| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Forged Coupon by Leo Tolstoy: debts, had gambled, and had seduced many
women; but he was clever, sagacious, and a good
magistrate. He was appointed to the court of
the district where Stepan Pelageushkine had been
tried. When Stepan was brought to him the first
time to give evidence, his sincere and quiet answers
puzzled the magistrate. He somehow uncon-
sciously felt that this man, brought to him in fet-
ters and with a shorn head, guarded by two
soldiers who were waiting to take him back to
prison, had a free soul and was immeasurably su-
The Forged Coupon |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Sarrasine by Honore de Balzac: committed by him while he was in the service of the Prince of Mysore.
Bankers, men of a more positive nature, devised a specious fable.
"Bah!" they would say, shrugging their broad shoulders pityingly,
"that little old fellow's a /Genoese head/!"
"If it is not an impertinent question, monsieur, would you have the
kindness to tell me what you mean by a Genoese head?"
"I mean, monsieur, that he is a man upon whose life enormous sums
depend, and whose good health is undoubtedly essential to the
continuance of this family's income. I remember that I once heard a
mesmerist, at Madame d'Espard's, undertake to prove by very specious
historical deductions, that this old man, if put under the magnifying
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy: windows of the theatre across to this quiet corner, at which there
seemed to be a smile of some sort upon the marble features of Jude;
while the old, superseded, Delphin editions of Virgil and Horace,
and the dog-eared Greek Testament on the neighbouring shelf, and the few
other volumes of the sort that he had not parted with, roughened with
stone-dust where he had been in the habit of catching them up for a few
minutes between his labours, seemed to pale to a sickly cast at the sounds.
The bells struck out joyously; and their reverberations travelled round
the bed-room.
Arabella's eyes removed from Jude to Mrs. Edlin. "D'ye think she will come?"
she asked.
Jude the Obscure |
