| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Second Home by Honore de Balzac: voice stirred his nerves as though they vibrated to the too full and
too piercing sounds of a harmonium. The Parisian turned round, and,
seeing a young figure, though, the head being bent, her face was
entirely concealed by a large white bonnet, concluded that the voice
was hers. He fancied that he recognized Angelique in spite of a brown
merino pelisse that wrapped her, and he nudged his father's elbow.
"Yes, there she is," said the Count, after looking where his son
pointed, and then, by an expressive glance, he directed his attention
to the pale face of an elderly woman who had already detected the
strangers, though her false eyes, deep set in dark circles, did not
seem to have strayed from the prayer-book she held.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from La Grande Breteche by Honore de Balzac: it.'
" 'Indeed. Well, now, I am sure you know everything.'
" 'Well, sir, I will tell you the whole story.--When I saw Monsieur
Regnault go up to see you, it struck me that he would speak to you
about Madame de Merret as having to do with la Grande Breteche. That
put it into my head to ask your advice, sir, seeming to me that you
are a man of good judgment and incapable of playing a poor woman like
me false--for I never did any one a wrong, and yet I am tormented by
my conscience. Up to now I have never dared to say a word to the
people of these parts; they are all chatter-mags, with tongues like
knives. And never till now, sir, have I had any traveler here who
La Grande Breteche |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Alcibiades II by Platonic Imitator: how to go to war and how to kill, as well as of orators puffed up with
political pride, but in which not one of them all had this knowledge of the
best, and there was no one who could tell when it was better to apply any
of these arts or in regard to whom?
ALCIBIADES: I should call such a state bad, Socrates.
SOCRATES: You certainly would when you saw each of them rivalling the
other and esteeming that of the greatest importance in the state,
'Wherein he himself most excelled.' (Euripides, Antiope.)
--I mean that which was best in any art, while he was entirely ignorant of
what was best for himself and for the state, because, as I think, he trusts
to opinion which is devoid of intelligence. In such a case should we not
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