| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Country Doctor by Honore de Balzac: known to the world; and this is nowhere better understood than in
Paris, where intriguing schemers know how to stifle every kind of
talent at its birth by heaping laurels on its cradle. So I did nothing
worthy of my reputation; I reaped no advantages from the golden
opinions entertained of me, and made no acquaintances likely to be
useful in my future career. I wasted my energies in numberless
frivolous pursuits, and in the short-lived love intrigues that are the
disgrace of salons in Paris, where every one seeks for love, grows
blase in the pursuit, falls into the libertinism sanctioned by polite
society, and ends by feeling as much astonished at real passion as the
world is over a heroic action. I did as others did. Often I dealt to
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Hero of Our Time by M.Y. Lermontov: sitting down on a rock by the fence, gazed into
the distance. Before me stretched the sea,
agitated by the storm of the previous night, and
its monotonous roar, like the murmur of a town
over which slumber is beginning to creep,
recalled bygone years to my mind, and trans-
ported my thoughts northward to our cold
Capital. Agitated by my recollections, I became
oblivious of my surroundings.
About an hour passed thus, perhaps even
longer. Suddenly something resembling a song
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Start in Life by Honore de Balzac: springs for those called "swan-necks," and other old-fashioned French
contrivances. But these hard and distrustful manufacturers would only
deliver over the diligence in return for coin. Not particularly
pleased to build a vehicle which would be difficult to sell if it
remained upon their hands, these long-headed dealers declined to
undertake it at all until Pierrotin had made a preliminary payment of
two thousand francs. To satisfy this precautionary demand, Pierrotin
had exhausted all his resources and all his credit. His wife, his
father-in-law, and his friends had bled. This superb diligence he had
been to see the evening before at the painter's; all it needed now was
to be set a-rolling, but to make it roll, payment in full must, alas!
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