| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Falk by Joseph Conrad: his skull! The sirens sing and lure to death, but
this one had been weeping silently as if for the pity
of his life. She was the tender and voiceless siren
of this appalling navigator. He evidently wanted
to live his whole conception of life. Nothing else
would do. And she too was a servant of that life
that, in the midst of death, cries aloud to our senses.
She was eminently fitted to interpret for him its
feminine side. And in her own way, and with her
own profusion of sensuous charms, she also seemed
to illustrate the eternal truth of an unerring prin-
Falk |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Marriage Contract by Honore de Balzac: crowd which surrounded the altar.
"Solonet tells me that the bride and bridegroom leave for Paris
to-morrow morning, all alone."
"Madame Evangelista was to live with them, I thought."
"Count Paul has got rid of her already."
"What a mistake!" said the Marquise de Gyas. "To shut the door on the
mother of his wife is to open it to a lover. Doesn't he know what a
mother is?"
"He has been very hard on Madame Evangelista; the poor woman has had
to sell her house and her diamonds, and is going to live at Lanstrac."
"Natalie looks very sad."
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Selected Writings of Guy De Maupassant by Guy De Maupassant: not even a breath of air stirring. "What is the matter with me?"
I said to myself. For ten years I had entered and re-entered in
the same way, without ever experiencing the least inquietude. I
never had any fear at nights. The sight of a man, a marauder, or
a thief would have thrown me into a fit of anger, and I would
have rushed at him without any hesitation. Moreover, I was
armed--I had my revolver. But I did not touch it, for I was
anxious to resist that feeling of dread with which I was seized.
What was it? Was it a presentiment--that mysterious presentiment
which takes hold of the senses of men who have witnessed
something which, to them, is inexplicable? Perhaps? Who knows?
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