“I haven't read either of them,” said Calvin. In truth he had never heard of either one and only deduced that they were dramatists from the context.
“Nor have you read my work, because in fact it is not yet genius, it is merely journeyman work. In fact I fear sometimes that I have the ambition of a genius, the eye and ear of a genius, and the talent of a chimneysweep. I go down into the filthy world, I come up black, I scatter the ashes and cinders of my research onto white papers, but what have I got? Paper with black marks all over it.” Suddenly he gripped Calvin's shirtfront and pulled him down until they were eye to eye. “I would cut off my leg to have a talent like yours. To be able to see inside the body and heal or harm, give pain or relieve it– I would cut off both legs.” Then he let go of Calvin's shirt. “Of course, I wouldn't give up my more fragile parts, for that would be too great a disappointment to my dear Lady de Berny. You will be discreet, of course, and when you gossip about my affair with her you will never admit you heard about it from me.”
“Are you really jealous of me?” asked Calvin.
«Only when I am in my right mind,» said Honor‚, «which is rare enough that you don't yet interfere with my happiness. You are not yet one of the major irritations of my life. My mother, now– I spent my early childhood pining for some show of love from her, some gentle touch of affection, and instead was always greeted with coldness and reproof. Nothing I did pleased her. I thought, for many years, that it was because I was a bad son. Then, suddenly, I realized that it was because she was a bad mother! It wasn't me she hated, it was my father. So one year when I was away at school, she took a lover– and she chose well, he is a very fine man whom I respect greatly– and got herself impregnated and gave birth to a monster.»
“Deformed?” asked Calvin, curious.
“Only morally. Otherwise he is quite attractive, and my mother dotes on him. Every time I see her fawning on him, praising him, laughing at his clever little antics, I long to do as Joseph's brothers did and put him in a pit, only I would never be softhearted enough to pull him out and sell him into mere slavery. He will also probably be tall and she will see to it he has full access to her fortune, unlike myself, who am forced to live on the pittance my father can give me, the advances I can extort from my publishers, and the generous impulses of the women for whom I am the god of love. After careful contemplation, I have come to the conclusion that Cain, like Prometheus, was one of the great benefactors of humankind, for which of course he must be endlessly tortured by God, or at least given a very ugly pimple in his forehead. For it was Cain who taught us that some brothers simply cannot be endured, and the only solution is to kill them or have them killed. Being a man of lazy disposition, I lean toward the latter course. Also one cannot wear fine clothes in prison, and after one is guillotined for murder, one's collars never stay on properly; they're always sliding off to one side or the other. So I'll either hire it done or see to it he gets employed in some miserable clerical post in a far-off colony. I have in mind Reunion in the Indian Ocean; my only objection is that its dot on the globe is large enough that Henry may not be able to see the entire circumference of his island home at once. I want him to feel himself in prison every waking moment. I suppose that is uncharitable of me.”
Uncharitable? Calvin laughed in delight, and regaled Honor‚ in turn with tales of his own horrible brother. «Well, then,» said Honor‚, «you must destroy him, of course. What are you doing here in Paris, with a great project like that in hand!»
“I'm learning from Napoleon how to rule over men. So that when my brother builds his Crystal City, I can take it away from him.”
«Take it away! Such shallow aims,» said Honor‚. «What good is taking it away?»
“Because he built it,” said Calvin, “or he will build it, and then he'll have to see me rule over all that he built.”
“You think this because you are a nasty person by nature, Calvin, and you don't understand nice people. To you, the end of existence is to control things, and so you will never build anything, but rather will try to take control of what is already in existence. Your brother, though, is by nature a Maker, as you explain it; therefore he cares nothing about who rules, but only about what exists. So if you take away the rule of the Crystal City– when he builds it– you have accomplished nothing, for he will still rejoice that the thing exists at all, regardless of who rules it. No, there is nothing else for you to do but let the city rise to its peak– and then tear it down into such a useless heap of rubble that it can never rise again.”
Calvin was troubled. He had never thought this way, and it didn't feel good to him. «Honor‚, you're joking, I'm sure. You make things– your novels, at least.»
«And if you hated me, you wouldn't just take away my royalties– my creditors do that already, thank you very much. No, you would take my very books, steal the copyright, and then revise them and revise them until nothing of truth or beauty or, more to the point, my genius remained in them, and then you would continue to publish them under my name, causing me to be shamed with every copy sold. People would read and say, 'Honor‚ de Balzac, such a fool!' That is how you would destroy me.»
“I'm not a character in one of your novels.”
“More's the pity. You would speak more interesting dialogue I you were.”
“So you think I'm wasting my time here?”
“I think you're about to waste your time. Napoleon is no fool. He's never going to give you tools powerful enough to challenge his own. So leave!”
“How can I leave, when he depends on me to keep his gout from hurting? I'd never make it to the border.”
“Then heal the gout the way you used to heal those poor beggars– that was a cruel thing for you to do, by the way, a miserable selfish thing, for how did you think they were going to feed their children without some suppurating wound to excite pity in passersby and eke out a few sous from them? Those of us who were aware of your one-man messianic mission had to go about after you, cutting off the legs of your victims so they'd be able to continue to earn their livelihood.”
Calvin was appalled. “How could you do such a thing!”
Honor‚ roared with laughter. «I'm joking, you poor literal-minded American simpleton!»
“I can't heal the gout,” said Calvin, coming back to the subject that interested him: his own future.
“Why not?”
“I've been trying to figure out how diseases are caused. Injuries are easy. Infections are, too. If you concentrate, anyway. Diseases have taken me weeks. They seem to be caused by tiny creatures, so small I can't see them individually, only en masse. Those I can destroy easily enough, and cure the disease, or at least knock it back a little and give the body a chance to defeat it on its own. But not all diseases are caused by those tiny beasts. Gout baffles me completely. I have no idea what causes it, and therefore I can't cure it.”
Honord shook his oversized head. “Calvin, you have such native talents, but they have been bestowed unworthily upon you. When I say you must heal Napoleon, of course I don't care whether you actually cure the gout. It isn't the gout that bothers him. It's the pain of the gout. And you already cure that every day! So cure it once and for all, thank Napoleon kindly for his lessons, and get out of France as quickly as possible! Have done with it! Get back about your life's work! I'll tell you what– I'll even pay your passage to America. No, I'll do more. I'll come with you to America, and add the study of that astonishingly crude and vigorous people to my vast store of knowledge about humankind. With your talent and my genius, what is there we couldn't accomplish?”