Chapter 5 — the creation, and the running-away

On a dreary night in November, almost a year after he started the work, Victor stands over his finished creation by the light of a single candle. He has been at it for many hours; it is just past one in the morning. He sees the dull yellow eye of the creature open. The Creature breathes hard. A convulsive motion agitates his limbs. Victor is overwhelmed by horror. The being he has made is, by Victor's own description, beautiful in proportion and ugly in execution — "his limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful... his lustrous black hair... his teeth of pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes... his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips."

Victor cannot bear to look at him. He flees the laboratory, paces his rooms for hours, and finally throws himself onto his bed and sleeps fitfully. He dreams. He dreams of his living Elizabeth — and as he kisses her, she becomes the corpse of his dead mother, "the grave-worms crawling in the folds of the flannel." He wakes in a sweat. The Creature is standing by the bed, parting the curtains, gibbering at him; the Creature has come, perhaps, to ask him something. Victor flees the apartments altogether and spends the rest of the night walking in the streets of Ingolstadt in his nightclothes.

In the morning he meets, by extraordinary coincidence, Henry Clerval — newly arrived from Geneva to study with him. Victor, half out of his mind, brings Henry back to his apartments. The Creature is gone. Victor will not say what has happened. He is unable to. He collapses into a months-long brain fever and is nursed back to health by Henry through the winter and into the spring. By the time Victor recovers, the Creature has been free in the world for many months, and Victor has decided not to pursue him. He will not name the Creature to anyone, not even Henry. The first decision of the cover-up has been made.