| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy: threatening to come on heavily. But having committed
herself to this line of action there was no retreating
for bad weather. Even the receipt of Clym's letter
would not have stopped her now. The gloom of the night
was funereal; all nature seemed clothed in crape.
The spiky points of the fir trees behind the house rose
into the sky like the turrets and pinnacles of an abbey.
Nothing below the horizon was visible save a light
which was still burning in the cottage of Susan Nunsuch.
Eustacia opened her umbrella and went out from the enclosure
by the steps over the bank, after which she was beyond
Return of the Native |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Domestic Peace by Honore de Balzac: Soulanges!" she said in deep tones.
The Countess shuddered as she saw, in the least brilliantly lighted
corner, the pale, set face of Soulanges stretched in an easy-chair.
The indifference of his attitude and the rigidity of his brow betrayed
his suffering. The players passed him to and fro, without paying any
more attention to him than if he had been dead. The picture of the
wife in tears, and the dejected, morose husband, separated in the
midst of this festivity like the two halves of a tree blasted by
lightning, had perhaps a prophetic significance for the Countess. She
dreaded lest she here saw an image of the revenges the future might
have in store for her. Her heart was not yet so dried up that the
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Bureaucracy by Honore de Balzac: and the solicitors for favors and appointments kept at a little
distance. When des Lupeaulx left the room the countess said to her
husband, "I think des Lupeaulx is in love."
"For the first time in his life, then," he replied, shrugging his
shoulders, as much as to inform his wife that des Lupeaulx did not
concern himself with such nonsense.
Just then the minister saw a deputy of the Right Centre enter the
room, and he left his wife abruptly to cajole an undecided vote. But
the deputy, under the blow of a sudden and unexpected disaster, wanted
to make sure of a protector and he had come to announce privately that
in a few days he should be compelled to resign. Thus forewarned, the
|
