![]() Humanity will be too much distressed by what you might have seen. You imagine that wearing a human face till the novel’s end will bring you the companionship that you so desperately seek. But in hiding thus for all your two thousand years, you see all the world, my lady, except yourself. ![]() You hide behind Sarah Perry, whom you watched writhe in pain and beat at her own limbs, and whose agony moved you so. You hide yourself within the words of Charles Robert Maturin and the maleness that he thought would grant you humanity. My lady Melmoth, why do you hide? You hide behind the sin of Helen Franklin and her singular attempts at atonement, behind Josef Hoffman, and Nameless and Hassan and their hideous ignorance of the humanity of their victims. But though Melmoth nestles boldly atop the rustling feathers of your jackdaws, your servants, though your many names appear on every page – Melmoth, Melmotte, Metmotka, Melmat – your novel is one of pasteboard masks a labyrinth in which you willingly lose yourself. Perhaps this is why your name commands the cover of your novel, its letters blanched and bloodless, while my work bears only a soubriquet, a caricature and a name that has never been mine. Your travels have bloodied your feet and mine my hands, but while you have witnessed the crimes of others, I have seen only my own. Accept the homage of one who has no name, and who, like you, was born the child of an accursed creator and cast out in the hour of my first great sin. ![]()
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