"But these are frightful torments!"

"Frightful! ay, frightful! But death! but annihilation! but to lose forever
this remembrance, as vivid as reality; but to renounce these recollections,
which torture me, devour me, and consume me! No! no! no! Live! live--poor,
despised, scorned--live in the galleys, but live! so that thought
remains--since this infernal creature has all my thought--is all my
thought!"

"Jacques," said Polidori, in a grave tone, which strangely contrasted with
his habitual bitter irony, "I have seen much suffering, but never tortures
that approach yours. He who holds us in his power could not have been more
unmerciful. He has condemned you to live--to await death in terrible
agonies--for this avowal explains to me the alarming symptoms which every
day develop in you, and of which I sought in vain the cause."

"But these symptoms are nothing serious! It is exhaustion; it is the
reaction of my sorrows! I am not in danger. Is it not so?"

"No, no; but your position is a critical one; you must not make it worse.
Certain thoughts must be driven away, otherwise you run great risk."

"I will do what you wish so I may live, for I do not wish to die. Oh! the
priests talk of the damned! never could one imagine for them a punishment
equal to mine. Tortured by passion and avarice, I have two bleeding wounds
instead of one, and I feel both of them equally. The loss of my gold is
frightful to me, but death would be more frightful still. I wish to live;
my life may be a torture without end, and I dare not call upon death, for
death annihilates my fatal happiness, this phantom of my thoughts, in which