| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Manon Lescaut by Abbe Prevost: with a fidelity which he has never shown to his wife. Two-thirds
of the men of fashion in Paris keep mistresses.
"`I certainly have on one or two occasions cheated at play.
Well, the Marquis of ---- and the Count ---- have no other source
of revenue. The Prince of ---- and the Duke of ---- are at the
head of a gang of the same industrious order.' As for the
designs I had upon the pockets of the two G---- M----s, I might
just as easily have proved that I had abundant models for that
also; but I had too much pride to plead guilty to this charge,
and rest on the justification of example; so that I begged of my
father to ascribe my weakness on this occasion to the violence of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Paz by Honore de Balzac: His love was more perfect than the love of Petrarch for Laura, which
found its ultimate reward in the treasures of fame, the triumph of the
poem which she had inspired. Surely the emotion that the Chevalier
d'Assas felt in dying must have been to him a lifetime of joy. Such
emotions as these Paz enjoyed daily,--without dying, but also without
the guerdon of immortality.
But what is Love, that, in spite of all these ineffable delights, Paz
should still have been unhappy? The Catholic religion has so magnified
Love that she has wedded it indissolubly to respect and nobility of
spirit. Love is therefore attended by those sentiments and qualities
of which mankind is proud; it is rare to find true Love existing where
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Black Dwarf by Walter Scott: Indeed, to judge from the difficulties he had already surmounted,
he must have been of Herculean powers; for some of the stones he
had succeeded in raising apparently required two men's strength
to have moved them. Hobbie's suspicions began to revive, on
seeing the preternatural strength he exerted.
"I am amaist persuaded it's the ghaist of a stane-mason--see
siccan band-statnes as he's laid i--An it be a man, after a', I
wonder what he wad take by the rood to build a march dyke.
There's ane sair wanted between Cringlehope and the Shaws.--
Honest man" (raising his voice), "ye make good firm wark there?"
The being whom he addressed raised his eyes with a ghastly stare,
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