| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Man of Business by Honore de Balzac: so as to absorb the whole amount in costs--"
"Oh, what is that?" cried Malaga; "it all sounds like gibberish to me.
As you thought the sturgeon so excellent at dinner, let me take out
the value of the sauce in lessons in chicanery."
"Very well," said Desroches. "Suppose that a man owes you money, and
your creditors serve a writ of attachment upon him; there is nothing
to prevent all your other creditors from doing the same thing. And now
what does the court do when all the creditors make application for
orders to pay? /The court divides the whole sum attached,
proportionately among them all./ That division, made under the eye of
a magistrate, is what we call a /contribution/. If you owe ten
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Dreams & Dust by Don Marquis: The lagging cycles turned at last
The pictures into thought,
Thought flowered in soul;--
But, oh, the myriad weary years
Ere Caliban was Shakespeare's self
And Darwin's ape had Darwin's brain!--
The battling, battling, and the steep ascent,
The fight to hold the little gained,
The loss, the doubt, the shaken heart,
The stubborn, groping slow recovery!--
But looking backward toward the dim beginnings,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Study of a Woman by Honore de Balzac: and as often as she chooses with the men who seem to her agreeable,
without being entered on the tablets of gossip. Certain coquettish
women are capable of following a plan of this kind for seven years in
order to gratify their fancies later; but to suppose any such
reservations in the Marquise de Listomere would be to calumniate her.
I have had the happiness of knowing this phoenix. She talks well; I
know how to listen; consequently I please her, and I go to her
parties. That, in fact, was the object of my ambition.
Neither plain nor pretty, Madame de Listomere has white teeth, a
dazzling skin, and very red lips; she is tall and well-made; her foot
is small and slender, and she does not put it forth; her eyes, far
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