| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Salammbo by Gustave Flaubert: Tanith, and the Venus of the Greeks. He engraved a name upon a copper
plate, and buried it in the sand at the threshold of his tent.
Spendius used to hear him groaning and talking to himself.
One night he went in.
Matho, as naked as a corpse, was lying on a lion's skin flat on his
stomach, with his face in both his hands; a hanging lamp lit up his
armour, which was hooked on to the tent-pole above his head.
"You are suffering?" said the slave to him. "What is the matter with
you? Answer me?" And he shook him by the shoulder calling him several
times, "Master! master!"
At last Matho lifted large troubled eyes towards him.
Salammbo |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Vendetta by Honore de Balzac: patricians, and passed before their camp without pronouncing a single
word. Her absorption seemed so great that she sat down before her
easel, opened her color-box, took up her brushes, drew on her brown
sleeves, arranged her apron, looked at her picture, examined her
palette, without, apparently, thinking of what she was doing. All
heads in the group of the bourgeoises were turned toward her. If the
young ladies in the Thirion camp did not show their impatience with
the same frankness, their sidelong glances were none the less directed
on Ginevra.
"She hasn't noticed it!" said Mademoiselle Roguin.
At this instant Ginevra abandoned the meditative attitude in which she
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Eryxias by Platonic Imitator: the richest are the same? The truth is that we are discussing the subject
of riches, and my notion is that we should argue respecting the honest and
dishonest means of acquiring them, and, generally, whether they are a good
thing or a bad.
Very good, I said, and I am obliged to you for the hint: in future we will
be more careful. But why do not you yourself, as you introduced the
argument, and do not think that the former discussion touched the point at
issue, tell us whether you consider riches to be a good or an evil?
I am of opinion, he said, that they are a good. He was about to add
something more, when Critias interrupted him:--Do you really suppose so,
Eryxias?
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