| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Michael Strogoff by Jules Verne: a bowl of punch!"
Their joy was great on finding Nadia and Michael safe
and sound; above all, when they learnt that their brave
companion was not blind. Harry Blount inscribed this ob-
servation: "Red-hot iron is insufficient in some cases to de-
stroy the sensibility of the optic nerve."
Then the two correspondents, settled for a time in
Irkutsk, busied themselves in putting the notes and impres-
sions of their journey in order. Thence were sent to Lon-
don and Paris two interesting articles relative to the Tartar
invasion, and which -- a rare thing -- did not contradict each
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy: harmful as the indifference which is now spreading--"
"But how is it that in the name of religion the very first
demands of righteousness are violated--families are separated?"
Toporoff continued to smile patronisingly, evidently thinking
what Nekhludoff said very pretty. Anything that Nekhludoff could
say he would have considered very pretty and very one-sided, from
the height of what he considered his far-reaching office in the
State.
"It may seem so from the point of view of a private individual,"
he said, "but from an administrative point of view it appears in
a rather different light. However, I must bid you good-bye, now,"
Resurrection |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Elixir of Life by Honore de Balzac: XV., people of taste would have laughed at this witticism. Or was
it, perhaps, that at the outset of an orgy there is a certain
unwonted lucidity of mind? Despite the taper light, the clamor of
the senses, the gleam of gold and silver, the fumes of wine, and
the exquisite beauty of the women, there may perhaps have been in
the depths of the revelers' hearts some struggling glimmer of
reverence for things divine and human, until it was drowned in
glowing floods of wine! Yet even then the flowers had been
crushed, eyes were growing dull, and drunkenness, in Rabelais'
phrase, had "taken possession of them down to their sandals."
During that brief pause a door opened; and as once the Divine
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