| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan by Honore de Balzac: very subject a score of times with Madame de Montcornet since she
married that little Emile Blondet, who makes her the happiest woman in
the world; not an infidelity, not a thought that turns aside from her;
they are as happy as they were the first day. These long attachments,
like that of Rastignac and Madame de Nucingen, and your cousin, Madame
de Camps, for her Octave, have a secret, and that secret you and I
don't know, my dear. The world has paid us the extreme compliment of
thinking we are two rakes worthy of the court of the regent; whereas
we are, in truth, as innocent as a couple of school-girls."
"I should like that sort of innocence," cried the princess, laughing;
"but ours is worse, and it is very humiliating. Well, it is a
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Ebb-Tide by Stevenson & Osbourne: comprehending it; and through the roar of so many miles of
breakers, it was a silent ship that approached an empty island.
At last they drew near to the break in that interminable
gangway. A spur of coral sand stood forth on the one hand; on
the other a high and thick tuft of trees cut off the view;
between was the mouth of the huge laver. Twice a day the ocean
crowded in that narrow entrance and was heaped between these
frail walls; twice a day, with the return of the ebb, the mighty
surplusage of water must struggle to escape. The hour in which
the Farallone came there was the hour of flood. The sea turned
(as with the instinct of the homing pigeon) for the vast
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Vendetta by Honore de Balzac: blade of a sabre on the young man's forearm, and a moan escaped her.
The stranger raised his head and smiled to her. There was something
touching which went to the soul, in the care with which Servin lifted
the lint and touched the lacerated flesh, while the face of the
wounded man, though pale and sickly, expressed, as he looked at the
girl, more pleasure than suffering. An artist would have admired,
involuntarily, this opposition of sentiments, together with the
contrasts produced by the whiteness of the linen and the bared arm to
the red and blue uniform of the officer.
At this moment a soft half-light pervaded the studio; but a parting
ray of the evening sunlight suddenly illuminated the spot where the
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