“Doesn’t it make you weary? Being married to such a lunatic?”

Margaret smiled. “Alvin has made me weary all my life,” she said.

“‘But’... no, let me say it for you ... ‘But the weariness is a joy, because I have worn myself out in his service.’”

“You mock me.”

“I mock myself,” said Balzac. “I play the clown: the man who pretends to be so sophisticated that he finds kindly sentiment amusing, when the reality is that he would trade all his dreams for the knowledge that a woman of extraordinary intelligence felt such sentiments for him.”

“You create yourself like a character in a novel,” said Margaret.

“I have bared my soul to you and you call me false.”

“Not false. Truer than mere reality.”

Balzac bowed. “Ah, madame, may I never have to face critics of such piercing wisdom as yourself.”

“You are a deeply sentimental man,” said Margaret. “You pretend to be hard, but you are soft. You pretend to be distant, but your heart is captured over and over again. You pretend to be self-mockingly pretentious, when in fact you know that you really are the genius that you pretend to be pretending to be.”

“Am I?” asked Balzac.

“What, haven’t I flattered you enough?”

“My English is not yet perfect. Can the word ‘flattery’ be used with the word ‘enough’?”

“I haven’t flattered you at all,” said Margaret. “On every path of your future in which you actually begin to write, there comes from your pen such a flood of lives and passions that your name will be known for centuries and on every continent.”

Tears filled Balzac’s eyes. “Ah, God, you have given me the sign from an angel.”

“This is not the road to Emmaus,” said Margaret.

“It was the road to Damascus I had in mind,” said Balzac.

She laughed. “No one could ever strike you blind. You see with your heart as truly as I do.”

Balzac moved closer to her, and whispered. No, he formed the words with his lips, counting on her to understand his heart without hearing the sound. “What I cannot see is the future and the past. Can I have my freedom from Calvin? I fear him as I fear no other living man.”

“You have nothing to fear from him,” said Margaret. “He loves you and wants your admiration more than that of any man but one.”

“Your husband.”

“His hatred for Alvin is so intense he has no real hate left over for you. If he lost your admiration, it would be a mere fleabite compared to losing hope of Alvin’s respect.”

“And what is that compared to my fleabite? A bee sting? A snakebite? An amputation?”

Margaret shook her head. “Now you are reaching for flattery. Take him home, Monsieur Balzac. I will try to find his heartfire somewhere in a house in Blacktown.”

9

Witch Hunt

Hezekiah Study could not concentrate on the book he was trying to read, or the sermon he needed to write, or even on the pear he knew he ought to eat. There were several bites taken out of it, and he knew he must be the one who had taken them, but all he remembered was fretful, wandering thoughts about everything. Purity, you young fool. He’ll come now, don’t you know? He’ll come, because he always comes, and because your name is on it, and he knows who you are, oh yes, he knows you, he wants your life, he wants to finish the job he started before you were born.