| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Salammbo by Gustave Flaubert: aqueduct between the ninth and tenth arcades. Bring with you an iron
pick, a crestless helmet, and leathern sandals."
The aqueduct of which he spoke crossed the entire isthmus obliquely,--
a considerable work, afterwards enlarged by the Romans. In spite of
her disdain of other nations, Carthage had awkwardly borrowed this
novel invention from them, just as Rome herself had built Punic
galleys; and five rows of superposed arches, of a dumpy kind of
architecture, with buttresses at their foot and lions' heads at the
top, reached to the western part of the Acropolis, where they sank
beneath the town to incline what was nearly a river into the cisterns
of Megara.
Salammbo |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Under the Andes by Rex Stout: A thought flashed through my mind with the speed of lightning.
I raised my voice and sang out:
"Desiree!"
She hesitated; the hand which held the knife fell to her side
and again her eyes sought mine.
"What of Harry?" I called. "Take two--the white for him, the
black for me."
She shook her head and again raised the knife; and I played my
last card.
"Bah! Who are you? For you are not Le Mire!" I weighted my
voice with contempt. "Le Mire is a child of fortune, but not of
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Massimilla Doni by Honore de Balzac: "The Austrians provide us with a sort of ease that is as stultifying
and heavy as themselves, while you overwhelmed us by your devouring
energy. But whether we die of tonics or of narcotics, what does it
matter? It is death all the same, Monsieur le docteur."
"Unhappy Italy! In my eyes she is like a beautiful woman whom France
ought to protect by making her his mistress," exclaimed the Frenchman.
"But you could not love us as we wish to be loved," said the Duchess,
smiling. "We want to be free. But the liberty I crave is not your
ignoble and middle-class liberalism, which would kill all art. I ask,"
said she, in a tone that thrilled through the box,--"that is to say, I
would ask,--that each Italian republic should be resuscitated, with
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