| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Albert Savarus by Honore de Balzac: wrecked. She is Mademoiselle de Watteville, the famous Besancon
heiress----"
The Duchess turned pale. Rosalie's eyes met hers with one of those
flashes which, between woman and woman, are more fatal than the pistol
shots of a duel. Francesca Soderini, who had suspected that Albert
might be innocent, hastily quitted the ballroom, leaving the speaker
at his wits' end to guess what terrible blow he had inflicted on the
beautiful Duchesse de Rhetore.
"If you want to hear more about Albert, come to the Opera ball on
Tuesday with a marigold in your hand."
This anonymous note, sent by Rosalie to the Duchess, brought the
Albert Savarus |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Daisy Miller by Henry James: and he liked her the more for her innocent-looking indifference
and her apparently inexhaustible good humor. He could hardly have
said why, but she seemed to him a girl who would never be jealous.
At the risk of exciting a somewhat derisive smile on the reader's part,
I may affirm that with regard to the women who had hitherto interested him,
it very often seemed to Winterbourne among the possibilities that, given
certain contingencies, he should be afraid--literally afraid--of these ladies;
he had a pleasant sense that he should never be afraid of Daisy Miller.
It must be added that this sentiment was not altogether flattering to Daisy;
it was part of his conviction, or rather of his apprehension, that she
would prove a very light young person.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall: in Faraday a kind of spiritual exaltation which makes itself
manifest here. His religious feeling and his philosophy could not
be kept apart; there was an habitual overflow of the one into the
other.
Whether he or another was its exponent, he appeared to take equal
delight in science. A good experiment would make him almost dance
with delight. In November, 1850, he wrote to me thus: --'I hope
some day to take up the point respecting the magnetism of associated
particles. In the meantime I rejoice at every addition to the facts
and reasoning connected with the subject. When science is a
republic, then it gains: and though I am no republican in other
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