| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Father Goriot by Honore de Balzac: "Of course not, sir; but still----"
"Just let the gentleman say what he has to say, dearie," said
Mlle. Michonneau.
"You see how it is, mademoiselle," Gondureau continued. "The
Government may have the strongest reasons for getting this
illicit hoard into its hands; it mounts up to something
considerable, by all that we can make out. Trompe-la-Mort not
only holds large sums for his friends the convicts, but he has
other amounts which are paid over to him by the Society of the
Ten Thousand----"
"Ten Thousand Thieves!" cried Pioret in alarm.
Father Goriot |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Madame Firmiani by Honore de Balzac: lithographic blocks, from which an indefinite number of copies can be
drawn by criticism,--the proofs being more or less like us according
to a distribution of shading which is so nearly imperceptible that our
reputation depends (barring the calumnies of friends and the
witticisms of newspapers) on the balance struck by our criticisers
between Truth that limps and Falsehood to which Parisian wit gives
wings.
Madame Firmiani, like other noble and dignified women who make their
hearts a sanctuary and disdain the world, was liable, therefore, to be
totally misjudged by Monsieur de Bourbonne, an old country magnate,
who had reason to think a great deal about her during the winter of
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Commission in Lunacy by Honore de Balzac: Marquis were legally due, though given to you in virtue of a very far-
reaching theory of honesty. If all the people possessed of confiscated
goods, by whatever cause, even if acquired by treachery, were
compelled to make restitution every hundred and fifty years, there
would be few legitimate owners in France. The possessions of Jacques
Coeur enriched twenty noble families; the confiscations pronounced by
the English to the advantage of their adherents at the time when they
held a part of France made the fortune of several princely houses.
"Our law allows M. d'Espard to dispose of his income without
accounting for it, or suffering him to be accused of its
misapplication. A Commission in Lunacy can only be granted when a
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