| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Poems by T. S. Eliot: Who has, and gives
Those qualities upon which friendship lives.
How much it means that I say this to you--
Without these friendships--life, what cauchemar!"
Among the windings of the violins
And the ariettes
Of cracked cornets
Inside my brain a dull tom-tom begins
Absurdly hammering a prelude of its own,
Capricious monotone
That is at least one definite "false note."
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Red Inn by Honore de Balzac: vast Aceldama. I know that. BUT Prosper Magnan left no heirs; BUT,
again, I have been unable to discover the family of the merchant who
was murdered at Andernach. To whom therefore can I restore that
fortune? And ought it to be wholly restored? Have I the right to
betray a secret surprised by me,--to add a murdered head to the dowry
of an innocent girl, to give her for the rest of her life bad dreams,
to deprive her of all her illusions, and say, 'Your gold is stained
with blood'? I have borrowed the 'Dictionary of Cases of Conscience'
from an old ecclesiastic, but I can find nothing there to solve my
doubts. Shall I found pious masses for the repose of the souls of
Prosper Magnan, Wahlenfer, and Taillefer? Here we are in the middle of
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Z. Marcas by Honore de Balzac: What wind blew on that letter, which, whatever language we find it in,
begins scarcely fifty words? Marcas' name was Zephirin; Saint Zephirin
is highly venerated in Brittany, and Marcas was a Breton.
Study the name once more: Z Marcas! The man's whole life lies in this
fantastic juxtaposition of seven letters; seven! the most significant
of all the cabalistic numbers. And he died at five-and-thirty, so his
life extended over seven lustres.
Marcas! Does it not hint of some precious object that is broken with a
fall, with or without a crash?
I had finished studying the law in Paris in 1836. I lived at that time
in the Rue Corneille in a house where none but students came to lodge,
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