The stranger is telling his story to Robert Walton.
I was born into a very noble family. My father was a politician, and as such he didn't think of marrying until he was a rather old man. Because the circumstances of the marriage illustrate his character, I must tell you about them. One of my father's best friends was a merchant named Beaufort. He had a fall from grace, and thus moved with his daughter to the town of Lucerne. Beaufort wanted to conceal his shame, so he hid. It took my father 10 months to find him. When my father found him, he learned of Beaufort's story. After he moved, depression caught ahold of his mind, and after 3 months he could no longer get out of bed. Beaufort's daughter, Caroline, worked very hard to support the family.
Caroline plaited start, and did plain work for several months to support her father and herself. After 10 months of his depression, Beaufort died. My father, after 2 years, married Caroline to help her. Once my father became a husband and a father, he quit most of his jobs to look over his family. I was the eldest child. My father dedicated his whole self to my education and care.
Before I can continue, I must tell you of an incident that happened when I was 4 years old. My father had a sister, who he loved. His sister married at a young age, and the husband brought her back to his home country. She died, and a few months later my father received a letter from her husband, requesting that my father take over her child. My father didn't hesitate. He took my cousin Elizabeth in as his own. My mother often said that Elizabeth was the most beautiful and gentle child she had ever met. This led my mother to conceder Elizabeth as my future wife.
Elizabeth was my playmate, she was good tempered, lively, graceful, and I loved to tend upon her. Everyone adored Elizabeth. To me, the world was a secret to discover. To Elizabeth, it was a vacancy to fill.
My brothers were considerably younger than me, but I had friends which compensated for that. Henry Clerval was my friend. He wrote at a young age, he studied, and he was enthralled with books of romance and chivalry. He was constantly with us, and he was an only child, therefore spending most days at our house. Our family was never completely happy when Henry was absent.
No childhood could have passed more happily than mine. My parents indulgent, my friends amiable. Our studies were never forced, and therefore we did not learn as much perhaps as other children, but what we learned was deeper.
Recalling my childhood makes me very happy as it was a joyful time, but I cannot omit that which started my downfall. When I was 13, we were on a trip, and the weather was bad, so we had to stay a day in the inn. While there, I picked up a work of Cornelius Agrippa with apathy. However, with reading, I found myself excited by his works. I told my father of my excitement, and he told me it is sad trash. If, instead of this statement, my father had taken the time to explain to me that Cornelius Agrippa was not science, and that a better way of study had taken hold, I may have applied myself to chemistry. Perhaps, had my father explained, my entire destiny would have changed.
However, he did not explain. So, I threw myself into his study. I studied many authors on the subject. Elizabeth did not share my enthusiasm. I had many large dreams, including immortality and unforetelled riches. When I 15, our family witnesses a great and terrible storm. 20 yards from our house, lightning struck a huge and old oak tree, and reduced it to nearly nothing. My father saw that this had alerted my curiosity, and thusly he taught me about electricity. Afterwards, my father sent me to natural philosophy classes, and accidents happened that kept me from attending until nearly the end, causing much confusion and therefore disgust of the topic.
When I was 17, my father thought I should be formally educated at the university of Ingolstadt and so I was. Before then, however, Elizabeth caught a mild case of scarlet fever. When she was nearly recovered, mother went against our wishes to visit her. To our despair, mother caught a severe case of the fever. On the 3rd day, her fever was awful and she died. I took weeks to grieve before going back to school.
