| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas: footing, and fell, entangling Raoul's leg under its body.
The Spaniard sprang forward and seized the gun by its
muzzle, in order to strike Raoul on the head with the butt.
In the position in which Raoul lay, unfortunately, he could
neither draw his sword from the scabbard, nor his pistols
from their holsters. The butt end of the musket hovered over
his head, and he could scarcely restrain himself from
closing his eyes, when with one bound Guiche reached the
Spaniard and placed a pistol at his throat. "Yield!" he
cried, "or you are a dead man!" The musket fell from the
soldier's hands, who yielded on the instant. Guiche summoned
Twenty Years After |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: like a network suspended as by a miracle in air above the vast
doorways. I saw the doors at the end of the side aisles, the aerial
galleries, the stained glass windows framed in archways, divided by
slender columns, fretted into flower forms and trefoil by fine
filigree work of carved stone. A dome of glass at the end of the choir
sparkled as if it had been built of precious stones set cunningly. In
contrast to the roof with its alternating spaces of whiteness and
color, the two aisles lay to right and left in shadow so deep that the
faint gray outlines of their hundred shafts were scarcely visible in
the gloom. I gazed at the marvelous arcades, the scroll-work, the
garlands, the curving lines, and arabesques interwoven and interlaced,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: with that coldly sullen and morose expression of face which may be
noticed in persons who are either fated to commit suicide or are
meditating it. The funereal ideas they are turning over in their minds
appear upon their foreheads in gray and cloudy tints, their smile has
something fatalistic in it, their motions are solemn. These unhappy
beings seem to want to suck the last juices of the life they mean to
leave; their eyes see things invisible, their ears are listening to a
death-knell, they pay no attention to the minor things about them.
These alarming symptoms Marie perceived one evening at Lady Dudley's.
Raoul was sitting apart on a sofa in the boudoir, while the rest of
the company were conversing in the salon. The countess went to the
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