| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Father Goriot by Honore de Balzac: all sense of decency, and renounce all the generous ideas which
redeem the sins of youth. He had chosen this life of apparent
splendor, but secretly gnawed by the canker worm of remorse, a
life of fleeting pleasure dearly paid for by persistent pain;
like Le Distrait of La Bruyere, he had descended so far as to
make his bed in a ditch; but (also like Le Distrait) he himself
was uncontaminated as yet by the mire that stained his garments.
"So we have killed our mandarin, have we?" said Bianchon one day
as they left the dinner table.
"Not yet," he answered, "but he is at his last gasp."
The medical student took this for a joke, but it was not a jest.
Father Goriot |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Madam How and Lady Why by Charles Kingsley: the good. What a gay picture he is painting now, with his light-
pencils; for in them, remember, and not in the things themselves
the colour lies. See how, where the hay has been already carried,
he floods all the slopes with yellow light, making them stand out
sharp against the black shadows of the wood; while where the grass
is standing still, he makes the sheets of sorrel-flower blush rosy
red, or dapples the field with white oxeyes.
But is not the sorrel itself red, and the oxeyes white?
What colour are they at night, when the sun is gone?
Dark.
That is, no colour. The very grass is not green at night.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from An Old Maid by Honore de Balzac: were occasionally ill; a few travelled about the department on
business; but certain of the faithful came every night (unless invited
elsewhere), and so did certain others compelled by duties or by habit
to live permanently in the town. All the personages were of ripe age;
few among them had ever travelled; nearly all had spent their lives in
the provinces, and some had taken part in the chouannerie. The latter
were beginning to speak fearlessly of that war, now that rewards were
being showered on the defenders of the good cause. Monsieur de Valois,
one of the movers in the last uprising (during which the Marquis de
Montauran, betrayed by his mistress, perished in spite of the devotion
of Marche-a-Terre, now tranquilly raising cattle for the market near
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