| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Country Doctor by Honore de Balzac: they will receive me with open arms. I shall come to grief at the
bottom of some glacier; but, if I am to speak my mind, I would rather
live for a couple of years among the heights, where there are no
governments, nor excisemen, nor gamekeepers, nor procureurs du roi,
than grovel in a marsh for a century. You are the only one that I
shall be sorry to leave behind; all the rest of them bore me! When you
are in the right, at any rate you don't worry one's life out----"
"And how about Louise?" asked Benassis. Butifer paused and turned
thoughtful.
"Eh! learn to read and write, my lad," said Genestas; "come and enlist
in my regiment, have a horse to ride, and turn carabineer. If they
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Off on a Comet by Jules Verne: Though still hidden by heavy clouds, the sun was evidently declining fast;
and what was equally inexplicable, it was not following the oblique curve
that in these latitudes and at this time of year might be expected,
but was sinking perpendicularly on to the horizon.
As he went along, Captain Servadac pondered deeply.
Perchance some unheard-of phenomenon had modified the rotary
motion of the globe; or perhaps the Algerian coast had been
transported beyond the equator into the southern hemisphere.
Yet the earth, with the exception of the alteration in its convexity,
in this part of Africa at least, seemed to have undergone no change
of any very great importance. As far as the eye could reach,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Cousin Betty by Honore de Balzac: had surpassed herself in the Rue du Dauphin that afternoon, he had
thought well to encourage her in her promised fidelity by giving her
the prospect of a certain little mansion, built in the Rue Barbette by
an imprudent contractor, who now wanted to sell it. Valerie could
already see herself in this delightful residence, with a fore-court
and a garden, and keeping a carriage!
"What respectable life can ever procure so much in so short a time, or
so easily?" said she to Lisbeth as she finished dressing. Lisbeth was
to dine with Valerie that evening, to tell Steinbock those things
about the lady which nobody can say about herself.
Madame Marneffe, radiant with satisfaction, came into the drawing-room
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