| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Pierre Grassou by Honore de Balzac: in the studios. When you find such things as that at the tip of your
brush, my good Fougeres, you had better leave colors with Brullon, and
not take the canvas of others. Go home early, put on your cotton
night-cap, and be in bed by nine o'clock. The next morning early go to
some government office, ask for a place, and give up art."
"My dear friend," said Fougeres, "my picture is already condemned; it
is not a verdict that I want of you, but the cause of that verdict."
"Well--you paint gray and sombre; you see nature being a crape veil;
your drawing is heavy, pasty; your composition is a medley of Greuze,
who only redeemed his defects by the qualities which you lack."
While detailing these faults of the picture Schinner saw on Fougeres'
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Ball at Sceaux by Honore de Balzac: Is not this as much as to say that her feeling had birth like all the
feelings of extreme youth--sweet but cruel mistakes, which exert a
fatal influence on the lives of young girls so inexperienced as to
trust their own judgment to take care of their future happiness?
Next morning, before Emilie was awake, her uncle had hastened to
Chevreuse. On recognizing, in the courtyard of an elegant little
villa, the young man he had so determinedly insulted the day before,
he went up to him with the pressing politeness of men of the old
court.
"Why, my dear sir, who could have guessed that I should have a brush,
at the age of seventy-three, with the son, or the grandson, of one of
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Chouans by Honore de Balzac: as she heard the name of the royalist general was observed by no one
but Francine, the only person to whom the least shade on that young
face was visible. Completely routed, the commandant picked up the bits
of his broken sword, looked at Mademoiselle de Verneuil, whose ardent
beauty was beginning to find its way to his heart, and said: "As for
you, mademoiselle, I take nothing back, and to-morrow these fragments
of my sword will reach Bonaparte, unless--"
"Pooh! what do I care for Bonaparte, or your republic, or the king, or
the Gars?" she cried, scarcely repressing an explosion of ill-bred
temper.
A mysterious emotion, the passion of which gave to her face a dazzling
The Chouans |
