Chapter 23 — Alphonse dies; the pursuit begins

Victor returns to Geneva alone, with Elizabeth's body, and breaks the news to his father. Alphonse, who has now lost his wife, his youngest son, his foster-daughter Justine, and his daughter-in-law Elizabeth — all in the space of a few years, all by causes his eldest son knows but will not speak — collapses. He lives a few more days. Victor sits at the bedside. Alphonse, in his final hours, can only repeat the names of the dead. He dies without understanding what has happened to his family. Ernest, the surviving brother, takes over the household. Victor cannot stay.

He goes, finally, to the chief magistrate of Geneva. He tells the entire story — the laboratory at Ingolstadt, the creation, the Creature's articulate vengeance, the murders, the threat at the wedding. The magistrate listens with growing disbelief. He is sympathetic but professional. There is no evidence; the story is impossible; even if it were true, the Creature, by Victor's own description, is now far beyond any jurisdiction Geneva can reach. He cannot help. Victor leaves the conversation knowing that no human authority will avenge his household. He must do it himself.

He goes home, gathers funds, and sets out alone. The Creature has left a trail he can follow — taunts written on rocks, on trees, on the doors of inns. Victor follows it east, then north, into Russia. The pursuit becomes the book's longest single action. By the time the chapter closes Victor is somewhere on the steppe, alone, half-starved, bedded down in shacks at night, crossing on foot what no man has ever crossed for any reason — except, in this case, to kill the thing he made.