| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Another Study of Woman by Honore de Balzac: divine accessories of the toilet, is no longer a wife, a maid, or a
townswoman; she is adrift, and becomes a chattel. The Carmelites will
not receive a married woman; it would be bigamy. Would her lover still
have anything to say to her? That is the question. Thus your perfect
lady may perhaps give occasion to calumny, never to slander."
"It is all so horribly true," said the Princesse de Cadignan.
"And so," said Blondet, "our 'perfect lady' lives between English
hypocrisy and the delightful frankness of the eighteenth century--a
bastard system, symptomatic of an age in which nothing that grows up
is at all like the thing that has vanished, in which transition leads
nowhere, everything is a matter of degree; all the great figures
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Cousin Pons by Honore de Balzac: price the collection will fetch. If it brings in eight hundred
thousand francs, you shall have fifteen hundred francs a year. It is a
fortune."
"Very well. I will tell them to value the things on their
consciences."
An hour later, Pons was fast asleep. The doctor had ordered a soothing
draught, which Schmucke administered, all unconscious that La Cibot
had doubled the dose. Fraisier, Remonencq, and Magus, three gallows-
birds, were examining the seventeen hundred different objects which
formed the old musician's collection one by one.
Schmucke had gone to bed. The three kites, drawn by the scent of a
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Adam Bede by George Eliot: influence over her, felt it was useless to attempt to persuade or
soothe her till this passion was past; so he contented himself
with tending the back kitchen fire and folding up his father's
clothes, which had been hanging out to dry since morning--afraid
to move about in the room where his mother was, lest he should
irritate her further.
But after Lisbeth had been rocking herself and moaning for some
minutes, she suddenly paused and said aloud to herself, "I'll go
an' see arter Adam, for I canna think where he's gotten; an' I
want him to go upstairs wi' me afore it's dark, for the minutes to
look at the corpse is like the meltin' snow."
Adam Bede |
