| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Ferragus by Honore de Balzac: many diverse sentiments have passed before him on biers; he has seen
so many tears, true and false; he has beheld sorrow under so many
aspects and on so many faces; he has heard such endless thousands of
eternal woes,--that to him sorrow has come to be nothing more than a
stone an inch thick, four feet long, and twenty-four inches wide. As
for regrets, they are the annoyances of his office; he neither
breakfasts nor dines without first wiping off the rain of an
inconsolable affliction. He is kind and tender to other feelings; he
will weep over a stage-hero, over Monsieur Germeuil in the "Auberge
des Adrets," the man with the butter-colored breeches, murdered by
Macaire; but his heart is ossified in the matter of real dead men.
Ferragus |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Pierre Grassou by Honore de Balzac: the play of "The Eglantine") was the source of much teasing; but, by
force of circumstances, he accepted the name of the town in which he
had first seen light.
Grassou of Fougeres resembled his name. Plump and of medium height, he
had a dull complexion, brown eyes, black hair, a turned-up nose,
rather wide mouth, and long ears. His gentle, passive, and resigned
air gave a certain relief to these leading features of a physiognomy
that was full of health, but wanting in action. This young man, born
to be a virtuous bourgeois, having left his native place and come to
Paris to be clerk with a color-merchant (formerly of Mayenne and a
distant connection of the Orgemonts) made himself a painter simply by
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Happy Prince and Other Tales by Oscar Wilde: yellow moth, and had been so attracted by her slender waist that he
had stopped to talk to her.
"Shall I love you?" said the Swallow, who liked to come to the
point at once, and the Reed made him a low bow. So he flew round
and round her, touching the water with his wings, and making silver
ripples. This was his courtship, and it lasted all through the
summer.
"It is a ridiculous attachment," twittered the other Swallows; "she
has no money, and far too many relations"; and indeed the river was
quite full of Reeds. Then, when the autumn came they all flew
away.
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