| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton: reported having seen in Paris. Meanwhile, as every one
she cared to see came to HER (and she could fill her
rooms as easily as the Beauforts, and without adding a
single item to the menu of her suppers), she did not
suffer from her geographic isolation.
The immense accretion of flesh which had descended
on her in middle life like a flood of lava on a doomed
city had changed her from a plump active little woman
with a neatly-turned foot and ankle into something as
vast and august as a natural phenomenon. She had
accepted this submergence as philosophically as all her
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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: the faubourg Saint-Jacques, and also an old employee at the mayor's
office, an intimate friend of theirs, named Laudigeois. Thus the
Phellions formed a phalanx of seven persons; the Collevilles were not
less numerous; so that on Sundays it often appeared that thirty
persons were assembled in the Thuillier salon. Thuillier renewed
acquaintance with the Saillards, Baudoyers, and Falleixs,--all persons
of respectability in the quarter of the Palais-Royal, whom they often
invited to dinner.
Madame Colleville was, as a woman, the most distinguished member of
this society, just as Minard junior and Professor Phellion were
superior among the men. All the others, without ideas or education,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Marriage Contract by Honore de Balzac: going to speak in her interests as well as in those of Monsieur le
comte."
Silence reigned for a moment, during which time everybody present,
oppressed with anxiety, awaited the allocution of the venerable notary
with unspeakable curiosity.
"In these days," continued Maitre Mathias, after a pause, "the
profession of notary has changed from what it was. Political
revolutions now exert an influence over the prospects of families,
which never happened in former times. In those days existences were
clearly defined; so were rank and position--"
"We are not here for a lecture on political ceremony, but to draw up a
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