| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Droll Stories, V. 1 by Honore de Balzac: we shall see them on our return."
She blushed, and the Sire de Montsoreau looked at her eagerly, as
though to shoot into her the mystic comprehensions of love, but the
clearing out of her intelligence had already been commenced by the
sayings of the peasants which were fructifying in her understanding--
her innocence was like touchwood, there was only need for a word to
inflame it.
Thus Blanche perceived now the notable and physical differences
between the qualities of her old husband and perfections of the said
Gauttier, a gentleman who was not over affected with his twenty-three
years, but held himself upright as a ninepin in the saddle, and as
Droll Stories, V. 1 |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Tono Bungay by H. G. Wells: I must have dozed, and it was still dark when I realised with a
start that we were nearly due south of, and a long way from, a
regularly-flashing lighthouse, standing out before the glow of
some great town, and then that the thing that had awakened me was
the cessation of our engine, and that we were driving back to the
west.
Then, indeed, for a time I felt the grim thrill of life. I
crawled forward to the cords of the release valves, made my uncle
crawl forward too, and let out the gas until we were falling down
through the air like a clumsy glider towards the vague greyness
that was land.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Deserted Woman by Honore de Balzac: second time. I cannot understand how it is that I am living yet, after
the anguish of that first week of the most fearful crisis in a woman's
life. Only from three years of loneliness would it be possible to draw
strength to speak of that time as I am speaking now. Such agony,
monsieur, usually ends in death; but this--well, it was the agony of
death with no tomb to end it. Oh! I have known pain indeed!"
The Vicomtesse raised her beautiful eyes to the ceiling; and the
cornice, no doubt, received all the confidences which a stranger might
not hear. When a woman is afraid to look at her interlocutor, there is
in truth no gentler, meeker, more accommodating confidant than the
cornice. The cornice is quite an institution in the boudoir; what is
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