| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Collection of Antiquities by Honore de Balzac: in a house with a steep-pitched roof. There was a little paved
courtyard in front, where the rose-bushes grew and clambered up to the
windows of the upper story. Behind lay a little country garden, with
its box-edged borders, shut in by damp, gloomy-looking walls. The
prim, gray-painted street door, with its wicket opening and bell
attached, announced quite as plainly as the official scutcheon that "a
notary lives here."
It was half-past five o'clock in the afternoon, at which hour the old
man usually sat digesting his dinner. He had drawn his black leather-
covered armchair before the fire, and put on his armor, a painted
pasteboard contrivance shaped like a top boot, which protected his
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Catherine de Medici by Honore de Balzac: ordered me to take up, Captain Chaudieu was obliged to turn my flank
to avoid a fight. So instead of arriving by night, like the rest, this
rebel and his men got there at daybreak, by which time the king's
troops had crushed the invaders of the town."
"And you had a reserve force to recover the gate which had been opened
to them?" said the prince.
"Monsieur le Marechal de Saint-Andre was there with five hundred men-
at-arms."
The prince gave the highest praise to these military arrangements.
"The lieutenant-general must have been fully aware of the plans of the
Reformers, to have acted as he did," he said in conclusion. "They were
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Aspern Papers by Henry James: that they must have been bought and might make up their minds
from this that I was a humbug. So I composed myself and finally,
though the delay was long, perceived some appearances of bloom.
This encouraged me, and I waited serenely enough till they multiplied.
Meanwhile the real summer days arrived and began to pass, and as I
look back upon them they seem to me almost the happiest of my life.
I took more and more care to be in the garden whenever it was not too hot.
I had an arbor arranged and a low table and an armchair put into it;
and I carried out books and portfolios (I had always some business
of writing in hand), and worked and waited and mused and hoped,
while the golden hours elapsed and the plants drank in the light
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