| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac: know how to live. Besides, I am not like you as yet, dear angel; I
don't like morality. Still, I am capable of great efforts to please
you. Yes, I will go to work; I will learn how to preach; you shall
have no more kisses without verses of the Bible interlarded."
She used her power and abused it as soon as she saw in my eyes the
ardent expression which was always there when she began her sorceries.
She triumphed over everything, and I complacently told myself that the
woman who loses all, sacrifices the future, and makes love her only
virtue, is far above Catholic polemics.
"So she loves herself better than she loves you?" Arabella went on.
"She sets something that is not you above you. Is that love? how can
The Lily of the Valley |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Blue Flower by Henry van Dyke: III
There was a silence in the Hall of Dreams, where I was
listening to the story of the Other Wise Man. Through this
silence I saw, but very dimly, his figure passing over the
dreary undulations of the desert, high upon the back of his
camel, rocking steadily onward like a ship over the waves.
The land of death spread its cruel net around him. The
stony waste bore no fruit but briers and thorns. The dark
ledges of rock thrust themselves above the surface here and
there, like the bones of perished monsters. Arid and
inhospitable mountain-ranges rose before him, furrowed with dry
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from An Episode Under the Terror by Honore de Balzac: On the 22nd of January, 1793, towards eight o'clock in the evening, an
old lady came down the steep street that comes to an end opposite the
Church of Saint Laurent in the Faubourg Saint Martin. It had snowed so
heavily all day long that the lady's footsteps were scarcely audible;
the streets were deserted, and a feeling of dread, not unnatural amid
the silence, was further increased by the whole extent of the Terror
beneath which France was groaning in those days; what was more, the
old lady so far had met no one by the way. Her sight had long been
failing, so that the few foot passengers dispersed like shadows in the
distance over the wide thoroughfare through the faubourg, were quite
invisible to her by the light of the lanterns.
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