| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Massimilla Doni by Honore de Balzac: noblest face to be seen in Italy? Can you drop from the blue sky where
you dwell, into the bed of a courtesan? In short, can you, an angel of
refinement, of pure and spotless beauty, condescend to imagine what
the love must be of a Tinti--in her room, and so effectually as to
deceive the ardor of Emilio, who is indeed too drunk to be very clear-
sighted?"
"Is that all?" said she, with a smile that betrayed to the Frenchman a
side he had not as yet perceived of the delightful nature of an
Italian woman in love. "I will out-do la Tinti, if need be, to save my
friend's life."
"And you will thus fuse into one two kinds of love, which he sees as
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: them, that I have often wondered there was any (women especially)
left behind.
In the first place, a blazing star or comet appeared for several
months before the plague, as there did the year after another, a little
before the fire. The old women and the phlegmatic hypochondriac
part of the other sex, whom I could almost call old women too,
remarked (especially afterward, though not till both those judgements
were over) that those two comets passed directly over the city, and
that so very near the houses that it was plain they imported something
peculiar to the city alone; that the comet before the pestilence was of
a faint, dull, languid colour, and its motion very heavy, Solemn, and
A Journal of the Plague Year |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Study of a Woman by Honore de Balzac: soul is then divined behind that rather indefinite form. If she takes
an interest in the conversation she displays a grace which is
otherwise buried beneath the precautions of cold demeanor, and then
she is charming. She does not seek success, but she obtains it. We
find that for which we do not seek: that saying is so often true that
some day it will be turned into a proverb. It is, in fact, the moral
of this adventure, which I should not allow myself to tell if it were
not echoing at the present moment through all the salons of Paris.
The Marquise de Listomere danced, about a month ago, with a young man
as modest as he is lively, full of good qualities, but exhibiting,
chiefly, his defects. He is ardent, but he laughs at ardor; he has
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