer their questions on the grounds that the pamphlet had been published anonymously. It would be an act of tyranny and injustice, he said, to press him when they had no legal cause. His was a nature that turned into fire at any hint of oppression. Of course he was judged to be guilty. He hammered upon my door immediately after leaving this gathering.
    “I am sent down,” he said as soon as he entered my rooms. “Not merely rusticated, Victor. Expelled! Can you believe it?”
    “Expelled? From what date?”
    “From now. This moment. I am no longer a member of the university.” He sat down, trembling. “I have no notion what my father will say.” He always spoke of his father in terms of the greatest disquiet.
    “Where will you go, Bysshe?”
    “I cannot go home. That would be too hard to bear.” He looked up at me. “And I would not wish to be deprived of your company for very long, Victor.”
    “There is only one place for you.”
    “I know it. London.” He jumped up from the chair, andwalked over to the window. “I have been in correspondence with Leigh Hunt for some weeks. He knows all the revolutionaries in the city. I will live in their society.” Already he seemed to be recovering his spirit. “I will grow towards the sun of liberty! I will find lodgings. And you must accompany me, Victor. Will you come?”

    I WAITED UNTIL THE END OF TERM before following Bysshe to London. He had rented lodgings in Poland Street, in the district of Soho, and I had found rooms close by in Berners Street. I had been in London once before, on my arrival from my homeland, but of course I was still amazed by the immensity of its life. No Alpine storm, no torrent among the glaciers, no avalanche among the peaks, can give the least idea of the roar of the city. I had never seen so many people, and I wandered through the streets in a constant state of excitation. What power human lives have in the aggregate! To me the city resembled some vast electrical machine, galvanising rich and