| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Red Inn by Honore de Balzac: murderer." He raised his head proudly. "This injustice restores to me
my innocence. My life would always have been wretched; my death leaves
me without reproach. But is there a future?"
The whole eighteenth century was in that sudden question. He remained
thoughtful.
"Tell me," I said to him, "how you answered. What did they ask you?
Did you not relate the simple facts as you told them to me?"
He looked at me fixedly for a moment; then, after that awful pause, he
answered with feverish excitement:--
"First they asked me, 'Did you leave the inn during the night?' I
said, 'Yes.' 'How?' I answered, 'By the window.' 'Then you must have
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Youth by Joseph Conrad: peered with lamps about the splintered bulwarks and
broken braces. 'But where's the captain?'
"We had not heard or seen anything of him all that
time. We went aft to look. A doleful voice arose hail-
ing somewhere in the middle of the dock, 'Judea ahoy!'
. . . How the devil did he get there? . . . 'Hallo!'
we shouted. 'I am adrift in our boat without oars,' he
cried. A belated waterman offered his services, and
Mahon struck a bargain with him for half-a-crown to
tow our skipper alongside; but it was Mrs. Beard that
came up the ladder first. They had been floating about
Youth |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Prince by Nicolo Machiavelli: less.
[*] Frederick the Great was accustomed to say: "The older one gets the
more convinced one becomes that his Majesty King Chance does
three-quarters of the business of this miserable universe."
Sorel's "Eastern Question."
I compare her to one of those raging rivers, which when in flood
overflows the plains, sweeping away trees and buildings, bearing away
the soil from place to place; everything flies before it, all yield to
its violence, without being able in any way to withstand it; and yet,
though its nature be such, it does not follow therefore that men, when
the weather becomes fair, shall not make provision, both with defences
The Prince |
