| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Albert Savarus by Honore de Balzac: one of those chances of which the Abbe de Grancey had spoken, she
happened to be on the Loire in a steamboat of which the boiler burst.
Mademoiselle de Watteville was so severely injured that she lost her
right arm and her left leg; her face is marked with fearful scars,
which have bereft her of her beauty; her health, cruelly upset, leaves
her few days free from suffering. In short, she now never leaves the
Chartreuse of les Rouxey, where she leads a life wholly devoted to
religious practices.
PARIS, May 1842.
ADDENDUM
The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
Albert Savarus |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: supplied either by Plato himself or allusions found in the dialogues have
not been lost sight of. Much may be said about this subject, but the
results can only be probable; there are no materials which would enable us
to attain to anything like certainty.
The relations of knowledge and virtue are again brought forward in the
companion dialogues of the Lysis and Laches; and also in the Protagoras and
Euthydemus. The opposition of abstract and particular knowledge in this
dialogue may be compared with a similar opposition of ideas and phenomena
which occurs in the Prologues to the Parmenides, but seems rather to belong
to a later stage of the philosophy of Plato.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Recruit by Honore de Balzac: integrity, greatly respected, and for whom Madame de Dey had shown
much esteem. There all the aspirants for the hand of the rich widow
had a tale to tell that was more or less probable; and each expected
to turn to his own profit the secret event which he thus recounted.
The public prosecutor imagined a whole drama to result in the return
by night of Madame de Dey's son, the emigre. The mayor was convinced
that a priest who refused the oath had arrived from La Vendee and
asked for asylum; but the day being Friday, the purchase of a hare
embarrassed the good mayor not a little. The judge of the district
court held firmly to the theory of a Chouan leader or a body of
Vendeans hotly pursued. Others were convinced that the person thus
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