| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Catherine de Medici by Honore de Balzac: Lorenzo II., the father of Catherine, married in 1518, for his second
wife, Madeleine de la Tour de Boulogne, in Auvergne, and died April
25, 1519, a few days after his wife, who died in giving birth to
Catherine. Catherine was therefore orphaned of father and mother as
soon as she drew breath. Hence the strange adventures of her
childhood, mixed up as they were with the bloody efforts of the
Florentines, then seeking to recover their liberty from the Medici.
The latter, desirous of continuing to reign in Florence, behaved with
such circumspection that Lorenzo, Catherine's father, had taken the
name of Duke d'Urbino.
At Lorenzo's death, the head of the house of the Medici was Pope Leo
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Second Home by Honore de Balzac: loudly, for the bitter wind blew cold about his calves. At last the
old lodgekeeper pulled up the latch; and as the young man passed his
window, called out in a hoarse voice, "Monsieur Granville, here is a
letter for you."
The young man took the letter, and in spite of the cold, tried to
identify the writing by the gleam of a dull lamp fast dying out. "From
my father!" he exclaimed, as he took his bedroom candle, which the
porter at last had lighted. And he ran up to his room to read the
following epistle:--
"Set off by the next mail; and if you can get here soon enough,
your fortune is made. Mademoiselle Angelique Bontems has lost her
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde: pagan days, between a silly watchman in Messina and a silly Justice
of the Peace in Windsor. But when he deals with higher characters,
with those exceptions of each age which are so fine that they
become its types, he gives them absolutely the stamp and seal of
their time. Virgilia is one of those Roman wives on whose tomb was
written 'Domi mansit, lanam fecit,' as surely as Juliet is the
romantic girl of the Renaissance. He is even true to the
characteristics of race. Hamlet has all the imagination and
irresolution of the Northern nations, and the Princess Katharine is
as entirely French as the heroine of DIVORCONS. Harry the Fifth is
a pure Englishman, and Othello a true Moor.
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