| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau by Honore de Balzac: 'Perfumery' in big letters of gold. On the /entresol/ I place the
office, the counting-room, and a pretty little sanctum for you. I make
the shop out of the back-shop, the present dining-room, and kitchen. I
hire the first floor of the next house, and open a door into it
through the wall. I turn the staircase so as to pass from house to
house on one floor; and we shall thus get a grand appartement,
furnished like a nest. Yes, I shall refurnish your bedroom, and
contrive a boudoir for you and a pretty chamber for Cesarine. The
shop-girl whom you will hire, our head clerk, and your lady's-maid
(yes, Madame, you are to have one!) will sleep on the second floor. On
the third will be the kitchen and rooms of the cook and the man-of-
Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A House of Pomegranates by Oscar Wilde: aloud, and the Earth seemed to them like a flower of silver, and
the Moon like a flower of gold.
Yet, after that they had laughed they became sad, for they
remembered their poverty, and one of them said to the other, 'Why
did we make merry, seeing that life is for the rich, and not for
such as we are? Better that we had died of cold in the forest, or
that some wild beast had fallen upon us and slain us.'
'Truly,' answered his companion, 'much is given to some, and little
is given to others. Injustice has parcelled out the world, nor is
there equal division of aught save of sorrow.'
But as they were bewailing their misery to each other this strange
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Beauty and The Beast by Bayard Taylor: smile.
"If I had a message to you from Otto Lindenschmidt, what then?" I
asked.
He turned pale, and presently stammered out, "He--he is dead!"
"Now," said my friend, "it is quite time to drop the mask before
us. You see we know you, and we know your history. Not from Otto
Lindenschmidt alone; Count Ladislas Kasincsky--"
"What! Has he come back from Siberia?" exclaimed Johann Helm. His
face expressed abject terror; I think he would have fallen upon his
knees before us if he had not somehow felt, by a rascal's
instinct, that we had no personal wrongs to redress in unmasking
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