| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Catherine de Medici by Honore de Balzac: indecision for which great statesmen are so often blamed, though it
comes from the vast extent of the glance with which they embrace all
difficulties,--setting one against the other, and adding up, as it
were, all chances before deciding on a course. Her ears rang, her
blood tingled, and yet she stood there calm and dignified, all the
while measuring in her soul the depths of the political abyss which
lay before her, like the natural depths which rolled away at her feet.
This day was the second of those terrible days (that of the arrest of
the Vidame of Chartres being the first) which she was destined to meet
in so great numbers throughout her regal life; it also witnessed her
last blunder in the school of power. Though the sceptre seemed
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: human creatures flocked to these great buildings, swarming about them
like ants on an ant-heap. Some were eager to rescue books from
oblivion or to copy manuscripts, others were helping the poor, but
nearly all were studying. Up above this countless multitude rose giant
statues that they had erected in their midst, and by the gleams of a
strange light from some luminary as powerful as the sun, I read the
inscriptions on the bases of the statues--Science, History,
Literature.
The light died out. Again I faced the young girl. Gradually she
slipped into the dreary sheath, into the ragged cere-cloths, and
became an aged woman again. Her familiar brought her a little dust,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from House of Mirth by Edith Wharton: you must have some letters for me to answer--let me at least be
useful."
She settled herself at the desk, and Mrs. Trenor accepted her
resumption of the morning's task with a sigh which implied that,
after all, she had proved herself unfit for higher uses.
The luncheon table showed a depleted circle. ALI the men but Jack
Stepney and Dorset had returned to town (it seemed to Lily a last
touch of irony that Selden and Percy Gryce should have gone in
the same train), and Lady Cressida and the attendant Wetheralls
had been despatched by motor to lunch at a distant country-house.
At such moments of diminished interest it was usual for Mrs.
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