- Elizabeth catches scarlet fever. She recovers, but Victor's mother catches the illness while nursing her back to health and dies herself. This is where the bad things begin, if you hadn't already picked up on that.
- On her deathbed, she tells Victor and Elizabeth she wants them to get married. Way to lay on the guilt trip, mom.
- A few weeks later, Victor goes away to study at a university called Ingolstadt. He's only seventeen.
- Once he gets there, he finds a place to live and starts chatting up professors. Some guy named M. Krempe teaches natural philosophy and basically discredits alchemy entirely, to Victor's dismay. Imagine studying all through high school only to get to college and have your teachers tell you that everything you know is wrong and stupid.
- Luckily, Victor meets a nice chemistry professor named Waldman and decides to study science. The real kind.