Open Letter of Citizen Schmeck, Minister of Health of the Republic of Guntreland, to Citizen Vernas, Chairman of the Judicial Committee of the Republic.
Published in “The New Regime” on the 9th Day of Felinose, in the Twentieth Year of the Republic of Guntreland
O Vernas! One of thine eyes was plucked out by a villainous dagger, yet the other keeps sleepless vigil for the People and the Republic, like the falcon’s that lets no pest of vice escape its gaze. Thy legs are shattered because thou hast loved Justice; yet the wheels of thy chair bear all Humanity onward upon the road of Liberty and Glory.
I address thee publicly, as a good citizen who hath nothing to conceal before the national public; I address thee on the day when all good patriots await that thy judicial hammer shall smite hard upon the hydra of tyranny, so that its two heads may never again lift themselves to vomit fire upon our honest fellow citizens.
Thou must be acquainted with my recent conduct, directed wholly toward the preservation of the health of our fellow citizens—conduct so slandered that suspicion hath crept into many souls of every district and region, quarter and municipality. How must he feel who would do good unto others, offering them the most radiant of gifts, that of health itself, when his recompense is so often loathing and the foulest calumny? And for what cause, save that Nature willed he be born with sharp claws, fangs, and pointed hairy ears, and with a scent which he employeth in no purpose but to detect enmity toward Virtue? Is there, by Nature herself, any condition more intolerable than that in which he who would do good is steadfastly believed to wish evil?
And how must the honest citizen feel when those who parade themselves as Republicans and enemies of superstition counsel him to step down from the post wherein he hath served the Republic with such devotion — and from which, why should it not be said, for ambition is but a good wind in the sails of the Republican ship, he inscribes in honest golden letters his chapter in the book of Humanity’s history — merely to appease some detestable superstition under the name of a supposed higher good?
Can there exist any good in the presence of such evil as that principle which teaches that one, by virtue of his birth, cannot hold a public office — that very principle upon which the whole abomination of the old regime was founded? And can the people be well, even in the smallest degree, when they are disfigured by that loathsome superstition which leads them to shun, without reason, their fellow citizen who is merely different in form?
Shame be upon Masden, who studied anatomy upon the corpses of Freedom’s hanged friends—corpses graciously granted him by the tyrant—while Schmeck was forced to steal bodies from the earth, escaping death by the muskets and pitchforks of peasants whom corrupt custom forbade to understand that no greater honour could be rendered their dead than to make their remains serve the gathering of knowledge for the common good of civic society. Should fate decree that a year hence Eustata behold once more a throne raised and an Afsen crowned upon it, she should marvel at nothing less than to see Masden, clad in gold, standing among the tyrant’s retinue, having persuaded him that his labours for the Republic were naught but deceit and inner treachery—precisely as he now tells us of his courtly intrigues in the past.
Masden hath no loyalty save to himself: had he been born heir to a throne, no greater royalist would there be; were he a werewolf, I verily believe he would embrace that odious, personally insulting, justice-poisoning, unity-destroying extremism which seeks to elevate werewolves—and even their offspring, who never felt the persecution of the old regime—above other citizens merely because, under the monarchy, they were by kind in a less favourable position.
Let this occasion therefore be seized to hurl a stone at that vile notion which, like feudal royalism, would apportion destiny by kind and by blood rather than by character. If one day my great-grandson, who should not even remember the persecution of werewolves under the kings, were to possess privileges over the great-grandson of some count who could in no wise have influenced the deeds of his ancestor, since he was not even born in that age—such would not be Justice, but only a new injustice.
Citizen Vernas, my good compatriot! The same hand that wielded the dagger which took thine eye because thou didst serve Justice, now wields the pen that spreads hatred toward me among those whom I would save from pernicious disease. That is the hand of accursed Royalism, whose second and fourth heads are today to be laid beneath the teeth of the Republican Law. Others may falter; thou and I may not—for where weakness and comfort among others rise as a mighty barricade to halt their revolutionary march, to thee and to me the sacred hatred of those who wrong us grants angelic wings, by which we may soar over that barricade and gaze upon it with disdain from the height of pure love toward Justice[1].
Thou and I live, yet we are already martyrs; let us exact good payment from our executioners. The People place in thy hands their enemies, to be laid upon the altar of eternal Justice. In the People’s name—annihilate them, and show that our sufferings have not been in vain.
Today, the accursed Rupert and Clarence Afsen.
As soon as Law and circumstance permit — Alfred Masden.
[1] It is anecdotally considered that this sentence was stylistically shaped by Henscher himself as the editor of the New Regime. Indeed, the metaphor of sacred hatred that gives wings to fly over and looks down on the barricade of weakness and commotion from the height of "pure love of justice" inevitably leaves the impression of Henscher's manuscript.
