| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Study of a Woman by Honore de Balzac: "What! can it be STILL Madame de Nucingen?" cried Madame de Listomere,
more eager to penetrate that secret than to revenge herself for the
impertinence of the young man's speeches.
Eugene colored. A man must be more than twenty-five years of age not
to blush at being taxed with a fidelity that women laugh at--in order,
perhaps, not to show that they envy it. However, he replied with
tolerable self-possession:--
"Why not, madame?"
Such are the blunders we all make at twenty-five.
This speech caused a violent commotion in Madame de Listomere's bosom;
but Rastignac did not yet know how to analyze a woman's face by a
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Z. Marcas by Honore de Balzac: take it in turns to copy a batch of manuscript, so that he should do
but a third of his distasteful task; he had been quite angry, and we
had ceased to insist.
We heard the sound of gentlemanly boots in the passage, and raised our
heads, looking at each other. There was a tap at Marcas' door--he
never took the key out of the lock--and we heard the hero answer:
"Come in." Then--"What, you here, monsieur?"
"I, myself," replied the retired minister.
It was the Diocletian of this unknown martyr.
For some time he and our neighbor conversed in an undertone. Suddenly
Marcas, whose voice had been heard but rarely, as is natural in a
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad: chicken, PATE DE FOIE GRAS, asparagus, cooked oysters, sardines--
on all sorts of abominable sham delicacies out of tins.
My early-morning coffee he always drank; and it was all I
dared do for him in that respect.
Every day there was the horrible maneuvering to go through so that my room
and then the bathroom should be done in the usual way. I came to hate
the sight of the steward, to abhor the voice of that harmless man.
I felt that it was he who would bring on the disaster of discovery.
It hung like a sword over our heads.
The fourth day out, I think (we were then working down the east side
of the Gulf of Siam, tack for tack, in light winds and smooth water)--
The Secret Sharer |
