| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Hidden Masterpiece by Honore de Balzac: "Listen, Gillette; come!"
The obedient, happy girl sprang lightly on the painter's knee. She was
all grace and beauty, pretty as the spring-time, decked with the
wealth of feminine charm, and lighting all with the fire of a noble
soul.
"O God!" he exclaimed, "I can never tell her!"
"A secret!" she cried; "then I must know it."
Poussin was lost in thought.
"Tell me."
"Gillette, poor, beloved heart!"
"Ah! do you want something of me?"
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Lesser Bourgeoisie by Honore de Balzac: fit into the mission that Madame de Godollo gave me, and
therefore, thinking them likely to interest you, I hasten to bring
them to your knowledge. The household in which I am now employed
is that of an old savant, named Monsieur Picot, who lives on a
first floor, Place de la Madeleine, in the house and apartment
formerly occupied by my late masters, the Thuilliers--
"What!" cried la Peyrade, interrupting his reading, "Pere Picot, that
ruined old lunatic, occupying such an apartment as that?"
"Go on, go on!" said Corentin; "life is full of many strange things.
You'll find the explanation farther along; for our correspondent--it
is the defect of those fellows to waste themselves on details--is only
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Illustrious Gaudissart by Honore de Balzac: "Subscribers are fools who never can be brought to understand that to
go ahead in the intellectual world they must start with more money
than they need for the tour of Europe," say the speculators.
Consequently there is endless warfare between the recalcitrant public
which refuses to pay the Parisian imposts and the tax-gatherer who,
living by his receipt of custom, lards the public with new ideas,
turns it on the spit of lively projects, roasts it with prospectuses
(basting all the while with flattery), and finally gobbles it up with
some toothsome sauce in which it is caught and intoxicated like a fly
with a black-lead. Moreover, since 1830 what honors and emoluments
have been scattered throughout France to stimulate the zeal and self-
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