| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Z. Marcas by Honore de Balzac: to study, nature had been generous and bestowed all that cannot be
acquired--keen perceptions, self-command, a nimble wit, rapid
judgment, decisiveness, and, what is the genius of these men,
fertility in resource.
By the time when Marcas thought himself duly equipped, France was torn
by intestine divisions arising from the triumph of the House of
Orleans over the elder branch of the Bourbons.
The field of political warfare is evidently changed. Civil war
henceforth cannot last for long, and will not be fought out in the
provinces. In France such struggles will be of brief duration and at
the seat of government; and the battle will be the close of the moral
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Juana by Honore de Balzac: world's esteem.
Diard was not always lucky; far from it. In three years he had
dissipated three fourths of his fortune, but his passion for play gave
him the energy to continue it. He was intimate with a number of men,
more particularly with the roues of the Bourse, men who, since the
revolution, have set up the principle that robbery done on a large
scale is only a SMIRCH to the reputation,--transferring thus to
financial matters the loose principles of love in the eighteenth
century. Diard now became a sort of business man, and concerned
himself in several of those affairs which are called SHADY in the
slang of the law-courts. He practised the decent thievery by which so
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Arrow of Gold by Joseph Conrad: That dummy had been made to measure years before. It had to wear
for days and days the Imperial Byzantine robes in which Dona Rita
sat only once or twice herself; but of course the folds and bends
of the stuff had to be preserved as in the first sketch. Dona Rita
described amusingly how she had to stand in the middle of her room
while Rose walked around her with a tape measure noting the figures
down on a small piece of paper which was then sent to the maker,
who presently returned it with an angry letter stating that those
proportions were altogether impossible in any woman. Apparently
Rose had muddled them all up; and it was a long time before the
figure was finished and sent to the Pavilion in a long basket to
The Arrow of Gold |
