Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous."
He describes how his physical ugliness repels human beings, who
fail to realise his benevolent intentions. A father snatches from
his arms the child he has rescued from death; the virtuous
family, whom he admires and would fain serve, flee affrighted
from his presence. To educate the monster, so that his thoughts
and emotions may become articulate, and, incidentally, to
accentuate his isolation from society, Mrs. Shelley inserts a
complicated story about an Arabian girl, Sofie, whose lover
teaches her to read from Plutarch's _Lives_, Volney's _Ruins of
Empire, The Sorrows of Werther_, and _Paradise Lost_. The monster
overhears the lessons, and ponders on this unique library, but,
as he pleads his own cause the more eloquently because he knows
Satan's passionate outbursts of defiance and self-pity, who would
cavil at the method by which he is made to acquire his knowledge?
"The cold stars shone in mockery, and the bare trees waved their
branches above me; now and then the sweet voice of a bird burst
forth amidst the universal stillness. All save I were at rest or
in enjoyment. I, like the arch fiend, bore a hell within me." And
later, near the close of the book: "The fallen angel becomes a
malignant devil.
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