| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Pierrette by Honore de Balzac: but if delay Pierrette will be dead.
I am, with respect, your devoted servant,
Jacques Brigaut.
At Monsieur Frappier's, Cabinet-maker, Grand'Rue, Provins.
Brigaut's fear was that the grandmother was dead.
Though this letter of the youth whom in her innocence she called her
lover was almost enigmatical to Pierrette, she believed in it with all
her virgin faith. Her heart was filled with that sensation which
travellers in the desert feel when they see from afar the palm-trees
round a well. In a few days her misery would end--Jacques said so. She
relied on this promise of her childhood's friend; and yet, as she laid
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Chronicles of the Canongate by Walter Scott: symptoms evinced that my friend was in the melancholy condition
of those in whom the principle of animal life has unfortunately
survived that of mental intelligence. He gazed a moment at me,
but then seemed insensible of my presence, and went on--he, once
the most courteous and well-bred--to babble unintelligible but
violent reproaches against his niece and servant, because he
himself had dropped a teacup in attempting to place it on a table
at his elbow. His eyes caught a momentary fire from his
irritation; but he struggled in vain for words to express himself
adequately, as, looking from his servant to his niece, and then
to the table, he laboured to explain that they had placed it
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Another Study of Woman by Honore de Balzac: will always be /the/ woman among women.
"Emile Blondet has given us a picture of the fascinations of a woman
of the day; but, at need, this creature who bridles or shows off, who
chirps out the ideas of Mr. This and Mr. That, would be heroic. And it
must be said, your faults, mesdames, are all the more poetical,
because they must always and under all circumstances be surrounded by
greater perils. I have seen much of the world, I have studied it
perhaps too late; but in cases where the illegality of your feelings
might be excused, I have always observed the effects of I know not
what chance--which you may call Providence--inevitably overwhelming
such as we consider light women."
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