| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Sarrasine by Honore de Balzac: his linen was of dazzling whiteness. A shirt-frill of English lace,
yellow with age, the magnificence of which a queen might have envied,
formed a series of yellow ruffles on his breast; but upon him the lace
seemed rather a worthless rag than an ornament. In the centre of the
frill a diamond of inestimable value gleamed like a sun. That
superannuated splendor, that display of treasure, of great intrinsic
worth, but utterly without taste, served to bring out in still bolder
relief the strange creature's face. The frame was worthy of the
portrait. That dark face was full of angles and furrowed deep in every
direction; the chin was furrowed; there were great hollows at the
temples; the eyes were sunken in yellow orbits. The maxillary bones,
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Market-Place by Harold Frederic: as I intend they shall be, and nothing unforeseen happens,
will bring in over four hundred thousand pounds,
and close the 'corner' in Rubber Consols for good.
Then I need never see the City again, thank God! And for
that matter--why, what is six weeks? It's like tomorrow.
I'm going to act as if I were free already. The rain fills
me full of the country. Will you both come with me tomorrow
or next day, and see the Pellesley place in Hertfordshire?
By the photographs it's the best thing in the market.
The newest parts of it are Tudor--and that's what I've
always wanted."
The Market-Place |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Letters of Two Brides by Honore de Balzac: it is the letter, not of a woman, but of a child. You are the same old
Louise, and you forget, what I used to repeat over and over again to
you, that the passion of love belongs rightly to a state of nature,
and has only been purloined by civilization. So fleeting is its
character, that the resources of society are powerless to modify its
primitive condition, and it becomes the effort of all noble minds to
make a man of the infant Cupid. But, as you yourself admit, such love
ceases to be natural.
Society, my dear abhors sterility; but substituting a lasting
sentiment for the mere passing frenzy of nature, it has succeeded in
creating that greatest of all human inventions--the family, which is
|
