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,