an armed adventure from neighboring France. This is clearly a reference to the French
invasion of Switzerland in the spring of 1798, when, it must be said, the Jura wholly
failed in this protective office. Still, why such a strong political sentiment should
be intruded by Victor Frankenstein at this point is not readily explicable. Perhaps
what the reader is intended to recognize is that Victor's distancing himself within
a political context allows him to forget the last time all these features of the landscape
were brought together by him in a single perspective, the night he first encountered
his Creature outside Geneva (I:6:17).