| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Royalty Restored/London Under Charles II by J. Fitzgerald Molloy: clear, it had made no progress till April. In that month two men
had died of this most foul disease; and in the first week of May
its victims numbered nine; and yet another fortnight and it had
hurried seventeen citizens to the grave.
Now the memory of their wickedness rising before them, dread took
up its abode in all men's hearts; for none knew but his day of
reckoning was at hand. And their consternation was greater when
it was remembered that in the third year of this century thirty-
six thousand citizens of London had died of the plague, while
twenty-five years later it had swept away thirty-five thousand;
and eleven years after full ten thousand persons perished of this
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Hidden Masterpiece by Honore de Balzac: "Forgive me, my own Gillette," said the painter, throwing himself at
her feet. "I would rather be loved than famous. To me thou art more
precious than fortune and honors. Yes, away with these brushes! burn
those sketches! I have been mistaken. My vocation is to love thee,--
thee alone! I am not a painter, I am thy lover. Perish art and all its
secrets!"
She looked at him admiringly, happy and captivated by his passion. She
reigned; she felt instinctively that the arts were forgotten for her
sake, and flung at her feet like grains of incense.
"Yet he is only an old man," resumed Poussin. "In you he would see
only a woman. You are the perfect woman whom he seeks."
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Red Inn by Honore de Balzac: undertook that pilgrimage. But Madame Magnan had died of consumption.
It was not without deep emotion that I burned the letter of which I
was the bearer. You will perhaps smile at my German imagination, but I
see a drama of sad sublimity in the eternal secrecy which engulfed
those parting words cast between two graves, unknown to all creation,
like the cry uttered in a desert by some lonely traveller whom a lion
seizes."
"And if," I said, interrupting him, "you were brought face to face
with a man now in this room, and were told, 'This is the murderer!'
would not that be another drama? And what would you do?"
Monsieur Hermann looked for his hat and went away.
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