| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Seraphita by Honore de Balzac: kind; take one step forward in well-doing. Advance beyond the love of
man and sacrifice yourself completely to the happiness of her you
love. Obey me; I will lead you in a path where you shall obtain the
distinctions which you crave, and where Love is infinite indeed."
She left him thoughtful.
"That soft creature!" he said within himself; "is she indeed the
prophetess whose eyes have just flashed lightnings, whose voice has
rung through worlds, whose hand has wielded the axe of doubt against
our sciences? Have we been dreaming? Am I awake?"
"Minna," said Seraphita, returning to the young girl, "the eagle
swoops where the carrion lies, but the dove seeks the mountain spring
Seraphita |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: amid a thousand misleading circumstances, was by no means Raoul's
greatest danger. His partners, Massol the lawyer, and du Tillet the
banker, had intended from the first to harness his ardor to the
chariot of their own importance and get rid of him as soon as he was
out of condition to feed the paper, or else to deprive him of his
power, arbitrarily, whenever it suited their purpose to take it. To
them Nathan represented a certain amount of talent to use up, a
literary force of the motive power of ten pens to employ. Massol, one
of those lawyers who mistake the faculty of endless speech for
eloquence, who possess the art of boring by diffusiveness, the torment
of all meetings and assemblies where they belittle everything, and who
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Message by Honore de Balzac: dream; to make sure of the piteous truth, I was obliged to look
fruitlessly under my pillow for the packet of letters. There is
no need to tell you how the next day went. I spent several hours
of it with the Juliette whom my poor comrade had so praised to
me. In her lightest words, her gestures, in all that she did and
said, I saw proofs of the nobleness of soul, the delicacy of
feeling which made her what she was, one of those beloved,
loving, and self-sacrificing natures so rarely found upon this
earth.
In the evening the Comte de Montpersan came himself as far as
Moulins with me. There he spoke with a kind of embarrassment:
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