| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Hidden Masterpiece by Honore de Balzac: those deep, self-developed discouragements, whose cause, if we are to
believe the mathematicians of health, lies in a bad digestion, in the
wind, in the weather, in some swelling of the intestines, or else,
according to casuists, in the imperfections of our moral nature; the
fact being that the good man was simply worn out by the effort to
complete his mysterious picture. He was seated languidly in a large
oaken chair of vast dimensions covered with black leather; and without
changing his melancholy attitude he cast on Porbus the distant glance
of a man sunk in absolute dejection.
"Well, maitre," said Porbus, "was the distant ultra-marine, for which
you journeyed to Brussels, worthless? Are you unable to grind a new
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Sarrasine by Honore de Balzac: "Ah!" said I, "you know how to punish."
"Am I in the wrong?"
"Yes," I replied, with a sort of desperate courage. "By finishing this
story, which is well known in Italy, I can give you an excellent idea
of the progress made by the civilization of the present day. There are
none of those wretched creatures now."
"Paris," said she, "is an exceedingly hospitable place; it welcomes
one and all, fortunes stained with shame, and fortunes stained with
blood. Crime and infamy have a right of asylum here; virtue alone is
without altars. But pure hearts have a fatherland in heaven! No one
will have known me! I am proud of it."
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Death of the Lion by Henry James: I was kindly permitted to remain, and this was not denied even to
Mrs. Wimbush. The privilege was withheld indeed from Dora Forbes;
so Mrs. Wimbush kept her latest capture temporarily concealed.
This was so little, however, her usual way of dealing with her
eminent friends that a couple of days of it exhausted her patience,
and she went up to town with him in great publicity. The sudden
turn for the worse her afflicted guest had, after a brief
improvement, taken on the third night raised an obstacle to her
seeing him before her retreat; a fortunate circumstance doubtless,
for she was fundamentally disappointed in him. This was not the
kind of performance for which she had invited him to Prestidge, let
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