| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Muse of the Department by Honore de Balzac: Madame de la Baudraye had been greatly struck by the reputation of
Lousteau, who was regarded as a lady's man of the first water in
consequence of his intimacies among actresses; she was anxious to know
him; she read his books, and was fired with enthusiasm, less perhaps
for his talents than for his successes with women; and to attract him
to the country, she started the notion that it was obligatory on
Sancerre to return one of its great men at the elections. She made
Gatien Boirouge write to the great physician Bianchon, whom he claimed
as a cousin through the Popinots. Then she persuaded an old friend of
the departed Madame Lousteau to stir up the journalist's ambitions by
letting him know that certain persons in Sancerre were firmly bent on
The Muse of the Department |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Some Reminiscences by Joseph Conrad: be no doubt as to the force and the continuity of my
abstemiousness. Three of them were examiners in seamanship, and
it was my fate to be delivered into the hands of each of them at
proper intervals of sea service. The first of all, tall, spare,
with a perfectly white head and moustache, a quiet, kindly
manner, and an air of benign intelligence, must, I am forced to
conclude, have been unfavourably impressed by something in my
appearance. His old thin hands loosely clasped resting on his
crossed legs, he began by an elementary question in a mild voice,
and went on, went on. . .It lasted for hours, for hours. Had I
been a strange microbe with potentialities of deadly mischief to
Some Reminiscences |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Duchesse de Langeais by Honore de Balzac: interest in the man before her had been aroused only the day
before, when she heard the story of one of M. de Montriveau's
adventures, a story calculated to make the strongest impression
upon a woman's ever-changing fancy.
During M. de Montriveau's voyage of discovery to the sources of
the Nile, he had had an argument with one of his guides, surely
the most extraordinary debate in the annals of travel. The
district that he wished to explore could only be reached on foot
across a tract of desert. Only one of his guides knew the way;
no traveller had penetrated before into that part of the country,
where the undaunted officer hoped to find a solution of several
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